Hillary email scandal

Federal judge orders Hillary Clinton deposition to address private emails: ‘Still more to learn’

A federal judge Monday granted a request from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch to have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sit for a sworn deposition to answer questions about her use of a private email server to conduct government business. Clinton has argued that she has already answered questions about this and should not have to do so again — the matter did not result in any charges for the then-presidential candidate in 2016 after a high-profile investigation — but D.C. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth said in his ruling that her past responses left much to be desired. “As extensive as the existing record is, it does not sufficiently explain Secretary Clinton’s state of mind when she decided it would be an acceptable practice to set up and use a private server to conduct State Department business,” Lamberth said. The judge went on to recognize that while Clinton responded to written questions in a separate case, “those responses were either incomplete, unhelpful, or cursory at best. Simply put her responses left many more questions than answers.” Lamberth said that using written questions this time “will only muddle any understanding of Secretary Clinton’s state of mind and fail to capture the full picture, thus delaying the final disposition of this case even further.” Lamberth even gave some examples of lingering questions about Clinton’s emails, such as how did she come to believe that her private emails would be preserved under normal State Department processes, who told her this and when, at what point did she learn department records management officials did not know about the server, “[a]nd why did she think that using a private server to conduct State Department business was permissible under the law in the first place?” The ruling comes after Judicial Watch revealed at a December 2019 status conference that the FBI released “approximately thirty previously undisclosed Clinton emails,” and that the State Department “failed to fully explain” where they came from. The State Department has been pushing for the discovery phase of the case to come to a close, but Lamberth said he is not ready to do so, saying that “there is still more to learn.” Judicial Watch, which initiated this case in 2014, is looking for information regarding whether Clinton used her private email server to intentionally get around the Freedom of Information Act, whether the State Department acted in bad faith when they tried to settle the case years ago, and whether the department had adequately looked for records in response to Judicial Watch’s initial FOIA request. Given that the settlement attempts and records search took place after Clinton left office, the judge ruled that the deposition should focus on whether she intentionally tried to use her private server to evade FOIA and her understanding of the State Department’s record management requirements. Lamberth also granted Judicial Watch’s request to depose former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills, IT specialist Paul Combetta who was involved in deleting Clinton’s emails, as well as Brett Gittleson and Yvette Jacks, who were State Department officials familiar with Clinton’s private email server. Judicial Watch also wanted to question Clinton and Mills about government talking points in the aftermath of the 2012 Benghazi attack. Lamberth said that while they “cannot be questioned about the underlying actions taken after the Benghazi attack,” they can face questions regarding “their knowledge of the existence of any emails, documents, or text messages related to the Benghazi attack.”

Well, it’s about time!!  FINALLY, Hillary is being forced to answer these questions.  All of us would spend the rest of our lives in federal prison for what she did with that email server.  She’s, of course, a Clinton..  So, she won’t spend a day in jail, unfortunately.  But, at least she is being forced to address her brazen corruption.  It’ll be fun to see how she dances around all of this.  Kudos to Judicial Watch for their efforts here.  Excellent!!    🙂

