Trump claims Comey 'exonerated' Clinton before email probe was over

[DonViejo]

Source: The Hill




BY ELLIOT SMILOWITZ - 09/01/17 08:09 AM EDT

President Trump on Friday seized on a letter from two Republican senators claiming evidence that FBI Director James Comey cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing over her private email server before concluding his investigation.

In a message on Twitter, Trump said it looked like Comey had "exonerated" Clinton before the investigation was over.

“Wow, looks like James Comey exonerated Hillary Clinton long before the investigation was over...and so much more. A rigged system!” he tweeted.

Link to tweet

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) released a letter to the new FBI director on Thursday that claims transcripts of interviews between a federal watchdog agency and FBI officials show Comey began writing a statement clearing Clinton in May, before interviewing her or other aides connected to the former secretary of State.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/348820-trump-comey-exonerated-clinton-before-email-probe-was-over

---

[denbot]

1. I guess the previous half dozen other investigation clearing her didn't matter..

No new evidence, no new outcome, seems pretty simple to understand.

[NewJeffCT]

4. the next investigation

will surely be the one that gets her!

After the first investigation, everything else was just for Republican fundraising emails.

[chelsea0011]

7. Waiting for Russia investigations to call in all perps for questioning....

still waiting.

[NewJeffCT]

2. What a sad, pathetic and small minded man

Comey cleared Clinton because there was no crime involved. She was following the same process as her predecessors

[Botany]

6. The Hillary email/server scandal was a perfect example of Goebbles' "Big Lie" process

You just keep repeating the same lie time after time and after awhile
some of the people buy it as the truth. All those republican hearings
had one goal and that was to work w/the Russia release of HRC's emails
in order to damage Hillary.

[karynnj]

10. HRC's emails were released by HRC and the State Department

Likely because Clinton expected after the news that they had been on a private server that various media/Congress requests would demand all work email. Clinton, before that happened, called on the State Department to process all of them and put anything on line that could be put online.

I agree that the Republican hearings were to damage Clinton... and they did. The sad thing is that she was wrong to have not turned over the work email as soon as she left office. Had that happened, the FOIA and Congressional requests in 2013, 2014 would have been addressed in a timely fashion and, in all likelihood, Clinton's email address would have been replaced with her name -- as it was on an early released email that they had on the .gov account. This did lead to HRC being seen as not transparent and raising questions on her honesty.

Obviously, compared to Trump, there is no Presidential nominee that has ever been less honest, moral, or ethical.

[ehrnst]

12. It didn't take much of anything to make her appear "corrupt" in the eyes of the media

and many on the far left.

And if she had released those emails, you really think that those wouldn't have been used against her by the GOP - and those on the left who didn't want her to be the Dem nominee, no matter what was in them?

FFS, I saw evidence that she was not supporting private colleges, even though Bill had a salary from one, called "outrageous!" and PROOF that she was "corrupt," and "a liar," on so called "progressive" FB pages - even though the fact that it was public was due to it being included on their financial records that were released to the public, with her being the **only** candidate last year in the final running who didn't hide her finances from the light of day.

I don't think that the personal emails that she kept (after fucking decades of being trashed for any and every candid comment she made) would have made any sort of difference if she had been a man.

Lord knows that "losing" emails didn't make a dent in GWB.

[karynnj]

17. Work emails -- not personal emails

Read what I said. I said, she should have followed policy and left the email with the State Department. This would have made her the FIRST Secretary of State who had all her email archived. The point was that had this been done, all the FOIA and Congressional requests would have been honored .... and there was NOTHING there to hide. By the way, the REQUESTED emails would have been a fraction of the 30,000 some emails.

Obviously the right would have continued attacking, but they would not have had the State Department mandated to put out monthly emails. More importantly, HRC would not have had to explain that she had recently given the SD all the email and would not have had to repeatedly correct information. It is entirely likely that the question of a private email server might never have come out.

