January 22, 2018

"Was Lynch coordinating with Comey in the Clinton investigation?"

Asks Sharyl Attkisson (at The Hill).
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew well in advance of FBI Director James Comey's 2016 press conference that he would recommend against charging Hillary Clinton, according to information turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Friday.

The revelation was included in 384 pages of text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and it significantly diminishes the credibility of Lynch's earlier commitment to accept Comey's recommendation — a commitment she made under the pretense that the two were not coordinating with each other.

And it gets worse. Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges even before the FBI conducted its three-hour interview with Clinton, which was supposedly meant to gather more information into her mishandling of classified information...
Read the whole thing.

167 comments:

chickelit said...

What's left of the written record exposing this is damning enough but the real details are "lost" in yet another 18 minute erasure of history.

chickelit said...

I hope the lib commenters here have an appetite for these sorts of stories; they certainly relished dishing them for the last year or so.

FIDO said...

Ms. Althouse, you act as if this is surprising to the Right. It is not. There is a boatload of Washington Collusion. But it mostly has a 'Clinton' on the cover and thus, is not covered by the media (except by a pillow)

The more I read, the more I think Vince Foster wasn't a suicide.

Birkel said...

Yes.
Next question.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I'm not that concerned about the decision not to charge happening before they interviewed Clinton. At that point, they already knew what she did, including all the gross negligence involved.

I'm more concerned about how the decision not to charge was made, and why partisans were allowed to change gross negligence to extreme carelessness in the final report.

Nonapod said...

At this point you'd have to be stunningly willfully ignorant to still hold on to the belief that everything was above board and straightforward with the whole Clinton Email affair. I mean, are there really still people who somehow truly believe that the FBI and Comey and Lynch weren't doing everything in their power to protect Hillary Clinton? Really?

exhelodrvr1 said...

The sad part is that there is not enough time to investigate everything from the Obama years that should be investigated. They'll get away scot free with most of it.

bleh said...

That's when I figured there probably wouldn't be charges. When she effectively abandoned her department's role in the investigation, I strongly suspected the decision had already been made to let Hillary off with a warning. In any event, the DOJ wouldn't prosecute a major party nominee (and the assumed election winner) except in extraordinary circumstances. That is so dispiriting and it still makes me angry that Hillary forced our democracy into such an embarrassing predicament. She made us look like a banana republic.

In the process, Lynch managed to turn her tarmac gaffe, which was totally inappropriate, to her advantage. She pretended to be so concerned about her ethics that she deferred to the career prosecutors and FBI agents to determine whether Hillary should be charged. Riiiiiight.

mockturtle said...

Most of us suspected complicity all along between Lynch and Comey. The whole mess is so much worse than Watergate and yet it is shrugged off as political mudslinging [by those busy slinging mud at our President].

Luke Lea said...

If Mueller’s investigation unravels, as perhaps it will, we may heading into the perfect storm of a reverse Watergate, in which the ones who end up behind bars are the illegal opponents of the president in the DOJ and intelligence community rather than his crooked defenders. That would be great theatre but might distract from the vital issues (vital for Trump as well as the country) going into the fall: real trade and immigration reform. Trump, the man who doesn’t have time for a grudge, might do better to show clemency to his enemies, even as he cleans out the Augean stables of the previous two administrations.

But I fantasize.

Sebastian said...

"Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew well in advance . . . it significantly diminishes the credibility of Lynch's earlier commitment . . . Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges" This is news? What credibility did she have that could be diminished? They "reportedly" knew what they were going to do anyway?

The only thing left to "reveal" is: what did O know, and when did he know it?

JPS said...

I doubt she collaborated with Comey. I doubt she needed to.

I would bet simply that she made her intent and that of the president known, left him to do his job, and knew damned well what the outcome would be.

David said...

I would say "unbelievable" but of course it is perfectly believable.

JPS said...

Sorry! "Coordinated" was the word I meant to use.

n.n said...

#SheKnew

Obama spied, Clinton colluded, DNC denied the nomination to the Jew. And JournoLists from the Fourth Estate came riding after.

Water Closet is still a shitshow.

I wonder if the timing of #MeToo is not just a happy, coordinated coincidence. #WhyNow

Darrell said...

The big takeaway is--never vote Democrat again.

mockturtle said...

"If the allegations bear out, it could have huge implications for a number of investigations handled by the officials in question over the past decade — not just cases related to the 2016 campaign."

I'm not holding my breath for the follow-ups.

Mary Martha said...

The silence from much of the media about this is deafening.

If half the time they spent on the 'Russia collusion' and/or presidential Twitter statement of the day was focused on this issue I *might* believe in journalism again.

buwaya said...

This was obvious at the time - it would have been assumed to be so by any intelligence analyst, a Kremlinologist of the Cold War sort for instance (are there Washingtonologists?) - but could not be proven. I don't think it is "proven" even now, this evidence is hearsay. The only way to properly prove such a thing is a recorded communication from either Lynch or Comey, or some intermediary between them, or an admission by either Lynch or Comey.

Still, it is extremely improbable that there wasn't such an arrangement and any third party would be prudent, for the purpose of characterizing the state of political affairs at the time, in assuming that they were colluding.

David said...

"The only thing left to "reveal" is: what did O know, and when did he know it?"

Once again, the nature of the Deep State is it does the bidding of the people at the top without even being asked. They know what they are supposed to do and they do it without needing instruction. The only reason the top Justice and FBI people were involved is that Lynch made the mess in the first place by meeting with Bill Clinton. No one reports this to Obama or asks his direction or sanction. They know who they are supposed to protect and their advancement is dependent on how they do that task. See, for example, Carol Mills.

rehajm said...

I'm more concerned about how the decision not to charge was made, and why partisans were allowed to change gross negligence to extreme carelessness in the final report

Yes, and given this distinction why did Comey need to invent the no reasonable prosecutor standard?

David said...

Yes she was. We knew that but now there is some evidence.

Matt Sablan said...

A rare time the answer to the question in a headline shouldn't default to 'no.'

Manafort and the others charged with crimes feel really dumb backing the wrong horse instead of the one whose minions get special protection, huh.

JackWayne said...

Unlimited governments work in unlimited ways. As the tradition of paying lip-service to limited government disappears, we can expect more of this. The only ones surprised are the naive. The ones happy are those that like unlimited government. Maybe some day people will understand that the failure of our society begins and ends with our Constitution which encourages these actions:

YoungHegelian said...

Why do you think the Deep Staters are so upset with a Trump administration? Because they were so sure HRC would win that they got too lazy to properly bury the bodies.

Now, they face a majority conservative Supreme Court, a Republican controlled Congress & a Republican WH who have at least three more years (maybe 7) to ferret out their corruption & abuse of power. They are scared shitless.

Under the Obama administration, the bureaucracy routinely either skirted or outright broke the law over & over. It became habit. Now, there's a good chance that the bureaucracy may be called to task for its malfeasance, & they're not happy about it. They understand that if what they did comes to light, the Democratic Party in its present form will not survive.

SGT Ted said...

Of course the fix was in. People with a brain knew it from the get go.

buwaya said...

From the POV of political strategy, nothing here changes anything. These two players are out of the picture, they have no formal positions. What still matters are the organizations both left behind.

People fixate on personalities and tend to ignore institutions. That is a terrible error. Both Lynch and Comey are creatures of the system, interchangeable with any number of others.

TRISTRAM said...

Pardon and subpoena the lot of them. If they accept the pardon, they lose 5th amendment right to not speak, since nothing CAN be used against them right? So they either get out jail free and have to spill the beans, or refuse the pardon so they can hide the truth. It would be illuminating to see what they would do.

Matt Sablan said...

"Yes, and given this distinction why did Comey need to invent the no reasonable prosecutor standard?"