Opinion/Analysis: There was collusion – but not involving Trump

There really was a collusion plot. It really did target our election system. It absolutely sought to usurp our capacity for self-determination. It was just not the collusion you’ve been told about for nearly three years. It was not “Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia.” Here is the real collusion scheme: In 2016, the incumbent Democratic administration of President Barack Obama put the awesome powers of the United States government’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic Party, and the progressive Beltway establishment. This scheme had two parts: Plan A, the objective; and Plan B, a fail-safe strategy in case Plan A imploded — which all the smartest people were supremely confident would never, ever happen … which is why you could bet the ranch that it would. Plan A was to get Clinton elected president of the United States. This required exonerating her, at least ostensibly, from well-founded allegations of her felonious and politically disqualifying actions. Plan B was the insurance policy: an investigation that Donald Trump, in the highly unlikely event he was elected, would be powerless to shut down. An investigation that would simultaneously monitor and taint him. An investigation that internalized Clinton-campaign-generated opposition research, limning Trump and his campaign as complicit in Russian espionage. An investigation that would hunt for a crime under the guise of counterintelligence, build an impeachment case under the guise of hunting for a crime, and seek to make Trump not reelectable under the guise of building an impeachment case. Upon becoming President Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton improperly set up a private, non-secure system for email communications. It featured her own personal server, stored in her home and, later, maintained by a private contractor. Secretary Clinton used this private email system for all of her official State Department communications, notwithstanding that doing so (a) violated government regulations (which, as the department head, she was responsible for enforcing); (b) violated governmental record-keeping and record-production obligations imposed by federal law; and (c) made it inevitable — due to the nature of her responsibilities — that streams of classified information would flow through and be stored in the non-secure system. This lack of security meant that top-secret intelligence — some of it classified at the highest levels, some of it involving Clinton’s communications with the president of the United States and other top national-security officials — became accessible to people who were not cleared to see it. Accessible not just to those lacking security clearance but also to hostile actors, including foreign intelligence services and anti-American hackers. When asked, nearly two years after leaving office, to surrender copies of her emails (by an Obama State Department under pressure from congressional investigators and Freedom of Information Act claimants), Clinton caused tens of thousands of her emails to be destroyed. Not just deleted. Destroyed. As in: purged with a special software program (“BleachBit”) designed to shred electronic documents. The aim was to prevent their being recovered. Ever. By anyone. In all, Clinton undertook to destroy over 30,000 emails, even though some of them had been demanded by congressional subpoena. And this would not be a Clinton story if we failed to note that, in the time-honored family tradition, Hillary lied her head off about the substance of the destroyed emails: We were to believe that, in thousands upon thousands of email exchanges, one of the busiest public officials and most obsessively political creatures on the planet had lolled her days away gabbing about yoga routines, family vacations, and her daughter’s wedding. President Obama took care of undermining any prosecution for her mishandling of classified information. He had a deep interest in doing so: He had knowingly communicated with his secretary of state through the private system, and he had misled the public about it — claiming to have learned about Clinton’s private email practices from news reports, like everyone else. All of that could be neatly buried in two steps. First, invoke executive privilege (without calling it that — too Nixonian) to seal the Obama–Clinton emails from public view. Second, ensure that the Clinton-emails case would never be prosecuted: If Clinton was never accused of criminal conduct, then Obama’s role as a minor participant would not become evidence in a criminal case. In April 2016, on national television, the president made clear that he did not believe an indictment should be filed against former Secretary Clinton, who, by then, was the inevitable Democratic presidential nominee. Obama explained that, in his considered judgment, Clinton meant no harm to national security. Plus, the intelligence involved, though technically categorized as “classified,” was not really, you know, the super-secret stuff — “There’s ‘classified,’” Obama scoffed, “and then there’s classified.” It was a classic Obama straw man. The criminal provisions pertinent to Clinton’s case did not require proof of intent to harm the United States, only that she was trusted with access to intelligence and nevertheless mishandled it, either intentionally or through gross negligence. Moreover, no one was accusing Clinton of trying to damage national security. That is a different, more serious criminal offense that was not on the table. It was as if Obama were claiming that a bank robber was somehow not guilty of the bank robbery because she hadn’t murdered anyone while committing it. There was no way on God’s green earth that the Obama Justice Department was ever going to authorize a prosecution involving conduct that would embarrass the president. Nor was it ever going to indict Obama’s former secretary of state — certainly not after Obama, revered by Democrats and pundits as a first-rate lawyer, had pronounced her not guilty, had provided a legal rationale for exoneration, and had endorsed her as his successor. Wonder of wonders: The “no intent to harm the United States” rationale President Obama had glibly posited in insisting Clinton had done nothing wrong was echoed in the ensuing months by his subordinates. Justice Department officials leaked to their media friends that Clinton was unlikely to be charged because there was scant evidence of intent to harm the United States. Meanwhile, very shortly after Obama’s public statements about Clinton’s case, FBI director James Comey and his closest advisers began drafting remarks exonerating Mrs. Clinton. Over a dozen critical witnesses, including Clinton herself, had not yet been interviewed. Salient evidence had not yet been examined. No matter. With the end of the story already written, the rest was just details. When Director Comey finally announced that Clinton would not be indicted, his rationalizations were indistinguishable from Obama’s. Thus “exonerated,” the former first lady was on her way to the Oval Office — this time as president. Or so she thought — as did the Obama White House, the Justice Department, the State Department, the FBI, the intelligence agencies, every progressive activist from Boston Harbor to Silicon Valley, and every political pundit from the Beltway to the Upper West Side. Alas, there was just one problem — a problem the president and his myrmidons could not fix for Mrs. Clinton. That problem was Mrs. Clinton. As would have been manifest to less politicized eyes, she was an atrocious candidate. Clinton was the same fundamentally flawed, deeply dishonest, broadly unpopular candidate she had been in 2008, when she couldn’t convince Democrats to support her. You may recall this as the reason there was a President Barack Obama in the first place. You say, “Hey, wait a second. Donald Trump was fundamentally flawed, deeply dishonest, and broadly unpopular, too.” Maybe so, but if hammering away at an opponent’s malignance is the path to victory, shouldn’t you perhaps nominate a candidate who doesn’t mirror his defects? The only differences between the “It’s My Turn” Senator Hillary! of 2008 and the “Stronger Together” Secretary Clinton who expected a 2016 coronation was that she now had hanging around her neck the Benghazi debacle, a desultory tenure as secretary of state, a shades-of-2008 inability to convince Democrats that she was the preferable candidate (this time, not in comparison to a charismatic young progressive, but to a 75-year-old self-proclaimed socialist who had joined the Democratic party about five minutes before announcing his presidential aspirations), whispers that her health was deteriorating, and an email scandal that smacked of both national-security recklessness and rules-don’t-apply-to-me arrogance — precisely the kind of controversy that reminded Americans of how exhausting the last scandal-plagued Clinton administration had been. The Obama administration’s exoneration gambit came up snake-eyes because of Clinton herself. Democrats can con themselves (and attempt to con everyone else) into believing that her failure is due to Vladimir Putin’s perfidy or Trump’s demagoguery. In the real world, though, Clinton lost because of her epic shortcomings. That loss made it inevitable that the Obama administration’s exploitation of counterintelligence powers to monitor the opposition party’s presidential campaign would come to light. That made it imperative to promote the notion that there had been a Trump–Russia scheme worth investigating — a dark cloud of suspicion that would straitjacket and shorten the Trump presidency. The collusion narrative.

