White House puts thumb on scales of Justice: Hillary “doesn’t seem to be headed” to indictment
How does the White House know?
The political interference by the White House in the investigation of Hillary Clinton just took a big step up.
Previously, in a 60 Minutes interview in October 2015, Obama pretty much signaled Justice to lay off Hillary (emphasis added):
Steve Kroft: Did you know about Hillary Clinton’s use of private email server–
President Barack Obama: No.
Steve Kroft: –while she was Secretary of State?
President Barack Obama: No.
Steve Kroft: Do you think it posed a national security problem?
President Barack Obama: I don’t think it posed a national security problem. I think that it was a mistake that she has acknowledged and– you know, as a general proposition, when we’re in these offices, we have to be more sensitive and stay as far away from the line as possible when it comes to how we handle information, how we handle our own personal data. And, you know, she made a mistake. She has acknowledged it. I do think that the way it’s been ginned-up is in part because of– in part– because of politics. And I think she’d be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly. But–
* * *
Steve Kroft: This administration has prosecuted people for having classified material on their private computers.
President Barack Obama: Well, I– there’s no doubt that there had been breaches, and these are all a matter of degree. We don’t get an impression that here there was purposely efforts– on– in– to hide something or to squirrel away information. But again, I’m gonna leave it to–
Steve Kroft: If she had come to you.
President Barack Obama: I’m going to leave it to Hillary when she has an interview with you to address all these questions.
The White House later tried to walk back Obama’s expression of his view on whether Hillary had a national security problem as even that commentary could be seen as improper interference.
Today the White House stepped it up a significant notch, as reported by The Washington Examiner:
The president’s top spokesman said he sees no reason for Democrats to find an alternative presidential candidate in case Hillary Clinton is indicted over her mishandling of classified material on her private email server.
“That’s not something I’m worried about,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Friday.
Earnest also tried to counter a steady stream of largely GOP predictions that Hillary Clinton will face a Justice Department indictment for the email scandal.
“That will be a decision that will be made by the Department of Justice,” he said. “Some officials have said she is not the target of the investigation and it does not seem to be the direction in which it is trending.”
Pressed again on whether he believed Clinton could get indicted, Earnest said firmly: “It doesn’t seem to be headed in that direction.”
The White House needs to shut its collective mouth and stop signaling to the supposedly independent investigators what the outcome should be.
That’s particularly true given the escalating revelations about the highly sensitive nature of material found in Hillary’s emails:
The intelligence community has now deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.
The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton’s personal server.
#Breaking: The @StateDept announces that it will not release 22 emails from @HillaryClinton because they contain "top secret" information
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 29, 2016
It’s particularly improper for the White House to make such comments since Obama signaled the other day that he’s quite fond of Hillary as his successor.
Unless The White House already knows what the result will be.
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The utterly corrupt Obama Administration.
A wise man once said (forgive me if I don’t quote 100% accurately, I was still a toddler) that “the American people have a right to know if their president is a crook.”
Well, he’s a crook.
And she is too.
In this case, I blame the room full of supposedly top-notch experienced reporters who would not ask the simple and obvious question many of us began asking with the 60 Minutes interview, “How could the White House know without improper contact and interfering with investigators?”
Obama’s corruption is one this; the media’s quite another – and even more serious, since their enabling promotes corruption in the officials.
OMG! Consider the source of this comment! It is none other than the liar in chief, obama. This is such a dishonest man that we still to this day do not know if or when he graduated from college or if anyone knew he was there or why. We have never had such disloyal people as obama and his cabinet members in our history.
That is not true. We definitely know he graduated from Columbia and from Harvard, and plenty of people remember him, especially from Harvard.
I believe Rudy was speaking of Columbia and Occidental, not Harvard. People who claim to know Obama at Columbia are rather thin on the ground, even in his department of PolySci.
1. Harvard is college
2. There are people who remember him from Columbia. He wasn’t very notable then, and he probably didn’t spend much time in class, so you wouldn’t expect a lot of people to remember him; but a roommate went public years ago. (I don’t think anyone has ever claimed he was a good or diligent student at Columbia, just that he attended and graduated. I expect he spent most of his time on non-academic activities, if you know what I mean.)
Was he admitted as a foreign student? To Columbia.
Does Columbia even have a category for “foreign students”? In any case, there is absolutely no foundation at all for the rumors that 0bama got into anywhere “as a foreign student” whatever that means. It’s pure bull***t.
Hill Harper, now in the CBS TV show “Limitless”, claims to have been Obama’s room mate, but doesn’t say much beyond that.