I think that an AL Gore or a John Kerry would have been every bit as hammered had they done this -- and neither had the transparency problems that she had. Both were actually seen as unusally "clean" and people who followed rules. Clinton was more vulnerable because she and Bill were not seen that way. Compared to Trump, they are both paragons of virtue, but unfortunately many just decided neither Clinton or Trump were honest, when in fact Trump was far far more dishonest.

[ehrnst]

19. I disagree. The Clintons have been painted as corrupt by the GOP from day one.

Any and all actions that they do are scrutinized in that light. No one else has had this sort of bias automatically applied to them. Especially HRC.

The media knew that would absolutely be compelling. The willingness of a younger-skewing left to swallow the narrative, abetted by other candidates on the left, and the sheer amount of misogyny lurking beneath the surface of the left was underestimated.

"There is a particular media narrative around the Clintons that has persisted for 25 years. They think the rules don’t apply to them. They are always pushing the envelope. They don’t consider the optics of what they do. They may not have engaged in illegal behavior, but they are still personally, even morally corrupt.


Of course, Republicans have taken this last one to a more sinister conclusion — namely that Hillary Clinton should be, as the chant goes, “locked up.”

What’s so strange about this narrative, however, is that even after being placed under the most intense media microscope in modern political history, we can say with some assuredness that the Clintons aren’t corrupt. Yet seemingly no amount of evidence can convince a jaded press corps and a skeptical electorate that this is true."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/09/06/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-and-why-media-are-failing/B6FDRApMzjVJ3NciRNPblK/story.html

Were any work-related emails intentionally deleted?

There is no evidence to date that work-related emails were intentionally deleted.

In all, the FBI recovered about 14,900 emails that were not part of the 30,000 work-related emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department in December 2014. But we don’t know yet how many of them were work-related. The State Department, which is under court order to release the emails recovered by the FBI, is in the process of determining how many of those are work-related, and how many of them have already been released to the public.

On Sept. 7, government officials disclosed that 30 of the emails were related to Benghazi, but only one had been previously undisclosed and two others were “near duplicates” of emails that had already been publicly released.

Comey said the FBI “found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them in some way.” In his July 5 press conference, Comey said “like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed.”


When did Clinton delete her 31,830 private emails?

The FBI on Sept. 2 released a two-part summary of its investigation of Clinton that said the former secretary of state’s emails were deleted “sometime between March 25-31, 2015.″ That was about three weeks after the House Select Committee on Benghazi served Clinton with a subpoena on March 4, 2015, to produce any emails related to its investigation into the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi in 2012.

Initially, the campaign had told us that the deletions occurred sometime between December 2014 and March 4, 2015, but did not provide a date. Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin later told us that Clinton and her attorneys had no knowledge of the email deletions in late March 2015 until the FBI released its report on Sept. 2.

Here’s what the FBI report said: By December 2014, Clinton’s lawyers had completed their review of her emails, and sent her work-related emails to the State Department. At that time, a Clinton lawyer told Platte River Networks – which was maintaining Clinton’s private server – that the former secretary no longer needed any emails that were more than 60 days old, and instructed an unnamed PRN employee “to modify the e-mail retention policy … to reflect this change.” The PRN employee told the FBI that “sometime between March 25-31, 2015″ he realized he did not make the change requested by Clinton’s office and he deleted her old emails at that time.

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/a-guide-to-clintons-emails/

[karynnj]

20. You are still implying that I said anything about the personal emails

I did not. Nor did I say any work emails were destroyed. What I referred to was that for nearly two years the State Department did not have her emails, She did not archive the work emails and leave them even though there were demands for some on some issues even when she was secretary.

Printing long fact checks on things I never said does not change the facts. At minimum, it is undeniably a mistake she likely regrets. It is also mind-boggling that she did not correctly predict that the State Department could not and would not be able to stone wall for 4 more years saying they were not finding many emails... from a woman for whom there was a meme about using her blackberry.

When she repeatedly had to correct her story, her favorables fell as did the perception that she was honest. Without this, I assume she would have won easily. Note there would have been no FBI or IG investigations thus no Comey report.

She KNEW she was running for President. SOS was a great position for those 4 years. She served the country and kept a high profile while doing a good job and taking few risks in terms of diplomacy. Had she followed what Obama wanted on transparency, she would not have had the problems she did.

