Doctor Fate wrote:Btw, if there is nothing to fear, why didn't Abedin just give permission?

Oh, please. Freak flags flying all over the place.

Geo,

I knew that line would be scoffed at and I know I sound like the guy who claims the aliens landed out in the fields but there's been some rather bizarre circumstances surrounding more than a few folks who were connected to this family.

At the very least, forgive my anger over the unfair treatment of Bernie Sanders at the hands of the DNC and everyone's crystal ball that justified that treatment. My crystal ball tells me the Berndog could have beat Trump hands down. But now we'll never know. So yes, all that is evil in this world springs from this lying, cheating, conniving family.

dh

This article sheds some light on how the FBI discovered the emails. Basically, they were investigating Weiner and discovered emails belonging to Abedin. Since those emails were not covered by the original search pertaining to Weiner they needed to get a new warrant. So the emails should not have been read prior to the warrant being obtained.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... ent=safari

I don't know if ol' Piers has taken a side, but I think he hits this one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... llary.html

(it's not long)

freeman3 wrote:This article sheds some light on how the FBI discovered the emails. Basically, they were investigating Weiner and discovered emails belonging to Abedin. Since those emails were not covered by the original search pertaining to Weiner they needed to get a new warrant. So the emails should not have been read prior to the warrant being obtained.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.co ... ent=safari

The answer is in your article:

Investigators took possession of multiple computers related to the inquiry of Anthony Weiner in early October, U.S. law enforcement officials said. Weiner is Abedin's estranged husband and is being probed about alleged sexting with a purportedly underage girl.

Technical experts at the FBI began procedures to catalogue the emails found on one of the computers and soon found emails belonging to Abedin. The discovery surprised investigators, triggering legal issues because the search warrant was limited to the sexting case. That's why the Justice Department sought the new search warrant.

Well, that's why I posted it...

Well, Piers gives the best defense that could be made for Comey. . But he does not give enough credence to the long precedent in the Justice Department of not doing anything to affect an election. Yes, he would get criticized no matter what he did--that comes with the territory. That's is not the issue. The issue is whether he made the right judgment here. The Justice Department did not come up with this rule for no reason. Clearly, when it advises its prosecutors not to proceed with late investigations into politicians which might become public and affect elections, it did so for a very good reason--it wants to maintain its institutional integrity as being strictly neutral and bipartisan. Making public investigations into politicians right before elections where the person being investigated can't really defend itself and the investigation may lead nowhere is very unfair to the persons being investigated and risks allegations of partisanship. Piers does not even take this under consideration, but this is the key reason you don't publicize investigations right before elections because they unfairly affect the political process. As one former high-ranking official in the Justice Department said, the rule is you put up or shut up. You either prosecute or you keep quiet.

If Comey thought that they could finish an assessment of the Huma's emails before the election and a decision could be made whether there was enough evidence to prosecute, then maybe it would have been justified to quietly reopen the investigation. But I don't see how such an assessment could have been made. The investigation is not going to be complete before the election and he should have waited until after the election to do it. And even if the emails reveal something significant it doesn't matter, that was not known before the election and now you are just having voters speculate about it.

freeman3 wrote:Well, Piers gives the best defense that could be made for Comey. . But he does not give enough credence to the long precedent in the Justice Department of not doing anything to affect an election. Yes, he would get criticized no matter what he did--that comes with the territory. That's is not the issue. The issue is whether he made the right judgment here. The Justice Department did not come up with this rule for no reason. Clearly, when it advises its prosecutors not to proceed with late investigations into politicians which might become public and affect elections, it did so for a very good reason--it wants to maintain its institutional integrity as being strictly neutral and bipartisan. Making public investigations into politicians right before elections where the person being investigated can't really defend itself and the investigation may lead nowhere is very unfair to the persons being investigated and risks allegations of partisanship. Piers does not even take this under consideration, but this is the key reason you don't publicize investigations right before elections because they unfairly affect the political process. As one former high-ranking official in the Justice Department said, the rule is you put up or shut up. You either prosecute or you keep quiet.

If Comey thought that they could finish an assessment of the Huma's emails before the election and a decision could be made whether there was enough evidence to prosecute, then maybe it would have been justified to quietly reopen the investigation. But I don't see how such an assessment could have been made. The investigation is not going to be complete before the election and he should have waited until after the election to do it. And even if the emails reveal something significant it doesn't matter, that was not known before the election and now you are just having voters speculate about it.

Freeman, a question about his first discussion of Clinton emails: He said (as close as I can find) the FBI would not press charges because no prosecutor would take the case. What I'm curious about is whether you think it is his job to determine the prosecutorial success of a case, or simply to gather the evidence, present it to the Justice Dept and let them make that decision. In other words, was he following standard procedure by not turning over the FBI's results at the time?

