FBI Finds 14,900 More Documents From Hillary Clinton's Email Server (go.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: The FBI uncovered nearly 15,000 more emails and materials sent to or from Hillary Clinton as part of the agency's investigation into her use of private email at the State Department. The documents were not among the 30,000 work-related emails turned over to the State Department by her attorneys in December 2014. The State Department confirmed it has received "tens of thousands" of personal and work-related email materials -- including the 14,900 emails found by the FBI -- that it will review. At a status hearing Monday before federal Judge Emmett Sullivan, who is overseeing that case, the State Department presented a schedule for how it would release the emails found by the FBI. The first group of 14,900 emails was ordered released, and a status hearing on Sept. 23 "will determine the release of the new emails and documents," Sullivan said. "As we have previously explained, the State Department voluntarily agreed to produce to Judicial Watch any emails sent or received by Secretary Clinton in her official capacity during her tenure as secretary of state which are contained within the material turned over by the FBI and which were not already processed for FOIA by the State Department," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in a statement issued Monday. "We can confirm that the FBI material includes tens of thousands of non-record (meaning personal) and record materials that will have to be carefully appraised at State," it read. "State has not yet had the opportunity to complete a review of the documents to determine whether they are agency records or if they are duplicative of documents State has already produced through the Freedom of Information Act" said Toner, declining further comment.

Comments

How hard is it to find emails?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has ever sent an email knows there are at least 2 copies. One on the sender's account. One on the recipient's. If anyone else is CC'd, then they have a copy too. Did anyone believe when she 'wiped her server' (even without a cloth), that they all disappeared forever?

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[thoromyr]

This is mostly due to media distortion. Her team did not "delete" emails -- that is a deliberately misleading term. What actually happened was normal discovery, but that isn't a field that many slashdotters actually have any familiarity with and so when the journalists misrepresent the facts? People predictably jump to the wrong conclusions.

For example, one "journalist" said that Hillary's team "skimmed the subject lines" when they did no such thing. What *actually* happened is they used discovery software to filter emails based on keywords. As anyone who has had to work with a large data set of barely structured and nearly arbitrary data can tell you, this is more art than science and results are iffy. Now the FBI went through *all* the emails, not just the ones provided by Hillary's legal team. And instead of using filters they put a number of their employees to the mind-numbing task of *manually* combing through the emails. Make no mistake, this is a man-power intensive task and it is easy to make mistakes. So auditing the effort for *that* adds time and takes even more resources. People should really appreciate the amount of effort the FBI put into looking for malfeasance.

I realize the above will rub a number of people the wrong way, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation, nor does not liking it alter the facts. It also does not excuse Hillary or absolve her of wrong doing. James Comey said that she was negligently careless (or words close to that, can't be bothered to get the actual quote) and she has taken the lawyer's way out of never answering questions asked, but instead rephrasing the question to her liking and answering *that*.

In short: this fantasy that Hillary attempted to delete evidence is completely without basis and is essentially due to media fabrication/misrepresentation about what is really a rather mundane and very common task in litigation. What she *has* done is tried to *misrepresent*, the most egregious being her assertion that Comey agrees with her.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[jedidiah]

This wasn't "normal" discovery. It was half-assed discovery that might get someone sanctioned in different circumstances. Withholding evidence from a private party is bad enough. Withholding it from the Feds is yet another example of something that the little people get severely punished for.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[ArtemaOne]

This is totally false. Did you forget the 9 hard drives that simultaneously failed a few years ago? I read a nice article covering the odds that 9 drives would fail immediately upon request of the data on them, and the number of zeros before the decimal on the percentage was staggering. They did totally remove emails, just because it wasn't a delete icon on a mail client doesn't mean they were not destroyed as soon as someone asked for them.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[penguinoid]

Can't be too hard to find the emails.

1) Trump suggests that Russian hackers find the missing emails for us.
2) Major hack attributed to Russians.
3) ???
4) FBI finds thousands of Hillary's missing emails.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow!
Remember when she said there were no emails at all? Do you think she was going to turn them over without a court order? Didnt the FBI say they had to recover the emails and couldnt recover all of them due to deletion?!? oh boy....

All we wanted to know is why Hillary told us that Benghazi happened due to a youtube video! Its not OUR fault than she didnt get that out of the way a long time ago!

'what difference does it make'? Well now... we're going to drag her face down across a bed of coals from now until November.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[DaHat]

FYI: The Trump suggestion occurred after the Russian attributed DNC hack.

Who then should we blame?

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[ScentCone]

Her team did not "delete" emails -- that is a deliberately misleading term.

Yes, they did delete them. They even SAID they deleted them. That the server that had contained them had had all of its contents destroyed once they were done picking out the stuff that was work related.

What *actually* happened is they used discovery software to filter emails based on keywords.

