Newsweek reveals why this latest FBI e-mail "investigation" was never really a thing.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation determined that almost every email discovered in a laptop used primarily by the husband of an aide to Hillary Clinton was a duplicate of previously produced documents or personal emails, a person close to the case told Newsweek. As a result, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress Sunday saying the new emails have not changed the bureau’s earlier decision that no crime occurred with Clinton’s use of a private server while she was secretary of state. 

Less than two weeks ago, Comey set the election on its head when he informed Congress that his agents had located emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the Clinton investigation. At that point, the FBI did not have a warrant to review the emails, nor had they sought permission from the owners of the laptop to search it. In fact, people involved in the case said, the FBI never asked either the Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, or her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, if they would voluntarily allow for such a search. 

The night of the disclosure, Newsweek reported that the emails were from as many as three accounts—one through Yahoo, one on the domain clintonemail.com, and one from an account Abedin used in support of one of Weiner’s campaigns for office. Last week, Newsweek learned that that account was through Gmail. In other words, Abedin’s personal account provided by the State Department for non-classified emails was not involved. Abedin, who did not know Clinton used a private server for her emails, told the bureau in an April interview that she used the account on the clintonemail.com domain only for issues related to the secretary’s personal affairs, such as communicating with her friends. For work-related records, Abedin primarily used the email account provided to her by the State Department.

So to be clear the FBI should have realized from the very beginning that they were never going to find a "smoking gun" in these e-mails.

And yet James Comey issued that letter to Congress on October 28th anyway.

The Newsweek article goes on to say that the reason there were duplicates of e-mails on this laptop is that Huma sent them from her non-classified e-mail at the State Department so that she could print them at home for Hillary because the State Department is apparently several decades behind technologically.

NONE of the e-mails she sent herself were confidential or classified, they just contained information pertinent to her boss who it seems likes to read them on actual paper.

In another interesting aside, despite what the Trump campaign might want you to believe, Edward Snowden suggests that the FBI COULD have gone through the e-mails on this laptop in a matter of hours.

@jeffjarvis Drop non-responsive To:/CC:/BCC:, hash both sets, then subtract those that match. Old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 7, 2016

If true that means that the FBI should have figured this whole thing out well before Comey sent that letter to Congress on October 28th.

And yet he sent it.

Wikileaks, Russia, the Republicans, and now the FBI, all working as one to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming our next President.

Who ever thought that the idea of a female President would be so terrifying?

About those new hacked e-mails about Hillary Clinton's speeches released by Wikileaks. Ho and hum.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

The leaks were the result of another email hacking intended to influence the presidential election. 

Excerpts of the speeches given in the years before her 2016 presidential campaign included some blunt and unguarded remarks to her private audiences, which collectively had paid her at least $26.1 million in speaking fees. Clinton had refused to release transcripts of the speeches, despite repeated calls to do so by her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

The excerpts were included in emails exchanged among her political staff, including Campaign Chairman John Podesta, whose email account was hacked. The WikiLeaks organization posted what it said were thousands of Podesta's emails. It wasn't immediately clear who had hacked Podesta's emails, though the breach appeared to cover years of messages, some sent as recently as last month.

Some of the e-mails it seems dealt with concerns about how portions of Hillary's speeches might be received by the public if they were made public.

Here are some of the portions that concerned the campaing:

One excerpt put Clinton squarely in the free-trade camp, a position she has retreated on significantly during the 2016 election. In a talk to a Brazilian bank in 2013, she said her "dream" is "a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders" and asked her audience to think of what doubling American trade with Latin America "would mean for everybody in this room."

I don't think that anybody would be too surprised by this.

After all though Hillary is now opposing TPP, she does NOT oppose trade deals in general.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, agreed that nothing in the excerpts “seems inconsistent with her positions on trade today.” 

“As I understand her position, she is against TPP in its current form but is open to moving forward with TPP if it is restructured in some way,” Schott added. “The No. 1 issue that is cited as part of the fix for TPP is provisions that prohibit currency manipulation.” 

Like I said, nothing burger.

Moving on:

"Running for office in our country takes a lot of money, and candidates have to go out and raise it," Clinton said. "New York is probably the leading site for contributions for fundraising for candidates on both sides of the aisle, and it's also our economic center. And there are a lot of people here who should ask some tough questions before handing over campaign contributions to people who were really playing chicken with our whole economy." 

In the same speech, Clinton was also deferential to the New York finance industry, exhorting wealthy donors to use their political clout for patriotic rather than personal benefit. She also spoke of the need to include Wall Street perspectives in financial reform. 

"The people that know the industry better than anybody are the people who work in the industry," Clinton said.

Now if this were coming from Bernie Sanders, who ran a fairly anti-Wall Street campaign, then I think people might be legitimately scandalized.

But Hillary Clinton was never anti-Wall Street, she was just in agreement that it needed serious reform, which thanks to President Obama and Elizabeth Warren is now being addressed aggressively.

Next?

In an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council, Clinton said politicians must balance "both a public and a private position" while making deals. Clinton gave an example from the movie "Lincoln," and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th Amendment, a process she compared to sausage-making. 

"It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be," Clinton said. "But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position."

Okay if you are surprised, or upset by this admission then you REALLY don't understand how politics works in this country.

EVERY politician has a public persona they present when being interviewed by the press or interacting with their constituents.

In 2008 President Obama stated in interviews that he did not support same sex marriage, and yet has been one of the leading advocates for making it legal in America.