What a fucking joke.
Whether it was damaging or not is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.
IT WAS CLASSIFIED.
Petraeus was convicted for just allowing his biographer/mistress to take home a drive with classified information. She even had a proper security clearance.
Nobody claimed for ONE SECOND that the information was compromised or damaging. It never touched an unclassified network.
Hillary PUT CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ON AN UNCLASSIFIED SERVER.
The default assumption in the intelligence community is that EVERYTHING she had in her emails was read by the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, and anybody else that was interested.
She should be in fucking prison.
If Hillary were a Republican she WOULD be in prison. I don’t think anyone doubts that. Change her name to ‘JANE DOE’ and change her party affiliation to ‘PUB’ and even Milhouse would put her in prison.
Better yet, imagine if her name were “Sarah Palin”.
To paraphrase that old adage about paranoia …
just because someone (VRWC) is trying to smear you, doesn’t mean you didn’t do what they allege.
And oh, by the way,
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CLINTON_EMAILS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-01-29-14-48-31
22 Top Secret SAP emails.
Literally ANYBODY ELSE would already been in prison over this shit. There is absolutely zero question that she is guilty.
Frankly at this point Obama should be indicted for obstruction of justice.
I wish I could “thumbs up” this comment 1000 times!
Anyone else would already be in jail.
This is a HUGE miscarriage of justice, and a slap in the face to every civil servant and every contractor who has diligently handled classified material safely and within the law.
It’s simple: Hillary thinks she’s better than you and me and can just commit criminal acts with impunity.
She is definitely not better, but she CAN commit crimes with impunity. She is a Democrat. The only thing that would cause her to face the law the rest of us deal with is if she crosses the wrong person.
It is the American Way now, and something to remember if you ever get jury duty.
“…something to remember if you ever get jury duty.”
Well said.
As a question to the legal/lawyerly types that inhabit this site:
Are the White House and the Justice Department supposed to, by law, stay away from each other? Obviously as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the country, the President cannot be seen directing the Justice Department to prosecute or investigate a particular individual or entity. It seems to me that as the chief enforcer of the law, the president picks an Attorney General who then does the investigating and prosecuting and that is where it stops.
Maybe I’m being naïve but isn’t that, at least, the way it used to be?
I hear so many talking-heads say that if Obama doesn’t want Hillary prosecuted then that’s it. There doesn’t seem to be much, if any, outrage that the president is deciding who will and who will not be prosecuted. Didn’t Bush II’s AG threaten to quit if the WH ignored some determination they provided that something was illegal and they couldn’t do it?
Obviously this is why Lois Lerner was not prosecuted for her blatant political partisanship at the IRS, because Obama did not want her to be.
What I want to see is the Rule of Law enforced on even the highest of the high. Take this to a Grand Jury, let them indict, let the justice department prosecute, let Hillary and her lawyers defend. In the end, let a jury decide. If she’s found guilty, suffer the same consequences as anyone else would. If she’s found not-guilty then she’s off to Chappaqua.
Let the law apply equally to everyone.
“Maybe I’m being naïve but isn’t that, at least, the way it used to be?”
Yes, and to a remarkable degree. NOT a perfect degree, but one that was quite worthy of pride by the American people, both in time and space. Meaning, you couldn’t find a more fine example of civic ‘justice’ contemporaneous with us anywhere on our planet at any point in time, and you couldn’t find one in history, either.
Look up the Nixon era for some really wonderful examples of people doing the right thing, even when it cost them…or could have cost them…everything they had.
“White House puts thumb on scales of Justice”
Yahbut, when has Pres. ScamWOW NOT put his thumb, fist, whole butt on the scales of justice?
From his first days in the Oval Office, he’s been corrupting the legal system.
Every. Day.
In the back of my mind, I can hear the crowds in the bleachers shouting at Obama, like a bad (or corrupt) umpire:
“AAASSssHOLe…AAASSssHOLe…”
I think it does, and that it knows she will be indicted, and it’s trying to talk it down so the impact will be greater when it happens. The 0bama machine has already begun to float the idea of Michelle as a possible replacement candidate.
Imagine Trump debating Mooch.
Just imagine.
Unless Michelle or Biden are nominated at the convention I believe it is too late for either of them to get into the primary race.
Michelle will simply replace Clinton, and take over her delegates and her place on the ballot.
Michelle cannot replace on the ballot of enough states. The deadlines have passed (on Feb 1, anyway) for her to even be on the ballot.
Since when have laws and other formalities stopped that corrupt bunch?