But the lie she told was that her lawyers read each and every email. She knew that wasn't true, and so was lying. But that's OK, because her supporters know she lies to them, and they like being lied to.

People should really appreciate the amount of effort the FBI put into looking for malfeasance.

People should also recognize that they FBI could only look for corruption (and worse) within the material they had available. Clinton did not provide all of the requested material. She said she did, but that was another lie. Not an oversight, but a lie. Because we're not talking about "oops, a couple of emails you should have seen slipped through the cracks" - but "oops, thousands and thousands of emails you should have seen in that pile I printed out without header info were deleted."

In short: this fantasy that Hillary attempted to delete evidence is completely without basis

Other than the part where, you know, her records were deleted after her team put on a show of pulling out what they thought would make the appearance of complying with her requirements ... years after she was supposed to have turned ALL of it over to State so their archivists could make the distinction between personal and work-related records from her deliberately co-mingled collection.

What she *has* done is tried to *misrepresent*, the most egregious being her assertion that Comey agrees with her.

That was egregious, but it's hardly the worst of it. She knowingly, willingly, and repeatedly lied about her motivations and actions, and deliberately slow-walked and stonewalled at every turn. The fact that she'd whip up yet another lie to make it sound like the FBI's very clear identification of her multiple "untruths" on the matter is only egregious because it shows that she's still willing to lie even when she knows that we all know she's doing it. None of that matters, of course. Her supporters like that she lies, and none of that is legally meaningful. What IS legally meaningful is her testimony in front of congress. She spent long hours carefully avoiding direct answers to questions to she wouldn't perjure herself. We'll see if she's still as slippery on that front as her reputation suggests.

Separate from all of that, of course, is the actual content of the messages now being read. They exhibit a very clear pattern of tying access to her and her policy influence to being willing to dump piles of cash into her family business while she was in office. Legal jeopardy there? Hard to say. That would once again be Loretta Lynch's call, and we already know where she stands.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we would all understand your naive point of view if it weren't for the fact that

a) She intentionally went through the pain to have this server to begin with

b) She tried to obliterate every e-mail that she didn't directly approve to hand over (i.e. you can't try to run discovery again, with better parameters or per a court order)

c) Lie to the public about what her team did when handing e-mails over (she said repeatedly that with certainty she had handed over every work e-mail). She did not say "we tried our best" and would be happy to look again if you think we made a mistake

d) Lie to investigators about what her team did

e) Knowingly lie about transmittal of classified information

f) Lie about (not?) knowing what classified information marks are

g) Lying about approval of the setup...

Shall I go on?

You claim normal discovery. I think it was normal discovery + a through scrub + a bunch of other shady shit.

Re: How hard is it to find emails?

[Anonymous Coward]

She told us that about Benghazi because it was a few short weeks before the election. Obama was campaigning on a "everything is just fine, we have been doing a great job" campaign theme. Hillary needed to control the narrative. It doesn't help that the reasonAmbassador Stevens was in Benghazi was to sell weapons to ISIS.

So few people mention the timeline. It was a burgeoning October Surprise, and so they decided a Filmmaker protest would work as an explanation until after the election.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[Archangel Michael]

Her team did not "delete" emails -- that is a deliberately misleading term

Okay, so incompetence is better than intent? Because that is what you're REALLY telling us, is that she (and/or her team) was incompetent. Because here are your options

1) It was deliberate (really bad for her)
2) She had a duty and was incompetent or negligent or carelessly deleted emails she was supposed to keep.

In order for you to believe the lies/misstatements/untruths/mistakes/ she spewed, you have to think she has some sort of MENTAL issues. And given the careful parsing of language that changed over the course of months as the details emerged that her previous statements weren't quite accurate, I can't help but think it was all intentional. "No Classified" became "Marked Classified" (neither which was true) which became "I was completely truthful to the FBI, which was exactly what I said to the American People".

So, when you say

you neglect (obviously) that she had a Fiduciary Responsibility to maintain ALL government records, which she FAILED to do. That, by itself, damning for either incompetence or criminal behavior.

And to steal Arthur C Clarke's line ... "Any sufficient level of incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

So, I will ask you, is she incompetent or criminal. And why would you vote for someone who was either in such a manner as to issue misstatement after misstatement regarding such as "mundane and very common task" ?

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[Archangel Michael]

Even if you though she could have her own private email server, She had a Fiduciary Responsibility to maintain ALL the proper records and get them archived properly. She failed either due to incompetence or malice. And quite frankly, I don't care which answer people choose, both are disqualification IMHO

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[jrumney]

And it turns out they "forgot" to add a couple of important keywords that has revealed that a shocking 33% of her secret communications as Secretary of State have been with various members of Nigerian royalty concerning what appear to be corrupt transactions, possibly even money laundering.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[Anonymous Coward]

It came out today she lied to the FBI when they questioned her as well.