..which we now know to be a total hoax; a complete fabrication.  Thanks to attorney Andrew C. McCarthy for this outstanding piece.  Its an excerpt from his new book: “Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig and Election and Destroy a Presidency.’  So, you’ll have to pick up a copy to read the rest of this..   Excellent!!!     🙂

Federal judge orders Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes to answer written Benghazi questions in Clinton email lawsuit

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice and former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes must answer written questions about the State Department’s response to the deadly 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, as part of an ongoing legal battle over whether Hillary Clinton sought to deliberately evade public record laws by using a private email server while secretary of state. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied a request by the conservative group Judicial Watch to make Rice and Rhodes sit for depositions, but agreed to have them answer written questions. He also agreed to Judicial Watch’s request to depose the State Department about the preparation of talking points for Rice, then President Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, ahead of appearances on political talk shows the Sunday following the attack. That deposition is part of Judicial Watch’s inquiry into whether the State Department acted in bad faith by not telling a court for months that they had asked in mid-2014 for missing emails to be returned. Rice initially claimed on several talk shows that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was triggered by protests over an anti-Islam video. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. “Rice’s talking points and State’s understanding of the attack play an unavoidably central role in this case,” Lamberth wrote in a 16-page order. Lamberth added that “State’s role in the [talking] points’ content and development could shed light on Clinton’s motives for shielding her emails from [Freedom of Information Act] requesters or on State’s reluctance to search her emails.” Lamberth also allowed Judicial Watch to seek written answers from Bill Priestap, the former assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. Priestap, who supervised the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, retired from government service at the end of last year. “In a major victory for accountability, Judge Lamberth today authorized Judicial Watch to take discovery on whether the Clinton email system evaded FOIA and whether the Benghazi scandal was one reason for keeping Mrs. Clinton’s email secret,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Today, Judicial Watch issued document requests and other discovery to the State Department about the Clinton email scandal. Next up, we will begin questioning key witnesses under oath.” The judge’s order amounts to approval of a discovery plan he ordered last month. In that ruling, Lamberth wrote that Clinton’s use of a private email account was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency” and said the response of the State and Justice Departments “smacks of outrageous misconduct.” As part of the discovery, Judicial Watch can depose Jacob Sullivan, Clinton’s former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and Justin Cooper, a longtime Bill Clinton aide who helped arrange the setup of Hillary Clinton’s private email address and server. Judicial Watch said the discovery period will conclude within 120 days. A post-discovery hearing will then be held to determine whether additional witnesses, including Clinton and her former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, may be deposed.

