Tag Archives: James Comey

04/4/17

Grassley Wants Answers From The FBI… Why Were They Offering Money To A Spy? [VIDEO]

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

Sen. Charles Grassley is demanding answers on the Trump dossier that sought to smear the President. A point that should be examined closely is brought up here… why did the FBI offer to pay Christopher Steele for investigating Trump? Grassley wants an answer from Comey over that issue and fast. He’s particularly interested in Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and his role in the Trump-Russia affair. Why is the FBI delving into partisan politics here? A few weeks before the FBI offered to pay Steele for the dossier, the Democrats also paid him. It looks like the FBI never followed through on payment to the spy, but they were all set to pay him. What is the story here?

The FBI and the Democrats were actively investigating a political opponent. Unless there is something solid there to indicate it is a national security issue (and a serious one), that is extremely unethical and perhaps illegal. I would also like to know if there were communications on this matter between the Clinton camp and the FBI. It appears there were, which makes Comey and the FBI look complicit and very, very bad.

From the Washington Examiner:

Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey demanding the story behind the FBI’s reported plan to pay the author of a lurid and unsubstantiated dossier on candidate Donald Trump. In particular, Grassley appears to be zeroing in on the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, indicating Senate investigators want to learn more about McCabe’s role in a key aspect of the Trump-Russia affair.

Grassley began his investigation after the Washington Post reported on February 28 that the FBI, “a few weeks before the election,” agreed to pay former British spy Christopher Steele to investigate Trump. Prior to that, supporters of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign had paid Steele to gather intelligence on Clinton’s Republican rival. In the end, the FBI did not pay Steele, the Post reported, after the dossier “became the subject of news stories, congressional inquiries and presidential denials.” It is not clear whether Steele worked under agreement with the FBI for any period of time before the payment deal fell through.

“The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for president in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration’s use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends,” Grassley wrote in a letter to Comey dated March 28.

The fact that Obama would use law enforcement and intelligence agencies to further his political agenda does not surprise me in the least. But he should be held accountable for that. Hearings need to be convened over this surveillance of Trump and his associates. This is far more serious than Watergate ever was.

Grassley is gunning for McCabe. He noted that McCabe is already under investigation by the FBI‘s inspector general for playing a top role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation even though McCabe’s wife accepted nearly $700,000 in political donations arranged by a close Clinton friend, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, for her run for state senate in Virginia. “While Mr. McCabe recused himself from public corruption cases in Virginia… he failed to recuse himself from the Clinton email investigation,” Grassley wrote, “despite the appearance of a conflict created by his wife’s campaign accepting $700,000 from a close Clinton associate during the investigation.” McAuliffe is dirty as hell and here we are with Comey and the FBI again. Is it a coincidence he let Clinton walk during all this? I highly doubt it. All of the involved parties should be investigated at the very least and go to prison if found guilty of breaking the law here.

01/18/17

AIM Editor on Cavuto about Trump and the Media

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

Accuracy in Media Editor Roger Aronoff was a guest on “Cavuto Coast to Coast” on January 13 on the Fox Business Network. The topic was how the mainstream media came to the defense of CNN after their confrontation with President-elect Donald Trump during his press conference last week, yet said little when President Barack Obama repeatedly attacked Fox News.

“When you saw the situation with [CNN’s] Jim Acosta the other day, it reminded me of when George Bush had a shoe thrown at him,” said Aronoff. “We haven’t seen it in these last eight years. And generally, there’s been very little support for Fox as this administration has attacked Fox. But there was immediately support for CNN.”

President Obama has blamed Fox News for poor polling numbers and Democrat losses during the election. “…[A]fter the election he referred to Fox in ‘every restaurant and bar and big chunks of the country,’” said Aronoff. “That’s why the Democrats lost, he thinks.”

Reporters are using unverified claims to tar Trump’s presidency before it begins, even if the charges may be baseless. “They’re throwing out through innuendo this scurrilous report which was nothing but opposition research,” said Aronoff. “A number of facts that we know to be wrong. And then this got leaked by the intelligence community.”

