House Republican agrees with Comey

[JimH52]

House Republican sides with Comey over Trump on Clinton emails - CNNPolitics.com

A Trump supporter. So much for infinite hearings.

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - dey's a spidey inna woodpile somewheres...

FBI Director James Comey faces Clinton emails questions
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 - House Republicans call FBI Director James Comey to testify about Hillary Clinton's use of private email as secretary of state.

On Tuesday, the FBI recommended Mrs Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, should not face criminal charges in the matter. However, Mr Comey said Mrs Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" in handling classified materials. Over 100 classified messages were found on her email servers, the FBI said. Mrs Clinton had previously said she had not knowingly sent or received classified material from her private email account. Mr Comey will testify on Thursday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Republican Jason Chaffetz. "The FBI's recommendation is surprising and confusing," Mr Chaffetz said. "The fact pattern presented by Director Comey makes clear Secretary Clinton violated the law," he said. "Individuals who intentionally skirt the law must be held accountable."

Analysis - Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington

The charge that the former secretary of state was "extremely careless" would not have nearly the same impact if it came from a Republican politician. In fact, many conservatives have tried tagging Mr Clinton with much, much worse. Instead the man delivering the very public rebuke is a career law enforcement official with a sterling reputation for rectitude and probity. Videos of Comey's statement have already found their way into a Republican attack advert - with many more sure to come.

Mr Comey said Mrs Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" with classified materials​

The FBI's key findings about Mrs Clinton's emails:

* It is possible that "hostile actors" gained access to Mrs Clinton's email account
* There were more than 100 emails that contained classified information when they were sent or received, contrary to her claim she never sent classified emails
* But there was no evidence she had knowingly shared sensitive material
* She did not delete emails in an effort to conceal them

The email scandal has become a key political talking point, with Republicans saying Mrs Clinton thinks she is above the law. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump called the decision "very unfair" and said it was proof that they system was rigged. Mrs Clinton said she had set up the email address for reasons of convenience, because it had been easier to do everything from one device than to have several phones or tablets. She later apologised for using the private email system, calling it "a mistake". House Speaker Paul Ryan said it appears that Mrs Clinton was given preferential treatment by the FBI, and the purpose of the hearing is to try to answer a number of questions about the inquiry. He questioned whether Mrs Clinton could receive classified briefings as a presidential candidate following the release of the FBI's findings. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has also been called to testify before the committee on 12 July.

FBI chief James Comey faces questions over Clinton emails - BBC News

 

[waltky]

Avoiding the appearance of interfering with Clinton e-mail probe...

WH: 'We Have Gone to Great Lengths to Avoid the Appearance of Interfering' With FBI's Clinton-Email Probe
July 6, 2016 - No one at the White House knew that FBI Director James Comey was going to speak on Tuesday, never mind what he'd say, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Tuesday.

"With regard to a reaction from the White House, I don't have an official reaction to share," he said. "The reason for that is simply that, while the FBI is completing their investigation, the career prosecutors at the Department of Justice still have to make a final determination about how and whether to proceed. "And we have gone to great lengths to avoid the appearance of interfering with this ongoing process. Director Comey himself noted that there was no outside influence brought to bear on this investigation. That certainly is consistent with the effort that we have made to protect the independence of the investigation."

In October 2015, President Obama, commenting on Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server, said, "I can tell that you this is not a situation in which America's national security was endangered." This was one month after the FBI quietly began its investigation. Then in April, Obama told "Fox News Sunday," "I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America's national security. Now what I've also said is that -- and she has acknowledged -- that there's a carelessness, in terms of managing e-mails, that she has owned, and she recognizes. "But I also think it is important to keep this in perspective. This is somebody who has served her country for four years as secretary of state, and did an outstanding job. And no one has suggested that in some ways, as a consequence of how she's handled e-mails, that that detracted from her excellent ability to carry out her duties."

Last month, President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, prompting Fox News's James Rosen to ask Obama's spokesman about a potential conflict of interest, given the FBI's ongoing investigation of Obama's chosen successor. Rosen asked Earnest, "So when a career prosecutor or an FBI agent who is working on the Clinton investigation hears this president speak openly of how he wants Hillary Clinton to succeed him, you don't think that that career prosecutor or that FBI agent takes that as some indication of how the president wants to see this case resolved?"

