FBI Clears Hillary Clinton Again

Donald Trump supporters will be crying in their beer and cheap moonshine again over the news that, after a review of the e-mails that Trump tool James Comey made such a big deal about a week ago Friday, the FBI found no criminality on the part of Hillary Clinton.  Of course, if Comey had not been playing political games and trying to throw the presidential election to Donald Trump, he would have reviewed the new e-mails and ONLY AFTER doing so, would he have advised Congress of the new e-mails and that they did not change the FBI's prior position that there was no basis for any criminal charges.   Sadly, I suspect Comey is now trying to save his own sorry ass. As I have asked before, when is he going to be investigated - and hopefully, prosecuted - for violating the Hatch Act?  The Washington Post has details on Comey's big fail and self-preservation attempt.  Here are excerpts:

FBI Director James B. Comey notified key members of Congress Sunday afternoon that after reviewing newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails the agency stands by its original findings against recommending charges.

Comey wrote that investigators had worked “around the clock” to review all the emails found on a device used by former congressman Anthony Weiner that had been sent to or from Clinton and that “we have not changed our conclusions expressed in July.”

The conclusion from Comey provided one more twist to the 2016 presidential race and cleared away a major distraction for Clinton and her team just two days before the election.

Prior to his Oct. 28 announcement, Clinton had opened a significant lead over Republican Donald Trump in most public polling following a string of strong debate performances. But the polls tightened considerably as Clinton’s email practices once again took center stage.

Comey had come under fire for inserting the FBI into the campaign’s final days with the announcement. Department of Justice policy discourages the agency from taking steps in days before an election, to avoid the perception that the FBI is trying to the influence the outcome of the vote.

A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment beyond Comey’s letter. A Department of Justice spokesman said only that the department and FBI had “dedicated all necessary resources to conduct this review expeditiously.” 

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted in response: “We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited. Now Director Comey has confirmed it .”

The three-paragraph letter was sent to the chairman of the Homeland Security, Judiciary, Appropriations and Oversight and Government Reform and was copied to the ranking members of those committees. Comey said the FBI had performed an “extraordinary amount of high quality work” to conduct the review.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee said the announcement “affirms and vindicates” the FBI’s decision from July. “Over the past week, Republicans have engaged in wild speculation and launched unsubstantiated accusations, but the FBI has determined—yet again—that they are without merit. Now it is time for the American people to go forward base,” he said.

Media Is Ignoring Trump Lawsuits and Destruction of Records and E-mails

While the American mainstream media continues to play into the hands of Donald Trump - and actually Vladimir Putin as well - by having near orgasms in its rush to sensationalize issues surrounding Hillary Clinton's e-mails, for the most part it is utterly ignoring the 75 lawsuits involving Donald Trump.  Even more hypocritically, it is ignoring Trump's history of destroying records and e-mails despite court orders.  A piece in Politicususa looks at the Trump's lawsuits while Newsweek looks at Trump's pattern of contempt of court actions and record destruction.  First these highlights from the Newsweek piece:

Over the course of decades, Donald Trump’s companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics—exposed by a Newsweek review of thousands of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an array of court cases—have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump. In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled—sometimes in vain—to obtain records.

This behavior is of particular import given Trump’s frequent condemnations of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, for having deleted more than 30,000 emails from a server she used during her time as secretary of state. While Clinton and her lawyers have said all of those emails were personal, Trump has suggested repeatedly on the campaign trail that they were government documents Clinton was trying to hide and that destroying them constituted a crime. The allegation—which the FBI concluded was not supported by any evidence—is a crowd-pleaser at Trump rallies, often greeted by supporters chanting, “Lock her up!”

TRUMP’S USE OF DECEPTION and untruthful affidavits, as well as the hiding or improper destruction of documents, dates back to at least 1973, when the Republican nominee, his father and their real estate company battled the federal government over civil charges that they refused to rent apartments to African-Americans. The Trump strategy was simple: deny, impede and delay, while destroying documents the court had ordered them to hand over.

For months, the Trumps ignored the government’s discovery demands, even though court procedure in a civil or criminal case requires each side to produce relevant documents in a timely manner. . . . .  When litigation is filed or even contemplated, scrupulous lawyers and corporations immediately impose document-retention programs or require that any shredding or disposing of records be halted. Courts have handed down severe sanctions or even criminal charges of obstruction of justice against executives and companies that destroyed records because they knew they were going to be sued.

Yet when the government filed its standard discovery requests, the Trumps reacted as though seeking that information was outrageous. They argued in court that prosecutors had no case and wanted to riffle through corporate files on a fishing expedition. Once again, this led to more delays, more replies, more hearings...and another specious argument thrown out of court.

Finally, under subpoena, Trump appeared for a short deposition. When asked about the missing documents, he made a shocking admission: The Trumps had been destroying their corporate records for the previous six months and had no document-retention program. They had conducted no inspections to determine which files might have been sought in the discovery requests or might otherwise be related to the case. Instead, in order to “save space,” Trump testified, officials with his company had been tossing documents into the shredder and garbage.