-- Because the draft was changed late in the game to remove "gross negligence," so he thought he still had gross negligence in the draft, and needed another reason not to press charges.

Nonapod said...

The only thing left to "reveal" is: what did O know, and when did he know it?

He knew everything, obviously. But you're right, it needs to be "revealed" unequivocally.

Hillary's entitled idiocy put Obama and the entire Dem establishment in a messy situation where they were forced to cover for her. There's so many ways that this could have been avoided, so many possible alternate timelines. But the facts remain that Hillary was in charge of the Clinton machine which in turn held the big donor purse strings for the Democrat party. And she was far too narcissistic and power hungry to ever back down from her ambition to be President. This created the perfect storm.

Michael K said...

I would strongly encourage anyone interested to read Kim Srassell's book, "The Intimidation Game." It was written before Trump was elected but it shows how corrupt the Obama people were in dealing with the Tea Party.

Achilles said...

Some of us knew this for months. It was easy to infer.

I am still really happy that it is coming out and it looks like we might get the reckoning we need to restore faith in the republic and the rule of law. Dozens of people need to be put in jail and there need to be executions.

Obama must go to jail if we are going to keep our republic. There must be consequences for what he did. The next tyrant that comes along needs to know there are real consequences for trying to impose a fascist state rule on a free nation.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Of course Comey was in collusion with Lynch to extract Clinton from the email scandal.

The most interesting bit from the article is that 5 months (Dec 2016 to the day Mueller was appointed) of text messages were allowed to be destroyed. The most important 5 months too.

Clinton destroyed evidence, IRS destroyed hard drives, Wisconsin destroyed evidence and not one obstruction of Justice charge.

Drago said...

YoungHegelian: "Why do you think the Deep Staters are so upset with a Trump administration? Because they were so sure HRC would win that they got too lazy to properly bury the bodies"

And every action the lefties have taken since the election have been panicked and over-the-top because they know full well if this sees the light of day the left will be destroyed with the independents.

Not the dem base of course. The knowledge that the lefties/dems weaponized the government and intelligence agencies against their domestic political opponents will be cheered and applauded by them.

Witness Inga and ARM for an example. Just as with the wiretapping claim that the dems denied vehemently and then, presto chang-o, flipped on a dime to -of course there was wire-tapping, the trump threat required it- line of attack, we are about to see it again on an industrial scale.

We still need to identify who in the media was paid specifically by Fusion to plant/carry the Fusion/dem/Putin allies narrative.

We often speak of projection by the lefties of everything they are doing or have done onto republicans/conservatives.

Well, we are witnessing in real time the reality that Hillary/Dems/Lefties/Deep State were colluding with Putin's pals to railroad Trump.

It would be unbelievable except for one important fact:

This has happened every single place and every single time anywhere in the world the leftists have gained power. But only every single place and every single time.

Why would the lefties here be any different than the lefties running the Stasi, Venezuela's "security" forces, Castro's minions, Maoists, etc?

Big Mike said...

Barack Obama figured that he could bring Chicago-style political corruption to the entire country. With the eager assistance of the Democrat Party and the media, he succeeded for a while. Holder, Lynch, Yates, Mueller, Comey, McCabe, Lerner, Koskinen, they all knew what they were doing and for whom.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

So they either get out jail free and have to spill the beans, or refuse the pardon so they can hide the truth. It would be illuminating to see what they would do.

They would take the pardon and then lie.

YoungHegelian said...

@Nonapod,

And she was far too narcissistic and power hungry to ever back down from her ambition to be President. This created the perfect storm.

Yep, & that perfect storm swamped her ship. I firmly believe that if HRC had not surrounded herself with Yes-(wo)men for years & years, she would be president today. As far as I can tell, for the eight years of the Obama administration, the only folks who ever told HRC "NO!" was the NSA (on the Blackberry issue) & Phillipe Reines (who she kept around as her "designated SOB").

glenn said...

If you were Rip Van Winkles descendant who went to sleep in in 1980 and just woke up you might not know what a bunch of bottom feeders the Dems are. But they are our bottom feeders.

Hagar said...

I don't think Loretta Lynch had much to do with any of it. She was just told how it was going to be and acquiesced. After all she was only a place holder in what was still Eric Holder's DoJ.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Trump, the man who doesn’t have time for a grudge, might do better to show clemency to his enemies

I was joking with my wife this morning that the worst thing he could do to Hillary was pardon her to, "heal the country's divisions, regardless of her many, many, yuuuuggggeee crimes. Boy she is guilty of many yuge crimes. But I pardon her."

TRISTRAM said...

So they either get out jail free and have to spill the beans, or refuse the pardon so they can hide the truth. It would be illuminating to see what they would do.

They would take the pardon and then lie.


Bub.. bu.. bu.. bu that is illegal! And wrong!


And, prosecutable, even with the prior pardon.

stlcdr said...

While it may be nice to have documentation on the claim - anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew about Clinton coverups and collusion. It’s, unfortunately, ancient history.

To coin a phrase ‘at this point, what difference does it make?’

Indeed.

Dude1394 said...

So it appears that anyone who does not call for charges to be leveled against the Obama administration is condoning lawlessness and the attempted rigging of a presidential election.

Big Mike said...

Anyone besides me realize that Barack Obama could have nipped the Clinton Email scandal in the bud by ordering her to use the secure State Department system for official message traffic. Surely he realized when he Emailed her that the extension was not dot-gov?

tim in vermont said...

The Silence of the Trolls

Lewis Wetzel said...

You would think that at some point a career civil servant would have said "This is wrong. In the United States, the people choose the president, not us."
The only president to resign office did so as a result of illegal leaks by an FBI agent, Mark Felt, and Felt took down Nixon because Nixon passed him over for a promotion, not because Felt didn't like Nixon's politics.

steve uhr said...

There was nothing improper with the AG being involved with the investigation assuming she was not required to recuse herself. Of course that is no excuse for her to lie about her role.

Rory said...

Loretta may have stepped on Bill's plane intending to give herself an excuse for recusal.

buwaya said...

And there are obvious reasons why CBS got rid of Sharyl Atkisson.

She was too independent a journalist to suit the degree of control and coordination required by that time. Her career in fact is the story of a canary in that coal mine, a steady increase in the concentration of poison in the air.

YoungHegelian said...

@Big Mike,

Anyone besides me realize that Barack Obama could have nipped the Clinton Email scandal in the bud by ordering her to use the secure State Department system for official message traffic

Oh, sure, he could have nipped it, but that would have caused a big blow-up with Her Holiness & the offended Clinton Machine might have made life difficult for the Obama Machine.

I'm sure that when the archives finally come to light, there will be hundreds of government employees & contractors who registered their dismay at HRC's incredible flaunting of proper security protocols. It will also come to light that they were all told to STFUA by their superiors.

tim in vermont said...

So I went to the comments on the Hill, and the main response seems to be the same as our own “reasonable” man puts up. "But Stormy Daniels!”

Oh yeah, and “Just you wait ’til Mueller gives his report!”

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Anyone besides me realize that Barack Obama could have nipped the Clinton Email scandal in the bud by ordering her to use the secure State Department system for official message traffic.

I've always wondered what his angle was for letting her do that. What was in it for him? Or was he just that clueless? Or perhaps he was fine with her corruption. Perhaps he was to get his reward after leaving office as long as he didn't obstruct Hillary.

tim in vermont said...

There was nothing improper with the AG being involved with the investigation assuming she was not required to recuse herself. Of course that is no excuse for her to lie about her role.

So why did she lie then? Was there anything improper at all in any of this, other than the unfortunate lying, of course, which was so unnecessary, given that it was all on the up and up!

Talk about grasping at straws!

buwaya said...

"You would think that at some point a career civil servant..."

