Jump to content

Boy, Hillary's Probably Hooped Now

FireFox

By FireFox
in Airline Aviation Forum

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 98
  • Created
  • Last Reply
DEFCON

DEFCON

Posted
Posted

Hilary's defensive speech was hilarious; it's clear to her anyway that the FBI is playing partisan politics.

By calling Comey & the FBI out and demanding the evidence they're developing be made public, even though she should know that's not possible, Clinton is going for broke imo.

Taunting the FBI may prove to be another gigantic error in judgement though, which leads to her arrest. Imagine that picture; Hilary is seen being led away in silver bracelets on her way downtown to pose for mug-shots and finger printing ...

'The Greatest Show On Earth' continues ...

 

 

 

   

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

Of course in the past a POTUS and the FBI didn't always like each other. Hoover and Harry Truman being one example. Then of course it was mostly the FBI that took Nixon down. Following is a good article on the subject:

No, Mr President – how the FBI bosses the White House
Barack Obama may have struck a delicate balance with Robert Mueller, but the 104-year history of the FBI is littered with clashes between presidents and feds – and it's the Bureau that comes out on top
Tim Weiner
Wednesday 24 October 2012 17.41 BST Last modified on Wednesday 11 May 2016 23.15 BST
One agency in the US has the power to invade and investigate the White House: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its extraordinary powers make it the closest thing the country has to a secret police. With the intelligence at its command, the FBI can make presidents, and break them.

Information is power; secret information is power squared. And eyes-only intelligence secured for the president – or against him – is the political equivalent of a nuclear warhead. Its mere possession is sufficient to deter an enemy, and the FBI's J Edgar Hoover had an arsenal unsurpassed in the annals of 20th-century America. Forty years after his death, the FBI still has that power, along with the keys and codes to unleash it. It was the FBI that toppled President Richard Nixon, made felony cases against President Ronald Reagan's national security team, and withdrew the blood and the DNA from President Bill Clinton that brought him to impeachment for lying about sex.
The FBI has been with us for 104 years, and for much of the past century its relationships with presidents have been marked by a ferocious tug-of-war. Only in the past three years, under Obama, has a delicate balance between national security and civil liberties approached equilibrium. No other Democratic president has been free of the fear of the power of the FBI since Lyndon B Johnson took office in 1963. Harry Truman worried aloud that the Bureau would become an "American Gestapo". John F Kennedy knew Hoover had 20-year-old sex tapes of his liaison with a suspected Nazi agent, and he shared his national security adviser's opinion that Hoover was "a goddamned sewer", collecting and disseminating dirt. But most presidents have taken pleasure in using the FBI as a sword and a shield to protect and defend their powers.

Franklin D Roosevelt gave J Edgar Hoover the power to eavesdrop, plant hidden microphones, and purloin secrets through burglary. When the Supreme Court outlawed telephone wiretaps, Roosevelt told Hoover, in so many words, to hell with the court. He relished the political intelligence and the unsavoury scuttlebutt that Hoover brought him. He knew that secret agents can be scofflaws; yet their techniques are useful against terrorists.

When Hoover ruled the FBI – as he did for 48 years, until his death in 1972 – he was confounded by the American electorate only once. After Roosevelt died in office, near the end of the second world war, Hoover, like his fellow Americans, assumed the Republican candidate, Thomas Dewey, would defeat President Truman in November 1948. Dewey, who had made his name as a crime–fighting prosecutor, would have been the first rock-ribbed conservative elected to the White House in 20 years. Hoover was working behind the scenes to support Dewey, who shared Hoover's views on the national emergency confronting the US in the early days of the cold war.

The autumn of 1948 was a dangerous moment in American democracy. As the civilian leader in the war on communism, Hoover was no longer obeying the president. "He wasn't taking orders from Truman or anybody else," said Stephen Spingarn, an army counterintelligence officer serving as a White House adviser. Hoover sought sweeping national security powers over law enforcement and intelligence, sufficient to make him a secret police tsar. The White House pushed back. "That was contrary to our whole tradition," Spingarn said. "You did that in communist and fascist countries, but you don't do that in the United States."

