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FBI obtains warrant to review emails possibly tied to previous Clinton case

Democrats claim FBI director James Comey 'may have broken the law' by influencing election

The Associated Press Posted: Oct 30, 2016 2:02 PM ET, Last Updated: Oct 30, 2016 8:03 PM ET, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/c...ey-details-1.3828341

Hillary Clinton's campaign on Sunday pressured FBI Director James Comey to release more details about emails he says could be related to the investigation into her use of a private email server.Hillary Clinton's campaign on Sunday pressured FBI Director James Comey to release more details about emails he says could be related to the investigation into her use of a private email server. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

A law enforcement official says the FBI has obtained a search warrant to start reviewing newly discovered emails that may be tied to the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The emails were discovered on a device seized during an unrelated sexting investigation into former New York congressman  Anthony Weiner. He is the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

FBI Director James Comey on Friday said the FBI would take steps to review those emails to see if any were classified.

It's not clear what connection, if any, the newly discovered emails might have to the previous Clinton email investigation.

Clinton camp urges FBI to release emails

Clinton's campaign on Sunday pressured Comey to release more details about the emails he says could be related to the investigation into her use of a private email server, including whether Comey had even reviewed them himself.

Tim Kaine, Clinton's running mate, said Comey owed it to the public to be more forthcoming about the emails, under review by the FBI with only 10 days remaining before Nov. 8 election. Kaine's message aimed to counter Republican rival Donald Trump, who has seized on the reignited email controversy in hopes of sowing fresh doubts about Clinton's trustworthiness.

"As far as we know now, Director Comey knows nothing about the content of these emails. We don't know whether they're to or from Hillary at all," said Kaine, who called Comey's announcement "extremely puzzling." The Virginia senator said if Comey "hasn't seen the emails, I mean they need to make that completely plain. Then they should work to see the emails and release the circumstances of those once they have done that analysis."

Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, said Comey's handling of the matter was "inappropriate." Podesta urged Comey to be more transparent because the disclosure came "in the middle of the presidential campaign so close to the voting."

Campaign 2016 Kaine

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine called Comey's announcement 'extremely puzzling' and suggested Comey may have not even read the emails. (Chuck Burton/Associated Press)

Clinton, speaking at a predominantly black church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., did not mention the FBI inquiry but said scripture reminded that "suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope." Trump visited a nondenominational church in Las Vegas, where he swayed and clapped along to the music.

Comey, in a letter to Congress on Friday, said the FBI had recently come upon new emails while pursuing an unrelated case and was reviewing whether they were classified.

Clinton's team tried to make its case on the Sunday news shows, joining Democratic leaders who have said it was "unprecedented" for such FBI action so close to an election.

Her campaign has called on Comey to release all the facts known so far, and they have criticized his letter because, they contend, it lacks crucial details.

Trump camp energized by email revelations

Comey's actions Friday roiled the White House race, energizing Trump as polls had showed him sliding and unnerving Democrats worried about the presidency and down-ballot congressional races.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Comey was in "an impossible spot" when he acknowledged the FBI was looking into the messages. "Had he sat on the information, one can argue that he also would be interfering in the election," by failing to disclose the review, Conway said.

Campaign 2016 Road to 270

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told a crowd in Golden, Colo., on Saturday that the FBI's review of Clinton email practices raises 'everybody's deepest hope that justice, as last, can be properly delivered.' (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

Clinton said in Florida on Saturday that it was "pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election" and accused Trump of using the issue to mislead voters in the final leg of the campaign.

Trump told a crowd in Golden, Colo., on Saturday that the FBI's review of Clinton email practices raises "everybody's deepest hope that justice, as last, can be properly delivered." His crowd cheered Clinton's email woes, which Trump has taken to calling the biggest political scandal since Watergate.

The controversy over Clinton's email practices while she served as Secretary of State has dogged her for more than a year.

FBI may have known about emails for weeks

A law enforcement official says FBI investigators in the Weiner sexting probe knew for weeks about the existence of newly discovered emails that might be relevant to the Clinton email investigation. The emails were found on a device that belonged to Weiner.

Comey said he was briefed Thursday about that development; he then told Congress on Friday that investigators had found emails that were potentially relevant to the Clinton investigation.

The official was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Campaign 2016 Comey Career Highlights

FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Friday that investigators had found emails that were potentially relevant to a previous Clinton investigation. (Susan Walsh/Associated Press)

A second law enforcement official also said the FBI was aware for a period of time about the emails before Comey was briefed, but wasn't more specific.

Justice Department officials who were advised of the FBI's intention to notify Congress about the discovery expressed concern that the action would be inconsistent with department protocols designed to avoid the appearance of interference in an election.

In an apparent departure from the wishes of top Justice Department leaders, Comey acted independently when he sent several members of Congress a letter about the emails on Friday, said one of the officials.

