FBI says no charges for Hildabeast

I think an indictment after the convention would have been much more beneficial . Anyone not against Hillary at this point is not likely to be swayed by this.Clinton is crushing the Tiny fingered Cheetos faced Ferret wearing Shitgibbon in the poles and will simply manufacture any additional votes needed.Basically it all boils down to we’re fucked.

bnw wrote:

The best gift ever to the Trump campaign. The hypocrisy of the insider for all to see. And it is so easy to see. Trump will ride this latest outrage to victory.

I hear that Wikileaks says they will soon have a major release regarding Hillary and the e-mails.
The bomb could fall yet. If so, that would be especially bad for the Dems if release after the convention.

Zooey wrote:

It’s out.

I didn’t see that. Thanks. Will be interesting if there’s some reports on the content of those e-mails.
Comey’s commentary was strange. He says there isn’t anything but careless handling of the server, but the law seems to include that as a means to prosecute. Think the Hillary/Bill hit man team had any pressure on Comey? I’m being somewhat facetious, but Comey probably knows more about that history than we do. He just sounded conflicted, maybe he was told to stop the process?

Zooey wrote:

It is easy to imagine, given what we know about Dick Cheney and other White House operatives applying thumb screws across the street to get what they wanted when they fabricated reasons for the Iraq War. Applying pressure is what these guys do. The Clintons didn’t get where they are without some arm-twisting along the way.

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Well, the FBI has a long long history of acting in utterly political ways,
because of political pressure. I recently listened to an old audio-book in my car
by Bob Woodward (whom i cant stand). It was his book about deep-throat, who was
the guy who was 2nd in command at the FBI during the Nixon/Watergate years.
(Deep throat far from being a freedom-of-the-press soldier was a great admirer of J.Edgar Hoover, btw) Anyway, Woodward, the former Navy guy, and former Republican was hardly an FBI-basher, but he made it very clear the organization was a matrix of contested ground between the “political” vs “professional”

w
v

It’s a good thing for you that you are not a federal prosecutor. The claim that a deletion of gov’t emails in and of itself is a crime would immediately be thrown out of court and you might be looking for other work. What is a crime is when the emails at issue are intentionally deleted with the purpose in mind to conceal evidence or to hinder an investigation. As the FBI Director stated there is no evidence than any of the thousands of deleted emails -both personal and work related-were deleted with such a purpose in mind. You can surmise and opine about the reasons why emails were deleted but prosecutions are based on factual evidence not opinion and or speculation.

waterfield wrote:

It’s a good thing for you that you are not a federal prosecutor. The claim that a deletion of gov’t emails in and of itself is a crime would immediately be thrown out of court and you might be looking for other work. What is a crime is when the emails at issue are intentionally deleted with the purpose in mind to conceal evidence or to hinder an investigation. As the FBI Director stated there is no evidence than any of the thousands of deleted emails -both personal and work related-were deleted with such a purpose in mind. You can surmise and opine about the reasons why emails were deleted but prosecutions are based on factual evidence not opinion and or speculation.

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Well, do you think it will cost her a significant amount of VOTES ?

I mean the amerikan public will get to decide if the email thing matters to them.

Will it?

w
v

bnw wrote:

waterfield wrote:

It’s a good thing for you that you are not a federal prosecutor. The claim that a deletion of gov’t emails in and of itself is a crime would immediately be thrown out of court and you might be looking for other work. What is a crime is when the emails at issue are intentionally deleted with the purpose in mind to conceal evidence or to hinder an investigation. As the FBI Director stated there is no evidence than any of the thousands of deleted emails -both personal and work related-were deleted with such a purpose in mind. You can surmise and opine about the reasons why emails were deleted but prosecutions are based on factual evidence not opinion and or speculation.

BS. Comey was compromised. This is justice since Comey detailed that she lied numerous times yet didn’t mean too? Wow. What type of precedent do you think this has set for all those handling any federal documents or records? Try to remove your partisan hat while answering, please.

Look-I’m just telling you what the law is and how the law applied to the actual facts determined by an investigation. That’s all. If you want to go on and on about your opinion as to the process fine-but you clearly don’t understand the law on this subject. And that’s fine to. I suspect most people don’t.