Was he really against is?

Probably not.

Could he have been elected if he had said he was for same sex marriage in 2008?

Absolutely not.

So yes we have to take things politicians say in public with a grain of salt.

No shit Sherlock.

In fact these revelations were so underwhelming that some folks decided to spice thing up a little with some creative editing.

WIKILEAKS BOMBSHELL: Hillary Clinton Smeared Poor Americans, Called Them "Bucket Of Losers" In Paid Goldman Sachs... https://t.co/KZwlS6FeUS

— Mark D. Ellis (@MarkDEllis1) October 8, 2016

Problem with that, as revealed by Snopes, is that nowhere on the actual documents does it say anything like that.

Which of course did not stop Fox News and other conservative outlets from running with it. 

In other words the hacked documents, which we believe came from Russia by the way, were so flaccid that disappointed Right Wing nutjobs decided to manufacture some real dirt in order to help their man Trump a little.

Nice try Wikileaks. What do you have for us next? Is Hillary secretly dying her hair? Or does she sometimes eat dessert before she has had her dinner?

Talk about a "bucket of losers."

FBI Director James Comey swats down another Hillary email conspiracy theory.

Courtesy of Politico:  

The FBI concluded that a computer technician working on Clinton's email was not engaged in an illicit cover-up when he asked on the Reddit website for a tool that could delete a "VIP" email address throughout a large file, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday. 

Republican lawmakers have suggested that the July 2014 Reddit post from a user believed to be Platte River Networks specialist Paul Combetta showed an effort to hide Clinton's emails from investigators. 

However, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, Comey said FBI agents concluded that all the computer aide was trying to do was replace Clinton's email address so it wouldn't be revealed to the public. 

"Our team concluded that what he was trying to do was when they produced emails not have the actual address but have some name or placeholder instead of the actual dot-com address in the 'From:' line," Comey said. 

Comey of course said this in front of a GOP led committee that was fired up after some pro-Trump folks on Reddit thought they had discovered some kind of smoking gun:

In the 2014 Reddit post, user "Stonetear" described "a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP’s (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file."

This inspired the Right Wing conspiracy machine to start cranking out headlines like, "How Reddit Ruined The Hillary Clinton Campaign," Clinton's Email Scandal Is Back In The News Again — Because Of Reddit," and "Reddit Busts Hillary Clinton Email Cover-up."

I actually visit Reddit several times a day, and I watched this whole thing start to take off.

In the beginning there were a few voices of reason essentially pointing out that this in no way pointed to proof of any conspiracy or coverup, however they were quickly shouted down by the Reddit crowd's fascination with conspiracy theories, and of course a sort of overriding dislike for Hillary Clinton.

Anyhow before you knew it folks were talking indictment, dusting off the Bernie Sanders campaign again, and of course talking cover up, cover up, cover up.

At this point I am essentially finished with all things e-mail, private server, or Clinton criminality.

EVERY SINGLE "explosive" new detail about any of these subjects has eventually turned out to be a nothing burger.

I have watched time and time again as the Right Wing has wound themselves up into a mouth frothing frenzy over some supposed "nail in the coffin" factoid only to have an investigation find nothing, or next to nothing worthy of their celebratory chest beating.

Perhaps John Oliver said it best about all of these Hillary Clinton "scandals" last weekend. "It's not good, but it's not as bad as it looks."

The Washington Post is washing their hands of this whole Hillary Clinton e-mail thing.

About damn time Washington Post.

The article by the Washington Post Editorial Board starts off by pointing out that there is a false equivalency which paints the e-mail kerfuffle as being just as damaging to Clinton as Donald Trump's never ending torrent of scandals are to him.

That of course is ridiculous, and yet the media continuously feels the need to appear non-partisan by suggesting that Hillary's choice to use a private server is on par with Donald Trump essentially being Vladimir Putin's butt-boy and a candidate so prone to exaggeration and out right lying that he is driving fact checkers to the point of exhaustion.

Here are the things that happened this week which the editorial board believes makes any further talk of Hillary Clinton's e-mail server unnecessary:

In fact, Ms. Clinton’s emails have endured much more scrutiny than an ordinary person’s would have, and the criminal case against her was so thin that charging her would have been to treat her very differently. Ironically, even as the email issue consumed so much precious airtime, several pieces of news reported Wednesday should have taken some steam out of the story. First is a memo FBI Director James B. Comey sent to his staff explaining that the decision not to recommend charging Ms. Clinton was “not a cliff-hanger” and that people “chest-beating” and second-guessing the FBI do not know what they are talking about. Anyone who claims that Ms. Clinton should be in prison accuses, without evidence, the FBI of corruption or flagrant incompetence. 

Second is the emergence of an email exchange between Ms. Clinton and former secretary of state Colin Powell in which he explained that he used a private computer and bypassed State Department servers while he ran the agency, even when communicating with foreign leaders and top officials. Mr. Powell attempted last month to distance himself from Ms. Clinton’s practices, which is one of the many factors that made the email story look worse. Now, it seems, Mr. Powell engaged in similar behavior. 

Last is a finding that 30 Benghazi-related emails that were recovered during the FBI email investigation and recently attracted big headlines had nothing significant in them. Only one, in fact, was previously undisclosed, and it contained nothing but a compliment from a diplomat. But the damage of the “30 deleted Benghazi emails” story has already been done. 

