Conservative Blogger
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Gregg Jarrett: FBI reopens email investigation. Is a Clinton presidency doomed?
If past is prologue, and it usually is, then a Hillary Clinton presidency may be engulfed and disabled by scandal.
Make that plural --scandals. As a consequence, she is likely to accomplish little on behalf of the American people. In other words, her presidency could be dead on arrival the moment she is sworn into office.
How do we know this? First, the FBI announced Friday that it is reopening its criminal investigation of Clinton’s personal email server.
FBI Director James Comey did not give details except to convey that, in connection with an unrelated case, new evidence had been uncovered. The Director said his agency would “review these new emails to determine whether they contain classified information.”
This is a stunning new development. It will surely do enormous damage to Clinton’s chances of winning the office she has long coveted. But if she is elected notwithstanding, the FBI investigation itself will hobble her presidency from the outset. The cloud of distrust and scandal that already hovers over Clinton could grow exponentially.
Second, the powerful chairman of a congressional committee and many others on Capitol Hill are vowing to pursue their investigations of wrongdoing by Clinton. These are the very people with whom the new president must work to accomplish anything meaningful on behalf of Americans who are yearning for something other than gridlock in Washington.
See the Fox News 2016 battleground prediction map and make your own election projections. See Predictions Map →
Why would Clinton behave with such reckless abandon when so much is at stake? Because Clinton seems addicted to misbehavior, yet never recognizing it as such.
As pointed out in my last column, she routinely breaches the bounds of propriety. She steps right up to the line of illegality and dangles her foot over it, unconscious or uncaring of the repercussions.
If her activities are not illegal, they are surely unethical. By her own actions, she has transformed herself into the poster child for moral turpitude. And there is no reason to believe she will suddenly stop upon assuming the nation’s highest office, should she win the election. Indeed, sitting in the Oval Office may only serve to embolden her to push the envelope of opprobrium even further.
Let’s review. She stands accused of deliberately evading public disclosure laws by hiding emails on a private server, then lying about it. She is suspected of using her position as Secretary of State to confer benefits in exchange for money from foreign donors (notoriously called “pay-for-play”). It looks like she and her husband leveraged their charity foundation to enriched themselves personally to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
And those are just her recent shenanigans. Illegality? Graft? Corruption? Malfeasance? Pick your favorite noun.
Investigations Into What?
Clinton did not tell the truth in several of her statements, according to FBI Director James Comey. The Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, has sent an official referral to the FBI to open an investigation into whether Clinton perjured herself in her sworn testimony before Congress when she insisted she did not send or receive anything marked classified via her private emails. That’s just one of her alleged deceptions.
Under Title 18, Section 162 of the federal code, a perjury conviction carries up to 5 years in prison. So the matter of lying to Congress is not just a pesky issue that will vanish after November 8th. Rep. Chaffetz is determined to pursue it and so are many of his colleagues. But that’s not all.
Chaffetz is now curious about whether the FBI’s decision not to recommend criminal prosecution of Clinton for mishandling classified documents was swayed by the $ 675,000 given by a close Clinton ally to the wife of the FBI official overseeing the investigation. It smacks of illegal influence-peddling.
And what about the claim of an FBI agent that Clinton aide Patrick Kennedy tried to declassify and bury one of Clinton’s legally toxic documents… in a quid pro quo favor for the Bureau? That smacks of obstruction of justice. Again, Chaffetz wants to know. And so does Speaker of the House Paul Ryan who is promising to dig into the suspicious offer.
There is also the matter of whether Clinton’s wholesale deletion of thousands of emails after Congress had issued a subpoena for them constitutes “destruction of evidence” which is also a crime. How did that happen? The people who seem to know are invoking the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination. More immunity deals might loosen lips.
Numerous reports indicate that wealthy donors to Clinton’s foundation secured special access to her as Secretary of State. This, too, may be part of the upcoming congressional investigation. It is against the law for a public official to use his or her position to confer benefits in exchange for money. Sen. John Cornyn, the second-ranking GOP senator, is demanding answers.