BS. Deleting emails is destroying government property. Extreme carelessness is a criminal offense for we but not for she. That includes all who participated in the email scandal which includes Obama.

This is kind of funny. In reality, no one in private life would be sent to jail for deleting emails. Or fined. Or even brought to trial. At worst, they’d be fired by their employer, and even that would be rare. Only government employees are held to such a standard — which, of course, has never been implemented for any previous SoS.

I think some people are getting a bit carried away due to hatred of Clinton. They’re losing all perspective. And I say that as someone who doesn’t like her either.

Eternal Ramnation wrote:

Extreme carelessness is Gross negligence look it up. If they charged Clinton they had to
charge Obama and everyone else that knew about the server (the entire state dept.)

Well-this is the problem when lay people argue about the law. Often statutes are vague and courts are required to clarify what the actual intent of the law is. The statute at issue in the Clinton “case” is 18 U.S.C.A. section 793(b). It’s foundation is based upon the Espionage Law. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the vagueness of the phrase “national defense” in 1941. In part its ruling finding that those words were NOT vague is informative:
“The obvious delimiting words in the statute are those requiring intent or
reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the
injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation. This
requires those prosecuted to have acted in bad faith.”

Furthermore “gross negligence” as a legal matter, doesn’t just mean it was wrong or dumb or even careless. Again, it is defined clearly in the law as:
” A lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or
lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation
of other people’s rights to safety. It is more than simple inadventure…”

One of my favorite law professors, Laurie Levinson, explained in a National Law Review piece:
“Politics aside, it is difficult to find prior cases where the unwise
handling of classified information led to a federal indictment. For
the last 20 years, the federal statutes have been used when there were
intentional unauthorized disclosures. (i.e.General Petraeus). The Department
of Justice appears to have gone after “leakers”, but not bunglers.”

As far as Comey goes any attempt to portray his investigation as being a set up is a failure to understand his background. He was Assistant Attorney General under the George W Bush administration and prosecuted many high profile Republicans and Democrats alike. He has a reputation for steadfast integrity which has never been questioned-except for the less informed today.

I’m not going to get into an unending on-line debate as to Clinton’s qualifications to be President or whether or not she acted in a nefarious way by doing something the FBI could not find. That’s for the haters and the Trump people to continue to talk about. My only purpose in this little exchange is to hopefully make the relevant law a little clearer to those who don’t understand the underlying criteria that is needed to successfully prosecute someone under the above statute.

I hear the pressure may be on to remove Hillary’s security clearances. Not like that would prevent her from top clearances as President, but it is interesting to review the security clearances information at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security at the State Dept:

Guideline K:
Handling Protected Information

33. The Concern. Deliberate or negligent failure to comply with rules and regulations for protecting classified or other sensitive information raises doubt about an individual’s trustworthiness, judgment, reliability, or willingness and ability to safeguard such information, and is a serious security concern.
34. Conditions that could raise a security concern and may be disqualifying include:

(a) deliberate or negligent disclosure of classified or other protected information to unauthorized persons, including but not limited to personal or business contacts, to the media, or to persons present at seminars, meetings, or conferences;
(b) collecting or storing classified or other protected information in any unauthorized location;
(c) loading, drafting, editing, modifying, storing, transmitting, or otherwise handling classified reports, data, or other information on any unapproved equipment including but not limited to any typewriter, word processor, or computer hardware, software, drive, system, gameboard, handheld, “palm” or pocket device or other adjunct equipment;
(d) inappropriate efforts to obtain or view classified or other protected information outside one’s need to know;
(e) copying classified or other protected information in a manner designed to conceal or remove classification or other document control markings;
(f) viewing or downloading information from a secure system when the information is beyond the individual’s need to know;
(g) any failure to comply with rules for the protection of classified or other sensitive information;
(h) negligence or lax security habits that persist despite counseling by management;
(i) failure to comply with rules or regulations that results in damage to the National Security, regardless of whether it was deliberate or negligent.