The Post suggests that Clinton deserves some of the blame for being careless, but that it does not rise to the level of illegality, and should not have any impact on her campaign.

The Post then wraps it up with this:

Imagine how history would judge today’s Americans if, looking back at this election, the record showed that voters empowered a dangerous man because of . . . a minor email scandal. There is no equivalence between Ms. Clinton’s wrongs and Mr. Trump’s manifest unfitness for office. 

I am hoping that most of the other mainstream media outlets follow the Post's lead and step away from this story leaving it to the Right Wing nutjobs like Alex Jones and Matt Drudge which is where it has always belonged in the first place.

There are still some things that Hillary Clinton can legitimately be criticized for, but none of them suggest that she is a criminal, a traitor, or even a murderer.

So if these are the things that you still believe about her, and feel you need to tell others, then congratulations you are officially a Right Wing troll.

E-mail between Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton shows Powell instructing her how to avoid having her e-mails become part of the official record.

The full back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell is here. And wow. pic.twitter.com/jHKpEbTS8W

— Matt Viser (@mviser) September 7, 2016

Courtesy of CNN:  

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell told his successor, Hillary Clinton, that he used his own personal computer to communicate with friends and foreign leaders and sent emails without going through the State Department server, according to emails released Wednesday by congressional Democrats. 

Clinton has previously said she reached out to Powell when she began serving as the nation's top diplomat to find out how he used personal devices. In a four-paragraph email response from Powell, he told Clinton he didn't use a BlackBerry, but detailed how he got around having his communications with both employees and people outside the State Department becoming part of the agency's official record. 

"What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient). So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels," Powell wrote.

Powell also admitted that he conducted business with foreign leaders on his private e-mail account, and warned Clinton to keep her Blackberry use private so that it would not be considered part of the official record.

Gee that does not sound like Colin Powell's version of events at all now does it?

Staying with Clinton's e-mail kerfuffle, FBI Director James Comey also just released a memo defending his decision not to prosecute and his decision to make the FBI notes public:

"We don't play games," the FBI director said as he further defended his decision not to recommend charges in the matter. 

"[D]espite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn't a prosecutable case," Comey wrote in the message obtained by ABC News. "The hard part was whether to offer unprecedented transparency about our thinking."

"I'm okay if folks have a different view of the investigation (although I struggle to see how they actually could, especially when they didn't do the investigation), or about the wisdom of announcing it as we did (although even with hindsight I think that was the best course)," Comey said. "[B]ut I have no patience for suggestions that we conducted ourselves as anything but what we are -- honest, competent, and independent. Those suggesting that we are 'political' or part of some 'fix' either don't know us, or they are full of baloney (and maybe some of both)." 

Comey told his employees they “may be sick” of hearing about the Clinton email probe, and he ended his message by saying, “I will try not to bother you with this any longer.”

Last night during the Commander-in-Chief forum Hillary also stated once again that she did not send nor receive any e-mails with the official markings of a confidential document.

And whether the Right Wing likes that or not it is supported by the FBI's investigation.

Mother Jones reporter read entire FBI report on Hillary Clinton's e-mails so you don't have to.

Jesus, are we still talking about this?

I am going to offer some of the highlights from the article as well as the author's opening and closing remarks:

Have you read the entire FBI report on their investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices? No? Well, I have, because that's the kind of professional I am. And I'm going to provide you with all the most interesting excerpts. 

The report starts off with a whole bunch of technical detail about how the Clinton email server was set up and managed, and is basically uninteresting except to nerds. 

The reporter, Kevin Drum then jumps into the report:  

Page 8: [Huma] Abedin recalled that at the start of Clinton's tenure, State advised personal e-mail accounts could not be linked to State mobile devices and, as a result, Clinton decided to use a personal device in order to avoid carrying multiple devices. 

In other words, Hillary could get a State-approved device, but couldn't receive her personal email on it. Likewise, she could use a personal device, but couldn't get State email on it. The only way to get both was to carry two physical devices. She considered this inconvenient, and decided to keep on using her personal BlackBerry for everything. This is exactly what she's been saying all along. 

Page 8: FBI investigation identified 13 total mobile devices [...] which potentially were used to send e-mails [...] eight of which she used during her tenure as Secretary of State. 

This has become a big talking point on the right for some reason. Hillary didn't have one device for convenience, she had 13! This is ridiculous. Over time, she had 13 devices, but the report makes it clear that she always had just one device at a time. 

(What I got from this was that Blackberries are very poorly made devices since apparently they kept malfunctioning. I personally have had the same I-Phone since 2009 and though I cannot confirm that the Russians have not hacked it, it still works just fine.)

Page 11: On January 23, 2009, Clinton contacted former Secretary of State Colin Powell via e-mail to inquire about his use of a BlackBerry while he was Secretary of State (January 2001 to January 2005). In his e-mail reply, Powell warned Clinton that if it became "public" that Clinton had a BlackBerry, and she used it to "do business," her e-mails could become "official record[s] and subject to the law." Powell further advised Clinton, "Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data." 

This is important. First, it makes clear that Hillary conversed with Colin Powell two days after becoming Secretary of State, not "a year later," as Powell has claimed. Second, Powell essentially told her that he had just gone ahead and broken the law by "not using systems that captured the data." Hillary, by contrast, chose instead to retain everything as the law required.

(Following the law will get you every time, serves Hillary right for being so honest and law abiding.)