The Big-Bucks Gravy Train
There are multiple reports that the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into potential corruption within the Clinton Foundation. Newly leaked emails show that charity official Doug Band, while raising money for the foundation, also steered millions of dollars to Bill Clinton. Quite the cozy relationship. However, if the foundation was not operating strictly as a charity under the laws governing non-profit groups, it could be deemed an illegal enterprise. In other words, criminal fraud.
How much money did the former president pocket? One Band email is especially revealing : “President Clinton’s business arrangements have yielded more than $ 30 million for him personally, with $ 66 million to be paid out over the next nine years should he chose to continue with the current engagements.”
The boat-loads of cash came from Clinton foundation donors --the same donors who had business before Clinton's State Department and some of whom appear to have received benefits therefrom. For example, Hillary helped UBS avoid the IRS, and then Bill got paid $ 1.5 million dollars. Thereafter, their foundation received a ten-fold increase in donations. If that was a reward for Hillary’s machinations, then it constitutes bribery under federal law, 18 U.S.C., section 201.
When asked recently to explain what appears to be blatant double dealing and the stench of pay-for-play, the Clinton campaign did not really deny it, but simply said the charity did wonderful work. It certainly did --it did wonderful work enriching the Clintons’ bank account.
If you ever wondered how Bill and Hillary got so outrageously rich, Band's emails make explicit the compelling and incriminating evidence the Clintons used their foundation for personal profit. It's a prosecutor's dream. A "smoking gun" document if ever there was one.
While Bill has stayed mum on the subject, Chelsea Clinton expressed some dismay that Band was using the foundation to “hustle business”, but I doubt she was objecting to her future inheritance. After all, why derail the “gravy train” when it’s running on a slick track at high speed?
More than 50 House Republicans have urged the Department of Justice to appoint a “special prosecutor” to investigate the Clinton Foundation. Yeah, fat chance. The objectivity of Attorney General Loretta Lynch was shattered when she hung out with Bill on her plane for a half hour just before she decided there would be no criminal prosecution of Hillary. And if she becomes president, there is zero Clinton’s newly appointed A-G will decide to investigate the new boss. No one wants to become the next Archibald Cox. (See “Saturday Night Massacre”.)
Watergate Redux
Speaking of Watergate, after Richard Nixon fired Cox, Congress began to toy with the notion of creating a special prosecutor who was not controlled by the executive branch which he or she was investigating. You know, conflict of interest and all that. Thus, the Independent Counsel Act was enacted. This is a nifty legal device which could be employed to investigate Clinton by circumventing DOJ.
Yes, the law has expired. But it could be reauthorized immediately by Congress since the full language of the statute still exists. It was resurrected once before, so it can be done again. Coincidentally, the most famous Independent Counsel, Kenneth Starr, composed a report that led to the impeachment of… yes… Bill Clinton. (See “blue dress”.)
Of course, the President must sign the bill into law. But would Obama now, or Clinton later, dare to veto legislation meant to curb the abuses of power? How could that be justified? Think of the political backlash.
Much can be learned from Nixon’s demise. He aided and abetted crimes, lied and obstructed justice. In the end, it caught up with him and he resigned in disgrace. The only American president to do so.
At the time, a young Hillary Rodham was serving as a junior member of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry staff which was investigating Nixon and Watergate. Given all that has happened and all she has done, one wonders if she learned anything from that experience.
She might have learned how power corrupts. And yet, here we are.
She might also have learned that scandals tend to disable presidents. Since it is likely that Clinton has been thinking (or dreaming) of becoming president for a very long time, why would she engage in such risky and aberrant behavior? It is truly confounding.
Hillary Clinton may well end up assuming the presidency. But winning an election is different than the hard business of governing. That’s what Nixon learned after his landslide victory over Sen. George McGovern in 1972.
Nixon viewed his re-election as an overwhelming mandate. Yet, the scandal of Watergate soon engulfed him. It so consumed his presidency and the public’s perception of him, that a weakened Nixon lost the ability to work with Congress. Very little legislation was accomplished for the benefit of the American people.