Hoover wanted to detain thousands of politically suspect American citizens in the event of a crisis with the Soviets. The broad outlines of Soviet espionage in the US were beginning to come clear; Stalin's spies had stolen American atomic secrets. Hoover now drew up plans for the mass detention of political suspects in military stockades: a secret prison system for jailing American citizens, including the suspension of the ancient writ of habeas corpus. Hoover's national security assistant, Mickey Ladd, began working out the details for an American Guantánamo in October 1948. The FBI and the army would hold the detainees at military bases in and around New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The FBI, the CIA, and army intelligence officers would share the duties of carrying out the thousands upon thousands of interrogations.

Truman looked powerless and politically spent as the election approached. Travelling on a long whistle-stop campaign, with the election four weeks away, he caught a glimpse of a Newsweek magazine poll of America's 50 most prominent political reporters. Their unanimous prediction: Dewey defeats Truman. Hoover went to sleep on election night confident in the outcome. But at 11.14am on Wednesday, 3 November 1948, the bulletin went out across the world: Truman had won the biggest upset in the history of the American presidency. A shift of only 33,000 voters in California, Illinois, and Ohio would have given Dewey victory. When Hoover heard the news, he left his desk at FBI headquarters and did not come back for two weeks. He simply disappeared.

 John F Kennedy with J Edgar Hoover in 1961
 President John F Kennedy (left) considered FBI chief J Edgar Hoover (right) 'a goddamned sewer'. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
Hoover would not let that happen again. He served to ensure the election of Lyndon B Johnson, his long-time Washington neighbour, their friendship bonded over sips of Jack Daniel's and backyard barbecues. Johnson loved secret intelligence; he craved it as he did whisky and cigarettes.


After the assassination of President John F Kennedy, both men feared that his brother, Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, would seize the fallen mantle. Hoover hated Bobby Kennedy with a passion and ceased to communicate with him. Though the attorney general was his titular superior, Hoover effectively cut off his supply of information and power, ending the possibility that Kennedy could command the Democratic party.

Then an FBI intelligence operation in the Deep South provided Johnson with essential political ammunition for his election. Johnson was furiously pushing civil rights legislation that would allow black Americans the right to vote and deny racist senators the ability to block them from the polls. He needed to destroy the Ku Klux Klan, which was murdering civil rights workers, blowing up black churches, and ruling by fear throughout the South.

On 2 July 1964, Johnson ordered Hoover to go to Mississippi and proclaim the omnipotence of the FBI. The director was dubious; he thought the civil rights workers, not the racists, were the primary problem. "Whatever you do, you're going to be damned," Hoover said. "Can't satisfy both sides." Then he got a direct order from the president. "Ain't nobody going to damn you," said Johnson, who was secretly taping the telephone call. "Ain't anybody in this country has the respect you have."

Johnson knew how to twist Hoover's arm: "Now I don't want these Klansmen to open their mouths without your knowing what they're sayin'. Now nobody needs to know it but you, maybe, but we ought to have intelligence on that state … I want you to have the same kind of intelligence that you have on the communists."

Johnson was telling Hoover to go after the Klan in language he understood. Hoover obeyed. He would subvert them and sabotage them, so long as Johnson commanded that it be done. The FBI broke the Ku Klux Klan like dry twigs. The civil rights laws were passed, and Johnson won in a landslide, with the votes of millions of white liberals and newly enfranchised black citizens.

Days before he left office, Johnson told his successor, Richard M Nixon: "If it hadn't been for Edgar Hoover, I couldn't carry out my responsibilities as commander-in-chief – period. Dick, you will come to depend on Edgar. He is a pillar of strength in a city of weak men."