Page 11: While State policy during Clinton's tenure required that "day-to-day operations [at State] be conducted on [an authorized information system]," according to the REDACTED the Bureau of Information Security Management, REDACTED there was no restriction on the use of personal e-mail accounts for official business. [...] In 2011, a notice to all State employees was sent on Clinton's behalf, which recommended employees avoid conducting State business from personal e-mail accounts due to information security concerns. 

This makes it clear that although State "recommended" that employees not use personal accounts, there was no rule prohibiting it. And apparently personal accounts were very widely used. 

(And that essentially destroys virtually ALL of the GOP talking points right there.)

Page 13: Thirteen individuals, consisting of State senior-level employees, work-related advisors, and State executive administrative staff, maintained direct e-mail contact with Clinton. 

That's not very many. It's not as if potentially sensitive information was flying around to hundreds of people. 

(So much for the allegation that Hillary carelessly put top secret information at risk of falling into the wrong hands.)

Page 20: When asked of her knowledge regarding TOP SECRET, SECRET, and CONFIDENTIAL classification levels of USG information, Clinton responded that she did not pay attention to the "level" of classification and took all classified information seriously. 

For some reason there are people guffawing at this, but I don't know why. The plainest reading is not that Hillary had no idea what various classification levels meant, but that she treated all classified information seriously no matter what level it was at. 

Page 23: During FBI interviews, State employees explained the context for why classified material REDACTED was sent and provided reasons to explain why they did not believe information in the e-mails was classified. [...] Authors of the e-mails stated that they used their best judgment in drafting the messages and that it was common practice at State to carefully word e-mails on UNCLASSIFIED networks so as to avoid sensitive details or "talk around" REDACTED classified information. 

This whole section is a description of common practices at State. Basically, most people the FBI talked to used private email accounts all the time; did their best to keep classified information out of these channels; and didn't believe that any of the emails they sent included classified information. Other classification authorities have disagreed, as we all know by now, and the entire discussion gives you a taste of how subjective the classification process is. Basically, we have lots of experienced people who disagree about whether various things really ought to be classified. 

Page 27: FBI investigation and forensic analysis did not find evidence confirming that Clinton e-mail server systems were compromised by cyber means. 

(Okay and my argument at this point is would it even matter if it WAS hacked? After all almost EVERY government agency has now been hacked including the State Department and the NSA, so the argument that Hillary put information at greater risk by storing on her private server is superfluous.) 

This section goes on for pages and pages, but this is really the only sentence you need. It could be that Hillary's email server was hacked. Anything is possible. But despite tons of forensic analysis, the FBI found no evidence of it. This doesn't mean that Hillary should have used a private server, and it doesn't mean her server used best security practices. She shouldn't have, and it didn't. Nonetheless, there's no reason to think her server was ever hacked other than "don't be an idiot, of course it was." 

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn't prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She's told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn't take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN's end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there's no evidence that her server was ever hacked.

I did not include every single portion by any means, as some were quite complex and I did not want this post to go on forever.

However the gist is that though there are certainly a few things about this server for which Hillary can be criticized, however she did NOT break the law, and she did NOT lie to the FBI or to the press about the server.

If you want to read the entire FBI report you can do so by clicking here.

But don't get depressed Hillary haters, apparently the new conspiracy theories center around the Clinton Foundation.

Yep, the fun just never ends.

More on the Hillary Clinton e-mail "scandal."

Courtesy of Forbes:  

The report released Wednesday by the State Department Inspector General on its email records management is being reported as heavy-duty criticism of former Secretary Hillary Clinton. However, the report has more in it that vindicates Clinton than nails her. 

It does not add any new serious charges or adverse facts. And, it shows she was less out of line with her predecessors, notably Colin Powell, than has been charged. Powell’s handling of his email was so similar, in fact, that when House Republicans drag this issue through hearings up to Election Day, Powell should be called as a witness – a witness for Clinton. To put it differently, she is having a double standard applied to her.

The author then goes on to list five key takeaways from the report. I won't list all them all on this post, but here are a few highlights.   

First, and foremost, it is simply not about classified email. It is about regular, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, unclassified email. Yet it is the classified email, not these messages, that are the focus of the FBI investigation of Clinton. In other words, the report does not, and cannot, talk about the most serious issues. It is about a sideshow.

It is, by the way, my opinion that the FBI investigation will not include anything substantial that damages Hillary either, and I join with others in hoping that they wrap up the investigation quickly.

However if the Right Wing hoped that his report contained a smoking gun, well it really doesn't.

I will skip through the next three takeaways and go directly to the last one, which I think is key.

Fifth, to the extent that she is criticized because “she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act,” the report is making a legal judgment that is not particularly strong. Note how she is not labeled as violating any statute, but rather, a real mouthful of mush – “the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.” So we are talking about obscure, dull, bureaucratic policies. Not a criminal statute. Not even a civil statute – just the bureaucratic policies. 

A report that says so little new against Clinton, amounts to a vindication.

You may disagree with that very last sentence, but the paragraph before it is hard to refute.

In short she broke NO laws. 

In fact other news outlets far less sympathetic to Hillary have come to essentially the same determination, like the Washington Post for instance:

The department’s email technology was archaic. Other staffers also used personal email, as did Secretary Colin Powell (2001-2005), without preserving the records. But there is no excuse for the way Ms. Clinton breezed through all the warnings and notifications. While not illegal behavior, it was disturbingly unmindful of the rules.