She said Colin Powell suggested she use a private email server when talking to the FBI, that is her public claim that she told the FBI. Powell said he explained his AOL account usage 9 months into her term as Secretary of State. He said he never encouraged her to use a private email, or private email server. Not that it mattered what he told her, she set it up before he had contact with her.

So she lied under oath to Congress, destroyed evidence, and lied to the FBI when they questioned her.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you forget the 9 hard drives that simultaneously failed a few years ago?

In their defense, they were IBM Deskstars...

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[LynnwoodRooster]

So if she wanted to be all above-board, and use good software - why did she PRINT them out, forcing the FBI to scan and do OCR and patchup on tens of thousands of pages of text? She could have just turned over that database you claim she could filter through...

Re: How hard is it to find emails?

[WarJolt]

Her husband lied under oath. Now she's lying under oath. What do you expect from the Clintons? I thought she would wait until she became president, but she has surpassed my wildest expectations.

There is plenty of disappointment to go around.

Democrat, come on...you should have know. You guys think of yourself as the educated ones and yet education must not preclude the possibility of insanity. It seems like you've repeated your mistake expecting different results.

Republican, I can't really blame you. The rest of your candidates sucked too.

Libertarian, too bad you can't find a candidate that isn't a non-interventionalist. Come on, Americans love to meddle. If you can't win this election you should just give up. Disband. Whatever parties do when they are no longer relevant.

If you're not disillusioned with this election, regardless of your party, you must be insane.

Re:How hard is it to find emails?

[TykeClone]

No they wouldn't. Don't you know who she is?

Hillary for prison!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course she had intent. She used a personal email server to avoid this very event. Now it is happening anyway.

Of course, it will be whitewashed anyway, too.

Re:Hillary for prison!

[Anonymous Coward]

She's even gone as far to blame a black man for telling her to do what she did.

Re:Hillary for prison!

[lgw]

Of course she had intent. She used a personal email server to avoid this very event. Now it is happening anyway.

Of course, it will be whitewashed anyway, too.

While I agree she's dirtier than a coal miner working overtime, "what difference, at this point, does it make". We've established pretty thoroughly that she's above the law, so why is the FBI even continuing this farce? Further budget negotiations? I had assumed that FBI and DOJ had secured the appropriate monetary concessions from the coming Clinton budget when Justice announced no intent to bring charges. This is just baffling.

Re:Hillary for prison!

[DaHat]

The sad thing is that I'm not sure that Obama overstepping the constitution and grabbing another term is worse than anyone on the ballot.

Would it be that hard to tell from his other constitutional oversteps?

More so, even if Clinton, Trump, Stein & Johnson & there VPs were abducted by aliens on election day, the electoral college system has methods for picking regardless of the actual votes cast by the public.

It's the same reason that Al Gore never had any legitimate chance of winning the presidency in 2000 via his court battles, but we could have seen a Bush/Lieberman administration.

Re:Hillary for prison!

[AHuxley]

What difference at this point does it make?
No reasonable prosecutor can be found in the US.

Elect Trump for Honest Government

[CajunArson]

Not because he's necessarily more honest than Hillary but simply because 95% of the press will refuse to give him a free pass for literally everything he does.

If Hillary gets elected then press-protected official bribery becomes the new "normal".

Re:Elect Trump for Honest Government

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. A President that the media hates means that the President is held accountable.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[halivar]

That's about how long it took to nail John Gotti, also. Eventually the teflon wears off.

Re:Elect Trump for Honest Government

[tomhath]

That certainly was the case with Nixon. He didn't do any more than what Kennedy did to him ten years earlier, but the press loved Kennedy and hated Nixon.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[Mike Van Pelt]

I'm deciding on which of my "A Plague on Both Your Parties" vote I'm going to indulge in this year. Both candidates are absolutely unacceptable in a "I don't care who they're running against" sense.

Of course, since I'm in a state that's going to give all its electoral votes to Hillary no matter what, I can afford to stick to my principles without any consideration of it making any difference in the outcome. I won't judge the decisions of anyone whose situation is different.

One advantage a Trump administration would have over a Clinton administration is that it would be short. Trump does not seem to have any more capacity to understand that laws apply to him than Hillary does... maybe even less. However, Trump is hated by most of the news media, most of the Republicans in the House and Senate, and all of the Democrats. The very first thing he does that can be construed as a "high crime or misdemeanor", and impeachment in the House proceeding to removal from office by the Senate will proceed at Warp Factor 10.

Hillary, by contrast, the Democrats will not vote to remove her even if she's performing daily human sacrifices to Cthulhu on the White House lawn.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? The Democrats hate him. The Republicans hate him. No one trusts him. No one will work with him. He would be a lame duck before he stepped foot in the whitehouse.