Hoover had helped Nixon gain power from 1947 onward, feeding him secret intelligence on American communists such as Alger Hiss. But Hoover died in May 1972, and six weeks later, Nixon's henchmen were arrested breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel. They had burglary tools and a gadget that the police thought was a bomb disguised as a smoke detector: it was a sophisticated electronic eavesdropping device. The suspects had crisp $100 bills and Watergate hotel keys in their pockets. Their ringleaders were Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, and Howard Hunt, a former CIA officer. The FBI quickly determined that both men worked for the president.
An FBI supervisor named Daniel Bledsoe was running the major crimes desk at the FBI on the morning of Sunday, 17 June 1972, when he picked up the overnight report of the break-in. He recognised Liddy's name; he had met him at the FBI a decade before. When he heard that the burglars had been caught with eavesdropping equipment, he immediately opened a case under the federal wiretapping statutes. At about four in the afternoon, his secretary answered the phone and told him the White House was calling.

"This is Agent Supervisor Dan Bledsoe," he said. "Who am I speaking with?"

"You are speaking with John Ehrlichman. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes. You are the chief of staff there at the White House."

"That's right. I have a mandate from the President of the United States," Ehrlichman said. "The FBI is to terminate the investigation of the break-in." Bledsoe was silent.

"Did you hear what I said?" Ehrlichman thundered. "Are you going to terminate the investigation?"

"No," Bledsoe said.

"Do you know that you are saying 'no' to the President of the United States?"

"Yes," the FBI agent replied.

The FBI investigated the break-in. Nixon's resignation came two summers thereafter.

Fast-forward 40 years: the White House, 12 March 2004.

The FBI director, Robert Swan Mueller III, who had taken office on 4 September 2001, walked into the Oval Office with a handwritten letter of resignation in his breast pocket. He had determined, along with the attorney general, that the electronic-eavesdropping programmes created in great secrecy by President George W Bush after the 9/11 attacks had violated the constitution's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. He would not consent to their use unless the president scaled them back to the boundaries of the law.

Mueller told Bush face-to-face that he would resign if the FBI was ordered to continue warrantless searches on Americans. Both men had sworn upon taking office to faithfully execute the laws of the US. Only one still held to his oath.

Bush promised to put the programmes on a legal footing. This did not happen overnight. It took years. But he backed down. Mueller has never breathed a word of what happened at the White House. But he is an exemplar of what the FBI must do every day.

The man who was then the acting attorney general, James Comey, later described what Mueller had heard from Bush: "If we don't do this, people will die."

"You can all supply your own 'this'," Comey said. "'If we don't collect this type of information' or 'If we don't use this technique' or 'If we don't extend this authority.' It is extraordinarily difficult to be the attorney standing in front of the freight train that is the need for this," Comey said. "It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say 'no' when it matters most. It takes moral character. It takes an ability to see the future. It takes an appreciation of the damage that will flow from an unjustified 'yes'. It takes an understanding that, in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country."

 

The FBI today is still calibrating the balance between liberty and security. Barack Obama, a Democrat grounded in civil liberties, and Mueller, still the civilian commander of domestic security, are two very different men who manage to see eye-to-eye. Mueller, born to wealth and privilege, joined the US Marines and led troops in combat at the height of the war in Vietnam, where he was decorated for valour. Marine officers follow a code: if your troops go up the hill, you go up the hill. Over the past decade, Mueller has led his agents to believe they must fight the threat of terrorism without trampling civil rights. By and large he has succeeded. Mitt Romney and the Republicans have thus far failed to credibly attack Obama's right flank on issues of national security. In this way, the FBI has protected the power of the president.

Obama and Mueller have never clashed on any significant issue of counterterrorism or civil liberties. The two men meet most mornings in the White House; unlike the presidencies of Clinton and Jimmy Carter, the discourse is not a dialogue of the deaf. Obama, who never came on to the FBI's radar until he started running for the White House, is intensely attuned to the difference between existential threats and idle chatter; 99% of what US intelligence hears is the latter. Mueller works on the same wavelength; he spent much of his first five years in office after the 9/11 attacks trying to filter out raw intelligence reporting that led the FBI to investigate pizza deliverymen and delusional sociopaths. The focus on analysing actual threats from potential terrorists has reduced the fear factor in daily political discourse, both at the White House and on the 24-hour ravings on the airwaves at Rupert Murdoch's Fox and its affiliates.