In 2009, a group of plaintiffs claimed Trump duped them into buying apartments in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, development by portraying it as one of his projects. The fine print of the dense and legalistic purchase contracts, however, revealed that Trump had agreed only to license his name to the developers, and when the project hit financial snags, he walked away from it.

In their initial disclosures in 2011, Trump and his company said they had no insurance to cover any of their liability in this case. . . . . Two years after denying that Trump had insurance that could have been used to settle the Fort Lauderdale litigation, one of his lawyers made a startling admission: Trump and his company had been insured all along for up to $5 million. But no more—the policy had recently “dried up,” the lawyer said.

PERHAPS THE WORST LEGAL CASE involving Trump and his companies hiding and destroying emails and other records involved real estate developer Cordish Cos., which, through an affiliate called Power Plant Entertainment LLC, built two American Indian casinos in Florida. 

Trump offered no evidence in support of his contention except his word, so the opposing lawyers filed extensive discovery demands, seeking emails, computer files, calendars and other records that might prove he knew about the casino deal before 2000.

A full year into the case, Trump and his company, Trump Hotels, had produced only a single box of documents, many of which were not relevant—and no emails, digital files, phone records, calendars or even documents Trump lawyers had promised to turn over. Interrogatories were still unanswered. Lawyers for Power Plant obtained a court order compelling Trump and his company to comply with the discovery demands and hand over the relevant information and documents.

In a March 2006 response, Trump’s lawyers argued that the emails and other electronic documents had not been produced because the company didn’t have them. They claimed it had no servers until 2001—the year Trump claimed he had learned of the Power Plant project. They also claimed Trump Hotels had no policy regarding retaining documents until 2003. In other words, they hadn’t turned over any emails because no emails had been saved on a Trump server.

Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld reacted with near disbelief. “I don't have the patience for this,” he said. “This has been going on too long to have to listen—and I don't mean to be disrespectful—to this double-talk. There has to be an attitude adjustment from the plaintiff.”

[B]y deposing numerous IT specialists with two Trump companies—the Trump Organization and Trump Hotels—lawyers for Power Plant gradually chipped away at it. Finally, during a deposition nine months after he had signed the deceptive affidavit, the same Trump executive admitted his assertions in it were untrue. In fact, an IBM Domino server for emails and other files had been installed in 1999, . . . These startling revelations changed nothing, however, because there was no trove of documents. The Trump records had been destroyed.

There is much more, but you get the drift: Trump and his companies are pathological lies and have nothing but contempt for the legal system and view others as suckers and targets for abuse.   The Politicususa piece follows this theme of just how crooked and unscrupulous Trump is in fact.  Here are highlights:

[H]ow many people realize that Donald Trump, at this moment, has 75 – SEVENTY-FIVE – legal issues hanging over his head.

He’s lying 20 to 35 times a day and has his followers – and with much less excuse, the mainstream media – thoroughly distracted by the Clinton email non-story so he can divert their attention away from his own legally questionable activities.

USA TODAY reported at the end of October that “Just two weeks before Election Day, at least 75 of the 4,000-plus lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses remain open, according to an ongoing, nationwide analysis of state and federal court records by USA TODAY.”

If one thing has become clear throughout this election it is that Trump does not pay his bills. Earlier, we had covered an incident where he had declined to finish paying a Florida contractor for work it did on one of his resorts, having decided that the contractor had been “paid enough,” even though it wasn’t the agreed-upon amount. Trump got nailed by the court for $300K in attorney’s fees in that case.

Just a few examples from USA TODAY’s investigation:

Trump faces significant open litigation tied to his businesses: angry members at his Jupiter, Fla. golf course say they were cheated out of refunds on their dues and a former employee at the same club claims she was fired after reporting sexual harassment. There’s a fraud case brought by Trump University students who say the mogul’s company ripped them off for tens of thousands in tuition for a sham real estate course.

Trump is also defending lawsuits tied to his campaign. A disgruntled GOP political consultant sued for $4 million saying Trump defamed her. Another suit, a class action, says the campaign violated consumer protection laws by sending unsolicited text messages.
 As pointed out by USA TODAY’s Nick Penzenstadler and John Kelly, these lawsuits will dog Trump into the White House, should he win. He will have no immunity because he is president. And America – and the world – will be treated to the spectacle of the President of the United States having to make trip after trip to the court to settle his highly questionable personal and business affairs.

There are harassment cases, sex discrimination lawsuits, fraud, unpaid bills, racist comments, defamation, cases involving Trump University. As USA TODAY notes, “as recently as last spring…New York had to take legal action to collect $8,578 in unpaid taxes on the Trump-owned company that owns the trademark Boeing 757 that jetted the mogul to campaign rallies across the country.”