Drip drip drip…  With each new day, we continue to learn more about Susan Rice’s and Hillary’s lies to we-the-people as they tried to cover up their poor decisions and incompetence that led to the tragedy in Benghazi.  Ben Rhodes was just a Dem political hack, a “useful idiot,” who just repeated the talking point lie that the riots were a result of a reaction to an online video (that nobody saw).  Kudos to Judicial Watch for pushing this issue and using the courts to get answers we should have had years ago.

Lawmakers Recommend Clinton, Comey, Lynch, McCabe for Criminal Referrals

Republican lawmakers on Wednesday sent a slew of criminal referrals to Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a number of Obama administration officials and senior FBI employees for violations of the law in connection to the Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations. Specifically, they sent criminal referrals to Sessions for: former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, as well as FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and his lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, for separate violations. The criminal referrals, first reported by investigative journalist Sara Carter, were made by Rep. Ron Desantis (R-FL), a senior member of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees who is leaving the House to run for Florida governor, and nine other colleagues. Signatories included: GOP Reps. Andy Biggs (AZ), Dave Brat (VA), Jeff Duncan (SC), Matt Gaetz (FL), Paul A. Gosar (AZ), Andy Harris (MD), Jody Hice (GA), Todd Rokita (IN), Claudia Tenney (NY), and Ted Yoho (FL). “Because we believe that those in positions of high authority should be treated the same as every other American, we want to be sure that the potential violations of law outlined below are vetted appropriately,” said the letter. They said Comey potentially broke the law when he chose not to seek charges against Clinton, for leaking classified memos of his conversations to President Trump to his friend Daniel Richman to give to the press, and for lying to lawmakers. They said Clinton potentially broke the law when disguising payments to Fusion GPS, the firm that produced the Trump dossier, despite mandatory disclosures to the Federal Election Commission. Lynch, they said, potentially broke the law when she threatened a former FBI informant, William Douglas Campbell, who had tried to come forward in 2016 with information related to the Uranium One deal that was approved in 2010. McCabe potentially broke the law when he lied to investigators four times when questioned about a leak that he had arranged, they said. Strzok and Page potentially violated the law by interfering in the investigation of Clinton’s private email server, they said. The letter cites a Wall Street Journal report that said their text messages to one another revealed FBI officials tried to eliminate evidence that Clinton had compromised high-level communications with then-President Obama. “The report provides the following alarming specifics, among others: ‘Mr. Strzok texts Ms. Page to tell her that, in fact, senior officials had decided to water down the reference to President Obama to ‘another senior government official,” the criminal referral said. Finally, the lawmakers referred all Justice Department and FBI personnel, including Comey, McCabe, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, for potentially breaking the law by using unverified and/or false information to obtain a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. Carter also reported that other recent documents obtained by congressional investigators suggest possible coordination by the Obama White House, the CIA, and the FBI in investigating the Trump campaign. “According to those documents, the senior Obama officials used unsubstantiated evidence to launch allegations in the media that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election,” Carter reported. CIA Director John Brennan had briefed Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in August 2016, prompting Reid to send a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey asking him to investigate allegations of collusion. Reid then reportedly stayed in close touch with Comey.

Wow!  This is huge!!

