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FBI Director James Comey Sacked
The Washington Post reports that:
FBI Director James B. Comey has been dismissed by the president [...] a startling move that officials said stemmed from a conclusion by Justice Department officials that he had mishandled the probe of Hillary Clinton's emails.
Previously:
Clinton Told FBI She Relied on Others' Judgment on Classified Material
FBI Recommends No Prosecution for Clinton
F.B.I. Director James Comey Is Fired by Trump
President Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey:
President Trump has fired the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, over his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, the White House said Tuesday.
[...] Under the F.B.I.'s normal rules of succession, Mr. Comey's deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, a career F.B.I. officer, becomes acting director. The White House said the search for a new director will begin immediately.
I never liked Comey (see this cluster of stories), but I doubt there will ever be an FBI Director I like.
Related:
We're Stuck With Comey
Earlier in the day...
FBI Director Comey Misstated Huma Abedin Evidence at Last Week's Hearing
ProPublica reports that most of FBI Director James Comey's testimony to Congress last Wednesday related to Huma Abedin's mishandling of classified emails was inaccurate, and that FBI officials are privately acknowledging the mistake(s) but are still considering their next move:
FBI director James Comey generated national headlines last week with his dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining his "incredibly painful" decision to go public about the Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop.
Perhaps Comey's most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — Weiner's wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made "a regular practice" of forwarding "hundreds and thousands" of Clinton messages to her husband, "some of which contain classified information." Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss. (Weiner's laptop was seized after he came under criminal investigation for sex crimes, following a media report about his online relationship with a teenager.)
The New York Post plastered its story on the front page with a photo of an underwear-clad Weiner and the headline: "HARD COPY: Huma sent Weiner classified Hillary emails to print out." The Daily News went with a similar front-page screamer: "HUMA ERROR: Sent classified emails to sext maniac Weiner."
The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it. FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found. On Monday, the FBI was said to be preparing to correct the record by sending a letter to Congress later this week. But that plan now appears on hold, with the bureau undecided about what to do.
[...] According to two sources familiar with the matter — including one in law enforcement — Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing — not the "hundreds and thousands" cited by Comey. It does not appear Abedin made "a regular practice" of doing so. Other officials said it was likely that most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry.
Also at Washington Post (alternate analysis), The Hill, The New York Post, and USA Today.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:19AM (13 children)
I signed the exact same agreement when I received my security clearance.
The key fact you are ignoring is intent. You can not be held criminally liable if you do not know the information is classified. During my stint working on classified projects I witnessed two cases of people unwittingly distributing classified information. They were not criminally prosecuted. They weren't fired. They weren't even demoted. They had an entry made in their permanent record. And that was it. Clinton was treated no differently than my two co-workers. Well, she was treated different because they didn't have the FBI digging through their lives.
Between you and me, you are the only one who has been brainwashed by bullshit propaganda.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:38AM (2 children)
So when HRC was writing emails about State topics, she was too much of a moron to know she was writing classified info? Good thing she lost, we don't need people THAT stupid in government.
Secondly, intent is not an element. Distribution is the element. Intent is only brought up in the context of HRC, who is totally above all laws being the queen of all goodness and light.
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/05/washington-has-been-obsessed-with-punishing-secrecy-violations-until-hillary-clinton/ [theintercept.com]
Thirdly, here's an email that WAS marked classified: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/06/11/despite-clinton-claims-2012-email-had-classified-marking.html [foxnews.com]
Finally, an email server doesn't just appear magically - she intended to set it up and divert work product belonging the US and the American people. They aren't "her" emails -- she intercepted them, stole them, and destroyed them. Thankfully, her paranoid Nixonian subterfuge bit her ass hard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:55AM
So when HRC was writing emails about State topics, she was too much of a moron to know she was writing classified info?
No, she didn't write it. It was sent to her from civilians. Of course there was no investigation into who gave the information to them.
Secondly, intent is not an element.
The intercept's reporting is misleading. The Kristian Saucier was not prosecuted for mishandling, he was prosecuted for lying and trying to cover up the mistake. Nishimura absolutely had intent, he knew the documents were classified when he copied them off the classified network.
