Hillary and Jim--and Bubba and Loretta

Correction to the essay below: Lynch did not recuse herself. See https://caucus99percent.com/content/apology-caucus99percent-re-loretta-l...

Hillary and Jim and Bubba and Loretta sounds like a country music song that Loretta Lynn might have sung. However, this essay is about Loretta Lynch, then Attorney General of the United States and therefore head of the Department of Justice, a position for which President Obama nominated her. It is also about James Comey, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was, at the time, under Lynch's Department of Justice, which, in turn, was under then President Obama. Bush had nominated Comey for the position of US Attorney, and "post-partisan" Obama had nominated Comey to head the FBI. And, of course, it's also about Bill and Hillary Clinton, who defy description or classification. (Apparently, nominating Republicans is Obama's strategy for having the Senate confirm his nominees, since Democrats won't deny him.)

Inasmuch as MSNBC tends to run the same stories all day and evening, I assume from today's Morning Joe that everyone on MSNBC (and others) today will be bloviating about how Comey broke the rules, departed from tradition, etc. The impetus is a recent New York Times story. But, Morning Joe seemed to want to talk mostly about about Comey's announcement, two weeks before the election, that the FBI had re-opened its investigation into Her emails due to an incident involving the computer of Anthony Weiner, husband of Her assistant, Huma Abedin. To quote Dana Garvey's Church Lady, "How very conveeeeyant."

In reality, this story started back in June 2016, with a certain tarmac tête-à-tête. Said tarmac tête-à-tête was the only reason that Comey had interfaced with the public about Her emails in the first place. Actually, my bad--The story started long before that. Barack Hussein Obama, then President of the United States and head of the Democratic Party failed to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate possible wrongdoing by the woman he himself had nominated as his first Secretary of State and who was then the apparent Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, running in part on protecting Obama's legacy. (IMO, Obama had made a deal with Hillary about 2016 back in 2008, but that is only my speculation.) How Republicans in Congress and media allowed the investigation to proceed without persistently demanding a special prosecutor, I will never know for certain. Perhaps they, too, wanted it to be Her turn? But, back to the airport. (What is about sleazy Clinton conduct and airports, anyway?)

As usual, at least one of the Clintons was under investigation, this time, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. A Freedom of Information request for Her emails had brought to light that she had run communications regarding the Department of State of the United States of America from a possibly unsecure private email server located on Her Chappaqua property. Correlations between actions of the Department of State and those of the Clinton Foundation seemed, at a minimum, suspicious. The rapid ascent of the Clintons from "deep in debt" to "hundred-millionaires" soon after leaving the White House added to the suspicion.

Hillary took over two years to comply with the FOIA request, during which time Her (via an aide) ordered the server wiped. Worse, the emails Clinton turned over to the FBI were admittedly not the only emails that had been on the server. According to Her representatives, she had withheld only personal emails. Again, convenient. This placed a huge burden on both the State Department and the FBI to try to piece things together. IMO, this was typical Clinton secrecy and entitlement, while crying "Victim!" all the while. But, I digress (maybe).

As usual, the Clintons tried to get an extra edge. Legal ethics forbid the appearance of impropriety and Obama, Lynch, Comey and both Clintons were trained as lawyers in the best law schools in the nation. The investigation was being conducted by the FBI, headed by James Comey, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, who had impressive legal experience in both the private and public sectors. The F.B.I. is under the Department of Justice, then headed by Lynch. Lynch's cred was similar to Comey's, except that she, like Obama, was a graduate of Harvard Law School. Lynch's prestigious office of A.G. of the U.S. was a promotion from her position as US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, for which Bill Clinton had nominated her, yet another reason for both Obama and Lynch to have sought appointment of a special prosecutor.