“I was struck by something Carl Bernstein said on the panel that night,” said Aronoff. “He said, ‘Look, do we know if this is true, do we know if any of it’s true? No we don’t. But here we are talking about it anyway.’”

Aronoff argued that Trump wasn’t in conflict with the intelligence community as a whole, just with the political appointees. “This is so political, coming from the top,” he said. “And I think we have to realize that, if Hillary [Clinton] had won this election, there would be no 35 Russians expelled, there would be no investigation into the FBI and [Director James] Comey, there would be no investigation into the Russian hacking.”

It is also suspicious that Obama has done little about this recent leak. “Why isn’t Obama saying we’re going to investigate who’s leaking this information?” asked Aronoff. As AIM has pointed out, Obama has a track record of going after journalists who print leaked information, as well as their sources. But this time the President has not signaled that he will go after the culprits.

You can watch the segment here:

11/8/16

FBI Director Confirms that Hillary Lied, and Mishandled Classified Material

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

comey

On Sunday, FBI Director James Comey sought to put a cap on the bottle he opened on October 28 when he announced that the FBI was once again investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails, based on a device they had discovered containing what turned out to be approximately 650,000 emails. The device was the shared computer of sexting pervert and former congressman Anthony Weiner and his long suffering wife, Huma Abedin, top aide to Hillary Clinton and a woman with deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Comey caused an uproar in the campaign, on both sides of the aisle. Democrats and their allies in the media were outraged that Comey would drop this bomb into the campaign with 11 days until the election, and not explain the urgency or the substance of his findings. Many Republicans, and their allies, who were outraged by Comey’s conclusions back in July—namely that Hillary Clinton was guilty of serious violations of the law, but that he didn’t believe that she had any criminal intent, nor that “any reasonable prosecutor” would attempt to prosecute the case against her—were saying that maybe Comey was going to implicate Hillary in serious criminal activity after all. He wouldn’t have reopened this matter, they believed, if he didn’t have something new and serious that he had seen.

Now, the roles are reversed again, with Democrats claiming that Comey’s latest statement represents a complete vindication for Hillary, while Republicans are questioning the timing and point of the whole exercise. Did the FBI, even with their high-tech reading devices, actually go through 650,000 emails in a week, and conclude that there is no there there? And why is the State Department only able to process 500 emails per month? The wheels of justice seem to turn at whatever pace the Democrats need them to.

I have a bit of a different take. In the November 6 letter to Congress, Comey stated:

“I write to supplement my October 28, 2016 letter that notified you the FBI would be taking additional investigative steps with respect to former Secretary of State Clinton’s use of a personal email server. Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation. During that process, we reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State.

“Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

While Comey did, in fact, argue back in July that he was not recommending an indictment or prosecution of Hillary, he also drew other “conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.” He had concluded that she lied when she said that she hadn’t sent or received classified materials on her private, unsecured server. She lied when she said that nothing that she sent or received was marked classified. She lied when she said that she only used one device, when in fact she used at least 13 devices, at least two of which were destroyed by hammers. And she lied when she said that she had turned over all of her work-related emails. No, in fact Comey said that there were “thousands” of work-related emails they found that she had not turned over. You can watch here to see Comey draw all of these “conclusions” back in July.

This is what the Clinton campaign is wearing as a badge of complete exoneration, and a closing of the books on her so-called email scandal, which is actually a national security scandal. As we have often pointed out, others have gone to jail, been fined, lost their security clearances and were run out of public life for far less egregious examples of mishandling classified material.

Andy McCarthy, the former U.S. Attorney who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh for his involvement in the first World Trade Center bombing, argued back in July that Comey basically rewrote the law. Comey “conceded that former Secretary Clinton was ‘extremely careless’ and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.”

McCarthy added that “Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States.”

“In essence,” wrote McCarthy, “in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.”

But this has been a corrupt process. The fix was in. It had to be to protect President Obama as well, who knowingly exchanged emails with Hillary on her private server. As Politico pointed out, “President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records…” Those FBI records, released in late September, confirmed what McCarthy had earlier predicted:  “As I explained in February,” wrote McCarthy, “when it emerged that the White House was refusing to disclose at least 22 communications Obama had exchanged with then-secretary Clinton over the latter’s private e-mail account, we knew that Obama had knowingly engaged in the same misconduct that was the focus of the Clinton probe: the reckless mishandling of classified information.”

