Category Archives: Corruption
Tarmac Talk Could Influence Election Outcome
Jane Mayer, in the New Yorker, points out that FBI Director Comey broke with Justice Department tradition:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch expressed her preference that Comey follow the department’s longstanding practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations, and not taking any action that could influence the outcome of an election, but he said that he felt compelled to do otherwise.
Tarmac Talk
He might have felt compelled to do otherwise because the AG turned her authority in the case over to him:
Comey’s supporters argue that he had to act independently, and publicly, because Lynch had compromised herself by having an impromptu visit with Bill Clinton late in the investigation.”
Here’s Andrew McCarthy in NR on Comey’s tradition breaking behavior:
In effect, it became The Decision because Attorney General Loretta Lynch had disgraced herself by furtively meeting with Mrs. Clinton’s husband a few days before Comey announced his recommendation. Comey, therefore, gave Mrs. Clinton a twofer: an unheard-of public proclamation that she should not be indicted by the head of the investigative agency; and a means of taking Lynch off the hook, which allowed the decision against prosecution to be portrayed as a careful weighing of evidence rather than a corrupt deal cooked up in the back of a plane parked on a remote tarmac.
Taking Action
McCarthy says not taking action would also have influenced the election:
But of course, not taking action one would take but for the political timing is as political as it gets. To my mind, it is more political because the negatively affected candidate is denied any opportunity to rebut the law-enforcement action publicly.
Anyway Hillary created the mess so it’s her fault. At least that’s the way Rich Lowry, A. B. Stoddard, Trey Gowdy, Andrew McCarthy, and Piers Morgan’s see it.
FBI Immunity Chest
Rather than convene a grand jury to subpoena her computer, the FBI gave Cheryl Mills immunity from prosecution. Mills served as Hillary’s chief of staff and as her attorney.
Immunity with Impunity
The FBI also gave immunity to four others and agreed to destroy computers after reviewing evidence on them.
Here’s what VDH thinks of that:
Had anyone else in government set up a private e-mail server, sent and received classified information on it, deleted over 30,000 e-mails, ordered subordinates to circumvent court and congressional orders to produce documents, and serially and publicly lied to the American people about the scandal, that person would surely be in jail.
We’re All Weasels Now
Not that anyone asked, but Director Comey assured us the FBI is not overrun by weasels.
Members of Congress needed assurances after last Friday’s FBI document dump. The dumped documents revealed that Clinton consiglieri Cheryl Mills sat in on Hillary Clinton’s FBI interview. Mills listened along with eight other lawyers while Hillary was questioned about her private email server. Mills is also a witness in that case. Legal experts say that’s unusual because it gives attorney/client protection to her communications with Hillary.
And the Justice Department gave her immunity anyway.
No Weasels Here
Committee Chair Trey Gowdy, a respected former federal prosecutor himself, says this isn’t the FBI he remembers.
When you have five immunity agreements and no prosecutions, when you are allowing witnesses who happen to be lawyers who happen to be targets to sit in on an interview — that is not the FBI that I used to work with.“
Comey sputtered that it is so.
“I hope, someday, when this political craziness is over, you’ll look back again on this, because this is the FBI you know and love,” the Bureau’s director told Gowdy. “This was done by pros, in the right way. That’s the part I have no patience with.”
And he insisted “We are not weasels.”
Two Bit BleachBit Clinton Caper
The FBI did a document dump on the Friday afternoon before Labor Day weekend. The dumped documents detailed Hillary Clinton’s answers to questions about her secret email server.
And it turns out Hillary used 15 Blackberrys with her home brew server. She had publicly claimed she needed the private server so she could use just one device. Of the fifteen devices, two were destroyed with a hammer. The whereabouts of the others are unknown.
BleachBit
Furthermore, an employee of Platte River Networks, the contractor who managed the server, wiped it clean. Not with a cloth or something, as Hillary wondered aloud. He used BleachBit software to destroy data which had been subpoenaed by Congress.
Paul Sperry in the NY Post writes:
Far from exonerating Clinton, the nearly 60 pages of documents expose both the systematic destruction of subpoenaed evidence by Clinton’s aides and the curious lack of interest by investigators in recovering it.
Comey even let Clinton’s State Department aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson sit in on the interview with Clinton’s other lawyers, despite the glaring conflict of interest. FBI documents make clear Mills and Samuelson led the effort to search and destroy Clinton’s subpoenaed e-mails and should’ve been prime targets of the investigation.
They’re Gonna Put Y’all In Chains
Andrew McCarthy in National Review calls Mills, longtime consigliere and chief-of-staff at Hillary’s State Department, the Clinton Family’s Tom Hayden.
I’m pretty sure he meant Tom Hagen.
Clinton Foundation Smoke
Hillary told ABC News yesterday that she doesn’t think Bill should step down from the Clinton Foundation before the election. She’s proud of the work the foundation has done and doesn’t think there is a conflict of interest:
“I know that that’s what has been alleged and never proven. But nevertheless, I take it seriously.”
Clinton Foundation Smoke
She admits, there’s a lot of Clinton Foundation smoke but no fire.
Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band worked with Hillary’s top aid, Huma Abedin, to arrange special access to the Secretary of State for foundation donors. But so far, no smoking gun.
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass knows something about political corruption. And here’s what he has to say about “smoking guns.”:
The other day at breakfast, I was talking about this stupid, narrow Washington definition of political corruption with a man who has made it his life study.
“Say you’re in a meeting with an elected official, and you say, ‘I’ll give you so much money if you give me this favor and that favor,’ You know what happens next?” asked the man wise in the Chicago Way.
I knew, but I played along: No, what happens?
“The first thing the politician will think to himself, ‘Why is he talking that way? This son of a b—- is wired up,'” he said. “And no one will ever talk to you ever again.”
That’s why it’s depressing to hear meat puppets insist that there is no there, there, with the Clinton Foundation and Hillary, because it’s already been laid out.
The corruption was in the selling of access to the highest reaches of the federal government.
To someone who was then a sitting secretary of state who — as all the foreign tough guys with treasure understood — was already reaching for the White House.