I still do not understand why she did not, at minimum, leave the work emails. Obviously by then, it had to be an internal issue because Kerry switched immediately to a State dot government email.

[ehrnst]

23. "Had she followed what Obama wanted on transparency, she would not have had the problems she did. "

I would like to see your source for her "not following what Obama wanted on transparency."

Obama was less transparent than GWB, despite his claims about wanting transparency. That didn't stop him from being re-elected and supported by Democrats in 2012, and while Bernie murmured about it, he didn't think there was a need to challenge him. I'm sure that many felt there must have been reasons for his being opaque, due to the lack of challenges from Democrats on it. However, when it comes to Hillary...

Also - could you share with me sources on her "not archiving emails" for two years, because I'm not sure on how that differs from being accused of deleting work emails.

And, yes she would have had the problems that she did had she been transparent. Look at how she was excoriated about things she was very transparent on: She was "deceitful" when the amount that Bill received as honorary chancellor for a for-profit college clearly didn't affect her opposition to breaks for for-profit colleges. That was made possible by the transparency full disclosure of her financial records.

Bernie's opacity (which continues) on something as basic as his financial records certainly wasn't a 'deal breaker" in a Democratic presidential bid. He apparently did not understand that, at a minimum, release your tax records. Can you honestly say that Hillary would have gotten away with doing that without calls for her head, especially on the far left, let alone being defended as "having nothing to hide?"

I guess it comes down to not trusting her when you don't understand something she did. If you default to "she's corrupt" it's just falling in line with the 25+ years and continuing narrative about them - which time and time again has been shown to be based in nothing. FFS - there was rumor that she "threatened" Bernie's family because she "called them by name" from the podium during her acceptance speech. The fact that she had so much support among superdelegates made her suspect - "she got to them first" and "Everybody knows that you don't cross the Clintons, or they take revenge." The fact that she was endorsed strongly was "evidence" that she was "corrupt" and there were "back room deals." The effort by "correct the record" to combat all the urban legends "She laughed and got a child rapist released" "She gave Russia Uranium" "Her campaign took money from Russia" etc - was viewed as "corrupt" and "deceptive" by the far left. There is indeed such a thing as Hillary derangement syndrome, and it doesn't need any facts to fester and grow.

"She should have known better" is something girls from preschool on are told when they do something that a boy does, and is given a pass for being a boy. The double standard is so endemic that women buy into it. And woman who doesn't back down in shame, or simply doesn't apologize for doing things like "a man" is often punished most harshly by other women.

[karynnj]

25. Correct the record is David Brock and highly allied with Clinton

I never defended Bernie not putting out all of his financial records. I am not arguing that Bernie or anyone else never did anything wrong. Not to mention - as you like links so much - in just what way - other than HRC's State Department - was the Obama administration less transparent than GWB. Not to mention, you misunderstand the problem with For Profit schools. The problem was that Clinton allowed his name to be used for a fee and there were questions about the company. Here is a long article on that. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-bill-clintons-nearly-18-million-job-as-honorary-chancellor-of-a-for-profit-college/2016/09/05/8496db42-655b-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html?utm_term=.90ee89370706 One question - would you have helped your son or daughter financially to go there? (I wouldn't, nor, before you ask, would I have paid for them to go to Burlington College.)

I am saying that HRC's decsion to not leave her email with the State Department when she left was a GIANT error. That this is true is painfully obvious. Note I did not say that what she did was evil, immoral or unethical. It DID cost her greatly. That she knew it was a problem in March 2015 can be seen by her defensive language and the fact that she did not - even then - get everything about it in public.

You misunderstood what I said about archiving the work emails. What she should have done was to leave all the emails with the State Department, so they could retain them and search them when required to do so. The fact is that the State Department never had the emails on her server for the 4 years she was Secretary and for nearly two years when Kerry was Secretary.