Okay but WAS it "disturbingly unmindful of the rules?"  Or is there in fact an epidemic of individuals in the State Department flouting the rules and Clinton is simply being held to a higher standard than the rest of them.

Because it appears very much as if it is the latter.

I think now might be a good time to once again remind everybody that the State Department's e-mail system suffered one of the "worst hacks" ever.

The FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server is coming to a close, and it looks like bad news for the conspiracy theorists.

First there is this from CNN: 

Some of Hillary Clinton's closest aides, including her longtime adviser Huma Abedin, have provided interviews to federal investigators, as the FBI probe into the security of her private email server nears completion, U.S. officials briefed on the investigation tell CNN. The investigation is still ongoing, but so far investigators haven't found evidence to prove that Clinton willfully violated the law the U.S. officials say. 

In recent weeks, multiple aides have been interviewed -- some more than once, the officials said. A date for an FBI interview of Clinton has not been set, these officials said, but is expected in the coming weeks. Abedin has cooperated with the probe, the officials said. Lawyers for Abedin declined to comment. The officials say the interviews of Clinton and her aides would be a routine part of an investigation like this.

"Routine part of an investigation" does not exactly sound like the FBI is closing in on some kind of criminal activity now does it?

Here is more from the Washington Post:  

Prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server have so far found scant evidence that the leading Democratic presidential candidate intended to break classification rules, though they are still probing the case aggressively with an eye on interviewing Clinton herself, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

"Scant evidence" is also not exactly a term to set Right Wing conspiracy theorists and Bernie Bros heart's a racing either.

And let's face it if the anti-Hillary crowd thinks that when she is interviewed she will break under the pressure and suddenly confess to secretly being a Russian agent or an operative for ISIS, I think they better go back and view those eleven hours of testimony that she gave before that Congressional Benghazi committee.


The woman does not crack. (Plus of course she is NOT a spy nor a terrorist.)

No this investigation will go the way of the Whitewater investigation, the Benghazi investigations, and the Vince Foster "murder" investigation.

Is Senator Chuck Grassley urging conservative FBI agents to break the law by leaking information about the Clinton email probe? Quite possibly.

Hey I'm not telling anyone to break the law, just saying how awesome it would be if somebody broke the law.

Courtesy of The Des Moines Register:  

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley suggested on Friday that the FBI might leak reports of its investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. 

Grassley, Iowa’s senior senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said an anonymous and unauthorized release of FBI investigative materials could result if officials at the agency believed prosecution of Clinton was stymied for political reasons. 

“Is there going to be political interference? If there’s enough evidence to prosecute, will there be political interference?” Grassley wondered aloud during a breakfast meeting with the Des Moines A.M. Rotary club on Friday. “And if there’s political interference, then I assume that somebody in the FBI is going to leak these reports and it’s either going to have an effect politically or it’s going to lead to prosecution if there’s enough evidence.”

When asked later if he was encouraging somebody to leak this information Grassley back pedaled: 

“I wouldn’t be encouraging it because if it’s a violation of law, I can’t be encouraging a violation of law,” he said. “This is kind of my own opinion, this is something I’ve heard.”

Nice try Grassley. It's something he hears alright, something he heard right after he said it.

The President has already assured the country that there will be no interference, and that the Justice Department is determined investigate this case like they would any other.

So for Grassley to suggest that the fix is in and then to further suggest that a Federal agent should break the law and put their job at risk for purely political reasons is incredibly irresponsible.

I would suggest that this is a sign of desperation on the part of Republicans who are becoming convinced that this latest attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton's campaign will fail like all of the ones that came before it.

During interview on Fox News President Obama says he does not believe that Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server jeopardized national security, and emphatically states that there will be no interference with the FBI investigation.

Courtesy of ABC News:  

The president went in depth in his defense of his former secretary of state, even after saying he had to be careful because of the ongoing investigations in the Department of Justice and Congress. 

“I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America’s national security,” Obama said. 

Obama was confronted about 2,000 email exchanges that had to be redacted for containing classified information when they were released by the State Department. Those emails were found to have passed through Clinton's private email server. 

“What I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there are -- there’s classified, and then there’s classified,” said Obama, emphasizing his second use of “classified.” “There’s stuff that is really top secret, top secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom or going out over the wire but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source.” 

When confronted about the investigation earlier this week, Clinton laughed off the prospect that she would be put in handcuffs when it concludes.

This being Fox News the President was also peppered with questions about possible interference of the FBI probe by his administration.

This was his response: 

“I guarantee there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department of the FBI, not just in this case but in any case,” he said. “Full stop. Period. Guaranteed. Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department because nobody is above the law.”

Of course Hillary's detractors will never believe this to be true.

Nor will anything the President says convince them that Hillary is not guilty of every manufactured "scandal" that has been created by the Right Wing over the last 25 years.

Department of Justice finds IRS did nothing criminal in denying tax exempt status to Tea Party groups.

Courtesy Washington Times:  

The IRS did mishandle tea party and conservative groups’ nonprofit applications, but their behavior didn’t break any laws, the Justice Department said in a letter to Congress Friday that cleared the tax agency and former senior executive Lois G. Lerner of any crimes. 

“Ineffective management is not a crime,” Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik said in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee. “The Department of Justice’s exhaustive probe revealed no evidence that would support a criminal prosecution. What occurred is disquieting and may necessitate corrective action — but it does not warrant criminal prosecution.”