Honestly, four years of the federal government in D.C. not fucking things up for the rest of us, regardless of party affiliation, sounds like the best kind of presidency.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[FlyHelicopters]

I predict that this, like the other fishing expeditions, will also show she's basically a do gooder that Republicans hate.

The FBI couldn't nail Al Capone for his crimes either, so they got him on tax evasion...

Clinton's crimes are far worse than these e-mails, but they might be what finally hangs her, or they should be...

Re:Elect Trump for Honest Government

[geek]

That certainly was the case with Nixon. He didn't do any more than what Kennedy did to him ten years earlier, but the press loved Kennedy and hated Nixon.

Shit man, Nixon got us out of Vietnam and the press still fucking hated him.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[meta-monkey]

She's been haranged by Republicans. She's constantly been protected by the press.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[Mike Van Pelt]

If that were the sort of Law of Nature you seem to be asserting it is, we'd still have the Federalist and Whig parties.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[_xeno_]

One of the most convincing arguments that I've heard this election is that congress won't allow Trump to do anything, but the same cannot be said of Clinton.

This right here is what has convinced me that I'd rather see Trump in the White House than Hillary. If Trump wins the presidency, we might actually see Congress rein in executive power! If Hillary wins, forget it, we all lose.

Of course, I live in a state that's so blue that my vote is entirely meaningless (for any office, anywhere), so I'm going to be voting third party as well. Might finally get them enough votes to at the very least be allowed in a national debate.

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[FlyHelicopters]

Trump V Clinton is a pretty massive shock to the system.

Unless it brings the system down, it doesn't matter...

The system itself is broken...

Re: Elect Trump for Honest Government

[FlyHelicopters]

If that were the sort of Law of Nature you seem to be asserting it is, we'd still have the Federalist and Whig parties.

The Federalist and Whig parties were how many again?

Right...

Tell me all the times when we had three parties putting forward a serious contender for President?

There might have been once... a long time ago...

A "First Past the Post" election system will always end up with two parties. It doesn't matter who those two parties are, it will always be two...

If you think the Green party or Libertarian Party have any chance of replacing the D or R teams, you're crazy, but even if they did, they would just turn into the D or R team, they'd have to... The viewpoints of the G and L teams are not a major part of the US population...

Re:Elect Trump for Honest Government

[LynnwoodRooster]

It's endemic to the left. This weekend, down in Santa Monica I came across a guy with a "Dump Trump" and "Trump = war criminal" posters, pushing "Peace" and Hillary! stickers on his table on the 3rd street Promenade. I asked him which candidate was the one that voted for the Iraq war, started the Libya mess, and let Syria/ISIS explode into the nightmare it is? The spittle was intense...

bern

[blackomegax]

I can't wait to see Hillary in an orange jump suit and Bernie Sanders in his rightful place as King of murica

Re:Popcorn's ready...

[Calydor]

... win?

so there you have it folks.

[nimbius]

These are the candidates. You either vote for a walking Meme, conveniently resuscitated as a living anachronism of our post apocalyptic plutocratic future, or a woman who could have faced charges for everything from obstruction of justice to murder or even treason yet unaccountably shows up once a week in a $12,000 designer potato sack to advocate on behalf of the middle class.

alternate candidates? why i thought youd never ask! it boils down to a woman who openly questions the science of everything from GMO's to simple vaccination, and laundry list of "break glass in case of party meltdown" candidates with about a fortnight of facetime with the american people. See you at the polls! and in 3 years immediately behind the burnt out wreckage of an MRAP as we trade rations for ammunition and clothing amidst what used to be a shopping center.

Re:so there you have it folks.

[ChromeAeonium]

She hasn't been particularly as overtly anti-vaccine as she could be, which is good, but she has given some pretty wishy-washy answers on the topic of alternative medicine and pandering to the corporate conspiracy crowd. At a time when she should be giving a scientific answer she gave a politican's one; something she would no doubt attack other politicians for doing if the topic was climate change (and rightfully so of course).

Although, on the topic of genetically engineered crops, she has just been consistently in the wrong, and the recent thing about 'subjecting children to wifi' was pretty silly as well.

Re:so there you have it folks.

[SuricouRaven]

Why would anyone bother with a smear campaign against the Greens? It's wasted effort, they pose no threat.

Re:Criminal

[__aaclcg7560]

As a moderate conservative, I'll be voting for Hillary. Any other choice is criminal.

Don't expect them before the election

[Crashmarik]

None of Hillary Clinton's work-related emails discovered by the FBI after being deleted from her private server have been released, raising questions about whether any will be seen in public before Election Day.

http://thehill.com/policy/nati...

Re:What about

[Anonymous Coward]

The porn. Did they find her porn? Or account credentials for Ashley Madison?

Those are Bill's, you silly goose.