And those 75 cases will likely grow. . . . All the facts – including the new disclosures about Trump’s ties to a Russian server and his potentially illegal ploy to avoid paying taxes – make it clear that if Trump the deadbeat liar drains the swamp, he will be the first one down the drain.

Many in the German media in the 1930's by laziness and default aided and abetted Hitler.  The parallels with the American media today are very disturbing.   Trump is a cheat and a perpetual liar, plain and simple.

Irresponsible Reporting on New E-Mail Investigation

This country would be such a different and better place if we had a responsible news media.  Yesterday, the FBI announced what appears to be a dubiously based re-opening of the Clinton e-mail investigation.  The problem is, that from what information that is available, the e-mails at the root of the "new" story are not even those of Clinton herself.  One very politically involved friend summarized the situation as follows:

So, here are a few things to keep in mind from news reports right now about FBI Director Comey and the "emails": 1) The e-mails Comey announced today were NOT originally withheld by Clinton or campaign (source: NBC) 2) Newly discovered emails related to Clinton investigation did not come from her private server (source: AP) 3) The e-mails mentioned in Comey's letter were discovered "on another device" tied to an unrelated case (source: NBC) 4) The emails were discovered during the FBI's inquiry into Anthony Weiner's sexting (source: New York Times)To me, it all seems like an overtly political move today.And none of it suggests it has anything to do with Hillary Clinton directly!!!

A piece in Salon further supports this reasoning.  Here are highlights:

The emails that the FBI are looking into did not come from Hillary Clinton’s private server.

The emails in question, according to the New York Times, came from seized electronic devices belonging to Anthony Weiner and his recently estranged wife, Huma Abedin.

NBC’s Pete Williams reported late Friday that the newly discovered emails the FBI teased in a letter came from a “device” involved in a separate investigation.

Williams appeared on MSNBC to give an update on what his sources were telling him.

“What they say is that in the course of a separate investigation, they came across a device — they won’t say whether it is a computer or cell phone, but that it’s some device — and that in looking at that, that led them to some other emails,” Williams said. “But they are not emails from Hillary Clinton.” 

“It doesn’t appear that the campaign, or the Clintons, or the State Department, had emails that they didn’t give to the FBI,” William said.

When FBI director James Comey announced the investigation in a letter, political commentators were already speculating how much damage this would cause the Clinton campaign. And because Comey’s letter was light on details, conjecture and guesswork dominated the cable news networks.

But as new details come forward, it appears this newest development is much to do about nothing. The AP recently corroborated Williams’ reporting, writing in a tweet that the emails “did not come from [Clinton’s] private server.”Clinton campaign chair John Podesta released a statement in response to the FBI letter, requesting Comey to provide any and all information he has related to the latest inquiry. “The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining,” the statement read. “We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different form the once the FBI reached in July.”

Comey seems more worried about covering his ass than getting to the truth or avoiding the misleading of Americans.  Regardless of who wins on November 8, 2016, Comey needs to go. 

 

The Hillary Clinton "Top-Secret" Email Controversy Explained

One of the most exasperating things about the Clintons is that so many of their political problems are self inflicted.  The most recent example is Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server reportedly for "convenience."  Other stories have suggested that she was not alone in employing the practice, but with an eye toward running for the presidency, why give an opening to her enemies? Whether or not there is any legitimacy to claims that she had truly classified or "top secret" information on the server remains to be seen as explained in a piece in Vox.  As we have seen from the Benghazi circus, Republicans will use the claims against Clinton whether they are true or not.  Again, why give them an opening?  Here are article excerpts:

The saga of Hillary Clinton and her emails took an unusual turn on Friday: the State Department announced it is withholding 22 emails because they contain information marked "top secret." And Clinton's campaign immediately objected, putting out a statement demanding that the emails be released.

So what is going on here? Why are these emails top secret, why is it a big deal, and why would Clinton, of all people, want them released?

It's impossible to know the answers to those questions with absolute certainty without seeing the emails. But the key dispute is over whether the classification shows that Clinton was emailing out highly sensitive secrets or if these were everyday emails that just got swept up in America's deeply broken classification system. There's some real reason to believe that the latter is at least possible. Here's what we know and how to parse this latest email controversy.

This might seem unimportant. If it's top secret, then it must be really sensitive, right?
Not necessarily. A large proportion of documents that our government classifies are not actually that sensitive — more on that below. So the key thing now is to try to figure out: Were these emails classified because they contain highly sensitive information that Clinton never should have emailed in the first place, or because they were largely banal but got scooped up in America's often absurd classify-everything practices?

[O]ne good way to make an informed guess is by asking whether the emails were classified at the moment they were sent or whether they were classified only later. The reason this matters is that if they were immediately classified top secret, then that is a good sign that they contained information that is known as "born classified" — that it was information in itself obtained by classified channels or because it was generated internally by classified means. 

[I]f the information were classified only later, then that would indicate it was more banal, or that it was not classified for any reasons particular to the emails themselves. Again, see below on how a boring email could become marked as top secret.