The move creates the potential for a divide between the Justice Department and Comey, who has served in government under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Comey on Sunday suggesting he violated the Hatch Act, which bars the use of a federal government position to influence an election.

"Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law," he said.

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A law enforcement official says the FBI has obtained a search warrant to start reviewing newly discovered emails that may be tied to the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

FBI obtains warrant to review emails possibly tied to previous Clinton case, The Associated Press Posted: Oct 30, 2016 2:02 PM ET, Last Updated: Oct 30, 2016 8:03 PM ET, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/c...ey-details-1.3828341

Interesting that unauthorized individual(s) of the department are speaking without authority.

The accepted views of government and elected officials world-wide are that such activities without authority and/or name are strongly viewed as "a dirty piece of paper/information" and therefore are of no value.

FM
Last edited by Former Member

In an apparent departure from the wishes of top Justice Department leaders, Comey acted independently when he sent several members of Congress a letter about the emails on Friday, said one of the officials.

The move creates the potential for a divide between the Justice Department and Comey, who has served in government under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Comey on Sunday suggesting he violated the Hatch Act, which bars the use of a federal government position to influence an election.

"Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law," he said.

FBI obtains warrant to review emails possibly tied to previous Clinton case, The Associated Press Posted: Oct 30, 2016 2:02 PM ET, Last Updated: Oct 30, 2016 8:03 PM ET, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/c...ey-details-1.3828341

Interesting developments.

FM

link

The Very Political James Comey

The FBI director says he doesn’t "give a hoot” about politics. But when it comes to Clinton and her emails, he’s made a series of political decisions that have jeopardized the integrity of the FBI—and the U.S. election process.

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FBI Director James Comey’s disdain for partisan politics is well known among his Justice Department colleagues. A respected former prosecutor who has held high-profile jobs in both Democratic and Republican administrations, this clean-cut father of five sees himself as a straight shooter who, in his own words, doesn’t "give a hoot” about politics.

But the past four months have completely exploded that notion. Since July, by repeatedly caving to political pressures as he sought to resolve an investigation that has now been grievously compromised by his own public statements, the director has led the bureau into its most politically perilous chapter in generations—with the presidential campaign hanging in the balance. It’s a crisis that’s unprecedented in FBI history—and the endgame, with just over a week until Election Day, is anything but clear.

 

The latest in the FBI director’s series of political bungles came over the course of the day on October 28—the second-to-last Friday before Election Day—when Comey approved, signed and sent two letters that will go down as infamous in the history of presidential politics and the annals of law enforcement.

In the first, addressed to the Republican chairmen of eight congressional committees, Comey dropped a bombshell that shook the presidential race. In defiance of longstanding tradition, Justice Department policy and an explicit warning from the department’s senior leadership, the director informed Congress that the FBI would be taking “appropriate investigative steps” to review “emails that appear to be pertinent” to its probe into Hillary Clinton’s email practices—a probe that Comey himself had very publicly laid to rest more than three months earlier.

With the second letter, addressed “To all” and distributed to FBI employees, the director made a feeble attempt at damage control. Acknowledging that the FBI doesn’t “ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations,” that it did not yet “know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails” and that his first letter carried “a significant risk of being misunderstood,” Comey defended his decision to subordinate the Justice Department’s clear-cut rules to his own personal judgment. “I â€Ķ think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record,” he wrote, apparently oblivious to the fact that his ill-conceived “supplement” was already spawning dozens of misleading headlines, even plunging financial markets (briefly) into turmoil.

Together, these letters give the lie to Comey’s repeated insistence that the FBI is above politics, exposing that notion as both irrelevant—because, whatever his motivations, Comey’s actions have placed the FBI at center stage during the presidential campaign’s climactic moment—and absurd, because the director has, in fact, repeatedly bowed to political pressures arising from the Clinton investigation.

In early July, when the investigation reached its (initial) conclusion, Comey called an extraordinary news conference to opine, before the national media, on the Democratic nominee’s “extremely careless” conduct—even as he insisted that “no reasonable prosecutor” would file charges against her. The fact that no prosecutor had been consulted was, for Comey, a point of pride—evidence, he thought, of his independence, rather than his brazen disregard for Justice Department rules (which dictated that a senior DOJ official, not the FBI director, should have had the final say).

Especially in retrospect, it is difficult to interpret Comey’s rambling statement—which veered at times into speculation and would have been assailed as prejudicial, had the FBI proposed charges against Clinton—as anything other than a preemptive defense against Republican allegations of partisanship. It was, in its own way, a purely political exercise—and an unfortunate mistake that Comey would compound, just two days later, by acquiescing to demands that he account for his conclusions in an open congressional hearing.

This unusual step, in turn, not only made the FBI complicit in a political assault on a presidential candidate; it invited members of Congress to pick through reams of investigative materials that the bureau normally holds in strict confidence. Even worse, Comey’s decision to release these materials to the public at the same time deprived Clinton of the chance to defend her actions and challenge the government’s findings in a court of law. By making the materials publicly available, Comey empowered political actors to second-guess investigators while arming Republicans with the evidence they needed to take their case to the court of public opinion.