So, somehow--Bubba and Lynch claiming pure chance--the "private" jet of Bill Clinton, probably paid for by us (Secret Service), and the "private" jet of Loretta Lynch, definitely paid for by us, were together on the tarmac of the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport at the same time. Supposedly, Bill, whose wife was then under FBI investigation, and Lynch, who owed Bubba quite a lot, talked only of things like grandchildren. However, the appearance of impropriety sufficed to cause a public outcry--very justified, IMO.

The outcry supposedly "woke" the seemingly clueless Lynch to seek a special prosecutor, as she and Obama should have done from the off. Better late than never, eh? Oh, wait, no. The outcry caused her only to recuse herself (as far as the public knew), putting in charge in her place a man who reported to her as part of his employment duties! Imagine this: the head of Exxon and Exxon's chief counsel have an important responsibility, but also have a conflict of interest. So, they propose to keep silent about the matter in public, putting an Exxon employee in charge instead. Okay, not an exact analogy because the FBI is supposedly independent, but Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

So, the first mistake Comey made was accepting this responsibility from his boss, Lynch, instead of insisting on a special prosecutor, as Obama and Lynch should have done on their own. This led directly to Comey's deviating from a tradition of FBI heads--holding a press conference to announce the end of the investigation and (alleged) lack of evidence of any intentional wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton. The third "mistake" that U.Chi Law School grad Comey made was claiming that the case he laid out in his announcement showed no intentional wrongdoing on the part of Hillary, when it clearly did show wrongdoing on Her part, including intent (Duh.) Just ask any unbiased criminal lawyer--assuming anyone in the US is truly unbiased about this. (Reportedly, Comey's exoneration of Hillary resulted in resignations by FBI agents.)

Of course, Comey's announcement, which deviated from tradition, helped Hillary enormously; but there was not much of an outcry about the three mistakes of Comey I've described that helped her. However, having done all that, again contrary to FBI tradition (and maybe more than only tradition), Comey also felt a responsibility to inform Congress when the FBI re-opened the investigation that Comey had previously described publicly as closed by the FBI. Comey exonerated Hillary a second time only a few days after announcing re-opening of the investigation. On the one hand, Hillary supporters, like Nate Silver, claim that the reaction in polls to re-opening of the investigation was almost instantaneous. On the other hand, Her supporters say the FBI's clearing Her for a second time came too late to help Her in the election. Seems inconsistent to me, but you will obviously make up your own mind.

For the reasons stated above, I never would never have put myself where Obama, Lynch and Comey were two weeks before the election. However, if I had come into the situation as it was then, I, too, would have felt a responsibility to report to Congress that the agency I headed had re-opened the investigation that Comey had previously told the public had been closed. Not so doing would have been a highly misleading omission. As to Hillary's driooubg in "the polls" after Comey announced re-opening of the FBI investigation: (1) Correlation is not necessarily causation; (2) unless the polls referred to showed a loss in the electoral vote, rather than merely a drop in national popularity, the stories range from irrelevant to misleading; and (3) the original cause of everything in this essay was the conduct of Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Another alleged wrongdoing of Comey's is his silence about the FBI investigation of Trump. However, since Lynch had not publicly compromised herself in the Trump investigation, she did not need to recuse herself from the Trump investigation. Therefore, Comey played the usual hand of an FBI director as to the Trump investigation, which was to leave public statements up to the D of J. Therefore, it was Lynch, not Comey, who decided not to make an announcement about the Trump investigation. Moreover, the only reason Comey announced the re-opening of the investigation of Hillary's emails was that he had previously announced the investigation closed, which I suspect, he was under a lot of pressure to do.

Comey deserves blame for going along with Lynch and Obama, his bosses. However, this mess all started with Obama's and Lynch's highly inappropriate failure to insist on a special prosecutor and the highly inappropriate tarmac tête-à-tête between Bubba and Loretta. And, again, the buck stopped with Lynch and Obama regarding that tête-à-tête because of their failure to seek appointment of a special prosecutor. They could have, and should have, taken themselves out of this Clinton mess from the off. Comey, while certain not blameless, had been, to a degree, April Glaspied.