It is possible that America will be electing someone as president on Tuesday who has committed serious crimes that could all be wiped away by a presidential pardon. The media’s failure to accurately cover this story could very well be the cause of a major constitutional crisis, the likes we’ve never witnessed before.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

09/30/16

Was the Fix in on FBI Investigation of Hillary Clinton’s Emails?

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

comey

The more that details about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices come to light, the more their efforts appear to have been a sham designed to exonerate her of wrongdoing from the very beginning. As we wrote, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) failure to indict Hillary, based on the recommendation of FBI Director James Comey, has moved the United States closer to banana republic status.

The Clinton family’s ongoing corruption and Hillary Clinton’s pay-to-play as secretary of state have also created a precedent which could encourage other politicians to enrich themselves at the expense of the integrity of their office. The FBI’s light touch also has created a double standard on national security, where high-profile figures such as Mrs. Clinton walk free while others lose their security clearance or are fined or jailed.

Yet some on the left are unhappy with Comey’s investigation because of the comments he made publicly characterizing Mrs. Clinton as “extremely careless” with classified information. “What Comey should have done…was handle the Clinton probe like any other routine inquiry: provide confidential recommendations to prosecutors, release a strictly factual statement noting that the investigation would be closed, and resist external pressures to inappropriately air the FBI’s findings outside a court of law,” argues Riley Roberts, former speechwriter for former Attorney General Eric Holder, in Politico Magazine.

Arguably, Clinton’s status as a presidential candidate under FBI investigation may have called for some public justification of the FBI’s decision. However, despite Comey’s open criticisms, the fact remains that he decided to recommend no indictment for Hillary Clinton. There will be no accountability for Clinton’s many lies about classified information on her private email server or the way she jeopardized national security as secretary of state.

Upon further review, it appears that Mr. Comey’s investigation was highly unusual, given the five immunity agreements that were handed out. According to Paul Sperry, writing for the New York Post, not only was Platte River Networks’ Paul Combetta granted immunity, the DOJ upheld this immunity despite the fact that he had lied to the investigators during an interview.

“Instead of asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to revoke his immunity deal and squeezing him, Comey let [Combetta] go because he was a ‘low-level guy,’ he testified at the House hearing. It’s yet another action by Comey,” wrote Sperry, “that has left former prosecutors shaking their heads.”

At that September 28 House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Director Comey as a witness, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) accused Combetta of “trying to cover-up the cover-up” by first using Reddit to solicit information on how to strip email address information and then trying to delete his posts. “The same guy later took Bleachbit and did delete emails,” continued Rep. Jordan.

But Comey insisted that the immunity agreement was necessary to ensure that the FBI got the facts.

“There’s no doubt Combetta was involved in deleting emails,” said Comey. “He had the ‘O-sh-t’ moment, as he told us, and that’s why it was very important for us to interview this guy to find out who told you to do that, why did you do that.”

According to Andy McCarthy, writing for National Review, Secretary Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and Clinton aide Heather Samuelson also received immunity agreements meant to ensure that they gave the FBI access to their laptops. However, the FBI could have just subpoenaed the computers or obtained a search warrant instead.

Sperry makes it clear that Mills was lying to investigators, as well. She, apparently, “told agents she had no idea Clinton maintained a private email server,” he writes. However, the email record demonstrates that she emailed the server administrator to ask about the status of that very server.

McCarthy calls the granting of these immunity agreements “very strange” behavior by the FBI. “The Justice Department could have required the production of the computer by simply issuing a grand jury subpoena,” he writes. “And had there been any concern that Mills would not cooperate, would destroy the computer, or would ‘misplace’ it (as Team Clinton claims to have misplaced so many Hillary devices), investigators could have applied for a search warrant and seized the computer.”

To add insult to injury, the FBI allowed Samuelson and Mills to sit in on Hillary Clinton’s interview with the bureau.