Which is why I bring up the matter of institutions. People don't matter, it is collectives of them that produce the individuals we see, those that bubble up from the stew. The DOJ and FBI as collectives, its career employees, and the pools from which they draw employees, are the true problem.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

The Democrats and MSM are going to try to spin this as a nefarious Trump plot to remove faithful public servants so he can impose dictatorial rule. Bet on it.

mockturtle said...

Rory says: Loretta may have stepped on Bill's plane intending to give herself an excuse for recusal.

Um, I think it was the other way around, Rory. But under the circumstances she should have recused herself.

Drago said...

Lewis Wetzel: "You would think that at some point a career civil servant would have said "This is wrong. In the United States, the people choose the president, not us."

The question Lewis is, who would these career civil servants go to in order to report what was happening?

The lefty media would fall go to full Destroy Messenger mode immediately (as they've done every time in the past any civil servant at the state or federal level tried to warn us about the Clinton's).

And the entire upper reaches of the establishment came under complete Hillary/obama control in 2008 it appeared as though the dems and left would be controlling the govt forever.

Those upper echelon dept political employees are leftists and are happy to destroy any dissenters. Just look at how crazy Brennan/Clapper/Comey went when Adm Rogers warned Trump that yes, he had indeed been "wiretapped" across the entire electronic spectrum.

Very interesting note: The day AFTER Rogers told that to Trump during the Transition the entire Trump transition operation moved from Trump Tower out to the Trump golf resort in New Jersey.

The day after. Think about that for a minute.

And Clapper/Brennan/Comey went to obama senior leadership to have Rogers fired...because Rogers was the one guy who would not go along with it all.....but ONLY after Trump won and there was hope that things could be turned around with a bit of swamp draining.

Matt Sablan said...

"Anyone besides me realize that Barack Obama could have nipped the Clinton Email scandal in the bud by ordering her to use the secure State Department system for official message traffic."

-- But then he couldn't communicate with her anonymously. Even Huma Abedin didn't know Barack Obama had an alias on Clinton's system until investigators told her.

Achilles said...

It is pretty clear at this point that Rosenstein, Mueller, and Comey are all guilty of conspiracy and treason.

After a fair trial they should be executed.

Balfegor said...

And it gets worse. Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges even before the FBI conducted its three-hour interview with Clinton, which was supposedly meant to gather more information into her mishandling of classified information

I haven't followed all the disclosures that have come out in this matter, but there was almost certainly a detailed proffer in advance of this interview. All parties going into it probably had a good sense of what the likely outcome was, as long as Clinton didn't vary much from the content of the proffer. At minimum, DOJ/FBI had a good sense of where they were going to come out assuming they didn't learn anything new in the interview. And if the FBI did learn something new in the interview, Clinton's counsel weren't doing their job right. This just isn't the smoking gun the laity think it is.

Now, I'm open to correction. Maybe there wasn't a proffer! Maybe Clinton's counsel sent her in there without preparing the ground first. But that would be somewhat unusual, particularly for someone of her status.

buwaya said...

Q (mysterious poster on 4 and 8 chan) says all of them, Obama included, were using private email systems in order to avoid FOIA and official investigations. Some of these may have been more careful of security than Mrs. Clinton.

That may also have been done with cutouts, as in an aide being given verbal or hand-written notes to pass to some third party owning an email account. Many of Clintons missing emails may have been those with these sorts of addresses.

stever said...

The Democrats set all this up before Obama had been inaugurated, The "investigation" only happened because simpletons like you and I were shocked at the whole idea of how the emails were handled. As a former DOD civilian employee, it went against everything I had been taught and experienced. So they played the game, once it became known, expecting her to win and for this to fall into the dustbin of history.

tim in vermont said...

This is like Climategate, when the leaked emails only served to “prove” what everybody in the right leaning blogosphere already knew about Michael Mann and his hockey stick, for example.

It is nice to see proven that the fix was in, and to see them deleting five months worth of messages, the FBI deleting them, covering up for Hillary deleting 30 thousand plus emails, and records of meetings with foreign officials, all the while collecting umpteen millions of dollars from foreigners, well, deleting them is what they do.

The IRS deletions really stick in my craw because they had the files, and slowly, even after admitting they had them, let them be destroyed.

“Look like a banana republic” ‘is’ is no spelled ‘l’ ‘o’ ‘o’ ‘k.’

Drago said...

Balfegor: "I haven't followed all the disclosures that have come out in this matter, but there was almost certainly a detailed proffer in advance of this interview."

The latest dump of emails from Strzok/Page show conclusively that both of those little slimey rats knew ahead of time that Lynch knew ahead of time that there would be no charges against Hillary.



Darkisland said...

Lewis wetzel

You are wrong. The people of the US do NOT elect the president.

The president presides over the sovereign states and is elected by the states.

It is the states which decide how to do that.

John Henry

steve uhr said...

Tim. I'm. not grasping for straws. As I have commented many times the investigation of Clinton was conducted contrary to normal procedures in many respects and I am looking forward to the IG report.

As one example, it wasn't Comey's call. As another example, Hillary should have been interviewed at the beginning, middle and end. Not just at end when she knew what everyone else had said and could conform her testimony accordingly. Many other examples ...

Matt Sablan said...

"The IRS deletions really stick in my craw because they had the files, and slowly, even after admitting they had them, let them be destroyed."

-- And she was punished by retiring with her full pension, if I recall.

Drago said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Achilles said...

Lewis Wetzel: "You would think that at some point a career civil servant would have said "This is wrong. In the United States, the people choose the president, not us."

Like Seth Rich?

Bad for your life expectancy.

Drago said...

Tin in Vermont: "It is nice to see proven that the fix was in, and to see them deleting five months worth of messages, the FBI deleting them, covering up for Hillary deleting 30 thousand plus emails, and records of meetings with foreign officials, all the while collecting umpteen millions of dollars from foreigners, well, deleting them is what they do."

Unfortunately for the lefties (presumably), the apparently straight-arrow Inspector General Michael Horowitz says he has copies of these emails that he received last summer. So it looks like we might be seeing them after all.

Very Important: There is a great deal of chatter that the career prosecutors at DOJ and career FBI-ers are quite pissed off about what has been done to their agencies are have, through IG Horowitz, strategically provided key information damaging to the deep staters to congressional investigators at critical moments just prior to congressional interviews of those deep staters.

That has certainly been the case for the last 3 to 4 months.

Certainly someone has been providing very interesting info that has caused a number of deep staters to "suddenly" come down with "interesting schedule conflicts that require us to delay our testimony"......LOL

Original Mike said...

Blogger Big Mike said...”Anyone besides me realize that Barack Obama could have nipped the Clinton Email scandal in the bud by ordering her to use the secure State Department system for official message traffic. Surely he realized when he Emailed her that the extension was not dot-gov?”

I don’t necessarily buy that. All the email programs I use replace actual addresses with aliases. It’s something that annoys me but, then, many of the things programmers do to make things “easier” are, IMO, bad ideas. So, I don’t take it as a given that Obama saw her actual address. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.

tim in vermont said...

The DoJ and top levels of the FBI under Obama were an ethical ‘shithole.’ Was that racist?

Drago said...

"Now, I'm open to correction. Maybe there wasn't a proffer! Maybe Clinton's counsel sent her in there without preparing the ground first. But that would be somewhat unusual, particularly for someone of her status."

Hillary was "interviewed" by her minions, not under oath, not video taped, no transcripts, no notes,....nothing.

After key witnesses were immediately provided immunity deals and then the FBI allowed a key "witness" (Cheryl Mills) to act as Hillary's attorney and sit in on the "interview"!!

Gee, no whitewash there, eh?

tim in vermont said...

So, I don’t take it as a given that Obama saw her actual address. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.

Well, it’s strange that he used an alias then.

tim in vermont said...

What really protected Hillary was that she dragged Obama into it. He has a lot more loyalty among the rank and file than she ever had. It’s like in “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” the communists made the villagers complicit in their crimes by forcing them to murder the small businessmen in town, you know, the “fascists.” It increased loyalty.

