FBI letter to Congress reveals that Hillary Clinton did not write nor send classified e-mails. Email-gate comes to a shuddering stop.

In a letter to the House Oversight Committee the FBI sticks a pin in allegations that Hillary Clinton sent classified data over her private e-mail server, or put any confidential information at risk.

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:  

A letter sent by FBI Acting Assistant Director Jason Herring to the House Oversight Committee confirms that the three emails media is making such hay over did not originate with Secretary Clinton, nor was the use of the term "extremely careless" meant to establish some mythical standard of conduct which did not exist before Director Comey's statement.

Herring also specifically compared the Clinton emails with the prosecutions of Bryan Nishimura, David Petraeus, and Sandy Berger. In all of those cases, the FBI said, there was "clear evidence of knowledge and intent," which was not present in this investigation. 

As for the term "extremely careless," Herring explained that the term was "intended to be a common sense way of describing the actions of Secretary Clinton and her colleagues." He further clarified that "the facts did not support a recommendation to prosecute her or others within the scope of the investigation for gross negligence."

The main three facts are the following:

1. Clinton did not send emails with information marked classified in them. She received them. 
2. There was no intent on her part -- or her staff's -- to share classified information with people not entitled to see it.
3. There has been no determination by the State Department as to whether these three e-mails were classified at the time they were sent.

In other words, Hillary did not lie about not sending classified e-mails on her private server.

Now of course the Republicans will still try to make the case that having these e-mails stored on her private server put them at risk of falling into the hands of our enemies.

However we then have to remind ourselves that the State Department, White House, FBI, DNC, and Hillary Clinton's campaign have all been hacked. In fact there is new evidence that even the NSA was hacked.

In other words perhaps the safest e-mail system in the country was the one that Hillary Clinton was using as Secretary of State.

So yeah it seems like there is a campaign going on to deny Donald Trump access to security briefings. Just tell me where to sign.

Courtesy of NBC News:  

Calls have increased for Republican nominee Donald Trump to be denied national security briefings offered to presidential nominees of major political parties after he said he hopes Russia is "able to find" Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's discarded private emails. 

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he hopes the candidate is given "fake intelligence briefings … because you can't trust him." 

And Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island has sent a letter to President Barack Obama saying Trump "is unfit to receive sensitive intelligence" and asks that he "withhold" Trump's expected intelligence briefing. 

A petition by the liberal group CREDO has amassed more than 80,000 signatories in less than 24 hours urging that Trump receive no security briefings.

You know I find is ironic that just a couple of weeks ago Paul Ryan was making a stink about denying Hillary Clinton access to security briefings due to her e-mail "scandal" and now this week there are far more legitimate concerns about the candidate representing his own party.

You know all partisanship and joking aside, I REALLY do think that giving Donald Trump access to anything deemed top secret is a very dangerous idea.

No Guccifer did NOT hack Hillary Clinton's e-mail server.

Farenthold: Did Guccifer gain access to Hillary Clinton's emails?

Comey: He admitted that was a lie

— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) July 7, 2016

This widely held belief by Republicans and Bernie-Bros that this Guccifer fellow hacked Hillary Clinton's e-mail server, and that she put potentially top secret information into the hands of our enemies, is complete bullshit.

Despite the claims by Fox News: 

The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. 

"For me, it was easy ... easy for me, for everybody," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held. 

Guccifer’s potential role in the Clinton email investigation was first reported by Fox News last month. The hacker subsequently claimed he was able to access the server – and provided extensive details about how he did it and what he found – over the course of a half-hour jailhouse interview and a series of recorded phone calls with Fox News.

Well he lied to them and in their desperation to prove Hillary Clinton unfit for the presidency they ate it up with a spoon.

Today when asked point blank if Hillary's e-mails had been hacked FBI director James Comey said this:  

"I'm not sure."

Which is ridiculous because he also said that there was no evidence found that the server had been hacked.

Typically when you find no evidence of a crime you say there was no crime. You don't say "Well there could have been a crime, but I can't be sure because I can't find the evidence."

So we now know that the State Department was hacked, the White House was hacked, the IRS was hacked, the Office of Personnel Management was hacked, and even the DNC was hacked.

And yet we have no proof, nor any real reason to suspect, that Hillary Clinton's e-mails were hacked.

So one more time, WHOSE e-mail system was more secure again?

Hillary Clinton is being vilified for what MIGHT have gone wrong with her e-mail situation, but in the end nothing that was classified fell into enemy hands, no hackers broke into her system, and it resulted in no agents or soldiers being put at risk.

Which by the way, is a hell of a lot more than can be said for other so-called secure government e-mails servers.

Upgrades by the State Department as to what is "confidential" or "secret" find that former Secretaries of State Condollezza Rice and Colin Powell may now be in violation of the guidelines as well. Oops.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Colin Powell and top staffers for Condoleezza Rice received classified information through personal email accounts, according to a new report from State Department investigators. 

Hillary Clinton has received severe criticism -- particularly from Republicans and computer security experts -- for using her personal email account while serving as the nation's top diplomat under President Barack Obama. 

Thursday's revelation about the two secretaries of state under former President George W. Bush gave her supporters an opportunity to claim the Democratic presidential candidate was being singled out over the practice. 

The emails were discovered during a State Department review of the email practices of the past five secretaries of state. It found that Powell received two emails that were classified and that the "immediate staff" working for Rice received 10 emails that were classified. 

The information was deemed either "secret" or "confidential," according to the report.

So I assume that we can now look forward to Condi and Colin having to sit before some Congressional investigative committee as well now, right?

Oh no I'm sorry that only happens if your name is Clinton.

Colin Powell is not exactly happy that he has been dragged into this BS either:

"The State Department cannot now say they were classified then because they weren't," Powell said. "If the Department wishes to say a dozen years later they should have been classified that is an opinion of the Department that I do not share." 

"I have reviewed the messages and I do not see what makes them classified," Powell said.

Okay we need to move onto a new scandal, this one is boring.

I think the new shiny object is that Hillary is supposedly the mascot of Wall Street.

Well at least it's relatively new.