Nixon squandered the public’s trust and good will…by his own inexplicable actions. Maybe it was the intoxicating influence of high office. Or maybe it was simply his own inner demons.
But Americans have reason to worry that a President Hillary Clinton could suffer a similar and tragic fate.
TRUMP CALLED IT MONTHS AGO: Anthony Weiner threatens national security
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| Source: New Clinton email probe linked to Anthony Weiner |
The FBI announced Friday it had uncovered news emails related to its investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton‘s handling of classified information while conducting a separate investigation into the pervy sexting habits of former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner of course is the estranged husband of Hillary’s closest aide, Huma Abedin who herself figures prominently in Clinton’s email scandals.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump saw this coming from a mile away, fingering Weiner as a potential national security threat all the way back in August of 2015. “It came out that Huma Abedin knows all about Hillary’s private illegal emails,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Huma’s PR husband, Anthony Weiner, will tell the world.”
Abedin recently announced the couple’s separation after Weiner became embroiled in a new series of embarrassing online sexting scandals, including one allegedly involving an underage girl that prompted the FBI to investigate.
One month earlier, Trump said he didn’t like the thought of “Huma going home at night and telling Anthony Weiner all of these secrets.”
Trump was sounding the alarm about Weiner as early September 2013, when he wrote that Huma should “dump the sicko Weiner” because he was “a calamity who is bringing her down with him.”
Giuliani: Initial FBI probe of Clinton's emails 'was a sham'
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| Giuliani: FBI did 'irresponsible' investigation on Clinton |
"If you read the [summary] of her interview, it’s absurd. The FBI agent doing that [summary] didn’t follow up on anything," Giuliani told Fox News' Sean Hannity on "Hannity." "In other words, she was questioned as follows 'Did you do the murder?' 'No.' 'Thank you.' And they walked out.
The FBI is investigating whether there is classified information in new emails uncovered during the sexting investigation of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of one of Hillary Clinton's closest aides.
FBI Director James Comey had announced in July that "no reasonable prosecutor" would seek an indictment against Clinton for mishandling classified information while secretary of state, though he noted that she had been "extremely careless." He notified congressional leaders of the new turn in the investigation Friday, though he did not reveal details of the probe.
"The reality is, the report that Comey gave to us [in July] before he came to the conclusion that she shouldn’t be prosecuted was a report that any prosecutor would have taken before a grand jury, probably got an indictment, and the evidence of intent is overwhelming," said Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor. "You don’t interview someone on a Saturday and put out a complete report on a Tuesday, unless the report was written before you interviewed her."
"The cover-up is worse than the crime," Giuliani added. "Although in this particular case, the crime was pretty bad, exposing national security information to countries we know can take it from us ... And for that, you shouldn’t be allowed to get off.
EXCLUSIVE: Comey memo to FBI staffers says election, timing required disclosure of renewed probe
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| Memo: FBI director says election made disclosure necessary |
In an internal memo obtained by Fox News, the beleaguered director noted that the FBI typically would not communicate with the public when reopening a case, according to a Department of Justice source. But Comey said he had to in this case because Clinton is seeking the White House in an election on Nov. 8.
“Of course we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey wrote. "I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.
“At the same time, however, given that we do not know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression,” Comey’s letter continued. "In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter, and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directy from me about it."
The bombshell revelation that newly discovered emails had prompted a new look into whether Clinton or those around her had broken the law my mishandling sensitive information rocked the race for the White House Friday.
Comey informed eight Republican lawmakers that new emails had surfaced that were relevant to the investigation, and warranted a new look.
See the Fox News 2016 battleground prediction map and make your own election projections. See Predictions Map →
Word of the server, at Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., first broke in early 2015. Clinton had used the private email server to conduct government business while serving from 2009-2013, but insisted that she handed over all work-related emails to the State Department.