Original Mike said...

”Well, it’s strange that he used an alias then.”

Ahh, well that there is evidence that he knew.

tim in vermont said...

"Stormy Daniels! Proves that this is all conspiracy nonsense, and Atkinson could never be trusted to bury the “unhelpful” stuff! You can’t trust her people! She’s one of them! Oh yeah, and Manafort! Oh man! Bad moon risin’ for Trump y’all!“

Sorry, since the trolls are silent, I decided to channel one through what I call a “troll seance.”

Achilles said...

Tim in Vermont said...
The Silence of the Trolls

They aren’t trolls. They truly believe that the country should have a tyrant in place using the government to spy on and suppress their political opponents.

After their leaders are jailed and executed they will have to be defeated.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Big Mike said...
Anyone besides me realize that Barack Obama could have nipped the Clinton Email scandal in the bud by ordering her to use the secure State Department system for official message traffic. Surely he realized when he Emailed her that the extension was not dot-gov?

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. - Napoleon Bonaparte.

I'm sure that's how Obama saw it.

tim in vermont said...

We saw what a fuckup she was as SoS in her ham-fisted war mongering, which lead, through a massive refugee influx, the Brexit and the general destabilization of the EU. Now we see how she fucked up what was BAU, I guess, for the ruling elite of sheltering themselves from the rule of law, to the point where all Obama’s horses, and all of Bill's men, can’t put Humpty together again.

What a bullet we dodged! We would probably already have suffered a nuclear exchange with the Norks. Maybe that false alarm was from a parallel universe where Hillary (shudder) won.

Anonymous said...

Where's Inga?

Anonymous said...

Big Mike gives Obama way too much credit.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I am not certain that Obama could order Hillary to do anything. She was his peer. She ran the SD like a private fiefdom. If he would have ordered her to do something she did not want to do, she would have refused & if he fired her there would be a scandal.
I think that everyone knows that Hillary got the secretary of state job as a payoff. She wasn't qualified for the job. Do even liberals doubt this?

Original Mike said...

“The question Lewis is, who would these career civil servants go to in order to report what was happening?”

I remember reporting that there were one or two State Dept IT types that objected. They were told by higher-ups never to bring the topic up again.

Drago said...

Remember, obama set up shop in DC after leaving office with Valerie Jarrett as a live-in advisor and how much do you want to bet that was where the #Resistance was being completely coordinated?

With all that implies, "legally" and "illegally".

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Sorry, since the trolls are silent, I decided to channel one through what I call a “troll seance.”

They never show up in a thread like this where everyone discusses the fact that it is transparently obvious that Hillary, Obama, and the upper echelons of the government are corrupt.

So, they stick to the threads where they can work on character assassination and claim moral superiority.

Achilles said...

Tim in Vermont said...
What really protected Hillary was that she dragged Obama into it.

What evidence is there that obama was an unwitting dupe?

Obama set up the state surveillance on his political opponents at least during the Iran negotiations and He sent the IRS and other bureaucracies after his political opponents. The destruction of evidence and acts of obstruction of justice are legion.

For all of Hillary’s crimes creating a police state is worse. Corruption pales in comparison to undermining the foundations of our free republic.

Anyone who supports Obama at this point is an enemy of freedom.

Drago said...

Achilles: "What evidence is there that obama was an unwitting dupe?"

He was no unwitting dupe.

He was the ringleader.

traditionalguy said...

Unfortunately, unraveling the Great Bush/Obama/Clinton treason conspiracy still has to deal with embedded an army of traitors who are yet to go on trial. There are so many of them that most of them are being allowed to resign and go home. Appomattox Redux.

Original Mike said...

”Where's Inga?”

If she comments at all on this thread, she will wait until it has petered out.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

I think that everyone knows that Hillary got the secretary of state job as a payoff. She wasn't qualified for the job. Do even liberals doubt this?

Yep, the whole point was to appease her and allow her to burnish her credentials while waiting to run in 2016 while also allowing her to keep her team on salary using the Clinton foundation. That's why the fix was in at the DNC to ensure her nomination.

SayAahh said...

Inga et.al: Crickets

tim in vermont said...

The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the administration of John Adams, involving a confrontation between the United States and Republican France that led to an undeclared war called the Quasi-War. The name derives from the substitution of the letters X, Y and Z for the names of French diplomats Hottinguer (X), Bellamy (Y), and Hauteval (Z) in documents released by the Adams administration.

An American diplomatic commission was sent to France in July 1797 to negotiate problems that were threatening to break out into war. The diplomats, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, were approached through informal channels by agents of the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand, who demanded bribes and a loan before formal negotiations could begin.
. - Wikipedia

Behavior like Hillary’s as SoS used to be considered scandalous by the American people, but that was before the Clintons and Obama raised our consciousness. What I don’t get is why she even bothered to try to hide her behavior. Obviously the press and Democrats in general would have been fine with it.

tim in vermont said...

in documents released by the Adams administration.

plus ça change...

traditionalguy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

Perspective is needed here. If the rigged election had been allowed to complete their War on America plans , then neither Hillary nor Obama would ever have faced this certainty of incarceration. And they would have had their totally corrupt FBI, DOJ and CIA ready to finish us off.

MaxedOutMama said...

This is not even news. We knew it was a cesspool in the summer of 2016. We knew it was a coverup.

This is just the part where we take the lid off the cesspool and get to look at some particularly large, unpleasant chunks floating near the top. But it's a cesspool. That's what's in there.

This will get to be news when people start being charged, lose their pensions, get tossed, etc. The only thing this should tell us all is that the FIX IS STILL IN. Nothing's changed.

MaxedOutMama said...

As for Obama's complicity - OF COURSE. Before the investigation was ever concluded, he was making it clear that there would be no charges. That there was "nothing in it". His admin was as dirty as they come.

Bruce Hayden said...

No one had to tell anyone what to do. What must always be remembered here, when reading the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page text messages is that he was the principal FBI investigator in the Clinton email investigation. He was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Crooked Hillary (not under oath, of course). He was one of the ones who violated a myriad of FBI and DoJ regulations in order to guarantee that she not do down. And I believe the one to change the wording from”gross negligence” to “extreme carelessness”. From his discussions with his paramour, it is obvious that he would do whatever it took to keep Trump out of office. The text messages don’t show the thoughts of an innocent bystander, but rather, one of the primary players in her investigation. That is how you get the results you want without saying a single word - you put a zeleous partisan in charge. And no doubt, the other FBI agents involved will turn out to be fellow travelers. Oh, and then he got magically transferred to the Mueller team. Amazing.

Balfegor said...

RE: Drago:

Hillary was "interviewed" by her minions, not under oath, not video taped, no transcripts, no notes,....nothing.

First, set aside for the moment the characterisation of the FBI/Strzok as her "minions" Maybe, maybe not.

Second, I am pretty sure that there were notes taken at the interview, unless the FBI agents generated their interview memo entirely from memory after the fact (an imp.

Third, it would be unusual for an interview to be under oath. That would be kind of pointless, because lying to the government is already a crime whether you're under oath or not.

Fourth, it is unusual for interviews of this sort to be video-taped. A distinction has to be drawn between interviews of people in custody (e.g. after arrest) and voluntary interviews of the sort Clinton consented to here. The former are usually video taped; the latter are not. I won't say they never are -- I think they could be -- but I've not experienced that.

After key witnesses were immediately provided immunity deals and then the FBI allowed a key "witness" (Cheryl Mills) to act as Hillary's attorney and sit in on the "interview"!!