As I said before, I personally know two people who inadvertently distributed classified information. Intent is absolutely, 100%, a requirement for criminal prosecution. And, with millions of people with clearances, it is a frequent occurrence. People fuck up. Nobody wants to fuck up. But shit happens. If everybody who fucked up was prosecuted there would be thousands of examples for the intercept to cite. Instead they could only find two that were only apples to oranges.
Thirdly, here's an email that WAS marked classified:
As I said originally, the marking was in error. The fact that fox links to a copy of the messages is proof that it the message was not classified, the government could never have released it unless it was not classified.
You are way out of depth here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:49PM
Having worked with classified material for over thirty years it is obvious you haven't the slightest idea how the classification system works.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday May 10 2017, @05:19AM (9 children)
Nope. Because intent is so hard to prove, it is explicitly not an element of any of the crimes under discussion. All that matters is that the classified information in her care was not properly handled. Screw up and leave the wrong filing cabinet unlocked? Even if it is in a secured location with armed soldiers marching around the building? You can still get boned. Feelz and intentions have nothing to do with national security, you either DO or DO NOT, there is no try, no "I didn't mean for Ivan to get that folder while I was boning that hot babe... who now that I think of it was probably a plant working for Ivan... oh crap." If nothing else it would be all too easy for a traitor to 'accidentally' leave a folder in the wrong place and claim 'oopsie' if caught.
And HRC can't claim setting up an entire mail system, complete with (sometimes functioning) malware and spam scanning and a backup regimen was a careless mistake. The entire thing was outside the government firewall, never certified by the government IT people charged with ensuring a system is properly setup to handle classified information, the outside vendors she used were Party loyal but had no clearance to process classified information. She can't claim she didn't know she was violating the laws on retention of official government records when she ordered it wiped. She lived and worked in and around the government at the highest levels for decades, she had underwent mandatory training and signed off on forms swearing she had received the instruction, had read the regs and that she knew them and would obey. She lied.
We will probably never know how many people died as a result of essentially all high level State Dept traffic being open on a Goddamned Microsoft Exchange Server for her entire tenure. We can guess at some of the crimes covered up but may never prove them. But we do not have to, we have her open confession to possessing classified information on a system that she knew, or should have known and it makes no legal difference, was not certified to process it, we know from her own mouth she ordered it wiped in the full knowledge it contained the only known (to her) copy of much of her work product while Sec State, and that is a crime.
Lock. Her. Up! Lock. Her. Up!
And Lynch knew all of these things and after his investigation so did Comey when he did that bizarre press conference where he announced most of the facts above and then declared the matter closed. If we can't lock him up he is at least fired in disgrace. That probably isn't enough to discourage the next crooked Democrat though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @05:32AM (8 children)
Nope. Because intent is so hard to prove, it is explicitly not an element of any of the crimes under discussion.
Hhhm. Do you intend to lie your ass off?
Or is it just wishful thinking based on ignorance?
Intent is the key, deciding factor.
Comey literally said that the reason there were no charges is that "there was no criminal intent." [dailycaller.com]
Furthermore, he wasn't just making up out of the blue. Literally everybody with experience in the law wrt to mishandling of classified documents is in agreement.
https://warontherocks.com/2016/07/why-intent-not-gross-negligence-is-the-standard-in-clinton-case/ [warontherocks.com]
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/11/01/clinton-mails-and-test-intent/PREmFjWAqwtl4amw2nZNvJ/story.html [bostonglobe.com]
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2016/08/25/gowdy-the-fbi-didnt-ask-hillary-clinton-about-her-intent-during-email-interview-n2209977 [townhall.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/federal-prosecutors-in-virginia-assisting-in-clinton-email-probe/2016/05/05/f0277faa-12f0-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.politico.com/blogs/james-comey-testimony/2016/07/james-comey-clinton-criminal-intent-225235 [politico.com]
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-clinton-emails-legal-20150908-story.html [latimes.com]
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday May 10 2017, @05:51AM (7 children)
Yea, you can link to an unlimited number of MSM stories from the election trying to excuse Hillary since they all knew it was too late to replace her. The actual text of the U.S. Code says otherwise. But don't believe me, here is the first link to a left site I found, since you wouldn't believe it from anywhere else.....