The balance between national security and civil liberties remains delicate. The authors of the constitution foresaw this struggle 10 generations ago. A free people must have both security and liberty. They are opposing forces, yet we cannot have one without the other. Mueller has said we will not win the war on terrorism if we lose our freedoms in the battle. He knows Americans will surrender guarantees of liberty for promises of security. They may feel more safe, but they will be less free. He lives each day in this state of continual conflict. We all do. No free republic in the history of civilisation has survived for more than 300 years.

• Tim Weiner is the author of Enemies: A History of the FBI (Allen Lane, £25/$30), out now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
UpperDeck

UpperDeck

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, deicer said:

Isn't it interesting that Trump fans are apoplectic over the email issue, yet nothing is mentioned about Trump's upcoming fraud and child rape court dates....

 

Perhaps because there are no "court dates"? I believe you are referring to the civil lawsuit in which damages are claimed for an alleged sexual assault that is said to have occurred 20 years ago. There is a conference upcoming after filing of proof of service.

That's a far cry from a disclosure of the existence of state dept. emails on a computer exclusively used by a person with no reason to have such emails especially when they are generated by an irregular private "secure" server.

And there is no doubt that these previously undisclosed emails exist. There is significant doubt that there are ANY grounds for that Trump lawsuit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DEFCON

DEFCON

Posted
Posted

I think UD was applying distinctions here Deicer; for instance, attending a status hearings is an entirely different animal legally than is 'going to court' as you are attempting to imply.

I'll leave the rest of the rebuttal to UD.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Don Hudson

Don Hudson

Posted
Posted

Back to the subject

The FBI Director has a responsibility to inform Congress of changes in incomplete investigations and this is what Comey did. Clearly he was between a rock and a hard place for obvious reasons. He was attempting to maintain impartiality and independence from the political process. However, in doing what he did in the way he did it, he placed both himself and the Bureau in between the electoral process and the legal process. Very bad news. 

The "innocence of information" is swiftly lost when the FBI Director's Friday statement to ranking members of both parties in Congress did not include details of why the investigation was continuing after Comey had declared it was essentially over.

Both parties are demanding that further "clarifying" information be released immediately, for obvious, though opposing reasons.

The discovery of relevant emails on Mr Weiner's laptop began the process. Apparently there are tens of thousands of emails also involving Abedin, a close associate of Clinton. Determining if these emails are mostly just copies of emails already sent or if some are new and contain classified information will obviously take time.

The problem with this action, which contravenes FBI policy, was that there were no details or evidence of wrong-doing.

"J'accuse" is the immediate outcome, along with obvious innuendo which clearly serves one party. No matter who's interests this action serves, this is very bad news for the stability of the political process and the acceptance of the electoral outcome.

The actual resumption of the investigation could have been conveyed in a way that recognized the above circumstances but it was not. This looks more like incompetence than it does a partisan action.

Independence of action is far different than unilateral action.

In addition, one could point out the ridiculousness of this by observing, "...if Weiner's & Abedin's laptops hold Clinton emails then what about all laptops/computers of all other recipients of Clinton's emails?".

Regardless of the candidate and the state of affairs in this election, the ability to think clearly, logically and without colouring the story red or blue is completely lost and will be interpreted as partisan, which will have a material effect upon next week's election.

FBI senior people are stating that Comey broke with long-standing policies by releasing such information without substantive evidence. 

The claim made by both parties is not that the investigation has resumed but that the Director has failed to release information which clearly leaves opportunity for innuendo. The door is wide open for the opportunity for one party to wreak unwarranted damage on the other.

Of course, "unwarranted damage" is wrought every day in this travesty of democracy and free elections, but this is the FBI and the rules of evidence apply, particularly in an election where the stakes are so high and the dysfunction so intense. The irresponsible party here is Mr. Comey, not Hillary, not Trump and respective surrogates.

There are cases where such events have changed the course of history. Whether this will or not remains to be seen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Don Hudson

Don Hudson

Posted
Posted

 

Quote

 

Eric Holder: James Comey is a good man, but he made a serious mistake

Washington Post

By Eric Holder October 30 at 10:38 PM

Eric Holder was U.S. attorney general from 2009 to 2015.

