Federal judge orders release of search warrant from Clinton email case

A federal judge on Monday ordered the release of the search warrant the FBI used to reopen their probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server days before the November election.
U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled Monday morning that the public had a right to see the warrant, which he said was secretly filed with the court on Oct. 30.
“The search warrant, the application for the search warrant, the affidavit in support of the application for the search warrant, and the search warrant return will be unsealed and posted on the Court's electronic case filing system” subject to redactions, Castel said in his order.
The Justice Department may seek to block the release before a federal appeals court.
The court dispute concerns the warrant agents used to get access to emails stored on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
FBI Director James Comey jolted the presidential race on Oct. 28 when he informed Congress that agents would be digging through the cache of emails between Abedin and Clinton for any new evidence related to Clinton's handling of sensitive State Department information.
Two days before the Nov. 8 election, Comey announced the inquiry had uncovered no new evidence of wrongdoing. Some in Clinton’s inner circle have blamed Comey for her loss, while President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers charge they’re making excuses.
The court documents are now set to be unsealed at noon Tuesday, with portions blacked out to conceal the names of the agents. The judge also ordered the redaction of any information about an open investigation of Weiner's online correspondence with a teenage girl.
Agents initially seized the computer in connection with that investigation.
Weiner, a Democrat, resigned his seat in Congress after sexually explicit texts and social media posts to various women. He tried for a political comeback two years later by running for mayor of New York, but his campaign was undone when evidence emerged that he hadn't given up his sexting habit.
Federal authorities began investigating him in late September after an online news outlet, the Daily Mail, published an interview with a North Carolina girl who said she had exchanged sexually explicit messages with him over several months.
Randol Schoenberg, a Los Angeles lawyer who specializes in recovering works of art stolen by the Nazis, petitioned the court to make the search warrant and supporting documents public.
In his order, Castel said public interest in the case overrode any privacy considerations.
"Ordinarily, a person whose conduct is the subject of a criminal investigation but is not charged with a crime should not have his or her reputation sullied by the mere circumstance of an investigation," he wrote. But in this instance, he said, the fact that the FBI investigated Clinton is hardly secret. "She has little remaining privacy interest in the release of the documents identifying her as the subject of this investigation."

Stupid Liberal Cartoons

Martin Sheen makes big mistake as he pitches elector not to vote for Trump

A group of Hollywood actor-vists are leading the effort to convince electors not to vote for President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, a hastily-arranged last-ditch bid that has led to at least one embarrassing mistake.
Martin Sheen, who played fictitious President Josiah Barlett on “The West Wing,” is featured in a personalized video designed to sway a Kansas elector, Politico reported. The piece is titled “Mr. Ashley McMillan” and Sheen implores “Mr. McMillan” to follow the example of America’s Founding Fathers. He’s hopeful that McMillan will switch his vote and become one of the 37 Republican electors required to possibly deny Trump the presidency.
Just one problem with Sheen’s pitch: Ashley McMillan is not a man.
“It’s my job to represent the people of Kansas on Monday. It was Martin Sheen’s job to get my name right. He failed. I won’t,” McMillan, who plans to vote for Trump, told The Daily Caller.
Sheen is joined in the main, non-personalized Unite for America video by the likes of “Will & Grace” actress Debra Messing, “Better Call Saul” star Bob Odenkirk and musician Moby.
“I’m not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Moby says during the ad, as soft piano music plays beneath his voice.
“What is evident is that Donald Trump lacks more than the qualifications to be president,” “M.A.S.H.” actor Mike Farrell says, with Messing delivering the blow: “He lacks the necessary stability.”
Sheen says the electors have “the opportunity to go down in the books as an American hero” if they don’t vote for Trump.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Sunday dismissed the effort as “out of work actors and actresses embarrassing themselves.”
“One guy played the president on the show ‘The West Wing.’ He’s not the president going to the West Wing. That’s Donald Trump,” Conway told Fox News’ Howard Kurtz on “Media Buzz.”
Trump is in line to get 306 of the 538 electoral votes under the state-by-state distribution of electors used to choose presidents since 1789.
The Associated Press tried to reach all 538 electors and was able to interview more than 330 of them. Many reported getting tens of thousands of emails, calls and letters asking them to vote against Trump.
But the canvass found overwhelming support for the system, and the nominee, among Republican electors. The AP found only one pledged to Trump who will refuse to vote for him.

Judge Jeanine Rips Michelle Obama: 'Since When Did 'Hope' Rise and Fall With You?'

Saturday on Justice, Judge Jeanine Pirro criticized Michelle Obama's recent comments to Oprah Winfrey that, after President-elect Donald Trump's victory, "we're feeling what not having hope feels like."
"This from a woman who, in 2008 at age 44, said 'for the first time I'm proud of my country' [but] eight years later you're out of hope?" Pirro said.
Pirro said the Obamas failed to bring their promise of "hope" to Americans in several crucial situations, including the beheading of journalist James Foley and the 13 hours that Americans were stranded on a rooftop in Benghazi.
She said Trump's election is proof that Americans "know what hope is", pointing to the tens of thousands of people who have braved cold weather to attend the president-elect's "thank-you tour" stops.
"For you, 'hope' is gone," Pirro addressed Mrs. Obama, noting that as of next month, the family will no longer be able to travel abroad at-will with a full presidential entourage.
Americans rejected the Obama's vision of hope, she said, adding that Mrs. Obama will be able to see firsthand the results of eight years of her husband's leadership once she leaves the White House.