Okay, that one was weird. The decision not to lean on the IT guy who lied in his initial FBI interview about deleting documents on the same day he talked to Clinton's counsel was also surprising, since that kind of thing usually makes the government see red. But that's different from the FBI/DOJ having made up their minds in advance of the final interview with Clinton.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

Democrats own the deep state. They believe they are heroes looking out for your best interests. Fighting against Nazis and racists, defending potential voters both domestic and foreign. And if all this goodness just happens to put more money and power in their own pockets? It's just an unintended consequence of their moral superiority!

Matt Sablan said...

"I am not certain that Obama could order Hillary to do anything. "

-- He used her server. He allowed this.

Drago said...

Balfegor: "But that's different from the FBI/DOJ having made up their minds in advance of the final interview with Clinton."

I fully understand why you are reluctant to actually confront the reality of what is unfolding and has unfolded right before your very eyes.

It is no small thing to come to the full realization that the highest levels of your federal government and its law enforcement and intelligence agencies have literally become what we see in banana republics.

But there it is.

I'm happy to give you more time to come to terms with that. But come to terms with that you must, eventually.

Ray - SoCal said...

Michael K - I was worried you stopped commenting again at Alhouse. I find your comments add a lot to the conversation!

I was having a talk with my Father last night, and he popped off about Tea Party. I commented the Tea Party got destroyed by the Press and the Republican Elite, and their name got co-opted by others for fund raising. And this was why you got Trump, who punches back.

tim in vermont said...

I am becoming convinced that we would be better off with a monarchy, and when things get too bad, somebody raises an army.

Achilles said...

Matthew Sablan said...

-- He used her server. He allowed this.

Obama created this. Not Hillary.

She is a corrupt criminal. He tried to turn the United States into a police state.

What he did is far worse.

Drago said...

Balfegor: "Okay, that one was weird. The decision not to lean on the IT guy who lied in his initial FBI interview about deleting documents on the same day he talked to Clinton's counsel was also surprising, since that kind of thing usually makes the government see red."

It's not "weird" at all.

At all.

It is perfectly understandable under only one set of conditions: the widespread politicization and corruption of the leadership caste in all of our most important law enforcement and intelligence services.

When viewed that way, it makes sense. In fact, when viewed that way, IT ALL makes sense.

As Glenn Reynolds says, just think of them as democrat operatives and it all makes sense.

Tommy Duncan said...

"Any (cruelly) neutral observer would have to be concerned about supposed missing evidence from a premier law enforcement and intel collection agency as well as the types of discussions and conflicts of interest apparently at issue with key officials within the FBI. It’s one more piece of a developing story that unfortunately points to alleged misconduct by some at top levels in our intelligence community.

Perhaps that is why the usual left wing suspects have been so quiet on this thread.

I was at first frustrated by the obstruction and foot dragging by the FBI and DOJ. Now I've come to enjoy the drip, drip drip of damming revelations. The pieces interlock as they are revealed.

We have come to know why they never found Russia/Collusion/Laundering/Obstruction. Have you noticed the cries for impeachment have slowed?

Yancey Ward said...

President Obama himself made the outcome public long before Comey took the stage. A public statement by the president told his subordinates all they needed to know- after that statement, I knew that Clinton wouldn't be charge no matter what evidence turned up.

Birkel said...

Balfegor:

It's cute that you're unwilling to admit the most likely reason that explains all of the scandals.

Occam's Razor: The Deep State is real, it has power that it will exercise for its own ends, and it supports Democrats who will expand the Deep State.

IOW, there was corruption in the Obama Administration never before witnessed at the federal level but rampant in Democrat-shithole-cities across the country.

Name anything you observe that cannot be explained through that lense: IRS, NSA, FBI, State (Benghazi), Clinton Foundation, $145 million for uranium sales...

I know you're not a Leftist Collectivist, but your denial of the obvious strikes me as "if only Comrade Stalin knew..." territory. This is the corrupt system operating in the open. They are worried that their power is threatened by Trump and they have chosen sides. That we see all this is a testament to the importance of the moment.

If conservatives lose this fight, the Deep State will have total victory and be unmoored from political traditions.

Balfegor said...

Re: Birkel:

I know you're not a Leftist Collectivist, but your denial of the obvious strikes me as "if only Comrade Stalin knew..." territory.

I'm not in "if only Comrade Stalin knew" territory at all. I mean, I do white collar defense, and a lot of the things people are pointing to as evidence of the Deep State are totally normal in white collar criminal investigations. Some of it is not consistent with my experience, as I've acknowledged above. I'm not saying there's no "there" there. I'm saying a lot of what people seem to think is smoking gun evidence of malfeasance is actually just standard operating protocol for DOJ/FBI in criminal investigations.

Matt Sablan said...

"I'm saying a lot of what people seem to think is smoking gun evidence of malfeasance is actually just standard operating protocol for DOJ/FBI in criminal investigations."

-- Deleting the texts and giving immunity to people who destroyed evidence with hammers feels very smoking gunny.

Matt Sablan said...

Not charging Abedin or Mills for perjury? Pretty smoking gunny.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Blogger Yancey Ward said...
President Obama himself made the outcome public long before Comey took the stage.


Obama did this with Lerner as well, announcing before the JD and the FBI had completed their investigations that the IRS was corruption free. Needless to say, the same liberal press that scours Trump's every statement to see if he is inadvertently prejudicing some bureaucrat or judge saw nothing wrong with Obama doing this.

Original Mike said...

The five months of destroyed text messages (a.k.a. evidence) should be the impetus for a second special counsel.

Matt Sablan said...

Unmasking attempts being done by some mystery person faking someone's credentials never being investigated... that's pretty much a smoking gun that the investigators *don't care* to know the truth.

Matt Sablan said...

"The five months of destroyed text messages (a.k.a. evidence) should be the impetus for a second special counsel."

-- Flynn, at a minimum, should recant and insist that the FBI lied to him, withheld exculpatory information and now has DESTROYED THAT EVIDENCE.

Flynn should be a free man.

California Snow said...

Obama endorsed Hillary on June 9, 2016. Are we to believe that his own DOJ was going to bring charges against her after that? Comey read his famous statement on July 5 exonerating her. It was a fix from the beginning.

Molly said...

Legal question: If the FBI/DOJ is unable to provide certain emails as described elsewhere, does that make it impossible (more difficult) to pursue a case against Trump associates for related matters? Didn't something like this happen in the case against the Alaskan Senator?

Balfegor said...

Re: Matthew Sablan:

-- Deleting the texts and giving immunity to people who destroyed evidence with hammers feels very smoking gunny.

Not charging Abedin or Mills for perjury? Pretty smoking gunny.

I pointed to letting a percipient witness (Mills) continue as counsel, and letting the IT guy slide after lying to the FBI without, apparently, any further pressure as examples of decisions that seem unusual to me. I wouldn't call them smoking guns, but you could certainly fit them into that pattern. The things that aren't smoking guns at all are things like
- Not interviewing Clinton at the start, middle, and end of the investigation
- Not interviewing Clinton under oath or on videotape
- FBI/DOJ making up their mind about prosecution before going through the formality of an interview

But people in this very thread are going on about them as though they're the final proof of the perfidy of the Deep State.

They're not.

Re: destroyed text messages, I would want to know more. If DOJ learned that my client had "accidentally" deleted 5 months of text messages from a critical time period, you can guarantee they would be following up, and would be pressure testing the results of any investigation and narrative I presented them. Heck, if I learned that a client had deleted 5 months of text messages, I would want to know more. But without doing the investigation, I would hesitate to draw a conclusion. And I don't think this would be a very difficult investigation -- just document what configuration settings allegedly caused the problem when they changed and when they changed back, pull the server logs, and find out who make the changes. Then follow the chain up and see whether you can uncover any evidence of direction. For credibility, you would want someone at some considerable remove from the affected accounts to perform the investigation, though, OIG, or whoever. Honestly, I doubt that a second special counsel would enhance the credibility of an investigation, given the concerns people have already articulated about the impartiality of Mueller's investigation.