What? You mean even though former IRS Director Lois Lerner plead the fifth before Congress, and the Teabaggers are completely convinced that she targeted them for ideological reason, she is not going to serve any jail time?

Right Wing freak out in 3...2...1

P.S. Boy has this been a bad week for the conservatives or what?

Fox News finds out that there is at least one public television in America where their network is NOT playing 24 hours a day, freak out about it and compare the non-viewers to POW's.

Courtesy of News Corpse: 

A local TV station in Fresno, California did a rather trivial story about a waiting room at a Veterans Administration pharmacy. The story concerned an allegation that Fox News had been banned from the televisions at the facility. So the reporter sent one of his veteran buddies into the pharmacy to pretend to want to view Fox News. Whereupon they discovered that the channel was not accessible. 

That set off a flurry of outrage over at the Fox News mothership. They aired panicky segments on this massive censorship plot on multiple programs, including America’s News Headquarters, The O’Reilly Factor, and Fox & Friends. In each case they characterized the situation as a blatant attempt to silence Fox News due to their reporting on the scandalous backlogs and corrupt management at some V.A. hospitals. The only thing wrong with these reports was – well – everything. 

First of all, there was no attempt to censor Fox News. A spokesperson for the facility made it clear that that the channel was removed because of patient concerns. At least some of the patients explicitly objected to Fox News and the resultant controversy created an uncomfortable environment. 

“It was just a misunderstanding. We’ve had a lot of veterans with diverse personalities. A lot of veterans complaining about one news station or the other, so the intent was really to be fair and equitable and take all stations off. [...] We’ve had several incidents of veterans actually arguing, fighting over the different news stations. Some wanted to watch news, some did not. Others wanted to watch specific stations.”

This kid of reminds me of the so-called "IRS Scandal" where the IRS dealt with the influx of applications by 501 (c) (4) organizations by flagging those that seemed suspicious for later review, which the Right Wing distorted to make it appear as if it were an attack on them.

In this case all cable news stations get removed, but the only one to play the victim is the one that promotes Right Wing ideologies.

Notice a pattern?

News Corpse then goes on to explain that there was no reason to single Fox News out over reports on problems with the VA, as they did no more than any other cable news network. (And besides CNN broke the story, NOT Fox News.)

But what was REALLY troubling was HOW Fox played the victim:

Particularly disturbing was the framing of this phony whining about censorship by the Fox & Friends crew, where co-host Brian Kilmeade packaged the segment as “Abandoned Brothers.” They actually employed language generally reserved for prisoners of war or fallen soldiers on the battlefield to describe people waiting to get their prescriptions filled in a downtown Fresno drug store who weren’t able to watch a gaggle of Fox News blondes in short skirts mutilate journalism.

Kind of icky. Especially considering how they tried and convicted Sgt. Bergdahl, an actual POW, without bothering to get the whole story about his capture and subsequent release.

After producing 750,000 documents for the Republican IRS witch hunt at a cost to taxpayers of 10 million dollars, it is revealed that some of Lois Lerner's e-mails were lost when her computer crashed, which immediately inspires Sarah Palin and the Right Wing to compare it to Watergate. No, seriously.

Courtesy of Sarah Palin's Twitter page:  

Remember the 18 minute gap in Nixon’s White House tapes during the Watergate scandal? Now Obama’s IRS top dog claims a communications gap of 1,052,000 minutes. Hmm. Wonder if the press will recognize similarities. Maybe a smidgen? The IRS claims it just “lost” two years worth of email records sent to and from the central figure in their harassment of conservatives scandal. Try claiming that next tax season: “Oops-a-daisy, computer crash, all records gone, so... just trust me on what I claim I owe you, IRS.” You know, Obama Administration, at this point why not just say the dog ate it? Watch now as the Administration tosses us a bone while the public demands Obama find those evaporated emails. And about that promise of transparency? About that claim to be “The Most Transparent Administration Ever”? All bark, no bite. 

- Sarah Palin

Just in case you are not up to date on the recent Right Wing conspiracy theories, this is what Palin is  gnashing her teeth over:  

Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency's tea party controversy. 

The IRS said Lois Lerner's computer crashed in 2011, wiping out an untold number of emails that were being sought by congressional investigators. The investigators want to see all of Lerner's emails from 2009 to 2013 as part of their probe into the way agents handled applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups.

Now if you are absolutely convinced that this administration is the most corrupt in the history of presidential administrations, this might seem like a smoking gun to prove that everything you hear on Right Wing news sites is real and the End Times are nigh.

However if you read a little further down into the AP article you discover this: 

The IRS said technicians went to great lengths trying to recover data from Lerner's computer in 2011. In emails provided by the IRS, technicians said they sent the computer to a forensic lab run by the agency's criminal investigations unit. But to no avail. 

The IRS was able to generate 24,000 Lerner emails from the 2009 to 2011 because Lerner had copied in other IRS employees. The agency said it pieced together the emails from the computers of 82 other IRS employees.

So while some are apparently missing, 24,000 of them have been made available for Cotton Mather and his Inquisition to sift through with a fine tooth comb.

And then there's this: 

The IRS said in a statement that more than 250 IRS employees have been working to assist congressional investigations, spending nearly $10 million to produce more than 750,000 documents. 

Overall, the IRS said it is producing a total of 67,000 emails to and from Lerner, covering the period from 2009 to 2013.