Appraisals

[ScentCone]

The people at State who have to appraise this material are the ones she was supposed to turn ALL of her co-mingled material over to on the day she left office. State's archivists are the ones who are supposed to weed through and figure out what's personal and what's not when someone in her role chooses to make everything personal. If she'd actually followed the rules and delivered all of it to them years ago as she was supposed to, she could have spent a solid year or two talking down all of the conflicts of interest and signs of corruption between her family business and access to her and her power as SoS and have Clinton-ed most of it into "the past" by now. She's got only herself to blame for deliberately ignoring her departure requirements, and then for slow-walking and hiding all of this stuff until it had to be pried out by the damn FBI and through suits pointing out FOIA shenanigans.

State will now say that it will take until next year to review this new material - plenty of time to stonewall and foot-drag past November. Her supporters are still running around claiming she hasn't once lied about any of this, and that nothing inappropriate to a private home-based mail server ever passed through her hands, despite the FBI pointing out the opposite.

Re:What about

[Anonymous Coward]

You think one server will hold Bill's collection?

Vote for Jill Stein and Gary.

[DMJC]

Vote for the Libertarian and the Greens and get a proper debate going for once. America has a lot of problems which need real attention. The two major parties are a crapfest of corruption and greed. There needs to be an open dialog. It's time the third parties got a say. It's funny how Americans bang on about free speech yet they deny their political parties a voice.

Re:Vote for Jill Stein and Gary.

[bongey]

Jill Stein: WIFI harms our kids(1). Gary Johnson: Jews should be forced to make wedding cakes for Nazi party members by the government(2).
Jill Stein and the green party doesn't believes in a free press, wants flat or negative GDP(3). The GP VP hangs out with holocaust denier and 9/11 truther.(4)
Gary Johnson isn't Libertarian at all.(5)
1) http://gizmodo.com/now-jill-st...
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
4) http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
5) http://www.dailywire.com/news/...

Re:Vote for Jill Stein and Gary.

[jeff4747]

2 is actually pretty close to the law. If you run a public business, you can not exclude members of protected classes. For example, a Westboro Baptist Church baker has to make wedding cakes for homosexual couples, if their business is open to the public.

Analogies are never perfect, since Nazi party members are not a protected class.

If you don't want to make a cake for someone you hate, charge an "annual membership fee" for the first cake any customer buys and give them a "membership card" good for the current calendar year. Ta-da! You are now offering a service at your private club, and are free to exclude anyone from club membership. Works for the Jewish baker you are so interested in, as well as the Phelps-inspired homophobic bakers.

As for "flat or negative GDP", I'm sure Florida and Louisiana being consumed by the ocean is not going to be good for GDP. Large numbers of refugees never are. Perhaps high GDP growth as the only goal to pursue has some downsides.

But hey, when you can't make your candidate appealing, you gotta try to rip down every other candidate.

Re:Criminal

[ChromeAeonium]

Yeah well there's just so many other options to choose from. You've got the corporate Teflon, the thought crime promoting nutcase, the de facto plutocrat who would let the invisible hand screw us right on over, and the conspiracy nutter who thinks wifi will fry your brain, and two of them don't even count. The options are so shitty I can't even protest vote, and if you go to any of the more minor parties you find theocrats, would-be communist overlords, and other assholes. There is literally no one who represents me, no one promoting reasonable reform where necessary without all the usual wingnut idiocy. This election day I see no get out of bed, except maybe to write in I. C. Wiener on my ballot. This election is genuinely disheartening.

There should be investigations immediately!

[PopeRatzo]

There needs to be more investigations into Hillary Clinton. It's not like Congress is busy doing anything else.

Re:There should be investigations immediately!

[Kernel Kurtz]

Given the number of people who seem to actually believe that the Clintons regularly have their potential enemies killed, the fact that desperately obsessing over emails is all they have says a lot.

Re:Criminal

[__aaclcg7560]

Hello obvious shibboleth, is the truth squad money really that good?

Why should take money for telling the truth? Trump is a failure.

Wiped, with a towel

[mveloso]

I guess they didn't use the secure erase towel when Hillary's minions wiped the server.

Don't confuse stupid with malicious

[LostMyBeaver]

Hillary is stupid, not malicious. Let's assume for the moment that neither Donald or Hillary are actually as evil as we make them out to be.

Let's also assume for the moment that Hillary wanted to have an e-mail address with a domain name the added to her marketing value and she asked some egg-head if he/she could make it happen. Now assume that the egghead recognizes that she's the secretary of state as well as the former first lady of a two term president.

Now the egghead hears her ask for this and he's like "Well, I can't put that on our internal servers... what else can I do to make it happen?" Of course the egghead isn't a lawyer and he/she doesn't want to be cock-blocked by some manager and then go back to Hillary and tell her/him (still not sure) that he screwed up and now her dreams of having a her marketing slogan as a domain name for her e-mail will not be possible.