Both Obama and Clinton in 2008 called for transparent government in contrast to GWB. When Clinton was nominated, there was an agreement on how the Clinton Foundation and the Obama administration would work to avoid any question of conflict of interest. That was violated. I have no intention of finding you links on transparency or the fact that everyone from the State Department who testified before Congress said they were working to quickly comply with the Congressional requests. What I find galling is that HRC essentially put the Obama administartion in a terrible position for two years. The State Department had to demand the email (May/June 2014) and when they didn't get it, they demanded the email PUBLICLY in October 2014 with the fig leaf of asking all former SoS as well.

It seems your entire defense is asserting that women do not get breaks men do -- with absolutely nothing concrete to back it up. (As to from preschool, even as the mother of three daughters, I saw times when they were tougher on the boys .. and some where they seemed fair ... and some wherethey were tougher on girls. I do know that boys tend to be the ones diciplined more in elementary school. Quite possibly because they are more likely to do something to get into trouble.

P.S. Don't insult my intelligence. There is nothing complicated with what HRC did and I made clear that one piece that served no purpose and created a huge problem is that she arrogantly left the State Department without leaving her email - some of which had already been requested. She was also the presumptive nominee even at that point. Do you seriously NOT see the terrible choices left to President Obama and Secretary Kerry? Should they have stonewalled for 4 years saying there were very few HRC emails because they did not have them?

PSS resorting to saying that I thought the Clintons corrupt because of 25 years of right wing memes is assinine. I never said they were corrupt, though I do think that there were more problems than with many other Democrats I could name - including Obama, Carter, Gore and Kerry.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Padded cell

[Honeycombe8]

5. Trying to deflect attention from his criminal investigations. nt

[DK504]

8. So when Comey stops an investigation without evidence is a

horrendous sin against mankind, these traitors and criminals throughout the government he needs to be raked over the coals. When he goes after a traitorous act by a cabal of puppets Comey is the bad guy.

He had more than enough evidence that there was no wrong doing on HRC's part, the hatred for Hillary is so overwhelming that it defies any rational thought. These old white guys have hated her since she came into the public eye 30 years ago. Why?

[karynnj]

9. He made the statement clearing, but faulting her in June

This was after an approximately one year investigation -- in parallel with the State Department IG and Intelligence Community IG investigations.

I would imagine that anyone would start to write drafts of what the summary of the investigation is BEFORE the final investigations of the principals. If you think of it, it is the easiest way to find what holes you need to fill through new questions. It also provides focus to a year's worth of investigation. To write a summary, you need to concisely state what happened. If you find that there are areas where you can't do that, it is clear that you do not know exactly what happened.

[ehrnst]

13. Faulting her in a way unprecedented for the FBI to do when exonerating. (nt)

[karynnj]

15. Absolutely true

His actions were absolutely not appropriate -- though the public (to the Congress when he knew it would be public in minutes) announcement of possible new emails was by far the worse.

[Primer]

11. Grassley undermining Comey

a fellow Repub shows how far GOP will go for Trump.

[Grins]

14. Comey did not "exonerated" Clinton.

Comey did not "exonerated" Clinton.

He said the FBI did not find evidence "sufficient to establish" that she knew she was receiving or sending classified information, or that it was against the law.

"I think she was extremely careless. I think she was negligent. That I could establish. What we can't establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent. 'Should have known,' 'must have known,' 'had to know' does not get you there. You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they were engaged in something that was unlawful."

I.e., it would never stand up in court.

He also said that as many as 20 FBI investigators unanimously agreed charges were not warranted.

[StevieM]

16. Comey's ruthless tactics towards HRC are the only reason Trump was elected. (eom)

[jmowreader]

18. I should say I don't believe this, but unfortunately I do

The Houston area is underwater, there's ANOTHER hurricane sitting in the Caribbean, the North Korean dictator is running a very active missile test program...and our purported president is still gobsmacked by Hillary Clinton's emails.

We're fucked.

[yallerdawg]

22. Comey 'exonerated' Clinton?

Welcome to revisionist history.

However, he was close to right about one thing.

Not even an "unreasonable prosecutor" (and you know there are a lot of THEM) has brought any charges against Hillary.

Keep spinning, assholes.

[Quemado]

24. The target is beyond buggy

To quote Malcolm Nance.