I began my career in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section 40 years ago, investigating cases of official corruption. In the years since, I have seen America’s justice system firsthand from nearly every angle — as a prosecutor, judge, attorney in private practice, and attorney general of the United States. I understand the gravity of the work our Justice Department performs every day to defend the security of our nation, protect the American people, uphold the rule of law and be fair.

That is why I am deeply concerned about FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to write a vague letter to Congress about emails potentially connected to a matter of public, and political, interest. That decision was incorrect. It violated long-standing Justice Department policies and tradition. And it ran counter to guidance that I put in place four years ago laying out the proper way to conduct investigations during an election season. That guidance, which reinforced established policy, is still in effect and applies to the entire Justice Department — including the FBI.

The department has a practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations. Indeed, except in exceptional circumstances, the department will not even acknowledge the existence of an investigation. The department also has a policy of not taking unnecessary action close in time to Election Day that might influence an election’s outcome. These rules have been followed during Republican and Democratic administrations. They aren’t designed to help any particular individual or to serve any political interest. Instead, they are intended to ensure that every investigation proceeds fairly and judiciously; to maintain the public trust in the department’s ability to do its job free of political influence; and to prevent investigations from unfairly or unintentionally casting public suspicion on public officials who have done nothing wrong.

Director Comey broke with these fundamental principles. I fear he has unintentionally and negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI. And he has allowed — again without improper motive — misinformation to be spread by partisans with less pure intentions. Already, we have learned that the importance of the discovery itself may have been overblown. According to the director himself, there is no indication yet that the “newly discovered” emails bear any significance at all. And yet, because of his decision to comment on this development before sufficient facts were known, the public has faced a torrent of conspiracy theories and misrepresentations.

This controversy has its roots in the director’s July decision to hold a news conference announcing his recommendation that the Justice Department bring no charges against Hillary Clinton. Instead of making a private recommendation to the attorney general — consistent with Justice Department policy — he chose to publicly share his professional recommendation, as well as his personal opinions, about the case. That was a stunning breach of protocol. It may set a dangerous precedent for future investigations. It was wrong.

The director said in July that he chose to take that extraordinary step in response to intense public interest. During my 12-year service in the Public Integrity Section and as attorney general, I worked on some of the most politically sensitive cases that our country saw. The additional public scrutiny such investigations provoke makes it even more important that we handle those cases consistently and responsibly. That is exactly why guidelines are put in place: so that Justice Department leaders, including FBI directors, will not substitute their own judgments and opinions for reasoned, fair, coherent and time-tested policy.

I am mindful of the unique facts that surrounded the July decision. The airplane meeting between the attorney general and former President Bill Clinton led to the perception among some that inappropriate communications occurred. Perceptions matter. But the solution was not for the FBI director to announce the department’s decision about whether to proceed. That determination — and how or whether it should have been be publicly revealed — rested with department lawyers, after consultation with FBI counterparts.


If the attorney general determined that she could not participate in the process, the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, a respected, apolitical, career prosecutor, should have stood in her place. Any comments should have come from the attorney general or deputy attorney general, the people who always communicate prosecutorial decisions made by the department. And let me be clear: Far less than that which was shared in the July news conference, and afterward, should have been revealed.

Those of us who have served as stewards of our nation’s justice system — from line prosecutors to attorneys general — are tasked with an awesome responsibility. The idea that all Americans are entitled to the same rights and obligations — to fair treatment and due process — is central to who we are and what we stand for as a nation. Whether that idea endures for future generations depends on the actions we take to keep its promise real.


I served with Jim Comey and I know him well. This is a very difficult piece for me to write. He is a man of integrity and honor. I respect him. But good men make mistakes. In this instance, he has committed a serious error with potentially severe implications. It is incumbent upon him — or the leadership of the department — to dispel the uncertainty he has created before Election Day. It is up to the director to correct his mistake — not for the sake of a political candidate or campaign but in order to protect our system of justice and best serve the American people.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DEFCON

DEFCON

Posted
Posted

Hilary turned over approximately 35000 emails to the FBI, but not before destroying 14 telecommunication devices with hammers, erasing another 33000 documents, bleaching out the data trail and so much more.