According to a statement by the State Department, "These documents were not marked classified at the time they were sent."

In other words, they do not contain information that was "born classified," but rather fall into the vast gray area of things that do not seem obviously secret at the time but are later deemed that way — not always for good reason.

The American government's system for classifying things as secret is widely considered a giant mess, by which agencies reflexively overclassify things, and the reasons for classifying often make little sense. It is thus extremely easy to imagine that Clinton's emails were classified not because they contained super-sensitive national secrets, and possibly not for any good reason at all, but rather just as a product of America's broken classification system.

This goes back to 1982, when the Reagan administration began a program of such aggressive classification that the unofficial slogan was, "When in doubt, classify." This waned under Bill Clinton but shot back up dramatically under George W. Bush, so much so that by 2004 the mere bureaucracy for classifying documents cost $7 billion per year.

The problem, in other words, isn't that the rules for classification are too strict. It's that the rules are unclear, messy, or contradictory, to the degree that the rules exist at all, and individual people and agencies have learned to overclassify to stay on the safe side.

The problem has grown so severe that it has hampered even the ability of American intelligence officials and policymakers to access the information they need to do their jobs. The head of the 9/11 Commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, told Congress in 2005 that "the failure to share information was the single most important reason why the United States government failed to detect and disrupt the 9/11 plot." He warned, "Information has to flow more freely. Much more information needs to be declassified. A great deal of information should never be classified at all."

Unfortunately this story will be immediately politicized, polarizing people into seeing Clinton as absolutely guilty or absolutely innocent.

The Associated Press got a little carried away in writing this up, declaring that the government had "confirmed" that "Hillary Clinton's unsecured home server contained some of the U.S. government's most closely guarded secrets." Maybe this will turn out to be true, but at present we have no idea that it is, and it strikes me as irresponsible to assert this when anyone who has reported on the government's overclassification addiction knows that classified information is just as likely to be banal as is to be "the US government's most closely guarded secrets."

It makes sense why the Clinton campaign would want these emails released. If they remain top secret, then this will give her Republican opponents an opening to accuse her of bandying highly sensitive secrets around on her private email account, and thus paint her as dangerously irresponsible.

The Clinton campaign's statement is obviously meant to imply that the emails are harmless enough to be immediately released and thus do not contain anything particularly sensitive. But it's also possible this is just a clever bluff.

U.S. Intelligence Chief Debunks Anti-Hillary Claims

First the Benghazi hearings turned into a tour de force for Hillary Clinton at the expense of her Republican inquisitors.  Now, the office of the Director of National Intelligence  has reportedly concluded that two emails received by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not contain top secret information as her enemies - and members of the media perhaps more concerned with sensation than the truth - have claimed.  Media Maters looks at the development that proves more than a small embarrassment for the New York Times which had breathlessly floated the intial story.  Here are excerpts:

The office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has reportedly concluded that two emails received by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not contain top secret information, a reversal from the Intelligence Community inspector general's prior claim that they did, according to a Politico report. Media had previously used the notion that the two emails were highly classified to suggest that Clinton or her aides had engaged in criminal behavior.

In July, the New York Times published an article -- which it subsequently had to correct twice -- about a security referral the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IG IC) made to the executive branch about whether there was any classified material on Clinton's email account during her time as secretary of state. The IG IC highlighted four allegedly classified emails and subsequently stated that two of those four emails contained "top secret" information. The State Department disagreed about whether the material in the emails was actually highly classified. As Politico is now reporting, "that disagreement has been resolved in State's favor" and the previous claim that the emails contained top secret information is wrong.

Politico reported on November 6 that the office of the Director of National Intelligence has now overruled the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community's prior conclusion that two emails received by Clinton contained highly classified information. As Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists explained to Politico, this "mistake" is nothing short than "astonishing" because "[i]t was a transformative event in the presidential campaign to this point. It had a potential to derail Clinton's presidential candidacy." From the article:

The U.S. intelligence community has retreated from claims that two emails in Hillary Clinton's private account contained top secret information, a source familiar with the situation told POLITICO.

The determination came from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's office and concluded that the two emails did not include highly classified intelligence secrets. Concerns about the emails' classification helped trigger an on-going FBI inquiry into Clinton's private email set-up.

More dashed hopes so far for the GOP.

Benghazi Committe Backfires: Support for Hillary Grows

Many have argued - and some Republicans have slipped up and admitted - that the GOP lead House Benghazi Committee was a political witch hunting from the very beginning with only one goal: to damage Hillary Clinton.  A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey seems to indicate that more Americans now see the Committee's hearings for what they really have always been.  The result? Hillary Clinton has seen a rise in support even as more view the Benghazi Committee as nakedly partisan and seeking to to impact the likely Democrat presidential nominee.  Here are highlights from Politicususa.com: 

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey contains some great news for Hillary Clinton. Since her appearance in front of the Benghazi Select Committee, there has been a nine-point swing in her favor on the issue of her emails.