Former U.S. attorney Solomon Wisenberg, who conducted the grand jury questioning of President Bill Clinton, argues that the FBI should never have allowed Cheryl Mills to sit in on Mrs. Clinton’s interview. “Competent prosecutors do not allow a key witness to participate as an attorney in an FBI interview of the main subject,” he writes. “It just isn’t done.” He writes that “if Clinton insisted on Mills’s attendance, the interview would be conducted under the auspices of the federal grand jury.”

In addition, it was inappropriate that the only interview of such a high profile subject wasn’t recorded. It is preposterous that nine people were allowed to sit in during the interview. Comey acknowledged that this was unusual, but he said it was not unprecedented, though he didn’t cite any precedents.

The FBI should have convened a grand jury instead of just conducting light touch interviews, argued former U.S. attorney Joe DiGenova, speaking at a recent Judicial Watch event. “Now, it is evident to me…what Mr. Comey should have done at the beginning of this investigation was empanel a grand jury,” said DiGenova. “When you want to investigate crimes involving national security information, classified information, you don’t do interviews. You issue subpoenas to witnesses, third parties for documents. You make people come into court and fight them in front of a federal judge…”

The left continues to claim that Mrs. Clinton is held to a different standard, a double standard when compared to other candidates. However, it is clear that the FBI did hold Mrs. Clinton and her aides to a different standard—one which gives a free pass to lies and corruption.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

07/13/16

CCB Press Conference on Benghazi Proves Dereliction of Duty [Video]

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

Benghazi

The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB) recently held a press conference and issued a report uncovering new details about the events leading up to and during the September 11, 2012 attacks in Libya that took the lives of four Americans. However, the press has done what it usually does when a story threatens the narrative or reputation of the administration of President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—they have, for the most part, ignored or misrepresented the CCB’s findings.

The speakers at our June 29 event at the National Press Club in Washington exposed, once again, how the U.S. facilitated the provision of arms to al-Qaeda-linked rebels, and demonstrated that there were many warnings leading up to the attack on the Special Mission Compound, warnings that the administration ignored. In addition, the administration was derelict in its duty to send forces to aid those under attack in Benghazi.

I said that “There’s a media theme, or meme, out there that keeps saying—and you see this [at the] New York Times, CNN, everywhere, saying, ‘No new evidence of any wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.’ That seems to be the conclusion of most of the media in response to yesterday’s [House Select Committee report]. And we see a field of smoking guns.”

“No matter what comes out…the role of many in the mainstream media is to protect the legacy of President Obama and protect the presidential candidacy and viability of Hillary Clinton,” I argued.

I was joined by a number of other members of the CCB, including former CIA officer Clare Lopez, General Thomas McInerney, Lt. Colonel Denny Haney, Admiral James “Ace” Lyons (all retired), our attorney John Clarke, as well as guests Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic (ret.) and Charles Woods, father of Ty Woods, the former Navy SEAL who was killed in the attack on the CIA Annex.

Here are some of our findings, in the words of each of the CCB members and the guests. In my earlier column on the press conference, we included a video of the entire event, including Q&A and crosstalk among the panelists. Here we present a video of each individual speaker. If you want to see the Q&A as well, please go to the previous column:

Clare Lopez:

“So, when we undertook to begin this second report, we think that we bring to this topic a willingness to name names, a willingness to assign responsibility and to demand accountability that too many of the others, committees and others, have not done—have neglected to do.”

“Now, from Christopher Stevens to the folks at the CIA Annex, they were in fact then relying on exactly the jihadist enemy that was eventually to turn on them and to kill four Americans and injure others so gravely.”

“Absolutely, they [Hillary and Obama] lied. There’s no question. We know, again, from Judicial Watch documents obtained through the FOIA process that the administration, including the President and Secretary of State Clinton, were actively involved that very night while the attack was still going on in concocting a false narrative to deflect the story from the truth and to defend at all costs, even the cost of American lives, the re-election campaign of the President. They were not even decided on which video they were going to blame. They only knew that they were going to blame a video.”