She doesn’t need her own line on the ballot. She’ll just take Clinton’s place. There’s no law that can prevent that.
Bless yer heart, no wonder you believe so many things that are just plain wrong.
Ms. Obama has already made her disdain of Washington crystal-clear to everyone who lives there. There’s not one chance in the world that she would want to be either President or Vice-President just on that basis. Not happening.
I get paranoid about a lot of things but not that one…
What she’s made clear is that she loves the good life she’s been living for the past 7 years. Why would she want to give that up?
Put down the bong and back away, no one needs to get hurt.
I gave you the link where they floated the idea.
Not indicted. That is something that the DoJ does. And, thanks to the increased politicization of the Obama DoJ, it is not clear yet what they will do.
You need to look at this as two steps in this case. The first is the current FBI investigation potentially resulting in a criminal referral or recommendation for prosecution. We have some reason to believe that the FBI may be honest here (thanks in part to the FBI director having a 10 year term, and the current Director being 3 years into it, and having worked for GW Bush), which means that with the information that we have right now, such a criminal referral is probably more likely than not. But, then it goes to the highly politicized DoJ, which must try the case, and that decision is the one that is highly politicized. Assuming an FBI criminal referral, what would AG Lynch do? The flippant answer is that she would do exactly what her boss demanded that she do. But, what is that? Are they willing to sacrifice this part of his legacy to protect Hillary, who would presumably protect the rest of it if she were to be elected?
A note though – apparently, the usual way that this works is that the FBI works closely with the DoJ, with the FBI using grand juries run by (Asst) US Attys from the DoJ. Not quite sure how they got to where they are now, with the two working separately and in sequence. My suspicion is that the DoJ told the FBI that they wouldn’t provide the manpower for grand juries, or something to that effect, maybe trying to make things hard for the FBI, or at least making the whole process a bit more political.
3 minutes ago on our local front page:
“Government finds ‘top secret’ info in Clinton e-mails”
“The Obama administration is confirming for the first time that Hillary Clinton’s unsecured home server contained some closely guarded secrets.”
Well, this is cute:
“Update: State Dept Withholding 18 Emails Between Obama And Hillary…”
http://www.weaselzippers.us/253771-breaking-obama-administration-confirms-hillary-clintons-server-contained-top-secret-information/
And the GOPe will just sit back with its collective thumb up its butt and pretend there’s nothing to be done about it.
Wouldn’t be surprised if she skates free.
Fast and Furious – no one fired, no one put on trial. Two dead Federal agents and hundreds or thousands of Mexicans dead.
EPA and the two western rivers destroyed. No one fired, no on put on trial, no one fined.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/27/citizens-united-demands-why-clinton-donor-wasnt-jailed-after-numerous-deaths/
A federal grand jury named Hansjorg Wyss, former CEO of Synthes, Inc., as “Person No. 7” in a 2009 indictment that stated he directed subordinates in executive management meetings to conduct illegal human drug trials using an untested but potentially lucrative medical compound for spines.
—-
Rather than go to trial, DOJ attorneys arranged a settlement in which four top Synthes executives went to prison for terms of varying lengths, while the company agreed to pay a $22 million fine. Wyss walked away free.
Wyss, whose net worth has been estimated at $6.1 billion, was a major donor to the Democratic Party at the time of the settlement. He contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to liberal activist groups, including $5 million to the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP).
Notice the pattern?
Dem Jon Corzine pushes the bill to make CEOs accountable, then as CEO his firm blows away $1 Billion yet he makes a few well-placed donations and walks the streets a free man.
Probably a pardon laying around, just waiting for a signature.
This is not what keeps me up at night.
25% +/- of the country wants her as POTUS.
25% +/- wants Sanders.
Right now both of those groups have the majority voice in the country and will probably win the popular vote next election.
That keeps me up at night.
Dan Abrams says “No, Hillary Did Not Commit A Crime. . .At Least Based On What We Know Today”
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/no-hillary-did-not-commit-a-crime-at-least-based-on-what-we-know-today/
Um, is this someone I should have heard of? His “analysis” looks to me like a mixture of BS and wishful thinking.
Scooter Libby unavailable for comment
Libby was convicted of lying to an FBI officer, not of any substantive crime.
I read the Abrams article. It’s laughable.
“…It seems the only other major public official to go to those sorts of lengths was Jeb Bush who, as Florida governor, used a private server for both his personal account and the accounts of some of his staffers from 1999 to 2007. But then again, he also used a government account and wasn’t Secretary of State dealing with matters of national security (assuming brother George wasn’t sending any over).”