According to the survey, before her Benghazi committee testimony, 47% of those polled said that Clinton’s emails were an important factor in deciding whether or not to support her, and 44% said the emails were not an important factor. After Clinton’s testimony, 48% believed that the emails were not an important factor, and 42% said they were. There was also a five point increase in the number of respondents who thought the Benghazi investigation is unfair and partisan. 

The NBC News poll reveals that having Hillary Clinton testify in front of the House Benghazi Select Committee was a major mistake by the Republican Party The hearing gave Clinton a platform and allowed her to turn public opinion on her emails in her favor. Republicans thought they would use the high-profile hearing to stop Hillary Clinton. Instead, they shot themselves in the feet.

According to all the recent polling, Clinton is a stronger presidential candidate today than she was before she testified in front of the Benghazi Committee. She now leads in every early state and nationally. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Clinton a surge in momentum when he admitted that the Benghazi Select Committee was a partisan political stunt.

A hearing that was supposed to yield talking points and thirty-second campaign ads for the Republican side has rallied Democrats around their frontrunner and put her on a steady march towards the White House. 

Hillary and the GOP's Big Benghazi Mistake

The right wing Republican hearings in the House of Representatives on Benghazi have always been a witch hunt intended to damage Barack Obama and, perhaps more importantly, Hillary Clinton, whom the GOP sees as the most likely opponent of whatever political whore/charlatan the GOP manages to nominate as its standard bearer in 2016.  But even if this has been the reality, it is not good politics to admit it.  Yet that is precisely what would be House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did last week.  Now, both Hillary Clinton and other Democrats are jumping on the admission and are calling out the GOP.  Indeed, in a new ad, Hillary that calls the Benghazi hearings and the e-mail server story line as nothing more than political hatchet jobs aimed at harming her political standing.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this gift from McCarthy to Clinton and Democrats.  Here are excerpts:

When House speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy claimed credit for the decline in Hillary Clinton's poll numbers because House Republicans had formed a congressional committee investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, I knew it was a bad political mistake. I may have underestimated just how bad.

Consider how Clinton responded to a question about her private e-mail server during a New Hampshire townhall hosted by NBC's "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie on Monday:

"This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan political issue out of the deaths of four Americans," she said. "I would never have done that, and if I were president and there were Republicans or Democrats thinking about that, I would have done everything to shut it down."

Throughout the interview, Clinton referenced McCarthy's comments — made during a contentious interview with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity — as a means to do something she's been unable to do ever since the e-mail story broke in March: Play offense.

She's impassioned and right on the edge of anger. Anger is, of course, not always a good thing for politicians.  But in this case, it shows Clinton at her best: Partisan, passionate and convincing.

[W]hile the Benghazi committee was aware that Clinton was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, the GOP leadership had been very careful to frame it as simply a fact-finding effort that happened to include the former secretary of state.

McCarthy, of course, changed all that with his comments to Hannity. What McCarthy said doesn't mean that the who, what, when, where and why of Clinton's exclusive use of a private e-mail server while at the State department isn't still an issue for her. What it does mean though is that she now has a way to change the subject — or at least the terrain on which she is fighting.

That all changed with McCarthy's comments.  Now, Clinton can do exactly what she did in New Hampshire n Monday morning: Quickly acknowledge her error then turn to the "real" issue, which is how Republicans are exploiting the deaths of four Americans for their own political gain. That narrative — coupled with Clinton's passion for it — is a winner, or as close as she can get to it on an issue that has caused tons of problems for her campaign. 

It's possible that this past five days or so is simply a blip in the broader context of the campaign and the Clinton-plays-defense storyline will reassert itself. But, the Clinton team thinks that McCarthy has handed them a massive political gift, and I tend to agree.

Clinton is not the only Democrat jumping on the band wagon that the GOP has foolishly provided.  As MSNBC reports, others are now sounding off.  Here are highlights:

It’s always interesting to see what happens when a charade ends. For quite a while, congressional Republicans tried to keep up appearances, pretending their Benghazi committee was a legitimate, non-partisan search for truth – a claim no one, anywhere, seriously believed – but House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) accidental candor last week ripped off the mask.

The Washington Post reported this morning:

Democrats are taking the unprecedented step of releasing excerpts from a closed-session interview the House Benghazi committee conducted last month with Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, accusing the panel’s Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy (S.C.) of selectively leaking information to damage Clinton in the presidential race.

In a letter signed by all five Democratic members of the panel, the lawmakers told Gowdy, “It has become obvious that the only way to adequately correct the public record is to release the complete transcript of the Committee’s interview with Ms. Mills…. [W]e plan to begin the process of correcting the public record by releasing the transcript of Ms. Mills’ interview. Since you have indicated your unwillingness to do this in a bipartisan manner, we plan to do so ourselves.”