General Thomas McInerney (ret.):

“We should have prepositioned F-16s from Aviano down to Sigonella to be on 15-minute alert.”

“It was 9/11. Isn’t 9/11 a significant date for us? And yet we had none of this preparation. We had all of the Combatant Commanders back in Washington, DC, on a commanders’ conference.”

“So, there was no pre-planning. I call that dereliction of duty.”

Lt. Colonel Dennis Haney (ret.):

“I talked to Sean Smith’s uncle this morning, and he said he’s read our report. He got halfway through [Trey] Gowdy’s report, he got all the way through our report. He says read this [CCB] report if you want to know the truth.”

“Qaddafi was out there killing bad guys. He was killing al Qaeda, and al Qaeda we supported—they went to Syria, they became ISIS. We developed ISIS. That’s a fact.”

Admiral James “Ace” Lyons (ret.):

“And when I watched the [Select Committee on Benghazi’s] press conference yesterday, to say I was disappointed would be an understatement, because Chairman Gowdy is not a stenographer and he’s not a tape recorder. He was there to make findings and conclusions. He had the information; he copped out.”

“There’s no reason why F-16 aircraft weren’t moved from Aviano to Sigonella, or to Souda Bay, Crete—either place. We had a 130-man Marine force recon team at Sigonella. We had the Marine FAST teams at Rota. We had the Commanders’ in Extremis Force in Croatia. We had assets.”

“We know Jeremy Bash, the chief of staff at the Department of Defense, at 1910 that evening sent an email, or called the State Department, and said ‘we’re spinning up as we [speak].’ Where do we get the cross border authority?”

John Clarke:

“Now we just heard, I just found out, because I haven’t read Mr. Gowdy’s report, that the order [to deploy] was given at 7:00 pm. Well, the attack began at 3:42 pm. local time. That’s three hours later.”

Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic (ret.):

“And I found out eventually that it was Secretary Clinton working directly with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had shut down not that truce talk [with Qaddafi] but had struck down a parallel one I didn’t even know was happening through a different business channel.”

“So it struck me that the same behavior that shut down the 72-hour truce at the onset of the war, leading to death, destruction a failed state, was the same kind of behavior that existed in that 7:30 [Deputies] meeting.”

Charles Woods:

“Many, many times Ty as a Navy SEAL in his 20 years of service was in worse situations than this. But he always knew that if there was a compromise of the mission, that he was going to be extracted. That did not happen in this case. That’s part of the DNA of being in the military. That’s part of the code of ethics, is you are always rescued.”

“We have a lot of experts in the military that say they could have been rescued. No attempt was made.”

You can read the CCB’s new report here. It is well documented, it puts Benghazi in context, it explains why we were in Libya, what we did and didn’t do, and it names the people most responsible for the failures of Benghazi.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

07/12/16

Comey Indicts Hillary Clinton—But Recommends No Indictment

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

Comey

Back in March, when it appeared that FBI Director James Comey might call for the indictment of Hillary Clinton, I laid out the stark consequences of failing to bring criminal charges against the now presumptive Democratic presidential candidate: “Now the administration faces its biggest challenge, which will determine whether the U.S. has become a banana republic: Will Hillary Clinton be indicted?”

The day when our Republic has succumbed to corruption, politicization and cronyism has arrived. In light of the decision last week by Director Comey and his rationale for it, we may have become that banana republic.

The idea that Hillary Clinton broke no laws while secretary of state is offensive to anyone who believes in equal justice for all. Even Director Comey, during his July 5statement to announce that the FBI will not recommend prosecution, did not argue that Mrs. Clinton and her staff weren’t in the wrong. Rather, he said that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” against Mrs. Clinton. But a number of very reasonable former prosecutors have since said otherwise: Rudy Giuliani, Joe diGenova, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and Andy McCarthy, to name a few. Yes, they’re all Republicans, just like Comey. But Comey owes his appointment as FBI director to President Obama, whose knowledge of Hillary’s use of an unsecured server implicates his own office in this ongoing scandal. This may well explain why Obama has had his thumb on the scale, long ago declaring Hillary’s actions as merely “careless” and not jeopardizing national security, while claiming no knowledge of the investigation beyond what was in the media.