So... what does he do? Well, not being a lawyer or understanding what it would mean, he sets up a new mail server that would allow her to send messages to Bill like "Make sure you leave your cigars at your intern's house before coming home... oh and buy milk." without them ending up as public record.

I honestly wonder if the e-mail is the best thing they can come up with. Hillary isn't particularly exciting, but she's pretty awful at her job... unless you consider her job as Secretary of State as a personal self-promotion, optimal for ladder climbing... where in that case, she's great at her job. She has to have incredible amounts of crap they can use on her without even digging too deep. And the e-mail thing which I'm damn near convinced is basically technical incompetence as opposed to intentional malicious deception of the country.

Let's also consider that there's absolutely nothing related to the e-mail that will cause Trump to win. He's like the golden goose or the gift that keeps giving to anyone who opposes him. After all, I think that even Dan Quayle could have won running against Trump. Al Gore could have creamed him. Instead, the country leaves Hillary as the opposition and while she looks like she has a landslide, you know you suck when it's months before election and people can still identify a possibility that Trump could possibly win.

Democrats... what the hell were you thinking when you supported Hillary?
Republicans... what the hell were you thinking when you supported Trump?

You both had better candidates and you actually chose the most entertaining ones as opposed to someone you might actually want in office.

Re:Don't confuse stupid with malicious

[SuricouRaven]

There's also the Bengazi smeer:

do{
    investigate('Bengazi');
}until(Hillary.guilty);

I've lost count of how many congressional investigations have been run on that subject now, and none of them have ever found any concrete evidence she mishandled the situation, but just being under perpetual investigation can hurt.

Re:Don't confuse stupid with malicious

[jeff4747]

Republicans thought they had been lied to for the last ~20 years by their party. Because they had - Republicans had been using various "wedge issues" to maintain power while not actually addressing those issues. If they had addressed those issues, Republicans would have lost the things that got them elected. So they fought for tax cuts for the wealthy instead of making serious efforts at rounding up all the homosexuals and brown people.

Which resulted in a lot of people who's anger had already been stoked by the "Tea Party" pseudo-movement turning their anger on the elites of their party.

Plus, it turns out Jeb's absolutely terrible at campaigning.

On the Democratic side, Clinton, Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership had been working to "clear the decks" for Clinton's primary run for a long time now. A lot of work went in to convincing other "serious" candidates to not run. Some of that has leaked from the DNC email hack.

Then this ancient socialist from Vermont almost screwed up the whole thing. But using the entire party apparatus and calling in a hell of a lot of "favors", she managed to fend him off about 54-46......and if that does not utterly terrify the Democratic leadership they are fucking idiots.

Btw, I do not believe it terrifies them.

Re:Don't confuse stupid with malicious

[h33t l4x0r]

You both had better candidates and you actually chose the most entertaining ones as opposed to someone you might actually want in office.

Whoever they picked, Fox News would just make something up and their side would believe it. Fox News viewers still think Obama is a muslim and that he was born in Kenya.

Re: Don't confuse stupid with malicious

[Bartles]

So she didn't lie about the attack being a protest against a youtube video?

Re:Criminal

[Dread_ed]

This. Soooo much this. And, if you squint hard enough most of the pejorative monikers for one candidate can be interchanged with at least one or two others.

Makes me want a shorter election cycle for president with a corresponding shorter term. Flush the system quicker, limit the damage, burn through the current chaff and get some damn wheat. Only problem is the people we elect to the "feeder" offices (like governor, etc) are just as tainted and tarnished as the crop of whackjobs we fielded this time. And if Trump is indicative in the slightest of our private sector offerings for the position of POTUS our American experiment is well and truly over.

The worst part is that there are so many die-hard fans of these imbeciles. Watching large swaths of the electorate fawn over these incredibly flawed humans has somehow further degraded my already rock bottom apprehension of the American public. It seems the worse the candidate the more the people voting for them have to overcompensate with fervor and gusto for their candidate du jour. Its sickening to observe.

I hate being resigned and cynical, its so gauche. Seems the only other options are to revel in the embarrassing spectacle that is the American political system, or actively contribute to its downfall. With the latter I used to think that armed uprising was the only way to bring down this country. Now it looks like pulling a voting lever will do the job quite thoroughly. You don't even have to worry about messing it up, any one will do.

Re:Criminal

[Cro Magnon]

A crook, two losers, and a buffoon.

Re:Criminal

[__aaclcg7560]

Because... ? Trump Steaks? Vodka? Air?

By offending every voting bloc except white males, Trump has one and only path through the electoral college. He must win Florida (which can go either way), Ohio (no Republican has ever won the White House without this state) and Pennsylvania (which haven't gone Republican since 1988). If he loses any one of these states, it's game over. His support among white males is starting to weaken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/politics/donald-trump-white-men.html

I'm no fan of Trump, however unlike you, I can recognize he has been very successful at enough to be in a pretty good spot today.