Daily Kos: Hillary Clinton's Felony [dailykos.com]
And they are going light on her, there is far more. You probably had to skip past several similar stories while collecting those links in fact, just setting the record straight for anyone else who is curious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:30AM (6 children)
Your citation is just some rando commenter on a forum, with zero actual domain knowledge, who can't even read the statutes they cite and who wrote their diatribe over a year before the FBI's investigation was complete.
Here are the subsections [cornell.edu] that theyu couldn't be bothered to quote in full.
I have bolded the parts that explain why the sections do not apply to clinton's actions:
(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe¹ could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust,² or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge³ 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—
1) Synonym for intent
2) Documents were not entrusted to clinton, they were emailed to her by a civilian who had no clearance [dailycaller.com]
3) Synonym for intent
-------------------------------
As I said originally, facts won't change your mind. You use the logic of conspiracy - clinton is a witch so anything that proves otherwise is just lies by the MSM. But anything that confirms it, no matter how low-quality, is TRUTH!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @10:05AM (5 children)
You have confused the neglect of signed and informed obligations with criminal intent.
Every single person who is given access to US government classified information signs at least one statement that they understand and agree to comply with government-manded rules for handling such classified information. People who are given access to very sensitive information, such as Hillary Clinton was as SoS, are further "read in" to the classified programs via meeting and briefing on exactly what sort of information is contained within the special classified programs. As such, ignorance is no excuse, as there is no justifiable ignorance.
While simply receiving classified information in an improper fashion is not itself a prosecutable act, failure to report improper handling of classified information is a prosecutable act. THIS is what your blockquoted text is referring to, and it cannot be used to claim that "Hillary did nothing wrong", because either HRC was ignorant in spite of her signed acknowledgements on classified read-ins and therefore perjurious, or HRC neglected to report her knowledge of mishandled classified information and therefore is in direct violation of the blockquoted section of law you posted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:30PM (4 children)
are further "read in" to the classified programs via meeting and briefing on exactly what sort of information is contained within the special classified programs. As such, ignorance is no excuse, as there is no justifiable ignorance.
As someone who has been read on special access programs I can say from experience you are lying by omission. My obligations to the programs I was on did not apply to programs I was not on. To assume that the SecState is read on to every program in the Dept of State is specious, that's not how access works, its not hierarchical, its need-to-know.
The fact that she was not prosecuted is de facto proof that she was not a position to know that the information she received from civilian sources was classified. And at this point the conspiracy theory kicks in that no she really did know, she just got special treatment. Yeah, she got special treatment all right, Comey made an obvious effort to over-play her culpability when he was grandstanding and he later walked it back under specific questioning weeks later. But that wasn't headline news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @11:40PM
Yeah, bullcrap. Especially when you follow it with:
I'm another AC who claims to have been read-in to programs, and it's made quite clear what the specifics of the classified information are. To try to claim that the SoS didn't recognize relevant classified information (of which there were many many more than the one particular piece you seem hung up on) is to damn Hillary Clinton as either inept, or a liar.
The icing on the cake is your absolutely stunning claim that some highly-placed government muckity-muck not being charged with blatant violations of criminal law is proof of innocence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:05AM (2 children)
Frankly, as someone who has a SECRET clearance working for DoD, this seems a rather astounding claim. Are you actually claiming that you have no obligation to protect classified information for programs "that you are not on"? Seriously? Suppose, for example, that you come across a classified document at work that is not stored properly and not under positive control of someone with clearance and need to know. What do you do? Do you walk away, saying to yourself "I'm not on that program, so it's not my problem"? Where I work, the boss would not be at all happy if that were to come to light. In fact, I'm all but certain that would immediately trigger an investigation (if it came to light).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:41AM (1 child)
Are you actually claiming that you have no obligation to protect classified information for programs "that you are not on"?
No. And if you had a shred of critical thinking ability you would not have assumed that either.
I am saying that I have neither obligation to, nor expectation of being able to recognize unmarked classified materials from programs that I have no need to know.
You don't either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:04AM
Hillary Clinton, let's remember, was the Secretary of State. You also make a wild, unfounded leap that the SoS would be unable to recognize classified information that pertains to that job and/or the classified programs required for said job.
So, you're claiming that Hillary was innocent of criminal acts by way of her incompetence...