Classified Documents Found Among Huma Abedin’s Emails on Weiner’s Laptop

The State Department released emails Friday that investigators found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop which were sent from his estranged wife—top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin—some of which contained classified information. At least five of the found emails were marked classified, the New York Post reports. One email from Abedin to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was preparation for a phone call with Prince Saud of Saudi Arabia. The call was intended to warn the Saudis of classified material Bradley Manning had given to Wikileaks and was about to become public. Most of the content of the emails was heavily redacted when released by the State Department: “I deeply regret the likely upcoming WikiLeaks disclosure,” read one of the talking points. “This appears to be the result of an illegal act in which a fully cleared intelligence officer stole information and gave it to a website. The person responsible will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law” the message continued. “This is the kind of information we fear may be released: details of private conversations with your government on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton released a statement after the release of the emails. “This is a major victory. After years of hard work in federal court, Judicial Watch has forced the State Department to finally allow Americans to see these public documents,” Fitton said. “It will be in keeping with our past experience that Abedin’s emails on Weiner’s laptop will include classified and other sensitive materials.” “That these government docs were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop dramatically illustrates the need for the Justice Department to finally do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law.” Judicial Watch has filed numerous lawsuits for official emails found on Clinton’s private email server to be made public.

Major kudos to Judicial Watch for its efforts in getting this information and making it available to the American public.  We the people have a right to know just how corrupt Hillary and her minions are/were.  And, we believe that Congress and/or AG Jeff Sessions need to reopen the probe into the Hillary email scandal with this new information that has come to light this past year.  It’s way past time Hillary and Huma were held to account for their clear violations of handling of classified information, among other things.

Gregg Jarrett: How an FBI official with a political agenda corrupted both Mueller, Comey investigations

How is it possible that Hillary Clinton escaped criminal indictment for mishandling classified documents despite incriminating evidence that she violated the Espionage Act? Why did Donald Trump become the target of a criminal investigation for allegedly conspiring with Russia to influence the presidential election despite no evidence that he ever did so? The answer, it seems, comes down to one person who played a vital role in both cases: Peter Strzok, deputy director of counterintelligence at the FBI. Strzok was exchanging politically charged texts with an FBI lawyer that denigrated Trump and lauded Clinton at the same time he was leading the bureau’s criminal investigation of Clinton. He is also the one who changed the critical wording of then-FBI Director James Comey’s description of Clinton’s handling of classified material that resulted in no charges being brought against her. Then, Strzok reportedly signed the document launching the 2016 investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election and whether the Trump campaign played any role. After leading the FBI’s probe into Trump, he then joined Robert Mueller’s special counsel team as an integral investigator. Thus, it appears that one man with a strident political agenda accomplished his twin goals of clearing Clinton and accusing Trump, evidence be damned. And then he was caught. The Department of Justice inspector general, Michael Horowitz, discovered the electronic texts Strzok exchanged with his lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The messages were so politically incendiary and so threatened the integrity of Mueller’s investigation that Strzok was quietly canned over the summer from the special counsel team, where he was a pivotal participant. Did Mueller or anyone else notify Congress that both the Trump investigation –and the Clinton case before it– were corrupted? Of course not. This was covered up. Mueller surely knew that if the truth were revealed, it would further discredit a Trump-Russia probe that had already taken on the stench of dead fish. The House Intelligence Committee could smell it and knew something was amiss. It demanded answers. But the Justice Department and the FBI refused to respond or otherwise produce relevant documents that the committee subpoenaed. They are still stonewalling many of Congress’s valid requests and should now face contempt charges. Importantly, all of the anti-Trump and pro-Clinton messages should be made public. Americans should decide for themselves whether our system of justice has been compromised by unscrupulous influences. Just how rife with political prejudice and corrupt motives is the special counsel’s investigation? Instead of choosing prosecutors who could be neutral, fair and objective, Mueller stacked his staff with Democratic donors. Apparently, he conducted little or no vetting of both prosecutors and investigators. How else does one explain the presence of Strzok and Lisa Page on the investigative team? It appears that Mueller selected people of a particular political persuasion without discerning review or scrutiny. We were supposed to simply trust Mueller’s judgment, notwithstanding his own disqualifying conflict of interest under the special counsel statute that demanded his recusal. The Trump-Russia investigation is now awash in illegitimacy. Mueller and those who work for him have squandered all credibility. It is imperative that the special counsel be dismissed, the current staff fired, and a new counsel appointed to re-evaluate the evidence objectively. Do not expect Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to make these changes. He, too, should be removed in his capacity as Mueller’s supervisor. As both a witness and prosecutor, Rosenstein has his own conspicuous and disabling conflict of interest. Yet he has refused to step aside. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is duty-bound to remove both Mueller and Rosenstein. Given what we know about the composition of the special counsel team, there may well be others who harbor a blatant political bias and have expressed their animus toward Trump in emails or texts. The computer accounts of the entire staff need to be examined by Congress and the DOJ Inspector General. Failing that, news organizations should file a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The examination should begin with Andrew Weissmann, who has close ties to Hui Chen, whom he hired at the Justice Department and with whom he worked at the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. Documents show the DOJ approved a salary for her position of $711,800 for two years of work, which is more than the attorney general earns.