They have the transcript – the whole thing, not excerpts edited by Republicans to advance a partisan agenda – and they want the public to have it, too. 

I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, Gowdy can do at this point to (a) keep the truth shielded from public view; and (b) punish the Democrats on his committee for going around him.

 

But as the masquerade ends and the Benghazi committee is exposed as the partisan exercise it has always been, the politics surrounding the scheme are clearly intensifying.

 

Is Hillary Clinton’s “Emailgate” a Fake Scandal

I will admit that I generally have a very low opinion of America's mainstream media, especially so called news outlets.  Reporters tend to be lazy and the sole emphasis is on sensation and grabbing headlines.  Real investigative reporting is increasingly rare and it's one reason why one finds the need to read British and other news outlets if one wants in depth  and/or investigative reporting.  Worse yet, time and time again the American media simply parrots what the GOP talking heads are spouting without challenging assertions that can easily be documented to be either untrue or deliberate lies.  A piece in Newsweek looks at the media's role in fanning "emailgate."  Here are highlights:

When it comes to the teapot tempest that is the Hillary Clinton email imbroglio, the real controversy isn’t about politics or regulations. It’s about journalism and the weak standards employed to manufacture the scandal du jour.

Because luminaries such as the public editor of The New York Times have dismissed critics of the emailgate coverage as rabid members on one side of a partisan divide—the pro-Hilary screamers versus the anti-Hillary frothers—I feel obligated to cut off that self-satisfied response up front: My opinion of Clinton is on par with my opinion of Jeb Bush. Neither is crazy, stupid or unelectable, which can’t be said about most other politicians stomping their way around Iowa these days. I’m not a Clinton supporter or opponent. I’m a Clinton agnostic.

Now let’s look at the real scandal—the one in journalism that’s been exposed by this whole episode.

There are two parts to emailgate: One, that Clinton used a personal email account when she served as Secretary of State, and the other, that neither she nor her aides preserved the emails. Break out the fainting couches and the smelling salts.

The first article about this episode (sorry, can’t even call it a scandal) appeared in The New York Times. . . . In what has to be one of the most snide journalistic defenses in a long time, Margaret Sullivan, the Times public editor, calls detractors of the piece as just Hilary supporters and dismisses most of the criticism by helpfully linking to the 2009 Federal Register, which lists an exceptionally technical series of regulations relating to the use and preservation of emails. She even cites a place to look, section 1236.22b. With all those numbers and letters, and the information coming out of a document as dull as the Federal Register, the story must be true, right?

In fact, the very rule that Sullivan cites contradicts the primary point of the Times story. For everyone except the two people who actually followed the link Sullivan posted, here is what the section actually says:

"Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system."

Catch the problem? The regulation itself, through its opening words, “specifically designates that employees of certain agencies are allowed to use non-federal email systems.” And one of those agencies just happened to be…drumroll please.… The State Department. In other words, not only was the use of a personal email account not a violation of the rules, it was specifically allowed by the rules.

Secretary of State Colin Powell did the same thing. And, just a tidbit—so did every other Secretary of State up until the current one, John Kerry. Why? Because the rules changed in 2014, after Clinton left office, and now it’s required to use a federal system. If Kerry used a personal account, he would be violating a regulation. Clinton did not.

[L]et’s get to part two of emailgate—that the agencies are required to make sure emails from non-federal accounts are preserved. Here is what the Times article says about that: Clinton "may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

Let’s dismantle this one part at a time. There is a term in journalism for the word may. It’s called a weasel word, which helps readers gloss over what the story is really saying: That the Times doesn’t know if the regulations were violated, but it sure sounds good to suggest that it could have been.

Then there is the part about how “Clinton and her aides failed” to preserve the records. Well, guess what? Under the very same regulation that Sullivan cites, it is not the responsibility of the email senders, recipients or their aides to make sure that the records are preserved. It is the responsibility of the State Department itself, which does so through technical analysis of all of the systems being used.
Every email that Clinton sent to any federal email account was preserved, automatically. And what kind of preservation systems existed in the server for Clinton’s personal emails that didn’t go into a federal server? Were they copied into the DoD–5015.2 STD-certified product (a lot of techno-speak which means a particular record-keeper)? Was there an automatic relay out of the server into a preservation system? Hell, my email account has that.  

The Times article makes it sound like Clinton just opened up a Gmail account and started sending emails without any consideration for the State Department techno-geeks responsible for following the rules and regulations,which, again, allowed for private email accounts to be used.

[A]s Clinton said on Tuesday, the server in question is the same one used by former President Bill Clinton and is located on private property, guarded by the Secret Service. 

The rest of the stories Sullivan links to show things such as Democrats reacting to the Times story and that Clinton’s daughter Chelsea had an email account on the same domain name. (Which is a truly bizarre point, since every employee at the State Department—down to the lowliest person on the rung of authority—would be using the same domain name as Clinton if she was on the federal system.)

