Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Hillary Clinton: The Teflon Candidate?


I find this simply hard to believe. FBI Director, James Comey, revealed the results of his lengthy investigation into the mishandling of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails and her refusal to use a government issued secured cell phone and email account or at least a secured server, along with her failure to properly dispose of government emails sent to her private email account (Ms. Clinton had testified before Congress that she didn't think it was necessary, kind of like refusing to provide assistance to those at Benghazi I suppose). FBI Director Comey stated that while the FBI has reviewed some 30,000 emails, which included the use of several unsecured servers and cell phones, no criminal charges will be filed. Director Comey went on to state that "no reasonable prosecutor" should consider bring charges against her. In other words, the fix is in and there will be no prosecution and certainly no convection if there is. This, despite the fact that their investigation, covering Ms. Clinton's email accounts from 2009 to 2013, included 110 messages in 52 exchanges which they verified to have contained confidential information. They discovered eight top secret emails, 36 marked secret, eight that were confidential, and 2000 which were listed as sensitive and later received a security classification.

It is interesting to note that this announcement came just five days after Bill Clinton just happened to bump into the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Loretta Lynch. She had initiated the investigation by the FBI into the illegal handling of the emails, as well as the use of a unsecured cell phone or server and the deleted emails. According to the corporate media, the former president simply bumped into Janet while on a campaign stop in Phoenix Arizona, where they spoke privately for about 40 minutes onboard Ms. Lynch's government provided Lear Jet, about various mundane subjects such as their grandchildren, the weather, golf and so forth while Secret Service agents waited outside. Both stated they there was no discussion about the ongoing investigation of Hillary or the pending announcement by the FBI Director. Honest. Trust me.

How is that even possible? When I was in the military, I routinely handled classified information. Some of which required personal "eyes only" delivery. Had I failed to properly follow security procedures in any way, I suspect I would have found myself on a one way trip to Leavenworth Federal Prison. Ms. Clinton and staff got little more than an ever so gentle slap on their wrist when Director Comey called their handling of the emails "extremely careless", but added that nothing is going to happen. Comey went on to state that although Clinton and staff mishandled secure email, there was nothing in his probe to indicate that the mishandling was intentional or deliberate. Ms Clinton did acknowledge the there were other emails---possibly in the thousands--- which were simply deleted (she later claimed that much of the deleted emails were about mundane subjects such as her yoga classes and daughter Chelsea's wedding plans. I wonder if Ambassador Steven's invitation had been deleted too?) . In short, the failure to use secured communications represented either incompetency or arrogance. I suspect that it was both. Oh well, no harm no foul. I guess it goes to show that there are rules and laws for the political class and elites and there are rules and laws for the rest of us.

There was, however, a bit of irony when it was revealed that several foreign intelligence services were able to tap into Ms. Clinton's email account and read almost in real time the messages. In fact, Russia offered t o provide the FBI with a copy of all the emails sent to and from Ms. Clinton, including the deleted ones, if they desired. Given Director Comey's announcement, I imagine that he will not take the Russians up on their offer. Too bad. It would be interesting to know what other games Ms. Clinton plays on her phone, but then again, we potentially have four years ahead us to find out.



US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton meet privately in Phoenix before Benghazi report
http://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/loretta-lynch-bill-clinton-meet-privately-in-phoenix


Clinton hid thousands of emails, put classified data on her server, but shouldn't be charged--FBI
https://www.rt.com/usa/349560-fbi-director-clinton-probe/


FBI Director: Hillary Clinton 'extremely reckless' but no charges recommended
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/politics/fbi-director-doesnt-recommend-charges-against-hillary-clinton/index.html


The damning things the FBI said about Clinton's email
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/07/05/what-fbi-found-in-hillary-clinton-email-investigation/86709530/

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