No kidding!!  To read the rest of this spot-on legal op/ed by former defense attorney, and current Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, click on the text above.  Excellent!!

Opinion/Analysis: Elites Move to Sacrifice Clintons Just Like Weinstein

Because the Clintons are guilty of the crimes the elites are accusing Trump of committing, it’s likely the criminal couple will soon suffer the same fate as Harvey Weinstein to make the persecution of Trump not seem “political.” Already the mainstream media, which one year ago promoted Hillary Clinton as a “glowing goddess,” is slowly but surely publishing headlines linking the Clintons to the Russian Uranium One scandal. This suggests that the globalists in control of mass media are fixing to dump the Clintons much like how Harvey Weinstein was burned, albeit the latter for sexual improprieties instead of political scandals. Just look at this article from The Hill demanding a “special counsel on Hillary Clinton’s Russia scandal:” There was more than enough smoke for the FBI to investigate official government favors in exchange for big donations to the Clinton Foundation, but agents ran into a hyper-politicized Attorney General in Loretta Lynch, whose public integrity section said it ‘did not have enough evidence to move forward,’ according to Washington Post in October 2016. Last week, blockbuster allegations surfaced in The Hill shedding light on what was happening inside the Obama administration and FBI while Russia was seeking control of massive amounts of our uranium supply. It turns out that the Obama administration inexplicably approved the uranium deal with Russia even though the FBI was investigating a massive corruption scheme that included bribery, extortion and other felonies involving Russia’s nuclear energy industry in the United States. This level of accurate reporting, at the expense of the Clintons, is unprecedented for The Hill, which was once a major Clinton cheerleader. Of course, accurate reporting has never been the mainstream media’s modus operandi. So what’s the real gameplan here? Easy: to sacrifice the Clintons to advance the anti-Trump agenda. Remember, the power elites have no real loyalty to the Clintons. The Clintons served them, not the other way around, and now the crime duo is presenting a problem because the Clintons are guilty of just about everything they’re accusing Trump of doing. So here’s what’s likely their next move: Burn the Clintons for their crimes to set a precedent to accuse Trump of similar criminality while claiming it isn’t politically motivated. This is exactly what they did with the Weinstein scandal, and remember at one point the fallen producer was seen as “untouchable” just like the Clintons. But will it work? Unlikely. President Trump simply lacks the criminal nature of the Clintons, and the mainstream media lacks the influence to manipulate the public into believing otherwise. This is one of the few plays the elites still have left, but considering that their playbook is obsolete, what difference at this point does it make?

Interesting analysis from Kit Daniels..

Push is on to have ex-FBI chief Comey disbarred after Clinton scandal

A crusading lawyer filed a bar grievance this week accusing former FBI Director James Comey of lying to Congress and destroying potential evidence in the Clinton email scandal, in a process that could end up costing him his law license. Ty Clevenger filed the grievance in New York, where Mr. Comey was a former U.S. attorney and is licenses to practice law. Mr. Clevenger said Mr. Comey’s testimony to Congress that he did not predetermine the outcome of the FBI’s probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is belied by revelations this week that he in fact started drafting an exoneration months before even speaking with Mrs. Clinton. “Insofar as Mr. Comey gave materially false testimony to Congress, it appears that he violated Rules 1.0(w), 3.3(a)(1), and 8.4 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct,” Mr. Clevenger wrote. He also asked to renew grievances in New York against former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, saying Mr. Comey’s claim that she tried to pressure him to downplay the Clinton probe should subject her to scrutiny. The state grievance committee had deferred an investigation in January, saying there were ongoing probes by Congress and they would await the outcome.

A very interesting development..  To read the rest, click on the text above.