The end question: Was security compromised? Was the process she used inappropriate or create any dangers? Or was it potentially safer, with more protections than exist in the federal system? I don’t know. But what’s sad here is, neither do the reporters who are huffing and puffing about this folderol. And aren’t journalists supposed to know if there is a scandal before declaring that one exists?

Remember  one thing: if the New York Times and other major outlets had done real reporting and challenged Bush/Cheney assertions, the entire Iraq War debacle might have been avoided.  Despite this reality, we some of the same players making the same lazy ass mistakes that were made back then.  Before you write stories about scandals, make sure one actually exists. 

Hillary Clinton is Not Spiraling Downward

If there is one thing that is a given in today's mainstream media it is the reality that reporters and newspapers prefer to report  the sensational (or fabricate it) rather than report the full news and refrain from editorializing.  Thus, be it online outlets or other media outlets - e.g., POTUS satellite news - one hears breathless pundits and lazy reporters buying into the meme that Hillary Clinton is spiraling downward in her prospects of winning the Democrat nomination much less the 2016 general election.  A column in the Washington Post lays out why reports of Hillary's demise are premature.  Here are excerpts:

There’s no question which is the more interesting and dynamic primary campaign right now, which inevitably leads reporters covering the other one to search for something new to write about. And in a race where there’s an obvious (if not quite certain) nominee, there will always come a point at which the press will decide that that candidate is spiraling downward, the cloak of inevitability is torn and tattered, the campaign is in crisis, the whispering from party loyalists is growing louder, and the scramble is on to find an alternative before the fall occurs.

This is the moment we have come to with Hillary Clinton.

First there was the fevered speculation about Vice President Biden running against her, based on second-hand reports that Biden has had conversations about the possibility of running. I’m sure that Biden thinks about being president about as often as he brushes his teeth, but that doesn’t mean there’s an actual candidacy in the offing. But it isn’t just him. ABC News reports that “a one-time high-ranking political adviser to Al Gore tells ABC News that a group of friends and former aides are having a ‘soft conversation’ about the possibility that Gore run for president in 2016.” Gore himself is not interested, but who cares?

If there’s one thing that stories like these should never be based on, it’s the mere fact that people who used to work for a particular politician would like that politician to run. Longtime political figures like Gore and Biden trail behind them a tribe of former staffers, advisers, fundraisers and the like, all of whom have entertained fantasies about either a job in the West Wing or at least a heady proximity to the most powerful person on earth. 

[R]ight now there’s virtually no evidence that the Democratic field is going to expand beyond the current five candidates. And what about the idea that Clinton is in a drastic decline? Bernie Sanders has generated plenty of interest and some support, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Democrats are rejecting Clinton; if there’s any evidence that Sanders supporters won’t be perfectly happy to back her if and when she’s the nominee, I haven’t seen it.

If you look over the long term at Clinton’s favorability ratings, you do see a drop, but it’s not a huge one, and not the kind of precipitous decline you’d associate with a campaign in free fall. Her favorability is down substantially from when she was Secretary of State, but that’s a natural consequence of her becoming a partisan political figure again. A year ago her favorability was just under 50 percent, and now it’s around 41 or 42 — not what she’d like, surely, but hardly a crisis.

As Nate Silver observes, whether or not the movement in the polls is terribly meaningful, reporters have an incentive to describe it as such, and then run with the implications:

Even if there were no Clinton scandals, however, she’d probably still be receiving fairly negative press coverage. The campaign press more or less openly confesses to a certain type of bias: rooting for the story. Inevitability makes for a really boring story, especially when it involves a figure like Clinton who has been in public life for so long.

Instead, the media wants campaigns with lots of “game changers,” unexpected plot twists and photo finishes. If the story isn’t really there, the press can cobble one together by invoking fuzzy concepts like “momentum” and “expectations,” or by cherry-picking polls and other types of evidence.

 [T]he race will have some ups and downs, Bernie Sanders may even win a primary or two, and in the end Clinton will prevail. .

That’s not as dramatic a story as a reporter covering the campaign might like. But at this point it’s still the most likely outcome.

 

Will Benghazi Testimony Work to Hillary's Advantage?

As noted numerous times on this blog, Republicans - or perhaps I should clarify, and say lunatics in the party base - are obsessed with Benghazi.  No conspiracy or rumor is too far fetched to not be grasped and believed by spittle flecked Christofacsists and Tea Party loons who seemingly all have IQ's under 70 (no offense intended to the retarded).  Given this reality, GOP House members have decided to have yet more hearings on Benghazi in order to  further prostitute themselves to the unwashed swamp dwellers of the party base.  Some suggest, however, that this exercise could backfire and actually work to Hillary Clinton's advantage.   Here are excerpts from a piece in Politico that thinks the GOP is unwittingly helping Hillary:

Three out of four Democratic insiders in the early states believe testifying before Congress about the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, will work to Hillary Clinton’s advantage.