Today we learned the FBI obtained a search warrant last evening that is at least in part needed because a portion of the 650,000 documents recovered from Anthony Weiner's laptop are classified higher than top secret. 

If you take a moment you can see that even if we allowed for over the top document duplication and included the 33000 bleached out emails in the total, the FBI still has more than half million new emails to consider.

I can't believe all the noise being generated by people that 'know' what Comey should have done and must do going forward when none of them have the foggiest idea how wide, or deep the swamp really is. If Comey is the honest broker he's reputed to be, both sides should back off and give him the latitude to do the job as he see's fit, within non-political reason of course.

Also; Comey has certainly cooked his own goose now, but had Crooked Hilary and her gang been honest brokers in the first place, there would never have been any need for the FBI to enter into an investigation involving the most contentious of all forms of criminal conspiracy.

I want to take a wild guess that's based on a gut feeling I've had for a while now; it's a story that could be expected to come from the pages of a Clancy novel.

Before the dust settles on an election process that seems destined to become a Constitutional crisis, all courtesy of Hilary's need to satisfy her ego, we may learn that Hilary and Bill were unsuspecting dupes so blinded by ego and ambition that they managed to get caught up in an international spy saga that included Anthony Weiner, a troubled & perverted troll that was in desperate need of a bullet proof political cover. Huma had been strategically placed where she could earn the trust of the Clinton's. From there she somehow managed to wiggle her way into Weiner's life where she became a modern day Mata Hari, Huma had successfully fooled the lot of them.

Imagine the plot; to avoid detection, Huma would have needed to transfer relatively small blocks of highly classified material by email over a fairly lengthy period through Hilary's home based server using Hilary's account address to a laptop she 'shared' at her own home with her unsuspecting and otherwise pre-occupied husband. To complete the mission, the stolen emails would be transmitted / transferred, let's say on a once per week basis, to foreign agents positioned somewhere close by the Weiner residence where they could connect / hack into Weiner's router & computer. When the download was complete, the agent could casually drive away with the secrets of the US Government safely stored in a likely stolen and untraceable laptop.

 

 

 

 

  

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Maverick

Maverick

Posted
Posted

 As DEFCON said, Comey's career is over. With that being a given then whatever evidence he now has must be overwhelming for him to have brought it to light at this point of the election.

I just can not see how anyone could vote for her with her blatant disregard of classified document protocol. 

She knew EXACTLY what she was doing. If it were just her equally blatant greed I could at least understand it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Don Hudson

Don Hudson

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, Maverick said:

. . . With that being a given then whatever evidence he now has must be overwhelming for him to have brought it to light at this point of the election.

. . . .

Hi Maverick;

Comey's serious mistake and the reason he's probably toast was exactly that assumption: That the evidence "must" be overwhelming.

Comey had NO further evidence for anyone to be overwhelmed by. 

 

That's the whole point of this latest blow-up. Neither he nor anyone at the FBI had any further evidence because they hadn't yet had the laptops to examine. 

They finally got the subpoena for the laptops on Sunday night and are now examining them, post-accusation.

Comey had closed the previous investigation. If there was further evidence against Clinton then it should have been presented along with the letter. It wasn't.

It is the FBI director who had to know exactly what he was doing and the effect his letter would have upon the election process 11 days out. 

Either that or he is incompetent because he didn't follow long-established FBI procedures for handling investigations within days of an election. The "Hatch Act" speaks to such interference by government officials.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Don Hudson

Don Hudson

Posted
Posted

[O]n Saturday, Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in George W Bush’s White House, filed an official complaint against Comey with the office, and then disclosed it in an op-ed:

New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

On Clinton Emails, Did the F.B.I. Director Abuse His Power?