35. Conditions that could mitigate security concerns include:

(a) so much time has elapsed since the behavior, or it happened so infrequently or under such unusual circumstances that it is unlikely to recur or does not cast doubt on the individual’s current reliability, trustworthiness, or good judgment;
(b) the individual responded favorably to counseling or remedial security training and now demonstrates a positive attitude toward the discharge of security responsibilities;
(c) the security violations were due to improper or inadequate training.

waterfield wrote:

NewMexicoRam wrote:

Zooey wrote:

It’s out.

I didn’t see that. Thanks. Will be interesting if there’s some reports on the content of those e-mails.
Comey’s commentary was strange. He says there isn’t anything but careless handling of the server, but the law seems to include that as a means to prosecute. Think the Hillary/Bill hit man team had any pressure on Comey? I’m being somewhat facetious, but Comey probably knows more about that history than we do. He just sounded conflicted, maybe he was told to stop the process?

No-the law does not include “carelessness” as a crime. What’s needed is the “mens rea” to prosecute-meaning a criminal “intent” to harm another or another’s property-in this case the U.S. There never has been any such evidence uncovered. At best this may go to competency but most certainly not criminal behavior. We don’t throw people to the gallows for doing stupid things. If she used her personal emails to keep abreast of stuff that may have been classified material-that was stupid not criminal.

NO!!!

Man, the Espionage Act specifically included provisions which precludes the requirement for mens rea.

She violated 18 USC 793 (f) in her email exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal who had no security clearance at all, yet she exchanged actual secret documents (and above) with him.

18 USC 793 (f) states: (citation is from Cornell Law)

(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, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, 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.

By it’s very definition, gross negligence allows for the absence of mens rea.

And you bet your ass we throw people in jail without mens rea. Otherwise, a driver who is absent-mindedly distracted (texting, eating, shaving, putting on makeup, etc) driving and kills a pedestrian couldn’t be charged with negligent vehicular homicide as they rightly can and ARE. Of course, there is no mens rea. The very basis of the charge is NEGLIGENCE, in this case gross negligence. The very charge of negligent homicide negates the presence of mens rea.

Moreover, an ambassador was removed from his post under this very statute for using a private server. The Secretary of State who removed the ambassador? Secretary Hillary Clinton.

FBI Director is pulling out a red herring when he talks about precedent with respect to intent because the cases talked about refer to 18 USC 1924 prosecutions like General David Petreus who actually took and kept Secret documents outside of their secure environs in their personal space against agency rules. They were clear violations of 1924.

In the digital age, the more appropriate application of the Espionage Act would be 793 (f). Moreover, as a former network engineer, I can say even from what they’ve released that they’re outright lying about the hacking. Period. They’re lying. Or they committed perjury in Federal Court. And having worked with a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server), they’re not rocket science to hack. Considering that she was famous for using her Blackberry, any hacker would have known she was using one and simply tried to be near her and sniffed her Blackberry using a wifi sniffer in a backpack (it would be on a laptop for example, so the Secret Service wouldn’t notice anything). I mean, I won’t go through all the steps, but it wouldn’t have been hard. Rest assured, it’s more believable that she got hacked than that she didn’t. I mean, I run a few network tools on my end and I see little network crawlers on my ISP every once in awhile trying to get in. Rest assured, she wasn’t a secret.

The hacker, Guccifer, was allowed to plead guilty in Federal court after being extradited from Romania expressly for hacking Secretary Clinton’s server. So, if the FBI knew for a fact that the server had not been breached, then they committed perjury in Federal court in presenting evidence in order to extradite and prosecute Guccifer such that he with counsel agreed to plead guilty.

Now, having said all of that, does it change anything?

Nope. We still have the major choices of a racist xenophobe and a lying criminal. And sorry, getting away with crime doesn’t make one “innocent”. John Gotti “wasn’t prosecuted” a bunch of times… didn’t make him innocent. And, frankly, I bet if you went to his old neighborhood, he had better approval numbers than Hillary did. Crime was super low and it was one of the safest neighborhoods in NY. Didn’t make John Gotti any less of a mobster/monster. Hillary Clinton won’t be prosecuted, but it doesn’t mean she wasn’t guilty of violating the Espionage Act. She absolutely was.

If Jill Stein wasn’t running for office, I know who my candidate would be…