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This is what I've been telling Her supporters all along! They kept screaming, "Comey! Comey! Comey!" I responded, "Loretta! Loretta! Loretta!" If Lynch had grown a brain, she shouldn't have been in the vicinity of Clinton. If he wanted to talk to her, he could've waited AFTER the election to talk with her.

When she recused herself from the case, she literally left it in the hands of Comey who could do whatever the hell pleased him.

This should be the answer everyone in here should use against TOP and the other site!

Again, thank you for this diary! I have a kindred spirit!

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@nedsdag @nedsdag

пожалуйста (pozhaluysta), YOU'RE WELCOME!

However--and I hate contradicting someone who thanked me so effusively--but I cannot tell a lie: I think it all started with Hillary and Bill and Obama before it even got to Lynch or Comey. And, as my essay said, Comey did, IMO, make a number of mistakes on his own. But, likely, DNCbots will never "hear" anything about the Clintons or Obama being responsible for a thing, ever, anyway. So, argue with them however you think will be most effective.

Personally, I gave up arguing with bots for Lent--then I pretended I was Catholic and it was always Lent.

Wink

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Alligator Ed's picture

@HenryAWallace The blame ultimately resides in the Triumvirate of NoWrong Can We Ever Commit. This is a contagious disease, infecting the DNC, HillBots, MSM and other Fellow Travelers. Do you think that the Treacherous Threesome could ever admit fault? (Rhetorical question, as I know you don't). Lying Loretta, since replaced, has now been calling for violence in the streets; a call which many snowflakes and SJWs have adopted, including the mob-like Anti-fa groups (who act just like Hitler's brownshirts, although they wear black). Comey seems to have lost all sense of integrity, claiming the FBI did not think Trump's charges of being surveilled were true, only to be proven wrong in short order.

Even Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the "Russian" probe. Seemingly, then, Sessions has more integrity than the Weasel. What an effed up world.

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@Alligator Ed

I love how Bill claimed he does this with all dignitaries, pointing to one time he had done something similar, only a couple of weeks earlier. As if he could not have planned that far in advance to give himself cover.

At the time, I wondered if he and Loretta had not done this precisely so she that could recuse herself, leaving with it with the theoretically unassailable FBI, which would be preferable to a special prosecutor.

Comey? He should never have taken it over. It's also hard for me to believe he forgot that intent to break a law is not how the law defines intentional acts. If the law forbids handling info carelessly and you intentionally do things that end up with info handled carelessly, you've broken the law. You don't have to intend to break the law. You don't even have to know the law exists. That's why we always hear "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."

All four of them--Obama, Bill, Lynch and Comey were graduated from the best law schools in the country and they all passed the bar. Bubba was AG of Arkansas. That not a one of them had an ethical issue with the meeting is unimaginable. That not a one of them thought a special investigator or prosecutor should have been appointed is also unthinkable. Lynch and Comey were even U.S. Attorneys, prosecuting criminals. That neither of them understood what constitutes criminal intent is also unimaginable.

There was stank all over this one.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@HenryAWallace You pointed out something deserving further comment.

All four of them--Obama, Bill, Lynch and Comey were graduated from the best law schools in the country and they all passed the bar. Bubba was AG of Arkansas. That not a one of them had an ethical issue with the meeting is unimaginable.

The reason they didn't have ethical issues is because they are all sociopaths or illuminati who could care less about you and me. I give Comey less blame than the other three, but blame he deserves also.

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@Alligator Ed @Alligator Ed

both (a) the need for an independent prosecutor and (b) the utter impropriety of the meeting. But the only thing any of them feared was the possibility that Hillary would not be elected.

What was going to happen to Obama? No third term? Same for Bill. If Hillary became President, she may well have kept Lynch on, especially if exonerated. Trump was certainly ont going to keep Lynch on. Comey? He was not fire-able. And, even if he were subject to dismissal, who was going to fire him for letting Hillary off the hook? Lynch? President Obama? President Hillary?

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