By RICHARD W. PAINTER
OCT. 30, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/opinion/on-clinton-emails-did-the-fbi-director-abuse-his-power.html?_r=2

THE F.B.I. is currently investigating the hacking of Americans’ computers by foreign governments. Russia is a prime suspect.

Imagine a possible connection between a candidate for president in the United States and the Russian computer hacking. Imagine the candidate has business dealings in Russia, and has publicly encouraged the Russians to hack the email of his opponent. It would not be surprising for the F.B.I. to include this candidate and his campaign staff in its confidential investigation of Russian computer hacking.

But it would be highly improper, and an abuse of power, for the F.B.I. to conduct such an investigation in the public eye, particularly on the eve of the election. It would be an abuse of power for the director of the F.B.I., absent compelling circumstances, to notify members of Congress that the candidate was under investigation. It would be an abuse of power if F.B.I. agents went so far as to obtain a search warrant and raid the candidate’s office tower, hauling out boxes of documents and computers in front of television cameras.

The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election.

Such acts could also be prohibited under the Hatch Act, which bars the use of an official position to influence an election. That is why the F.B.I. presumably would keep those aspects of an investigation confidential until after the election. The usual penalty for a violation is termination of federal employment.

That is why, on Saturday, I filed a complaint against the F.B.I. with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, and with the Office of Government Ethics. I spent much of my career working on government and lawyers’ ethics, including as the chief White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush. I never thought that the F.B.I. could be dragged into a political circus surrounding one of its investigations. Until this week.

(For the sake of full disclosure, in this election I have supported Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Hillary Clinton for president, in that order.)

On Friday, the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, sent members of Congress a letter about developments in the agency’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, an investigation which supposedly was closed months ago. This letter, which was quickly posted on the internet, made highly unusual public statements about an F.B.I. investigation concerning a candidate in the election. The letter was sent in violation of a longstanding Justice Department policy of not discussing specifics about pending investigations with others, including members of Congress. According to some news reports, the letter was sent before the F.B.I. had even obtained the search warrant that it needed to look at the newly discovered emails. And it was sent days before the election, when many Americans are already voting.

Violations of the Hatch Act and of government ethics rules on misuse of official positions are not permissible in any circumstances, including in the case of an executive branch official acting under pressure from politically motivated members of Congress. Violations are of even greater concern when the agency is the F.B.I.

It is not clear whether Mr. Comey personally wanted to influence the outcome of the election, although his letter — which cast suspicion on Mrs. Clinton without revealing specifics — was concerning. Also concerning is the fact that Mr. Comey already made unusual public statements expressing his opinion about Mrs. Clinton’s actions, calling her handling of classified information “extremely careless,” when he announced this summer that the F.B.I. was concluding its investigation of her email without filing any charges.

But an official doesn’t need to have a specific intent — or desire — to influence an election to be in violation of the Hatch Act or government ethics rules. The rules are violated if it is obvious that the official’s actions could influence the election, there is no other good reason for taking those actions, and the official is acting under pressure from persons who obviously do want to influence the election.

Absent extraordinary circumstances that might justify it, a public communication about a pending F.B.I. investigation involving a candidate that is made on the eve of an election is thus very likely to be a violation of the Hatch Act and a misuse of an official position. Serious questions also arise under lawyers’ professional conduct rules that require prosecutors to avoid excessive publicity and unnecessary statements that could cause public condemnation even of people who have been accused of a crime, not to mention people like Mrs. Clinton, who have never been charged with a crime.

This is no trivial matter. We cannot allow F.B.I. or Justice Department officials to unnecessarily publicize pending investigations concerning candidates of either party while an election is underway. That is an abuse of power. Allowing such a precedent to stand will invite more, and even worse, abuses of power in the future.

Richard W. Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, was the chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
DEFCON

DEFCON

Posted
Posted

Don

 

Do you think there's some possibility Comey's decision to inform Congress may have been guided by evidence we're completely unaware of at this time that's separate and distinct from whatever may be contained within Weiner's laptop?

For instance, Anthony may have provided something of an 'extra' for the FBI to consider in return for a 'Get of Jail For Free' card?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing


×
×
  • Create New...