Thread: FBI drama injects uncertainty into frantic final week of race

October 30, 2016, 09:32 pm

FBI drama injects uncertainty into frantic final week of race



The presidential campaign is entering its final full week amid high drama and volatility, as both sides grapple with the fallout from the FBI’s announcement that it is examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to an earlier investigation of Hillary Clinton.

The shock announcement came on Friday and sucked up political oxygen throughout the weekend, dominating cable news networks and the Sunday talk shows.

Democrats are furious about what they see as political meddling on the part of the bureau and its director, James Comey. The Clinton campaign sent a release late Sunday evening signed by nearly 100 former prosecutors and and Department of Justice officials questioning Comey’s “break with longstanding practices” by making public statements about an ongoing investigation or even acknowledging the existence of one.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) suggested on Sunday that Comey may have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal government officials from using their authority to influence an election.

Republicans, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, have commended the bureau. Behind the scenes, GOP activists are gleeful about the prospect of the FBI announcement helping to shift down-ballot races, as well as the presidential contest, in their favor.

GOP control of the Senate has looked in serious danger, and Republicans will try to stave off the possibility of losing their majority by pressing Democrats onto the defensive. One endangered GOP senator, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, told a Philadelphia radio station soon after the news broke that “it looks to me like Hillary Clinton is in a world of hot water.”

Uncertainty on several key points is fueling the feverish atmosphere that has gripped the political world.

The impact of the Comey announcement on public opinion cannot be reliably assessed because no major opinion polls have yet emerged that were conducted wholly in its aftermath.

But a Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll released on Sunday, which included data from both before and after the revelation, carried ominous news for Clinton.

The poll found that 34 percent of likely voters said they were “less likely” to vote for the Democratic nominee as a result of Comey’s announcement. A clear majority of those people were Republican or Republican leaning, the Post reported, and therefore may never have intended to vote for Clinton.

But 17 percent of those who said they had been deterred from backing Clinton leaned Democratic, and a further 9 percent were self-described independents.

Any shift in their ranks could be pivotal in an election that appeared to be tightening even before the Comey bombshell.

Also unknown is whether the FBI will make further comment on the matter before Election Day.

Many experts believe such comment is unlikely given that agents only obtained a search warrant to look through the relevant emails — some 650,000 — on Sunday.

The ultimate conclusion to the matter could fall anywhere on a very broad spectrum.

The emails, apparently found on a laptop once shared by close Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), could be mere duplicates of messages already examined by the FBI. If that were the case, Clinton might benefit from a perception that she had been smeared

— and criticism of Comey would reach a new level.

At the other end of the range of possibilities, the emails could lead to the criminal indictment of a president-elect, a scenario that would envelop an already tense nation in chaos.

If Clinton were to lose the election on Nov. 8, it seems all but certain that disappointed supporters of the former secretary of State would blame the bureau.

Trump has stated a number of times that he believes the process is “rigged” against him, spurring fears that his most fervent backers will not accept the legitimacy of the outcome if he loses.

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, asserted that Clinton has “a very casual relationship with the truth,” on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. She was building on a case already made by the nominee himself, who reacted to the Comey announcement by arguing that “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before.” In a statement, he warned voters not to let the former secretary of State “take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”

But the Clinton team, moving past its initial shock at the news, has sought to shift onto a more aggressive footing. Campaign chairman John Podesta called Comey’s conduct “inappropriate” on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, while Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), asserted on ABC’s “This Week” that it was “completely unprecedented.”

Those comments were part of a broader effort by the Clinton campaign to undercut Comey. In talking points sent to surrogates on Saturday afternoon and obtained by The Hill, the campaign suggested emphasizing that the director’s actions were “extraordinary” and accused him of having created a “misleading impression.”

The talking points also noted that both the Clinton and Trump campaigns were calling upon the FBI director to make more information available.

The two sides clearly have diametrically opposed motives for making that request — the Clinton team believing it could be exculpatory and the Trump camp asserting it could be damning. But their appeals may be in vain, given that agents are only now beginning to look through the enormous cache of emails.

The episode is just one more unprecedented twist in a campaign that has been chock-full of them. And the drama may not be over yet.

On Sunday evening, WikiLeaks, the organization that has published private emails from Podesta and from Democratic National Committee staffers in recent months, tweeted that it would “commence Phase 3 of our US election coverage” this week.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/...ign-into-chaos

Clinton should of never set up a secret server and continue lying about it all these years.

Clinton dug her own grave and now she has to lay in it!

It's her mess and she needs to stop whining and playing the victim.

Hillary only has herself to blame for the mess she’s in


October 29, 2016 | 10:15pm | Updated



We must forgive Mark Twain for his error when he declared that “history never repeats itself but it often rhymes.” After all, he’d never met the Clintons.

If Twain were alive now, he would be astonished at how the headlines over the e-mail scandal roiling the presidential race are virtual repeats of the family’s 1990s saga in power.

The headlines are also an omen. A restoration of the Clinton presidency would be a restoration of the national and moral chaos they invariably create.

They can’t help themselves. They are corrupt and corrupters, the *Typhoid Mary of politics.