So to be clear, the IRS has spent ten million dollars  of taxpayer money, to produce 67,000 e-mails and 750,000 documents, on a "scandal" that has already been proved to be bullshit, and THIS is what Sarah Palin and the Right Wing feel is comparable to Watergate?

Fox News contributor, Charles Krauthammer, tells the Republicans that "the clock has run out on Benghazi."

Courtesy of TPM:  

Charles Krauthammer, an influential conservative commentator, on Wednesday told Republicans to give up on Benghazi. 

"Politically speaking the administration has won. They ran out the clock. If we had a select committee from the beginning, really had coherent hearings unlike what we’ve had, which were disjointed hearings that let all things sort of slip away, we really would have been somewhere. We would have gotten to the bottom of this. But as a political fact, this thing is done," he said on Fox News about congressional Republicans' many investigations into how the Obama administration handled the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. 

Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday held a press conference on Benghazi. Last month, the same three senators called for a Select Committee to investigate Benghazi, but Krauthammer said it's time for them to let it go. 

"Unfortunately you only have a certain amount of time, a certain amount of attention, and the clock has run out on Benghazi," he said Wednesday.

Of course Krauthammer claims that if the Republicans had simply been more aggressive in the beginning they would have found something. However the truth is, and has always been, that there was nothing for them to find.

Personally I hope that the Republicans keep on worrying that Benghazi bone, and that they use that as their central attack against Hillary in 2016.

After all, what else have they got?

Oh yeah, Bill had an affair 25 years ago.

Good luck with that GOP.

P.S. Does anybody else think that Krauthammer looks like something that lurches out of the dark in a horror movie? Or am I the only one he creeps out?

Darrell Issa's IRS investigation appears to be imploding.

"Stop presenting me with facts! I'm trying to smear a President here!"

Courtesy of Bloomberg BusinessWeek:  

But after a burst of attention, Issa’s investigation appears to have stalled. Although he turned up embarrassing material—has any government official been humiliated quite like the IRS commissioner in the dorky video dressed up as Spock?—Issa hasn’t made the all-important connection to the White House. And he may not be able to. The news this week that he won’t release the full transcripts of his interviews with IRS officials—interviews he selectively quoted from to imply White House complicity—suggests that what they contain may in fact exonerate the administration of the very charge Issa is laboring so hard to prosecute. 

“Your push to release entire transcripts from witness interviews while the investigation remains active was reckless and threatened to undermine the integrity of the committee’s investigation,” Issa wrote in response to a letter from his Democratic counterpart, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who himself had selectively quoted the transcripts and then called on Issa to publicize the whole thing. 

In theory, Issa could be building a case against the White House to rival Watergate that he just isn’t quite ready to unveil. But that’s highly unlikely. Cummings has seen the transcripts and wouldn’t call for their release if they contained information that would fell his party’s president. Issa’s weak-tea defense of why he won’t comply—witnesses might be demoted or fired, he says—only buttresses this suspicion. So does the effort by Issa’s colleague, Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, to broaden the investigation’s scope to include donor audits. You don’t broaden an investigation if you’ve found the smoking gun and nailed the culprit.

Issa must be just about shitting himself right now. First the "Fast and Furious" investigation turns out to be "snail-like and anti-climatic" and now, according to Elijah Cummings, THIS Obama "scandal" turns out to be a Republican scandal instead.

I mean what's a slimy, unethical, political hit-man to do?

If only Obama would knock over a liquor store or something, Then they'd have him by God!

Fox News host flips out on liberal pundit for not agreeing that all of the Obama "scandals" are connected and demands that producers "cut his damn mic."

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

On Friday, Cavuto attempted to link the recent revelations about the extent of the National Security Agency’s collection of American’s cell phone metadata with several other scandals that the Obama administration has had to face in recent weeks. “You see one incident after another that comes up, and it all comes back to the same basic issue,” Cavuto said. “Privacy is invaded or potentially invaded, institutions of all sorts doing pretty much the same thing. There is a pattern,” he went on to say. His guest, liberal commentator Julian Epstein, attempted to counter the idea that all of the issues Cavuto listed — including the Department of Justice’s probe of news agencies tied to national security leaks and the IRS’ heightened scrutiny of conservative groups — were exactly the same as the NSA issue. “If you want to conflate or combine all of these issues, then make these general statements you can do that,” Epstein said. “I just don’t think that’s a very thoughtful way of approaching it.” 

Cavuto exploded over Epstein’s comments, calling on Epstein to “drop the liberal thing, focus on the reality thing.” Epstein tried in vain to inform Cavuto that it was worth taking each of the issues separately rather than lumping them all together: 

EPSTEIN: Because I want to talk facts, and you want to make these general broadsides, Neil. 

CAVUTO: Julian, you’re saying nothing and it’s offensive! Because Ben Stein — 

EPSTEIN: Okay, why don’t we speak about them specifically? 

CAVUTO: Julian, why don’t you talk facts? It’s annoying how obnoxious you can be on the reality. 

EPSTEIN: I am talking the reality. 

CAVUTO: I’m not going to play this game with you, Julian. You play the same damn game dismissing. 

EPSTEIN: Neil, you’re playing the game too and — 

CAVUTO: Cut his mic! Cut his mic, he’s going nowhere fast. Cut his mic! Ben, I want to be very clear to you — cut his damn mic!

Went all Bill O'Reilly on his ass didn't you Neil? Wow! Don't you hate it when your guest does not agree with your conspiracy theories?