That is, I admit all police/FBI/etc will be concerned about the strength of their investigation and the chances for prosecution. But they still turn the case over, since it is a district attorney who will make that decision.

freeman3 wrote:Well, Piers gives the best defense that could be made for Comey. . But he does not give enough credence to the long precedent in the Justice Department of not doing anything to affect an election. Yes, he would get criticized no matter what he did--that comes with the territory. That's is not the issue. The issue is whether he made the right judgment here. The Justice Department did not come up with this rule for no reason.

Q: Did the State Department have a rule regarding personal email servers?

Q. Did Hillary Clinton sign an agreement that she would keep the CF and State Department business separate? (Note: interesting that Blumenthal's name now comes up in emails about Northern Ireland. Did he have business there too?)

Q. Did Hillary Clinton sign documents while Secretary of State indicating she understood she was responsible to know what was/was not classified material and how it must be stored?

I find it funny as all get out that you are hung up on Comey "violating" a tradition (not a recorded "rule" or mandate), but are so sanguine about the many (I've listed only three) times Clinton violated her oath or a signed document.

Your outrage is very selective.

You either prosecute or you keep quiet.

Tell you what: Comey can't convene a grand jury; Lynch can. Let's have her do that and see if we can indict Secretary Clinton.

Would that satisfy you?

You would have Comey violate his promise given under oath. Obviously, he disagrees.

As of today, Brazil is out for cheating the system.

Wasserman is out for cheating the system.

These are the types of people driving the DNC machinery. These are the types of operatives responsible for seeing to it that Bernie would play second fiddle.

I wonder who is next?

Police are not the ones who decide whether to prosecute or not. It takes a lawyer to make that assessment. The FBI website clearly states that they turn over the results of an investigation to a US attorney who decides whether to prosecute. But many FBI agents have law degrees and Comey is a lawyer who has handled significant matters, so I imagine that unlike other police agencies the FBI might throw its weight around a little more in whether the US Attorney decides to prosecute. Comey was clearly making a legal assessment in July when he said they could not find similar cases to Clinton's. And, of course, Bill Clinton's meeting with the AG made it important for the Administration to trot out another high-ranking official to announce that Hillary would not be prosecuted.

I guess to answer your question it would be against procedure for the FBI and not the US attorney to decide whether to prosecute. Police do determine whether to take an investigation to the prosecutor in the first place. But if something is in a gray area of the law that would appear to be clearly within the province of the prosecutor to decide if prosecution is warranted.

Comey's boss said she was going to defer to Mr. Comey regarding the bringing of charges.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/us/politics/loretta-lynch-hillary-clinton-email-server.html

Ms. Lynch said she had decided this spring to defer to the recommendations of her staff and the F.B.I. because her status as a political appointee sitting in judgment on a politically charged case would raise questions of a conflict of interest.

any argument that complains this is unprecedented so should not happen is a bit of a laugh. I do get it but to focus on the FBI side and claim this "unprecedented" card is to ignore Clintons side of this being "unprecedented". She went and did something never done before, maybe too far over the line so much so the FBI felt they had to say something. You do not know what they saw, it was more than a simple email from Hillary with her favorite Mac and Cheese recipe, it had to be damning. It's so very partisan to put ALL the blame on Comey and ignore anything Clinton may (probably) has done wrong.

freeman3

Police are not the ones who decide whether to prosecute or not. It takes a lawyer to make that assessment. The FBI website clearly states that they turn over the results of an investigation to a US attorney who decides whether to prosecute. But many FBI agents have law degrees and Comey is a lawyer who has handled significant matters, so I imagine that unlike other police agencies the FBI might throw its weight around a little more in whether the US Attorney decides to prosecute. Comey was clearly making a legal assessment in July when he said they could not find similar cases to Clinton's. And, of course, Bill Clinton's meeting with the AG made it important for the Administration to trot out another high-ranking official to announce that Hillary would not be prosecuted

.
Normally the Attorney General would have made the decision to procede to prosecution, based on a report from the FBI. Bill Clinton queered that process so Lynch said she would "accept the recommendation of the FBI". Which provided Comey with the power to be both investigator and potential prosecutor.
This was a mistake. Lynch should simply have recused herself.
Comey should also have done no more than provide his decision not to proceed.

freeman3

As for the idea that this is going to be a quick process...are they kidding?

Depends. If the 650,000 emails are mostly Weiners, and if the ones with Huma's name on them are duplicates (software can check that), then maybe.
That this process wasn't done before Comey said anything is part of the problem. What if they go through the whole process and find exactly zilch, which is likely. (Considering that this is a sub set of the 300,000 emails already processed that found maybe 6 questionable emails.....)

Heard this on the weekend somewhere. (Zakkaria?) Americans tend to criminalize a lot of behaviours that in other political systems are considered regulatory or political failings. They can get people fired, but not jailed. But by raising the stakes there's a lot more difficulty resolving things that in many systems get solved with a firing or two...
And there doesn't seem to be a systemic examination. How could a system like this have been allowed to develop? Its all very well and good to blame Hillary, but any system that would allow a 65 year old career politician to be the final decision maker (apparently) on cyber security is screwed up.