This week’s survey of The POLITICO Caucus, a bipartisan group of the most influential activists, operatives and elected officials in Iowa and New Hampshire, found that most Democrats think it would be beneficial to Clinton when she is called to discuss the matter before Congress, something she is expected to do at some point, likely this summer.

Democrats were skeptical that Clinton would get a fair hearing, but were confident she would do a good job shutting down questioners in the hopes of moving on from the issue.

“Republicans prefer the safety of manufactured outrage on Benghazi. In person, I think Clinton will crush their questions,” said an Iowa Democrat.

Added a New Hampshire Democrat, “As she has proven many times before, Hillary is not afraid to testify and is a very good witness; she will walk out of the hearing room enhanced.”

A majority of Republicans — nearly 60 percent — also said it would be helpful for Clinton to address the issue head-on (she appeared before Congress once before on this issue in 2013). Several Republicans warned some in their party could overdo the confrontation, which could work to Clinton’s advantage if she appears to be answering questions openly and honestly.

“It is a real opportunity for her to face this and defuse it—the R’s will not be able to resist the temptation to gang up and it may actually engender some sympathy for her, hard as that is to imagine,” said a New Hampshire Republican.

Another Granite State Republican acknowledged, “Hillary is at her strongest when she answers her critics head-on. She should embrace it — and hope her opponents overplay their hands. Which they could do, easily.”

74 percent of Democrats and 22 percent of Republicans — including one-third of the 15 New Hampshire Republicans who responded this week — say that the Benghazi attack is not quite as much of a hot-button issue for the GOP base as it was in the aftermath of the attacks and during the 2014 midterm elections.

“The nut job conspiracy theorists on the fringe love the issue. Everyone else sees shades of gray in a horrible, messy, tragic situation, and how it was handled,” said a New Hampshire Republican. “Could have happened just as easily in a Republican administration.”

Sadly, nowadays "nut job conspiracy theorists" describes a majority of the GOP base. Logic, reason and objective reality are now scorned by the GOP base, especially among Christofascists. 

Why the E-Mail "Scandal" Won't Hurt Hillary

One time classmate Larry Sabato has a piece at Politico that looks at why he believes the "e-mail scandal" the GOP is trying to fan into a conflagration will fail to hurt Hillary Clinton.  True, the conspiracy theory advocates in the GOP base will be all a twitter and the usually Hillary haters will be venting and engaging in spittle flecked rants.  But for most people, the "scandal" may more likely prompt a yawn. Especially among those turned off by the failed policies of the GOP and its agenda to create a new Gilded Age and special rights for Christian extremists.  Here are highlights from Sabato's piece:

The Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy is just the latest entrée in a decades-long, calorie-rich menu provided by the former first lady and her husband. But will it make a difference in 2016?

Scandal allegations are almost always an enormously time-consuming distraction and they make it virtually impossible to communicate a positive message during the feeding frenzy. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the damage will be long-lasting. In this respect, presidential campaigns can be very different than those for lower levels.

At those lower levels of politics—House and Senate races, for example—there is considerable evidence that a scandal can wreak havoc and even defeat normally favored incumbents.

Nevertheless, there is good reason to think that scandal has a much less pronounced effect at the presidential level. For one thing, most elections for the White House revolve around macro-issues such as the economy and war, and voters instinctively realize that personal peccadilloes fade in importance. For another, most top-tier contenders are reasonably well known and have been vetted to some degree by the press and opponents in prior elections. When voters already have a clearly formed view of a candidate and his or her strengths and weaknesses, it naturally becomes more difficult to alter impressions.

For no one is this more true than Hillary Clinton, who has been in the national spotlight, center stage, for 23 years. 

[O]ver 90 percent of the public has already formed an opinion of Clinton, the most of any potential 2016 candidate. Other than the very youngest voters, is there really anyone left who doesn’t have a mostly fixed view of her?

You can argue that, to a lesser degree, the same is true for Jeb Bush. . . . Jeb is insisting he’s his own man, yet it will be nearly impossible to insulate him from the deep recessions and Mideast wars of his father and brother. With the good that derives directly from being a Bush (instant name recognition, establishment support, tons of campaign cash) comes the unavoidable bad of the Iraq War, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and economic near-collapse.

Even when scandals were prominent in the headlines or recent memory, they have only rarely had a critical impact on the selection of a president. If you examine the 29 presidential elections since 1900 to look for the dominant deciding factor(s), you’ll find that scandal has seldom played any conclusive role. The traditional, overriding voter concerns about the economy and war adequately explain the bulk of election outcomes.

So what does this tell us about Hillary's emails and the scrapes her Republican opponents are going to have while traveling 2016's scandal road? First, there is perhaps less to worry about than the distraught handwringing by pundits and activists suggests. And second, if a candidate is going to detour to the scandal trail, it’s far better to take the trip early in the election cycle. Commentators and partisans from the other camp will always remember and never forgive, but many voters are inclined to move on from “old news.”