"No," Earnest said. "I think that those career prosecutors understand that they have a job do to. And that that job that they are supposed to do, which is to follow the facts, to pursue the evidence to a logical conclusion, that that is a job that they are responsible for doing without any sort of political interference. And the president expects them to do that job. Earnest continued: "And that's why the president, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference, and that people should be treated the same way before the law regardless of their political influence, regardless of their political party, regardless of their political stature, and regardless of what political figure has endorsed them."

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AP Fact Check: Clinton email claims collapse under FBI probe
July 6, 2016 | WASHINGTON (AP) — Key assertions by Hillary Clinton in defense of her email practices have collapsed under FBI scrutiny.

The agency's yearlong investigation found that she did not, as she claimed, turn over all her work-related messages for release. It found that her private email server did carry classified emails, also contrary to her past statements. And it made clear that Clinton used many devices to send and receive email despite her statements that she set up her email system so that she only needed to carry one. FBI Director James Comey's announcement Tuesday that he will not refer criminal charges to the Justice Department against Clinton spared her from prosecution and a devastating political predicament. But it left much of her account in tatters and may have aggravated questions of trust swirling around her Democratic presidential candidacy. A look at Clinton's claims since questions about her email practices as secretary of state surfaced and how they compare with facts established in the FBI probe:

CLINTON: "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material." News conference, March 2015.

THE FACTS: Actually, the FBI identified at least 113 emails that passed through Clinton's server and contained materials that were classified at the time they were sent, including some that were Top Secret and referred to a highly classified special access program, Comey said.

Most of those emails — 110 of them — were included among 30,000 emails that Clinton returned to the State Department around the time her use of a private email server was discovered. The three others were recovered from a forensic analysis of Clinton's server. "Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation," Comey said. Clinton and her aides "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," he said.

CLINTON: "I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified." NBC interview, July 2016.

THE FACTS: Clinton has separately clung to her rationale that there were no classification markings on her emails that would have warned her and others not to transmit the sensitive material. But the private system did, in fact, handle emails that bore markings indicating they contained classified information, Comey said.

He said the marked emails were "a very small number." But that's not the only standard for judging how officials handle sensitive material, he added. "Even if information is not marked classified in an email, participants who know, or should know, that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it."

CLINTON: "I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work related" to the State Department. News conference, March 2015.

THE FACTS: Not so, the FBI found.

Comey said that when his forensic team examined Clinton's server it found there were "several thousand work-related emails that were not in the group of 30,000" that had been returned by Clinton to the State Department.

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Lt. Gen. Boykin: FBI Director ‘Allowed Politics to Override Sound Judgment’
July 6, 2016 | Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin (U.S. Army- Ret.) criticized FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation that the Justice Department not bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton despite what Comey described as "evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information."

“I know that James Comey is an honorable man, but even he has allowed politics to override sound judgment,” Boykin wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. “I am not surprised, but to say that this is not politically driven is to ignore reality. I spent 36 years in the US military and had a TOP SECRET clearance for over 35 of those years. I have seen so many people punished for so much less,” the former Delta Force commander said. “This is actually very sad as well as being outrageous,” he added. Boykin spent 36 years in the Army and now serves as executive vice president of the Family Research Council. “Remember that Hillary was not being investigated for ‪#‎espionage, she was being investigated for ‪#‎negligence and even the FBI director admits that she is ‪#‎guilty,” he continued in the Facebook post. “How can she not be charged when so many people have been punished for so much less?”

Boykin pointed out that both he and Gen. David Petraeus had been punished for allegedly mishandling classified information. Gen. Petraeus resigned as CIA director in 2012 when emails to his biographer, Paula Broadwell, with whom he was having an extramarital affair, created a potential national security breach. Gen. Boykin was issued a reprimand in 2013 for information contained in his autobiography, Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom, although the Defense Department had concluded earlier that his book did not contain classified information. “I was not disturbed when Gen. Petraeus was punished because he knew the rules. I was given a written reprimand for violating a non disclosure agreement after writing an autobiography. … “My case was closed for 3 years before it was reopened and a reprimand was issued. That too was pure political shenanigans to force me to stop criticizing the administration for destroying the readiness of the armed forces. So don’t think that this decision to hold Hillary to a different standard is anything but politics. “She was the SECSTATE and knew better,” said Boykin. “This is gross negligence and malfeasance. That is punishable under the federal statute and anyone else would be headed to court. …"But unlike ANYONE ELSE, she will not be held accountable,” he continued.

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