Why, it seems Dan Abrams doesn’t know that Florida officials no matter how exalted aren’t federal officials. And thus subject to entirely different set of laws, not federal laws such as the FOI Act. It seems an honest broker would mention that fact.
He makes a great deal about intent, as in you have to prove someone intended to harm the US to convict them of the Espionage act. That it would warp the intent of the law to convict someone of violating the Espionage Act without proving they intended to harm the US.
In what universe? That’s not the way things work on this planet, in this country, if you have a clearance. People regularly get convicted of violating the Espionage Act with no one ever proving they intended to harm the US. But by recklessly handling the classified material they jeopardized the security of the United States.
I knew a sailor who was court martialed for mishandling classified material inside a SCIF. That’s a Sensitive Compartmented Information facility, compartments being the same thing as special access programs. There were various areas of the SCIF where people who were read into different compartments could access the information they needed, but if they weren’t read in they couldn’t go into other areas. Naturally, documents couldn’t leave their designated areas.
Of course security doors abounded.
A sailor removed a TS/SCI document from an authorized storage area and brought it into another area of the SCIF where it was not supposed to be. He went to court martial for that, despite the fact it never left the SCIF and everyone had TS/SCI clearances. What they didn’t have, what they weren’t all authorized, was access to the information on that particular document.
No one ever claimed he intended to harm the United States. No matter what Dan Abrams would have you believe, that isn’t an element of the crime.
“First, none of the information she possessed and/or presumably “removes” had officially been declared “classified” at that time. That matters… ”
A defense mouthpiece like Abrams would like you to think that matters. Here’s why it doesn’t. On 29 December 2009 Obama issued two E.O.s under the same number, 13526. One concerned Classified National Defense Information. The other one, the relevant one, concerned Original Classification Authority. Guess what? Hillary Clinton was designated by job title as an Original Classifying Authority (OCA). In other words, it was her responsibility to recognize classified information even if it wasn’t marked to determine the proper classification level of that information, and what caveats to place on it in order to protect it.
Yes, she delegated the actual day to day drudgery of performing the work, like embassy security, to her underlings. And of course no one expects an agency head or cabinet-level secretary of an executive branch department to actually waste their time doing this. But if you’re designated an OCA, you’re supposed to at least be trained to do the job. If Hillary Clinton couldn’t be bothered to learn how to perform one of the responsibilities of her job per presidential E.O. that’s her own damned fault. That’s an aggravating factor, not a mitigating factor.
Other Secretaries of State didn’t find it too much of a bother. In fact, thanks to Hillary Clinton’s lawlessness and the resultant FOIA requests we know that Colin Powell acted as his own OCA in his personal correspondence with President Bush. He didn’t to send it to the personnel he had delegated the day to day job for review. Hillary Clinton, apparently, would have been incompetent to act as an OCA on her own behalf.
Oh, speaking of strict liability, Abrams cites 18 USC 793 (f). He doesn’t seem to notice part 2 of that paragraph.
“…or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Abrams is just blowing smoke, as are all the liberal mouthpieces out there. Again, this is a matter of strict liability. If you receive classified information (and no, it doesn’t matter if it’s marked classified and never has) over an unclassified system you have an absolute legal responsibility to report the breach.
You do not have the option of sitting and staring at the email on your screen and tell yourself, as Abrams would have you believe, “Since I intend no harm to the security of the United States and without such intent there is no crime I don’t need to say a word to anyone about this email.”
If you don’t want the responsibilities that come with a TS/SCI clearance, don’t apply for one, and certainly don’t sign your life away when you’ve survived your background check and you receive the clearance.
Based upon his analysis I’m sure Dan Abrams never had a clearance.
Thank you for the compelling rebuttal to Abrams.
“White House puts thumb on scales of Justice: Hillary ‘doesn’t seem to be headed’ to indictment
How does the White House know?”
Because Hillary Clinton has bribed Obama with an offer to make him a Supreme Court Justice, that’s how the WH knows this isn’t headed toward an indictment.
And, what do the Clintons really have on 0bama?
The damning truth about his birth?
What would they spill if Hill were indicted?
Scorched earth?
Redefining ‘checks and balances’ – one scumbag v. another.