Comey said investigators “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,” but they did find evidence “that [Clinton and her aides] were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Despite Comey’s assertion that such a prosecution would be unprecedented because Mrs. Clinton didn’t, in his view, intend to break the law, Sarah Westwood of The Washington Examiner has found several examples where negligence, or carelessness, in handling classified materials—far less egregiously than Clinton—resulted in charges.

There was, for example, the case of the Marine Corps officer forced out of the service for mishandling classified materials. His crime: “sending a warning to deployed colleagues about an Afghan police chief whose servant later killed three Marines” and that the police chief “was corrupt and sexually abusing children,” according to The Washington Post.

Two days after Comey’s announcement, he went before a congressional committee to answer questions about his decision. During questioning from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Comey acknowledged that Mrs. Clinton had lied about whether she had sent or received any emails marked classified; whether she had emailed classified material that was classified at the time, whether marked or not; whether she had done this email set up so she could do all of her emailing using just one device (Comey acknowledged that she had used multiple devices); the fact that she had turned all of her work related emails over to the State Department (Comey acknowledged there were “thousands” that had not been turned over); and she lied when she said that no work related emails were deleted or wiped from her server. You can watch that exchange here:

But the events leading up to and throughout the Fourth of July weekend revealed a staged event, or at least one in which the principal players must have known Comey’s bottom line. About the time it was announced that Hillary was finally going to be interviewed by the FBI for three and a half hours, it accidentally came to light that there had been a meeting on a plane between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Clinton had appointed Lynch to her position as U.S. Attorney when he was president. In addition, a message came from the Clinton camp via The New York Times that Ms. Lynch would be getting strong consideration to stay on as attorney general in a Hillary Clinton administration. And we heard from CNN and others citing sources “familiar with the investigation” indicating that no indictment was likely. The fix was in; the media should have instead been asking the hard questions about Mrs. Clinton’s reckless disregard of the law.

Then, less than three days after the FBI interview was completed—an interview that Comey later said was not under oath, and apparently not recorded—he announced that he was recommending no indictment, and that no reasonable prosecutor would do otherwise. It would have been impossible to compare her statements in the interview to her public record to determine if she had lied to the FBI. Comey even acknowledged that her testimony was not compared at all to what she told the Select Committee on Benghazi last October.

On the same day as Comey’s announcement, President Obama and Mrs. Clinton traveled together on Air Force One to a campaign stop where she spoke in front of the presidential seal. In other words, the outcome was apparently known before Comey made his announcement, in spite of his declaring that that was not the case.

As former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy has previously noted, “’malicious intent’ is not required to prove felonious mishandling of classified information.” Rather, McCarthy writes, “gross negligence would do, so if there really is even ‘scant’ evidence of malicious intent, that suggests it would be fairly easy to prove the crime.”

Even Director Comey concurs that Mrs. Clinton and her staff were willfully reckless. Do her actions not qualify at least as “gross negligence?”

“Mrs. Clinton has asserted that she did not send or receive any information marked classified at the time it was sent,” reports The New York Times. “But about two dozen emails were designated ‘top secret,’ the highest level of classification, and Mrs. Clinton’s critics say she jeopardized national security.”

In other words, Mrs. Clinton lied.

“To be clear,” said Comey at his announcement, “this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions, but that’s not what we’re deciding now.”

Yet there will be few consequences for Hillary Clinton for her misconduct outside the political domain. And Comey’s actions constitute little more than a politicized decision.

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly acted in ways that benefitted her and her family and her family’s foundation, in obvious quid pro quo situations, and most importantly in her handling of classified information on her private unsecured server. When there were problems with the secure fax, Mrs. Clinton indicated that her staff could turn secure information “into nonpaper with w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” thereby stripping classified markings. Mrs. Clinton also authored 104 classified emails sent through her private email server.