As a politician, Trump is failure. George W., as the first CEO president, was a success in comparison.

Here let me help you decide....

[SadButResolved]

Clinton's Success stories:
Movie : Clinton Cash Movie:Free
Movie Fact Sheet: Fact Sheet
Clinton Death Count: Death list Dont forget Julian assanges head attorney hit by a train, the father of the doc that did hillary's checkup who released some info.
Bill Clinton's Rape Sheet: Victim list Not sure if the 19 year old when he was in the CIA in oxford is on that one at 19 or his supposed best friend at 16 either.
Hillary getting a rapist off, while accusing a 12 year old virgin of being hot for older men: Article with sources here is the interview with her last month: Interview with victim 2016 Because you know a 12 year old wants stitches in her vagina.

I dont have to link hopefully what Comey said about all the lies, treason, and death she caused with her pay for play clinton foundation or the fun mails that keep coming out with FOIA. All though this one should give you an idea of the kind of treason we are talking about: Treason so high this guy can't even get access to the pages


Those of you that say I'm voting for Hillary because Trump is a meanie or a scoundrel, take a look at what this woman has caused already. If she is elected you will have done the world the biggest proof is in the pudding injustice ever.

Re:Criminal

[SuricouRaven]

The public has a short memory. There is still time for him to reinvent himself - throw away the offensive persona that served him well in the primary, bring on a new moderate one that will stop talking about or outright change position on all his worst primary stances.

Re:Criminal

[amicusNYCL]

If other parties have a decent showing then it may force the media to start paying attention to the other parties. A third-party vote is not a non-vote, it is a vote against the 2-party system. The desired outcome is presidential debates which feature more than 2 people, so that people can actually educate themselves about who represents them the best instead of voting based on fear.

Re: Criminal

[Nidi62]

For this election, no. But if third parties get more votes this election they stand to do better next election. They might poll better next election which helps get them onto national televised debates, increasing their exposure. This election season has already shown people are sick of the establishment. People need to see third parties as a chance to get away from the establishment.

doh!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no law requiring candidates to release their tax records - Nixon did it as a ploy to show he was a 'good guy' and thus begat the tradition. Are you a big fan of Nixonian traditions? If you are, then Hillary is your candidate this time.

Candidates ARE required to file full financials with the FEC under oath which are far more detailed and which Trump did indeed file a year ago.

Now, how about that other tradition of campaign transparency:

Candidates have never (before Obama) refused to release their academic records and birth certificates. Obama refused to produce a birth certificate until long into his administration, when he produced a low-res PDF of what may be a copy of his as a manipulation of the public. His refusal to release is what caused Hillary's 2008 campaign to start the whole "birther" thing, which brought wider attention to it. I'm NOT a birther, I think Obama cleverly used the whole issue to bring out the conspiracy nuts and then paint ALL his critics as crazy birthers. Obama has kept all his academic records sealed. We do not know what courses he took, what his grades were, or even if and when he graduated. It's curious that unlike past presidents, we do not know who his teachers were or who was in classes with him, etc. Again, I'm not implying a conspiracy here other than to ask why he is so opaque and why his supporters do not want to know this stuff that we have easily known about all past presidents- and why they demand to know stuff about Trump that they did not need to know about their messiah.

 

Re:doh!

[Zeinfeld]

Obama didn't release his birth certificate for one very good reason, he is very clever and Trump is very stupid.

The fact is that the Republicans will always invent some crazy idiotic 'scandal' that they obsess about and endlessly throw up smoke. The birther conspiracy was mind numbingly ridiculous. It would require someone to go back in time to plant the birth notice in the papers. Or for some group of conspirators to go to an enormous amount of trouble in order to make a particular black kid president.

So rather than release the birth certificate and let the Republicans invent a new scandal, Obama held onto it and let them obsess about a scandal nobody else thought made the slightest sense, knowing that he could knock their house of cards down any time he chose. Which of course he did a week before the Bin Laden raid which was guaranteed to end the story.

George W. Bush opened torture chambers across the world and collected photographs for a sick sexual thrill. Yet nobody ever talks about that. None of the people complaining about Hilary ever complained about GWB refusing to comply with Congressional investigation or the deletion of 5 million emails.

So here is what is going to happen. Trump is going to go down to the biggest defeat since Carter and he is going to drag the rest of his party down with him. And afterwards there is going to be a new civil rights act that prohibits Republican voter suppression tactics and the gerrymandering that give them a 5% advantage in elections. And by the time it is all done the Republican party will have two choices, either boot the racist conspiracy theorists and Trumpists out or face two decades in the wilderness.

Re: doh!

[KenHansen]

George W. Bush opened torture chambers across the world and collected photographs for a sick sexual thrill. Yet nobody ever talks about that.

Really, George Bush personally collected torture photographs? Care to prove that assertion with a credible citation?