Unmasking attempts being done by some mystery person faking someone's credentials never being investigated... that's pretty much a smoking gun that the investigators *don't care* to know the truth.

That's a different investigation, no? I don't know whether there was even an investigation authorised by DOJ. That' mostly been Devin Nunes, hasn't it?

Original Mike said...

”Honestly, I doubt that a second special counsel would enhance the credibility of an investigation, given the concerns people have already articulated about the impartiality of Mueller's investigation.”

The actual reason we need a second special counsel is to protect against the Democrats shutting down the Congressional investigations if they regain the majority.

Balfegor said...

Re: Molly:

Legal question: If the FBI/DOJ is unable to provide certain emails as described elsewhere, does that make it impossible (more difficult) to pursue a case against Trump associates for related matters? Didn't something like this happen in the case against the Alaskan Senator?

The misconduct in the Stevens case was (1) failure to produce exculpatory evidence (Brady disclosure) and (2) knowingly presenting, um, false evidence at trial. Here is an article going into some of the appalling details:

Failure to produce exculpatory evidence:

According to court documents, prosecutors told defense counsel before trial that Allen had said he believed Stevens would not pay the invoice. However, two FBI reports, known as 302 Forms, contained contradictory statements from Allen, in which he said he believed Stevens would have paid the invoice. The defense did not initially receive the FBI reports, even after court orders to turn over all Brady evidence. In fact, one of Allen’s statements was actually redacted from a report by an FBI agent before it was given to defense lawyers.

Allen apparently testified at trial that an October 2002 letter from Stevens to Allen asking for a bill was just Stevens "covering his ass."


False accounting records presented as evidence:

Then came evidence that the government knowingly submitted false VECO accounting records to establish the proposition that employee David Anderson and others billed $188,000 for the renovations. The records had been used by the prosecution to show the amount of time and money spent on renovations to Stevens’ chalet—an important part of proving that Stevens had received a benefit.

Unclebiffy said...

President Obama needs to be held as accountable as anyone else is in this debacle. The myth that the only way president Obama only learned of bad things happening in his government is by reading about it in newspapers is preposterous. There is a consistent pattern throughout his tenure of his agencies being found by courts to have conducted illegal activities and then his Attorney General would refuse to prosecute.

Fast and Furious, the ATF was determined to have illegally sent guns across the border into Mexico. The ATF and DOJ destroyed evidence and did everything in their power to avoid FOIA requirements. The Attorney General was held in contempt of congress for perjuring himself during a congressional hearing. Result no charges filed, only on person held accountable and punished....the whistle blower that reported the illegal program.

IRS Scandal: IRS found guilty in court of illegally refusing to allow conservative groups to receive tax exempt status. during the investigation emails were lost, blackberries and laptops were intentionally destroyed, even back-up tapes of systems were destroyed. FOIA requests were ignored and slow rolled. Only way IRS was compelled to release information was through court orders. IRS regularly refused to meet court ordered deadlines to produce evidence. Head of IRS threatened with contempt of court and contempt of congress. Result: DOJ determines wrong doing was unintentional and no one was punished or lost their job.

Clinton Email Scandal...same result

Russia Collusion Investigation...sure looks like same pattern and it was the Obama administration that appears to have attempted to undermine and remove a duly elected president through the illegal use and corruption of national intelligence gathering and law enforcement agencies.

This is a pattern and I am sure that this group of commenters could provide even more examples of wrong doing during President Obama's tenure that fit this same pattern.

A detailed list needs to be compiled because the MSM will try to make any instance of wrong doing by the left to appear as if it is a one off.

President Obama needs to held accountable for the wrong doing in his administration. He was in charge, even if he was not directly knowledgeable of all of the wrong doing he is responsible for putting the people and policies in place that allowed it to happen.

PackerBronco said...

Lynch: When I meet with the FBI people, should I insist that all of Hillary's people be given clean records?
Obama: Mention it. Don't insist. Comey is a man who'll know that without being told.

Mike Sylwester said...

Yesterday the Liberty Unyielding website published an article titled "Timeframe of missing Strzok-Page texts is very informative", written by J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer.

The article includes information about events that were happening around December 14, 2016, the date when the FBI's erasure of the Strzok-Page texts began.

-----

9 December 2016

– John McCain provides a copy of the dossier to James Comey. ... After that date, Comey was aware that McCain knew of it, and that McCain was concerned. .... Deployment of the dossier for official purposes was out of the narrow control of the executive branch and the Democrats who commissioned it.

– Obama orders a “full review” by executive agencies of “Russian hacking during the election campaign.” ...

The Washington Post reports that the CIA shared with Congress its latest assessment of Russian “intervention” in the 2016 election. ... WaPo’s report on 9 December was the first public notification about the CIA assessment and Senate briefing.

13 December 2016

– Date of the final memo in the Steele dossier. The memo purports to identify a Russian executive who had orchestrated the hacking of the DNC during the campaign. ...

– Fox reports that the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) hasn’t concurred with the CIA assessment briefed to Congress and cited in WaPo’s 9 December 2016 article.

14 December 2016

ODNI, CIA, and FBI leadership cancels previously scheduled brief on “Russia” intelligence to the House Intelligence Committee, which was to occur on Thursday, 15 December. Committee Chairman Devin Nunes “blasted” this move as “unacceptable.”

15 December 2016

– AP and WaPo report that the FBI has now concurred in the CIA finding that “Russia interfered in the presidential election with the goal of supporting Republican candidate Donald Trump.” ODNI is also said to now be on board, after Fox reported it was not, two days earlier. DCI John Brennan reportedly verified this concurrence by contacting DNI James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey directly.

– James Clapper signs a revision to Executive Order 12333 that relaxes rules for sharing information on U.S.-person identities from “upstream-about” queries against the NSA communications database. In short, the rules were relaxed for sharing “unmasked” identities. ....

-----

https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/01/21/timeframe-missing-strzok-page-texts-informative/

Rusty said...

tu le monde.
Everyone knew that the fix was in except the American people who chose the candidate most like them and not the crazy lady.
The whole world knew she would win.
She lost.
A true Bonfire of the Vanities.
Will the rule of law return?

Mike Sylwester said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bay Area Guy said...

As a journalist, Sharyl Attkisson is a national treasure. She's up there with Kinberly Strassell.

Sessions should indict James Clapper immediately for lying to Congress about the spying program. This will be a good shot across the bow of the conspirators.

The "Get Trump" squad is on their heels today.

Birkel said...

Balfegor:

Again, we disagree. All of the errors operate in a single direction. If you would like to debate that obvious point, please note a single variance.

In a world filled with randomness, when I observe the precise opposite, I am freed to draw inferences that fit the facts.

pacwest said...

"President Obama needs to held accountable"

Regarding Hillary, I decided long ago that if it walks like a duck.... so all of this, while interesting holds no suprises.

Regarding Obama, the man is an empty suit. The ultimate hipster. Going after him is like accusing the novice getaway driver of robbing the bank. Complicit, yes. But I want to know who the real culprits are. Were the Clinton cronies running the heist, or were the Chicago mafia the main players? I'm even willing to consider the Illuminati at this point.

It's possible Clinton is the top of the food chain but several things, including the animosity between the Clinton camp and the Obama handlers, makes me think there is more here than is obvious. Jeez, I'm starting to sound like buwaya.

Mike Sylwester said...

The date when the FBI was informed about the Strzok-Page texts will be important in determining who at the FBI made the decision to delete all those texts.

The FBI's erasure of the Strzok-Page texts is the most blatant obstruction of justice in this case so far.

There is ZERO chance that Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller will take any action at all to investigate and prosecute this particular obstruction of justice.

Mueller's gang of Trump-hating lawyers is investigating only one problem -- how to get President Trump's tax documents in order to leak them to Trump-hating journalists.