At every stage, Comey’s defenders have argued that the very existence of the Clinton investigation has put the FBI director in an impossible position. Had he handled it like any ordinary matter, they say—ignoring political pressures, releasing a terse statement that the investigation would be closed without charges, or perhaps declining to say anything at all—the FBI would surely have faced intense criticism. Such an outcome might have eroded the public’s faith in the competence and impartiality of federal law enforcement—a worrisome prospect, to be sure.

The trouble with this line of reasoning—that the rules do not apply in cases like Clinton’s, and that the need for “extraordinary transparency,” as defined by the FBI director, outweighs the rights of a person under investigation—is that every successive disclosure sets an unfortunate precedent (or at least a public expectation), and every new exemption leads to another. If Comey was willing to explicate his thinking at a televised news conference, why not do so—in even greater detail—before a congressional committee? If the director was happy to discuss evidence that the Justice Department had declined to present in court, why not release that evidence to the general public? And if Congress is entitled to join in the FBI’s investigative deliberations—evaluating its evidence and critiquing its every move—why not provide updates in real time?

On Friday, with his vaguely worded letter to Congress—a letter that again broke with precedent, that was ripe for misinterpretation and that he had been advised by his superiors not to send—Comey took this logic to its regrettable conclusion. The result, as we have seen, has been less clarity, not more; rising, rather than falling, confusion and controversy; and an enormously heightened, rather than minimized, impact on the presidential election. This is something that past FBI directors have taken great pains to avoid—and for good reason: Even the appearance of influencing an election, with or without an overtly partisan agenda, would spell disaster for the FBI’s credibility.

Had Comey—the straight shooter—simply allowed his actions to be guided by rules that had been exquisitely crafted, over decades, to prevent this from occurring, he would have faced criticism for quietly closing the Clinton case and refusing to improperly air its findings. And it would have been his job, as a law enforcement professional, to absorb this criticism.

By instead carving exceptions to those rules whenever it suited his judgment, he has done far greater (and potentially lasting) damage to the FBI’s reputation—leading his agency to the very outcome he once hoped, at all costs, to avoid.

However pure Comey’s motives, his actions have been irresponsible—“careless,” he might say—in the extreme. It is startling to consider that, in an election roiled by what looks to be unsettling Russian interference, violent rhetoric and a chilling pledge by one candidate to jail his political opponent, one of the most palpable shocks to the 2016 campaign—at least to this point—might well have been touched off by the FBI director. The situation must be personally agonizing for Comey, whose distaste for partisan politics is well known among current and former Justice Department officials (many of whom greeted last week’s letters with cold fury). But the director has no one but himself to blame.

In the coming days, if past is prologue, Comey will devise a way to respond to this spiraling political furor, further bending the rules toward “extraordinary transparency” in hopes of clarifying at least some of the ambiguities introduced in his letters. Unfortunately, though, the damage has likely been done. The headline itself has become the indictment; the underlying facts matter hardly at all. With just over a week until Election Day—and early voting underway in more than two dozen states—there is precious little time to set the record straight.

FM

Comey did say in his last decision, if anything new develops he will immediately go back and inform Congress.  He is doing what he promised under oath.  Exactly what's the issue?  The bigger issue is what business Bill has [secretly] meeting with Loretta Lynch shortly prior to a decision on the Hillary scandal.  This smells fishy!!

FM
ba$eman posted:

Comey did say in his last decision, if anything new develops he will immediately go back and inform Congress.  He is doing what he promised under oath.  Exactly what's the issue?  The bigger issue is what business Bill has [secretly] meeting with Loretta Lynch shortly prior to a decision on the Hillary scandal.  This smells fishy!!

The emails were discovered many weeks ago so if he was obligated to inform Congress of any new developments immediately, he should have done so weeks ago. Instead he waited until 11 days before the elections and dropped the bombshell which is against FBI departmental policy. Being a life long Republican, he's going in the tank for Trump. That is troubling when one of the highest law enforcement officers in the country is trying to sway the outcome of the most important elections on the planet.

Mars
Last edited by Mars
ba$eman posted:

Comey did say in his last decision, if anything new develops he will immediately go back and inform Congress.  He is doing what he promised under oath.  Exactly what's the issue?  The bigger issue is what business Bill has [secretly] meeting with Loretta Lynch shortly prior to a decision on the Hillary scandal.  This smells fishy!!

The issue is extremely fundamental to the rules and procedures of the department of which James Comey is the Director ...

1. The procedures of the FBI department is that no such statements are to be made within two months of an election.

2. James Comey did not abide with the fundamental procedures of the department plus he also went against the advice of the Secretary of the Department plus senior advisors.

FM

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