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The FBI Didn’t Persecute Hillary. It Protected Her. (Eli Lake @Tablet).
The gist is in the title, a longer gist is:
I urge you to read the article itself, as it's about details and evidence for the claim above. It did also finally clue me in about why the secret services might be supporting the left. Before Trump was elected they were:
[EDIT: _I wrongly thought my original referred to the FBI. That confused reading did in fact solve the puzzle that I had been wondering about, but is nonethless confused. I should have quoted: _]
This is very plausible. I hail from a longstanding 3rd wold democracy, and this is pretty typical behaviour. None of the elections are fair because the authorities tip them in favour of whichever side looks more likely to win. Usually this is the government of the day, but not always. In Australia, Rupert Murdoch behaved this way too with his media coverage.
Once Trump was elected, you would expect the FBI to quietly switch sides. But they might have accidentally burned their bridges. Or you might blame Trump for being too volatile and sour-minded to be worth sucking up to.
The other angle is topical: is prosecuting Trump and not Clinton a double standard? There's an argument (ping @ymeskhout) that the difference is that Trump has so brazzenly admitted guilt. Well if there's videotape Clinton also bragging about how her sever was illegal but she's above the law, then we are less likely to know about it because she really is above the law.
If the Tablet article is accurate, this casts light on this and every other putative distinction between the Trump and Hillary cases. Whatever distinction there is, it has (at least if the article is accurate) been brought out under circumstances where investigating authorities have bent over backwards to find ways to protect Hillary.
So what? That might sound flippant but it's truly not. What is the implication or application to politics here? What are we supposed to do with this information/what is the logical call to action? I think that's almost as important as discussing the actual contents.
Example. A lot might read your post and linked article, and let's say for the sake of argument it's all true. Some might say, "well this means Trump shouldn't be charged for the crimes he's currently accused of." Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Because at the end of the day, intent does matter. While Hillary is certainly guilty of thinking she's above the law, used to be coddled by the media, and having her wishes fulfilled by government bureaucrats, and being dishonest on top, she didn't intend to expose confidential or classified information and most of the email saga came down to a mixture of negligence and pride. Contrast Trump in the most recent classified docs saga. It's NOT an issue of over-classification (though it does exist). It's NOT a case of negligence, as he was given a number of chances to cooperate. It was WILLFUL retention of government secrets. It's not like he couldn't access these secrets -- I'm almost certain former presidents are given access to these materials if they are writing their memoirs, for example. It was the pride of "owning" them, though they manifestly weren't his. It doesn't matter how the investigation started, only how it ends.
Vague gestures at other would-be conspiracies sound much like the Steele Dossier inspired ones. Hunter Biden has gone through at least one GOP led congressional investigation. So far, not a whole lot to show.
No, she intended to keep it very secret indeed, so secret not even the government was allowed to see it, which is why she wiped it "with a cloth". It also seems ironic to see an argument that the foolish pride driven imbecile is Hillary Clinton and the nefarious master manipulator is Donald Trump.
I don't think you read my comment closely enough. I claimed both of them were due to shortsighted pride but one of them was a lesser, "omission" type deal and the other is a much more brazen "commission" type, which I do think should be treated differently. I think most people agree the intent of the server was to avoid embarrassing FOIA type revelations rather than a deliberate and insecure discussion of top secret stuff.
This framing would make sense if you were going harder on Clinton than Trump.
Storing documents in a shower that you want is an omission. Sending documents over an unsecured internet line and then deleting them while you know an investigation is happening is commission. Somehow I don't think the FBI would have gone easy on Trump if when they conducted the raid all they found was a burning pile of papers and some cans of petrol in the toilet.
See my other responses in this thread -- deletions did not happen by Clinton or on her orders and evidence about the process that was investigated by the FBI found nothing strange or odd about the process of marking private emails nor the actual deletion by a panicked subordinate. Sure the deletion sounds nefarious but this turned out not to be the case. You are mischaracterizing this deletion entirely and I encourage you to re-check your sources about it, as we now know much more than we did initially. Her crime was being told "your setup is insecure" and her going "well no I like it the way it is and don't want to break things" like an old tech-illiterate person in a position of power frequently does. That's akin to omission because the email server was one she had been using for eight-ish years as a senator and didn't want to change. It's not like she made a big deal about setting it up that way, just that no one relevant knew about it or if they knew, they were a junior person who didn't raise a stink about it.
Trump's timeline is different. He's literally pestered both formally and informally to give stuff back, doesn't give back the majority of it, and then is on record as taking action to hide or move other stuff. The search warrant was an unusual step, I agree -- one that proved to be wholly valid as they found classified stuff in new unexpected locations. There are elements of obstruction and admission of guilt and of lying to the government. It was a crime of omission initially, as there were admittedly a LOT of documents and I'm sure a lot WERE personal, but as soon as the official requests are coming in Trump has a duty and legal obligation to do his due diligence and return stuff. But what, at that juncture, was his response? Not just ignoring the requests, but deliberately doing the opposite. Right at that moment, it becomes a crime of commission.
You actually think this is true? Or is it what the FBI wanted to conclude so it structured its investigation to not probe that question too much?
I am not mischaracterizing what happened. I got all the information from the IG report that is one of the most pro-FBI sources.
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I read your comment fine. I may have misunderstood your point, probably because you claimed Clinton was so much lesser that nobody should give a shit and it has zero relevance to politics(!) and Trump was NOT negligence, NOT over-classification, but WILLFUL retention of government secrets. But I think your goal was to defend Clinton by bringing Trump into it based on an argument nobody here had made, which this follow up only solidifies. What exactly do you think were the embarrassing foia type revelations that "most people agree" she wiped the server to avoid, and how specifically do they differ from a deliberate and insecure discussion of top secret stuff?
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