The FBI investigation determined that thousands of messages that would later be marked classified by the State Department retroactively were on the server. Federal law makes it a crime for a government employee to possess classified information in an unsecure manner, and the relevant statute does not require a finding of intent.
Friday, October 28, 2016
'Make Soros happy': Inside Clinton team's mission to please billionaire VIP
Newly revealed emails posted by WikiLeaks show top aides to Hillary Clinton went out of their way to keep a certain VIP happy: Uber-liberal billionaire George Soros.
The emails, hacked from the account of Clinton Campaign Chairman and Soros ally John Podesta, disclose that Clinton was advised to do fundraisers simply to make Soros “happy.” They also indicate the 85-year-old Hungarian-born heavyweight, through his top aides, freely reached out to Podesta to make Soros’ wishes clear on issues ranging from trade to migration to the Supreme Court.
In one instance, trusted Clinton adviser Huma Abedin wrote to now-Campaign Manager Robby Mook on Oct. 7, 2014, to tell him Clinton was having dinner with Soros. Abedin said she expected Soros would eventually ask Clinton to appear at a fundraiser for America Votes, one of the many liberal organizations Soros helps fund, and Abedin wanted to know how to proceed.
“I would only do this for political reasons (ie to make Soros happy),” Mook replied.
NEW REPORTS REVEAL SOROS INFLUENCE
During her time as secretary of state, Clinton was forwarded from Soros’ aides on Jan. 23, 2011 a message he wrote specifically for her addressing “a serious situation” in Albania. Soros even included two actions that “need to be done urgently.” One of the suggestions was appointing “a mediator such as Carl Bildt, Martti Ahtisaari or Miroslav Lajcak…”
See the Fox News 2016 battleground prediction map and make your own election projections. See Predictions Map →
Just hours after Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was reported dead on Feb. 13, 2016, the president of the Soros-founded Open Society Foundations also emailed Podesta.
“Remember our discussion of Wallace Jefferson, [former] Chief Justice in Texas?” Chris Stone asked cryptically.
Podesta replied: “Yup.”
Most of the Soros-related correspondences with Podesta came via Michael Vachon, an adviser and spokesman for Soros, who frequently emailed Podesta to schedule phone calls and meetings and relay his boss’ policy positions. Many of the messages were brief or mysterious.
On Feb. 23, 2015, Vachon wrote to Podesta that he needed to tell him something “separately, important, timely but certainly not urgent.” In a message dated Jan. 13, 2009, Vachon thanked Podesta for meeting with Soros the previous day.
“He found it extremely useful,” Vachon wrote.
Other emails show a stream of Soros’ policy beliefs being passed to Podesta: An invitation to the screening of a film about climate change at Soros’ house in July 2015; a short documentary based on Soros’ essays about Ukraine in January 2015; a Soros-authored piece titled “Recapitalize the Banking System” in October 2008.
On March 7, 2016, Vachon sent Podesta a memo regarding “TPP and Malaysia’s Corruption Crisis.” The document criticized President Obama for making “visible compromises” in his quest to get a deal for the Trans Pacific Partnership completed. Podesta was ostensibly set to discuss the memo with Soros and his son, Alexander, during a dinner later that month. Six days later, Vachon got even more specific.
“In general I think George is more interested in talking about policy than the campaign per se,” Vachon wrote. “In a separate email I will send you George’s latest thinking on the migration crisis, which he is spending a lot of time on. His other big preoccupation these days is Ukraine.”
While Vachon said Soros wasn’t interested in discussing “the campaign per se” at that dinner, his involvement in the 2016 election is extensive. As of July, Soros had donated $25 million to help elect Clinton and other Democrats, Politico reported.
Judge Napolitano: What happened to the FBI? It's been corrupted by Obama and his team
When FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 that the Department of Justice would not seek the indictment of Hillary Clinton for failure to safeguard state secrets related to her email use while she was secretary of state, he both jumped the gun and set in motion a series of events that surely he did not intend. Was his hand forced by the behavior of FBI agents who wouldn’t take no for an answer? Did he let the FBI become a political tool?