Whether by nature or nurture, they are programmed to ruin. Friends, allies, institutions — all are stained by their touch.

And always, the Clintons blame somebody else. Now it’s FBI Director James Comey’s turn to embody their all-purpose bogeyman, the vast right-wing conspiracy. Somebody, sometimes everybody, is out to get them, unfairly of course.

The victim card is a Clinton family heirloom, but there are major problems playing it over Comey’s sudden reopening of the e-mail probe.

Clinton created the mess with her incredibly stupid decision to use a private server as secretary of state. Virtually every major issue dogging her, including her reputation for chronic dishonesty, was started or exacerbated by that decision, including the current one.

Even as her top aides remain mystified about why she did it, the result fits the family pattern now that Huma Abedin, her most loyal “body” person, is on the hook. It was, by all accounts, the FBI’s criminal investigation into Abedin’s pervy husband, Anthony Weiner, that led to the new cache of suspect e-mails found on a computer the couple shared.

Still, Clinton is understandably panicked because the timing of Comey’s announcement could cost her the election. Her demand that he release everything immediately is also understandable, even as she knows it is impossible for him to release potential evidence before it is examined.

Her attacks on him play well to her base, and her media handmaidens are amplifying the complaint that he has gone rogue. But, as usual, there is less than meets the eye here, for Clinton could solve the problem herself without Comey doing anything to help.

She could simply order Abedin to hold a press conference and answer any and every question about the newest batch of e-mails. Let reporters ask Abedin directly: What’s in those e-mails? Did any contain classified material?

Why didn’t you turn that computer over to the FBI during its initial investigation? Did you lie to the FBI about having work-related e-mails on it?
Also, did Weiner have access to classified material? Was the computer ever hacked?

The potential upside is huge. If Abedin can answer “no” to all the key questions about classified material and her own conduct, Clinton could credibly declare Comey’s announcement much ado about nothing.

She could even hold her own press conference to answer questions and conclude by saying: We have been as transparent as we can be, and we are not afraid of a new investigation because we have nothing to hide.

Now, back to reality. Clinton reality.

Hillary won’t do any of that because the potential downside is also huge. My guess is she fears the worst, and may secretly subscribe to the idea that Comey wouldn’t have acted in such a bold and controversial way without some conviction that he had stumbled on a potential bombshell.

And Clinton, a former litigator used to playing defense, probably already knows what’s in the e-mails. Or perhaps she has concluded that, if indeed there are thousands of them, as is being reported, at least some are bound to re-fuel suspicions that she and her team are guilty of mishandling national secrets.

Then, instead of putting the issue to bed, any substantive discussion, including an Abedin press conference, would actually fan the fire just as voters are going to the polls.

Moreover, even if Abedin’s answers would help Clinton, taking her public would be effectively betting the presidency on her performance. Abedin’s always worked behind the scenes, and has little experience in front of a camera, not to mention a forest of them that would assemble for such an extraordinary event.

To top it off, this professional crisis is coming as Abedin’s personal world is in turmoil. Weiner is a certified creep, but he is still the father of their young child, and now faces the possibility of federal prison.

Against that backdrop, what if Abedin were to stumble or crack in public? What if she has a lawyer who advises her to say nothing because she might also be a federal target and risks incriminating herself by speaking publicly?

The stress for everybody involved must be enormous. The race with Donald Trump was tightening even before this, and now Comey’s wild card scrambles the prepared end game and closing arguments.

All of which points to Clinton’s most likely strategy: say nothing while trying to make the issue about Comey’s unorthodox move. A hint of it came Friday evening in her first public reaction.

After falsely accusing him of sending his congressional letter only to Republicans — congressional Democrats also got it — Clinton dodged a direct question about whether she had spoken to Abedin. Instead of saying yes or no, she avoided it entirely.

According to reporters, Abedin was on the campaign plane, but disappeared when it landed. And she hasn’t been seen since; hence the “Huma in Hiding” headlines.

We’re likely to see more of those headlines in coming days. It’s the Clinton way, where truth is always the enemy.

Copycat alert

1: Reader David Biesty writes:

“I just saw Chuck Schumer’s new TV ad where he saves guitar-string jobs on Long Island from the bad-boy Chinese. All he needs is the “Make America Great Again” trucker cap.

2: Reader Harold Theurer writes:

“I don’t understand the controversy over Hillary’s attendance at an Adele concert. She probably just wanted to see how someone could fill an arena without having to pay the attendees and couldn’t sneak into a Trump rally.”

The biased media strikes again — and strikes out again

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, a big Democratic contributor and supporter of Hillary Clinton, gave a deposition to the former University of Virginia dean who is suing his magazine for defamation over the botched campus rape story.

“I’m very, very sorry. It was never meant to ever happen this way to you,” Wenner told Nicole Eramo in taped testimony played at the trial.

“And believe me, I’ve suffered as much as you have,” he went on. “And I know what it’s like. I hope that this whole thing hadn’t happened but it is, and it’s what we live with.”

See, he’s a victim too, just like his chosen candidate.

http://nypost.com/2016/10/29/hillary...-mess-shes-in/

Donald Trump was right when he said years before he announced he was running that our country is in "serious, serious trouble."