Lynch says tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton was 'regrettable'

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Sunday said she “regretted” her controversial tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton this summer while the FBI was still investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a secret server for her emails during her tenure as secretary of state.
While Lynch has never portrayed the June 27 Phoenix meeting as anything other than a cordial encounter, the lengthy tete-a-tete onboard Lynch’s plane immediately raised questions about whether she – or the Justice Department – could be impartial in the Hillary Clinton investigation. Just days later, FBI Director James Comey called Hillary Clinton’s actions “extremely careless” but declined to recommend charges.
“I wish I had seen around that corner and not had that discussion with the former president, as innocuous as it was, because it did give people concern,” Lynch said on “State of the Union.” “It did make people wonder, ‘Is it going to affect the investigation that’s going on?’ and that’s not something that was an unreasonable question for anyone to ask.”
TRUMP: LYNCH-CLINTON MEETING 'OPENED UP A PANDORA'S BOX'
Asked why Clinton sought out the meeting with Lynch, the outgoing attorney general declined to speculate.
“Well, I can’t say what President Clinton saw or thought because I wasn’t in communication with him before that,” Lynch said. “I don’t know what was in his mind.”
Lynch played off the length of the conversation – reported to be around 45 minutes – as being a by-product of Clinton’s loquaciousness. She joked with host Jake Tapper that Clinton “is a talker.”
“And our conversation went on a lot longer certainly than I had anticipated, because it was just going to be ‘Hello, how are you?’ and everyone was just going to go on about their evening,” Lynch said.
But Lynch acknowledged the perception created by the private summit was a problem. Republicans frequently brought up the meeting and President-elect Donald Trump made it a staple of his stump speech as the November presidential election approached.
“I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him because it did give people concern,” Lynch said. “And as I said, my greatest concern has always been making sure people understand the Department of Justice works in a way that’s independent and looks at everybody equally. And when you do something that gives people a reason to think differently, that’s a problem. It’s a problem for me. It was painful for me.”
Three days after the meetings, amid mounting questions, Lynch tried to take herself out of the equation, saying on July 1 that she would accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and Comey made regarding bringing charges.

Clinton advisers point fingers at Huma Abedin, inner circle for loss

Maybe she's a Russian Spy :-)

While many of Hillary Clinton’s top advisers have focused their post-presidential election fury on blaming alleged Russian interference and FBI Director James Comey for Clinton’s loss, some in the so-called “Hillaryland” orbit are looking inward, including pointing fingers at Clinton’s most-trusted aide: Huma Abedin.
“The real anger is toward Hillary’s inner circle,” a Clinton insider told Vanity Fair for a Wednesday feature on Abedin. “They reinforced all the bad habits.”
One of the most important people in that “inner circle” was Abedin, 40, who has been by Clinton’s side since she was a White House intern during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. The email trove hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta and posted on WikiLeaks shows Abedin, the estranged wife of disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner, as an important resource for the campaign. The vice chair of the Clinton campaign, Abedin offered guidance on Clinton’s probable thoughts regarding upcoming events, meetings and calls before the requests ever made it to the Democratic presidential candidate. While her fingerprints don’t often appear on policy issues, she weighed in with authority on most other matters.
ABEDIN CLAIMS SHE NEVER RECEIVED FBI WARRANT
Clinton was known to keep an extremely small and tight-knit group around her, and, indeed, during the 2016 primary and presidential campaign, the core group – including Campaign Manager Robbie Mook, Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, adviser Cheryl Mills, Podesta and Abedin – never changed.
One Clinton insider, however, said the closeness of that group also created problems, prompting dismissive answers when new ideas that originated outside the circle were suggested, Vanity Fair reported.
“Where in most presidential campaigns the circle grows broader and broader, hers grew smaller and smaller,” a source told Vanity Fair.
A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign disputed that notion to Vanity Fair and said the campaign’s plane seated up to three times as many people during the run-up to the November vote. Abedin declined to be interviewed for the feature.
Abedin’s proximity to Clinton – and in turn the limelight – also created another issue, according to some observers.
“She was enjoying the red carpet and enjoying the photo spreads much too much in my opinion,” one Clinton insider told Vanity Fair. “She enjoyed being a celebrity too much.”
Though Abedin’s next move seems to be in limbo now that Clinton’s political career appears to be over, she was recently spotted at Clinton’s “Thank You” holiday party for top-tier donors on Thursday and then at an after party with fellow attendees Mick Jagger and Reese Witherspoon, The New York Post reported.
“Maybe I’m just p----- off, but I really don’t give a s--- about what happens to Huma to be honest with you,” one close adviser to Clinton told Vanity Fair.

A Couple of Train Cartoons

Gutfeld: Celebrity has-beens' Trump hysteria backfires / What does Canada think about a President Trump? (Not that we care)

Gutfeld

Watters