If Mueller lawyers can get the tax documents, then Mueller himself will leak them. Mueller's previous leak recipient (during the anthrax-poison case) Nicholas Kristof has been begging publicly for Trump's tax documents, and so Mueller probably will leak to Kristof again.

Phil 314 said...

"Read the whole thing."

Professor;
I believe Glenn Reynolds has a copyright on that phrase.

tim in vermont said...

With apologies to Mark Steyn, it’s like Murder on the Orient Express. Everybody is guilty except Trump.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Look: if it hasn't been obvious to everyone that the "fix was in" on "her emails" from the beginning then there's no hope for us as a self-governing people.
That's why, by the way, people like Bill Kristol and the TrueCon NeverTrumpers should feel shame over they way they loudly proclaimed Comey & Co. above reproach and castigated those of us who said we weren't so sure his hands were clean.
I'll definitely hold my breath for that apology! Any day now....

Unclebiffy said...

packwest, I agree everyone involved needs to be held accountable. Due to the Left's dominance of the media, the minimal stories that identify Government malfeasance consistently applied against conservatives are presented as isolated or one-offs. They also portray these actions as taking place at levels below people like Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton so that they can escape responsibility.

I noticed earlier in the thread that a number of commenters were expressing the idea that maybe Hillary and definitely Obama should be pardoned in order to get the facts, correct the agencies that acted improperly and allow the country to move on and heal.

If this in fact was a one-off I would definitely agree with that sentiment. In fact, I was very much for charges being brought on Hillary's obvious unlawful usage of government emails and President Trump pardoning her. Specifically because I don't like the idea of the justice system of this country being used to attack one's political opponents. Very similar to what occurred during Watergate.

However, this is not a one-off. As a matter of fact the Left/Democrats have used lawfare to attack their political opponents for decades. Ted Stevens, Tom Delay, Sarah Palin (to name just a few off of the top of my head) have all been immoral if not illegal manipulation of our justice system to attack and remove political opponents and enforce their political will in instance where they should never have been able to do so. Obamacare is a direct result of this tactic.

Under the Obama administration the Left/Democrats have taken Lawfare and now institutionalized it within our Federal Government. The Obama administration openly broke laws, Fast and Furious, IRS, Hillary Email Scandal, (likely Russia Collusion probe). They have been so brazen as to openly destroy evidence. Someone please provide me an example where Government telephones, laptops, servers, emails have consistently been "lost/destroyed" every time their is an investigation of the Democrats/Left and yet no one, and I mean no one is ever held accountable.

There is a longterm pattern of this for Democrats/Left and they are getting more and more brazen as time goes on. As they have become more brazen the less anyone is ever held accountable.

At this time l have yet to be presented with any evidence of any illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Yet we have a Special Prosecutor who has been given a mandate to investigate the sitting president without any restrictions. The Special Counsel was appointed because James Comey was fired as the Director of the FBI. When the president legally fired Comey, Comey illegally took his work product, gave it to a friend to illegally to a friend to illegally leak to the NY Times. Mr. Comey said under oath that he leaked this information specifically to get an Special Counsel appointed and his hope that it would be his friend and mentor Bob Mueller.

Meanwhile, we have a very significant amount of evidence that indicates:
-FBI surveilled the republican presidential candidate illegally
-FBI may have gotten permission to surveil Trump campaign by misleading the FISC Court
-FBI may have worked alongside the company paid by the DNC and Hillary campaign to develop opposition research
-FBI may have allowed opposition research firm access to surveillance information both before and after election
-FBI used same people who were illegally surveilling Trump were investigating Clinton
-FBI investigating Clinton appear to have worked in Tandem with Attorney General to exonerate Clinton using a sham investigation
-I need to stop because this can go on and on.

The point is that it appears that their is a significant pattern indicting that Left/Democrats/Obamah Admin intentionally corrupted our Federal institutions. This is not a one-off. They all need to be held accountable. If they are not, why should they not act in the same way again as soon as they regain power?

Sydney said...

Our government has become so corrupt, I despair that it will ever be made right again.

Jim at said...

Obama did this with Lerner as well, announcing before the JD and the FBI had completed their investigations that the IRS was corruption free.

"Not a smidgen," I believe, was the exact quote.

We are a nation of laws or not, leftists.
Your choice.

For now.

walter said...

"(M)any FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities."

Define "many".
If we are supposed to believe this, what else was lost?
Surely some IT heads should roll, right?

bagoh20 said...

The lefties in here rarely show up for this kind of story. In their defense, judging from where they get their news, they have not, nor ever will hear of it, so it didn't happen. Jut like nobody they know voted for Trump, so he's not really the President.

Matt Sablan said...

I wonder how many lawyers are asking the FBI if any documents relevant to their clients were accidentally lost.

Birkel said...

Unclebiffy:

It started even before Obama was elected president. How many people were ruined by the press as they cleared the path for their guy?

Who will rid me of this troublesome Plumber?

Marty Keller said...

Still no Inga, ARM, no Comrade LLR, nor Cookie.

Probably busy dealing with the "Dems blinked" meme on the government "shutdown."

Understandable.

Unclebiffy said...

Birkel:

It's been happening, and getting progressively worse in my opinion, for as long as I can remember. My point is that the right never compiles a complete list of these things and they should. When democrats are caught it is always presented as an isolated incident and the country has a tradition of not using the legal system to go after our political adversaries. This is false.

As I have pointed out, the left has a long history of using the legal system, often abusing the system, to go after the right:

Scooter Libby
Tom Delay
Ted Stevens
Sarah Palin
Scott Walker
Donald Trump

The also have a long history of abusing the legal system to exonerate themselves:

Bill Clinton
Eric Holder
John Corzine
Lois Lerner
John Koskinen
Loretta Lynch
Hillary Clinton

Again, these are instances where I am confident there was an abuse of the legal system to go after republicans and exonerate democrats. I am sure that there are many, many examples that I cannot remember that the commenters at this blog could provide if they put their mind to it.

Whenever the Left does get caught doing something illegal, the strategy is to make it appear as an isolated incident. When the Right gets caught doing something illegal the MSM makes it appear that it is systemic throughout the group, ie, all conservatives are racist.

The Right needs to catalog this behavior on the left and demonstrate the pattern. That is the only way anyone on the left will ever be held to account.

Francisco D said...

I think you nailed it pacwest.

Well, except for the Illuminati part.

I strongly suspect that the Democrats have been behaving in an egregiously illegal fashion for some time. The media covers for them and Republicans seem to be spineless.

Unclebiffy said...

Also, I realize that I have a significant political bias. Therefore, I would love for the one of the commenters on the left to compile a list of instances where the right corrupted the legal system and an injustice was done.

Bob Loblaw said...

The more I read, the more I think Vince Foster wasn't a suicide.

I'm still willing to believe Foster offed himself, but there's no way in hell Seth Rich was killed in a botched robbery.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Unclebiffy, your list is all post-Clinton. That was the turning point, IMO. Bill Clinton institutionalized a mindset in the Democrat party that no act is illegal or legal until a a court has found that it is illegal or legal, and if the court's finding hurts the dems, you appeal.

Oso Negro said...

Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
No one had to tell anyone what to do. What must always be remembered here, when reading the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page text messages is that he was the principal FBI investigator in the Clinton email investigation. He was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Crooked Hillary (not under oath, of course).
1/22/18, 11:59 AM


Bruce - He was also the #2 of FBI Counterintelligence!!! That fact alone boggles the mind in light of his textscapades with gal pal. Not only is the FBI corrupt, there are apparently morons in key leadership positions.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Nobody on the left cares about the corruption in their own house.

Sprezzatura said...

"Nobody on the left cares about the corruption in their own house."

Well, thankfully now that DJT is draining the swamp, we can have the gov focus on non-policy stuff, i.e., locking her up.

That'll show the GOPE.