Here is the back story.
The FBI began investigating the Clinton email scandal in the spring of 2015, when The New York Times revealed Clinton’s use of a private email address for her official governmental work and the fact that she did not preserve the emails on State Department servers, contrary to federal law. After an initial collection of evidence and a round of interviews, agents and senior managers gathered in the summer of 2015 to discuss how to proceed. It was obvious to all that a prima-facie case could be made for espionage, theft of government property and obstruction of justice charges. The consensus was to proceed with a formal criminal investigation.
Six months later, the senior FBI agent in charge of that investigation resigned from the case and retired from the FBI because he felt the case was going “sideways”; that’s law enforcement jargon for “nowhere by design.” John Giacalone had been the chief of the New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., field offices of the FBI and, at the time of his "sideways" comment, was the chief of the FBI National Security Branch.
The reason for the "sideways" comment must have been Giacalone’s realization that DOJ and FBI senior management had decided that the investigation would not work in tandem with a federal grand jury. That is nearly fatal to any government criminal case. In criminal cases, the FBI and the DOJ cannot issue subpoenas for testimony or for tangible things; only grand juries can.
Giacalone knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would be toothless, as it would have no subpoena power. He also knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would have a hard time persuading any federal judge to issue search warrants. A judge would perceive the need for search warrants to be not acute in such a case because to a judge, the absence of a grand jury can only mean a case is “sideways” and not a serious investigation.
As the investigation dragged on in secret and Donald Trump simultaneously began to rise in the Republican presidential primaries, it became more apparent to Giacalone’s successors that the goal of the FBI was to exonerate Clinton, not determine whether there was enough evidence to indict her. In late spring of this year, agents began interviewing the Clinton inner circle.
When Clinton herself was interviewed on July 2 -- for only four hours, during which the interviewers seemed to some in the bureau to lack aggression, passion and determination -- some FBI agents privately came to the same conclusion as their former boss: The case was going sideways.
A few determined agents were frustrated by Clinton’s professed lack of memory during her interview and her oblique reference to a recent head injury she had suffered as the probable cause of that. They sought to obtain her medical records to verify the gravity of her injury and to determine whether she had been truthful with them. They prepared the paperwork to obtain the records, only to have their request denied by Director Comey himself on July 4.
Then some agents did the unthinkable; they reached out to colleagues in the intelligence community and asked them to obtain Clinton’s medical records so they could show them to Comey. We know that the National Security Agency can access anything that is stored digitally, including medical records. These communications took place late on July 4.
When Comey learned of these efforts, he headed them off the next morning with his now infamous news conference, in which he announced that Clinton would not be indicted because the FBI had determined that her behavior, though extremely careless, was not reckless, which is the legal standard in espionage cases. He then proceeded to recount the evidence against her. He did this, no doubt, to head off the agents who had sought the Clinton medical records, whom he suspected would leak evidence against her.
Three months later -- and just weeks before Clinton will probably be elected president -- we have learned that President Barack Obama regularly communicated with Clinton via her personal email servers about matters that the White House considered classified. That means that he lied when he told CBS News that he learned of the Clinton servers when the rest of us did.
We also learned this week that Andrew McCabe, Giacalone’s successor as head of the FBI Washington field office and presently the No. 3 person in the FBI, is married to a woman to whom the Clinton money machine in Virginia funneled about $675,000 in lawful campaign funds for a failed 2015 run for the Virginia Senate. Comey apparently saw no conflict or appearance of impropriety in having the person in charge of the Clinton investigation in such an ethically challenged space.
Why did this case go sideways?
Did President Obama fear being a defense witness at Hillary Clinton’s criminal trial? Did he so fear being succeeded in office by Donald Trump that he ordered the FBI to exonerate Clinton, the rule of law be damned? Did the FBI lose its reputation for fidelity to law, bravery under stress and integrity at all times?
This is not your grandfather’s FBI -- or your father’s. It is the Obama FBI.
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