In fact Fox is SO dedicated to pimping this conspiracy idea that they are selectively editing remarks from Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is ALSO on Darell Issa's committee, so that their viewers do not learn that there is no IRS scandal.

And if THAT were not bad enough it appears that the NSA leak may not be nearly as explosively as originally reported. 

Hmm, it looks like the "Summer of Scandals" is turning into Fox's "Winter of Discontent."

It was a conservative Republican, NOT the White House, that decided to increase scrutiny on applications submitted to the IRS by the Tea Party.

Courtesy of Chicago Tribune: 

A U.S. Internal Revenue Service manager, who described himself as a conservative Republican, told congressional investigators that he and a local colleague decided to give conservative groups the extra scrutiny that has prompted weeks of political controversy. 

In an official interview transcript released on Sunday by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, the manager said he and an underling set aside "Tea Party" and "patriot" groups that had applied for tax-exempt status because the organizations appeared to pose a new precedent that could affect future IRS filings.

So just like that EVERYTHING the Right Wing has imagined about this situation turns out to be  bullshit.

So that's it right? I mean if this was started in Cincinnati, by a conservative, who was only trying to do his job, and certainly had NO agenda to punish the Tea Party, then there is no reason for further inquiry, right?

Nope, not right. Not if you are Darrell Issa.

Issa vowed to press ahead with the investigation and said the IRS manager's comments "did not provide anything enlightening or contradict other witness accounts." 

"I strongly disagree with ... Cummings' assertion that we know everything we need to know about inappropriate targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS," the California Republican said in a statement released by his office.

God I hate this little shit!

Another Republican talking point bites the dust. Ambassador Stephens TWICE refused additional security.

Courtesy of McClatchy:  

In the month before attackers stormed U.S. facilities in Benghazi and killed four Americans, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens twice turned down offers of security assistance made by the senior U.S. military official in the region in response to concerns that Stevens had raised in a still secret memorandum, two government officials told McClatchy. 

Why Stevens, who died of smoke inhalation in the first of two attacks that took place late Sept. 11 and early Sept. 12, 2012, would turn down the offers remains unclear. The deteriorating security situation in Benghazi had been the subject of a meeting that embassy officials held Aug. 15, where they concluded they could not defend the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The next day, the embassy drafted a cable outlining the dire circumstances and saying it would spell out what it needed in a separate cable. 

“In light of the uncertain security environment, US Mission Benghazi will submit specific requests to US Embassy Tripoli for additional physical security upgrades and staffing needs by separate cover,” said the cable, which was first reported by Fox News. 

Army Gen. Carter Ham, then the head of the U.S. Africa Command, did not wait for the separate cable, however. Instead, after reading the Aug. 16 cable, Ham phoned Stevens and asked if the embassy needed a special security team from the U.S. military. Stevens told Ham it did not, the officials said. 

Weeks later, Stevens traveled to Germany for an already scheduled meeting with Ham at AFRICOM headquarters. During that meeting, Ham again offered additional military assets, and Stevens again said no, the two officials said. 

“He didn’t say why. He just turned it down,” a defense official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject told McClatchy. 

So the Ambassador had TWO different chances to beef up security and turned hem both down. Certainly does NOT sound like a man who felt that his life was in danger, and whose fears were ignored by Hillary Clinton and the State Department now does it?

Don't you hate it when your big plan to get the President impeached blows up in your face? No really, don't you?

Just in case anybody had ANY doubt that this Benghazi thing was all about taking down Hillary Clinton, I present to you the newest RNC ad.

Yeah nothing subtle about that!

(H/T to Daily Kos.)

Another conspiracy story blows up in the Right Wing media's face.

Courtesy of CNN:  

Sen. Robert Menendez slammed accusations that he had paid a Dominican woman for sex and expressed hope Tuesday that those behind the claims would be exposed in the wake of the woman's notarized confession that she'd never even met the New Jersey Democrat. 

"I hope that you will all vigorously go after who was the source and purpose as you did go after the story at the time," he told reporters. 

In a notarized statement filed in court, Nexis de los Santos Santana said she was filmed without her knowledge when she claimed that Menendez had paid her to have sex. 

"I am the person in the video, that is me, and those are my words, but this statement is not true," Santana said in the statement. "I never agreed to be recorded." 

In addition to criticism over accepting unreported plane flights and allegedly advocating on behalf of a business, Menendez was accused of partying with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic -- accusations he said were "unsubstantiated." 

As he did when the claims first emerged, Menendez said Tuesday the claims are "false smears" lifted from right-wing blogs ahead of the election.

The Daily Caller, who originally "broke the story" about  Menendez's sexual liaisons on the Dominican Republic, instead of apologizing is now saying that this is not the same woman.

Well that's interesting since the FBI has been searching the Dominican Republic since February for evidence that Senator Menendez had utilized prostitutes, and have found no evidence to back up that claim.

By the way it might be worth noting that Senator Menendez may have a legitimate ethical problem:

Questions revolve around his relationship with Salomon Melgen, the Florida man who owned a plane Menendez admits having flown three times -- once on official Senate business, and twice for personal reasons -- to the Dominican Republic in 2010.

I guess the Daily Caller found these allegations too boring, and decided to "sex them up" a little bit.

Hopefully this kind of character assassination and yellow journalism will quickly usher in the end of these Right Wing online outlets, along with their television equivalent Fox News.