Carry on.


Lewis Wetzel said...

Missing the point completely, as usual, PB&J.
Please send your money to H & encourage her to run again in 2020. If you guys had run someone just slightly more likable & a smidgeon less obviously corrupt in 2016 we wouldn't have Trump in the White House.

Carry on.

Sprezzatura said...

LW,

As I've noted many times in these threads, I voted third party. And, if the D's had run someone less awful, I'd still have done the same.

OTOH, if the Rs had gone less slimy, I'd be down w/ RNC.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I think you are a little on the dull side, PB&J, so let me explain what I mean in terms even a child could understand.
The goal is not to put Hillary in jail. It is to make Hillary even less electable in 2020 than she was in 2016. Since the Clintons still have an outsized role in Dem party politics, they may (please God) still get her nominated for prez in 2020. This will give whoever the GOP candidate is in 2020 a lock on winning the election. Hillary has won only two elections -- to the senate in 2000 & 2006. She is a terrible candidate for nation wide office. She is dishonest, has negative charisma, and now is tainted with the #metoo virus. Kamela Harris? No appeal outside the urban Dem strongholds. If you guys win the same states in 2020 that you won in 2016 you still lose. If not Harris, who? No one else is acceptable to your increasingly loony base.
Get it?

Lewis Wetzel said...

In November 2016 I voted for Daryll Castle, Constitution Party.
I am a conservative, not a Republican. I am registered as an independent. I want to see the GOP move right where moving right is the popular position, as it is in immigration and avoiding foreign wars.

Sprezzatura said...

LW,

W/ all your wisdom, e.g. explaining to me via child jabber, it's cool that yur focusing on HRC while the GOPE is being wiped out in DC.

Yur smart.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I iz veri smart. My IQ is nearly a hunnert.
I iz even smart enuf to no that the GOPE is not being wiped out in Capitol City.

PackerBronco said...

Blogger walter said...
Surely some IT heads should roll, right?

1/22/18, 4:19 PM


Only the IT guys who failed to scrub the system are in trouble.

Fritz said...

Matthew Sablan said...
"The IRS deletions really stick in my craw because they had the files, and slowly, even after admitting they had them, let them be destroyed."

-- And she was punished by retiring with her full pension, if I recall.


And a going away bonus

Fritz said...

Bob Loblaw said...
The more I read, the more I think Vince Foster wasn't a suicide.

I'm still willing to believe Foster offed himself, but there's no way in hell Seth Rich was killed in a botched robbery.


Simpson claims someone was killed over the the dossier. . .

pacwest said...

"Well, thankfully now that DJT is draining the swamp, we can have the gov focus on non-policy stuff, i.e., locking her up."

I know you were just being a smart-ass, but I personally can think of nothing more important than getting to the bottom of this and finding a way to prevent the likelihood of it happening again. If there is a way other than severe punishment let me know. It has nothing to do with revenge and everything to do with having a functioning democratic republic. That would be the starting point of any possibility of doing decent policy. No guarantees, but you certainly aren't going to get it with a bunch of crooks running things.

Narayanan said...

Why assume Mueller was not expecting to be special counsel ... After all his bf is Comey.

Narayanan said...

Buwaya has mentioned Mueller origin in San Francisco politics. More pieces fall in place with him as deep state also.

We're still in banana republic zone.

Bruce Hayden said...

"The goal is not to put Hillary in jail. It is to make Hillary even less electable in 2020 than she was in 2016. Since the Clintons still have an outsized role in Dem party politics, they may (please God) still get her nominated for prez in 2020. This will give whoever the GOP candidate is in 2020 a lock on winning the election. Hillary has won only two elections -- to the senate in 2000 & 2006. She is a terrible candidate for nation wide office. She is dishonest, has negative charisma, and now is tainted with the #metoo virus. Kamela Harris? No appeal outside the urban Dem strongholds. If you guys win the same states in 2020 that you won in 2016 you still lose. If not Harris, who? No one else is acceptable to your increasingly loony base.
Get it?"

Strategically, then, you seem to be suggesting that she be dirtied up some more, but not sent to jail. And that maybe a good strategy. I stll, though, can't believe that the Democrats would be dumb enough (and still beholden enough) to nominate her again. Sure, it might make a bunch of butt hurt libtards happier, but she would very likely lose some of the close states she won, even without the dirtying up. Sure, now that registering to vote is now opt-out in CA, she might get run up her popular vote there with the illegals now voting en mass, but that won't get her any more electoral votes. And if she wasn't healthy enough, and sober enough, to hit. More than a couple of campaign events a week in 2016, I think it likely that she would do worse in 2020. That doesn't even count that Trump would have the Rose Garden and AF1 this time around. Last time around, one big question was whether he could look and act Presidential. The answer is clearly yes to the former, and when he wants to, with the latter. I think that, absent health issues, or real scandal, Trump is going to be formidable in 2020 against anyone. Against Crooked Hillary, it would, I think be a massacre. So, to some extent, I think the better strategy might be to just leave her and her husband alone, regardless of how much they deserve jail time.

The other thing to keep in mind is precedent. Going after the immediate former President or the losing Presidential candidate, with all the resources available to an Administration, could, very easily, make that the new norm. As it is in some banana republics and 3rd world countries. We pride ourselves on our orderly successions of power (which is why it is so essential that the DoJ and FBI get cleaned up). We saw what Strzok and Page, and their FBI/DoJ buddies, were willing to do when the danger was completely imaginary. Just think how much worse it could get if it had been sanctioned and encouraged from the White House, fearing imprisonment themselves if they don't jail their political opponents first. Indeed, since DoJ, FBI, and the intelligence agencies would be dragged into it, they too would risk prison time if the party controlling the White House lost. It could get a lot worse than what we saw done to Trump. And that is why, I think, that the outgoing President, as well as the losing candidate, should presumptively be given a pass for most past crimes. And, note, jailing the govt employees who commit crimes for political reasons and gain, as appears to be the case this last year nor two, while giving a pass to their elected leaders, who did not directly order the crimes, tells the millions of federal employees to mind their business, and stay out of the politics.

Bad Lieutenant said...


Lewis Wetzel said...
In November 2016 I voted for Daryll Castle, Constitution Party.


Well, we beat Hillary without you. How do you find things working out with President Trump?

Bad Lieutenant said...


Bruce Hayden said...


Disagree. The only way out is for the Democrat gang, for that is what they are, to hand over the Clintons, *and their stack*, for just and condign punishment. Then the ghost can be said to be exorcised, and we can go on.

Else it's war.

They have to pay. All your fine words, Bruce, = Democrats no pay.

If you want to not poison the well forever and ever... They should confess all. You can decide then how much mercy or clemency or time off they should get.

If you don't punish the guilty because it is inconvenient, or difficult, or complicated, why bother?

Rs would never, will never, have never received any such consideration.

Obama's fine, immunity, but I say all his stack should burn too. I don't think it's too much to ask, because the Clinton stack will turn and dime them out, easy peasy.

This is just necessary - threshold goals. The objective should be to root out "who sent them." That is probably a generational effort, but starts with this lot.

I want some justice and I want some housecleaning. Now, while we still can. Now or never.

I'm not afraid for Trump. He won't do anything wrong. Why would he?

Rusty said...

Then there's this.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/page-strzok-referenced-fbi-secret-society-met-day-election/
I don't know if it rises to the level of treason, but it certainly rises to the level conspiring to commit a felony.

jim said...

... & when this chaff falls flat exactly like the last 20 or 30 shovels of bullshit, rest assured there will be another one to take its place.

It's almost like they know the rubes who keep voting for them will never dummy up & admit they're being played like a kazoo by a pack of sociopathic grifters, as long as said grifters wave a flag &/or a Bible in their faces come election time.

Investigations in & of themselves are trivial.
Indictments, not so much.

Watch who gets indicted next.