I don’t know if it is dirt on Obama, or something else. At this point in his term of office, I suspect that Obama is mostly concerned with his legacy. He knows that most anything he does judicially won’t be as noxious as what Bill Clinton did on the way out of office, with the blatant trading of pardons for money and political favors. And, yet, Bill Clinton’s wife (who benefited from those pardons) still is the favorite for the Dem nomination. And, Obama never showed much shame anyway. So, I don’t think that the appearance of impropriety is that important to Obama. Rather, the part of the legacy that is probably most important revolves around the programs he has put in place, and for that, he needs a Democrat (or socialist) as a successor. Right now, much of it is a house of cards, ready to collapse with a Republican in the White House. ObamaCare would quickly collapse without mandate waivers for businesses, and illegal diversion of funds in the risk corridors, which help subsidize insurance companies offering conforming policies. Anything that Obama did with an Executive Order, etc., can be undone just as easily. The DoEd Dear Comrade letter will be out the door, as well as the newly announced requirements to provide the Labor Dept. demographic salary information. The list goes on. So, I think that the White House’s calculations here will revolve, at least to some extent, around whether dumping Hillary will improve, or degrade, Obama’s chances to be followed in office by a Democrat willing to support his actions and his legacy.
This is just the WH putting out a trial balloon on what the reaction to not indicting Clinton would be, hence the weasel words “doesn’t seem to be”, so they can still indict if the political costs of not indicting is too great. Democrat congressional and other leaders are monitoring reaction among their constituency and reporting it up, i.e., ‘will it hurt us in November if we don’t indict?’
What is the likelihood that Comey and others at FBI and DOJ will resign in protest if there is political interference in this legal process? Could we have another Saturday Night Massacre?
Now it can be told! I barely dodged a similar bullet that well and truly should hit Clinton/Abedin. But under entirely different, indeed innocent circumstances.
I’m going to leave out a great deal of detail because, unlike the Clinton Spy Ring/Crime Family I think it’s important to keep my word as well as any secrets I might be entrusted with.
Desert Storm had just ended in the early ’90s and “joint” was the mania of the day. I was serving at a shore based naval intel command supporting a numbered fleet. The powers that be decided we were going to become a joint command. So the responsible unified commander advised us he was sending an inspection team. We had about a month to prepare.
Among our other functions we had a research and analysis section, with an attendant classified library. For 30 years the command had put its least capable performers, those who it couldn’t get rid of as disciplinary problems, to work in the library. So the library was an unholy mess and there was a lot of classified material that it just couldn’t account for. What we had on hand just didn’t match the inventory list.
I was my skipper’s second choice to un**** the library. His first choice knew exactly what kind of minefield he was getting thrown into, was close to his transfer date, so he called the detailer and said, “Get me the h3ll out of here.” He was gone before the inspectors arrived. I on the other hand was only halfway through my tour so when the skipper put me in charge of the library I was stuck with the job.
I actually did pretty well, but pretty well isn’t good enough when you’re dealing with a library full of hard-copy TS/SCI publications. I had located most of the material and believe you me I destroyed just as much of the material I could justify, following proper destruction procedures of course, to make sure the bastards never got away again. But when the inspectors showed up I was still short two TS/SCI publications. They had arrived mid-week. They said they’d delay inspecting the library until the following week. But I had better find those two pubs by Monday.
None of this squid ink the Clinton Spy Ring/Crime Family and its defenders is spewing would have mattered. All that mattered was I was at that time responsible for accounting for every publication in that library. If I couldn’t account for even one of those two pubs by the deadline I would have at the very least lost my clearance, and therefore my career. I was under the distinct impression they would have prosecuted me, as was my CO. Who, oh by the way, would have gone down with me because as the CO he was responsible for everything in his command. He had signed for it and accepted responsibility as part of the change of command, so in a way when he put me in charge of fixing the library it was a vote of confidence. Thanks, skipper!
As they say in the military, taking more than your fair share of hills leads to having more than your fair share of hills to take.
I suppose his confidence was well placed as I found both documents before my time was up and we passed the inspection.
You might say, well, that’s the Navy. But the rules for handling classified material are the same no matter if you are a civilian. And losing defense information is a very, very serious matter. I would have gotten no sympathy from NCIS, or the FBI should they have gotten involved as they sometimes do, if I had merely just come up short.
So, what do you think the odds are of a mass revolt not just in the FBI and DoJ but in the wider IC if Clinton and her crew walk? We in the IC know exactly how we would have been treated for unintentionally committing .00001% of the violations they knowingly and/or recklessly committed. And law enforcement that investigate these breaches know what they would have had to have done in our cases as well.
Obama won’t let the DOJ to indict Hillary because he wanted the emails to be hacked by China and Russia. He wants to destroy our country and Hillary’s un-secure server fills his objective.
I can just hear it coming … PARDON ME