Clinton apologists and the media have claimed that the information Mrs. Clinton sent through her private email server was largely up-classified retrospectively. However, the classified information that Mrs. Clinton jeopardized was far from inconsequential—and some of it was highly classified at the time. One of Mrs. Clinton’s emails regarding the “movement of North Korean nuclear assets” was “initially flagged by the inspector general of the intelligence community in July as potentially containing information derived from highly classified satellite and mapping system of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” according to The Washington Times.

The degree to which Mrs. Clinton broke classification laws shows arrogance and contempt for the American people. It was not merely carelessness: it was willful. And, as Comey said, Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server was widely known by those in government.

This is a dark day in American history, although the media certainly won’t report it that way. We must wait to see if Joe diGenova was right when he said in January that there would be a revolt inside the Bureau if there is no indictment, because failing to prosecute Mrs. Clinton means that the government can never again credibly indict someone for mishandling of classified material.

As far as the other investigation regarding public corruption, in regard to the intersection of Mrs. Clinton’s work as secretary of state with matters related to the Clinton Foundation, it came up at the House Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday, but Comey refused to comment. Asked by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chair of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, “Did you look at the Clinton Foundation?” Comey replied, “I’m not going to comment on the existence or non-existence of any other investigations.”

Some see this as an unintentional favor to the GOP and those who believe that electing Mrs. Clinton president would be a disaster in terms of rewarding someone who was so deceitful and reckless with America’s national security secrets. She may also be vulnerable to blackmail from countries and individuals who may have successfully hacked her server. Mrs. Clinton is a badly weakened candidate, the theory goes, and was clearly treated as someone above the law. Comey, whether wittingly or unwittingly, made the case for how corrupt and deceitful Mrs. Clinton had acted, but left her to twist slowly in the wind.

Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

07/7/16

James Comey makes the government safe for corruption

By: LAWRENCE SELLIN, PHD | Family Security Matters

It is times like this that words almost fail me, but, thinking about FBI Director James Comey, “coward,” “disgrace” and “cheap political hack” come to mind.

Other words like “hypocrite” and “double standard” are, in this case, equally appropriate.

The FBI investigated Hillary Clinton for alleged violations of U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, subsection (f):

“Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer- Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”

On national television, Comey, describing his reasons for not charging Hillary Clinton with a crime, said:

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. ”

First and foremost, U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 subsection (f) says nothing about “intent” as a requirement for indictment.

Secondly, recalling my days in the US Army Reserve for which I had a security clearance, the classified computer system (SIPRNet) was neither connected to nor interactive with non-classified systems. Moving information from SIPRNet to a non-classified computer system was both a violation of U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 and could only be done physically and intentionally using a portable storage device like a thumb drive.

Somebody had to move that classified information, physically and intentionally, from the State Department’s classified system for delivery to Hillary Clinton’s non-classified account.

Will anyone be prosecuted or does everything surrounding this case get swept under the rug?

And what is the difference between the “extreme carelessness” that Comey claims Hillary Clinton demonstrated and the “gross negligence” described in U.S. Code Title 18 § 793 subsection (f)?

And why didn’t Comey let the “prosecutors” in the Department of Justice decide not to indict rather than FBI, which really isn’t its role in the legal system?

Comey followed his appalling excuse for inaction with what one could consider an outright lie, stating:

“In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.”

There was just such a similar case less than a year ago.

On its own website, dated July 29, 2015, the FBI boasts about the conviction of a Folsom California Naval Reservist, who was convicted and sentenced after pleading guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials:

“According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers. Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. He carried such classified materials on his unauthorized media when he traveled off-base in Afghanistan and, ultimately, carried those materials back to the United States at the end of his deployment. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system.”

Does that not sound like, in substance, what Hillary Clinton and her subordinates did?

Comey’s decision was nothing less than politically-motivated malfeasance, that is, the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law.

Thanks to Comey, it should now be clear to all thoughtful Americans that the US Government, as an institution, is hopelessly corrupt, unaccountable to the people and unconstrained by the rule of law.

Comey obviously concurs with and has aptly demonstrated that the political elite are immune from prosecution regardless of the damage done to our national security and the Constitution, specifically the concept of equal justice under the law.

James Comey has secured his place in US History.

America has a new Benedict Arnold.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution “. He receives email at [email protected].