Comey drafted letter on Clinton email investigation before completing interviews, FBI confirms

The FBI released documents Monday proving former FBI Director James Comey began drafting a letter regarding Hillary Clinton’s email investigation months before conducting several key interviews, including speaking to Clinton herself. The document release was titled “Drafts of Director Comeys July 5, 2016 Statement Regarding Email Server Investigation Part 01 of 01.” The contents of the email were largely unclear as nearly all of it was redacted. The now-public records show the email titled “Midyear Exam — UNCLASSIFIED” was sent by Comey on May 2, 2016, to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, general counsel James Baker and chief of staff and senior counselor James Rybicki. On May 16, the documents showed a response email from Rybicki, saying “Please send me any comments on this statement so we may roll into a master doc for discussion with the Director at a future date. Thanks, Jim.” The existence of the documents, reported by Newsweek, were first brought to light by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also a member of the committee, after they reviewed transcripts of interviews with top Comey aides who alluded to the email’s existence. The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating Comey in his role as FBI director and President Trump’s decision to fire him in May. The senators penned a letter on Aug. 30 to newly-appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray noting their findings, saying that “it appears that in April or early May of 2016, Mr. Comey had already decided he would issue a statement exonerating Secretary Clinton. That was long before FBI agents finished their work,” the letter said. “The outcome of an investigation should not be prejudged while FBI agents are still hard at work trying to gather the facts.” Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, was investigated by the FBI for using a private email address and server to handle classified information while serving as secretary of state. In July 2016, Comey famously called Clinton’s email arrangement “extremely careless” though he decided against recommending criminal charges. The existence of such an email draft raised questions about Comey’s Senate testimony in June 2017 regarding his decision to go public with findings in the Clinton email investigation. At the time, Comey testified that he was inclined to publicly announce the results of the probe to “protect the credibility of the investigation,” after then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton had an unscheduled meeting on a tarmac in Arizona. He also said “other things” encouraged him to make the announcement, including Lynch allegedly urging him to refer to the email scandal as a “matter” and not an “investigation.” “That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude I have to step away from the department” in order to close the case “credibly,” he said. Calls for Comey to return to Capitol Hill for questioning have mounted, including from Graham who said he would subpoena Comey if he had to. “He’s coming one way or the other,” Graham said..

Assuming this is all true, Pres. Trump was exactly right in firing then Director Comey.  And, again, if this is all true..  Comey has much to answer for, including the fact that he lied under oath.  This story is developing…

FBI reversal: Bureau will release more Clinton investigation docs

Weeks after saying there wasn’t enough public interest in Hillary Clinton’s email case, the FBI’s decision has been modified, and the bureau will publicly release more details of its obstruction of justice probe into the former secretary of state. The Justice Department confirmed the new position in a letter Thursday to Ty Clevenger, a lawyer who’d filed an open-records request for the information. The FBI had initially told him there wasn’t enough public interest to outweigh Mrs. Clinton’s privacy concerns, but he appealed to the Justice Department, which said it was “modifying the FBI’s response.” Justice Department official Sean R. O’Neill said after speaking with Mr. Clevenger, they have concluded that the records in question are part of the Clinton email investigation file, which he said they’re already making public in installments. “Any records concerning the FBI’s investigation of obstruction of justice are currently being processed by the FBI along with the remainder of the Clinton email investigation file. The FBI is publicly posting all releasable records on a rolling basis,” he said. The records are being posted at the FBI’s “vault,” a section of the bureau’s website, under the heading “Hillary R. Clinton.” “The FBI will continue to process and post subsequent releases of responsive records until processing of the entire investigative file is complete,” Mr. O’Neill said. Mr. Clevenger said he took that to mean the Justice Department had overruled the FBI and reversed its earlier decision. “I think it’s a sign that the Justice Department is putting some daylight between itself and the FBI. James Comey created this mess, and DOJ is not going to protect him,” the lawyer said. “It’s a step in the right direction, but we still need a special prosecutor to investigate James Comey and the various Clinton scandals. Both houses of Congress should be passing resolutions demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor,” Mr. Clevenger said. Earlier this week he won a ruling from a state judge in Maryland who overruled the state’s bar counsel’s office and ordered an investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers should face discipline for their handling of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Mr. Clevenger says that by deleting emails that the government later determined were official records and should have been returned to the State Department — and that were subject to preservation requests — the lawyers engaged in destruction of evidence.

Drip Drip Drip…