None of the people complaining about Hilary ever complained about GWB refusing to comply with Congressional investigation or the deletion of 5 million emails.

If no one talks about them, how do you know about them?

What "5 million emails" are you talking about? The Private, non-government emails from an RNC server established specifically to COMPLY with federal laws regarding doing 'political party business' on government equipment? You may want to look a little deeper - no one talks about the 5M 'deleted' emails because A) they weren't deleted, they were lost backup tapes; B) there were 20M emails, not 5M; and C) Because they were ultimately found and handed over to the government by the RNC when the backup tapes were found.

...there is going to be a new civil rights act that prohibits Republican voter suppression tactics

Like thinking proving identity when someone votes is just as valid a demand as requiring state-issued IDs to buy certain cold medicines?

and the gerrymandering that give them a 5% advantage in elections.

You do know that Democrats gerrymander voting districts also, right? Of course you do.

And by the time it is all done the Republican party will have two choices, either boot the racist conspiracy theorists and Trumpists out or face two decades in the wilderness.

That's one opinion, I personally can't wait to see how Democrats are going handle watching "The most qualified candidate for Predident of the United States" (according to the candidate that called her corrupt and a liar back in 2008 - then-Senator Obama) gets charged with purjury for lying to Congress. There are 14,900 emails Hillary didn't turn over to Gov't, want to guess how many were wrongly-deleted by team Hillary?

Hillary lied repeatedly about her email server, she lied about why she did it (claimed simplicity, but used multiple devices), she lied about her predecessors doing same thing, she lied about it being approved/legal, she lied abou classified material on the server, she lied about turning over all work-related emails, etc... Why are her lies accepted/dismissed by Democrats?

Re:Criminal

[Archangel Michael]

If you're voting for Hillary, other than being "anti Trump" what are you resting on that you think she is ANY better than Trump?

Because quite frankly, both Trump and Clinton are disastrous, and I can't see why most people would vote for her anymore than him. Unless of course you're a single issue Abortion voter, that is.

And for most people Gary Johnson is the ONLY sane choice out there.

Re:Popcorn's ready...

[RoccamOccam]

I'm very much anti-Trump, but ..

Trump is under no legal obligation to share his tax returns. I think that he should, but that is just an expectation of a candidate for the office - it holds no legal weight. But his situation is *very* different from the criminal activities that Hillary has been engaging in.

Re:Criminal

[Archangel Michael]

This is ONLY because the system has been rigged by the two parties to be a two party system.

Imagine for a second, that NO party affiliation marking for office holders appeared on the ballot, and all you saw were names.

So, instead of Hillary Clinton (D) - it was just "Hillary Clinton"

And all the idiot (D) and (R) voters who know NOTHING about actual candidates randomly picked whomever from the list of 5 - 8 names on the ballot, how that would spread the vote out, so that no person ever got to 50%.

Imagine for a second, that ONLY two or three people were on the ballot for the General Election, having secured those positions by voting in the primary (completely open none-partisan) election where no party was ever mentioned.

Imagine then, the following, California primary for President, has the primary winners being Hillary and Bernie, with Jill Stein as third place (and qualified for Nov), and Texas has Trump and Cruz and possibly Hillary, and Florida, Trump, Rubio and Bernie. And Ohio for Kasich, Hilary and Bernie ...

Now, imagine how the ENTIRE population is properly represented, rather than the crappy choices we have today between Dumb and Dumber, and two third party candidates that people WANT to vote for, but are too afraid that it might mean Hillary or Donald actually wins.

I mean, if EVERYONE I know, who is voting, but is voting not FOR someone, but rather to keep the OTHER out actually voted for Gary Johnson (L), he would win in a landslide. So, if you aren't voting FOR someone, please vote FOR Gary Johnson.

Democrate here

[rsilvergun]

we were thinking "How the _fuck_ are we suppose to create a viable progressive candidate when we've got to deal with the right wing in our party who think Jesus will somehow make Flint's water clean again?".

Hilary is a compromise between our right wing and our progressives. That's kinda the point of progressivism: Progress. Hilary is progress. Not a lot. Lots of us want more. But there's a _lot_ of aging baby boomers scared out of their wits right now who don't want _anything_ changed. Hilary's there for them. Bernie was there for the progressives, but we let him slide after he got some concessions out of the establishment because otherwise those boomers will stay home. They won't vote the big R. But they will stay home. Out of fear of Bernie the Big Bad (Democratic) Socialist. And we'll lose the election.

We did the same thing to get Mr Clinton in the Whitehouse. Worked then too. It'll probably work now. If Hilary was a man it'd probably be going smoother. Folks don't like Bossy chicks.

Re:Popcorn's ready...

[Aighearach]

Many people don't know why they're expected to share their returns, or when it started. They don't realize that when President Nixon said, " I am not a crook! " he wasn't talking about the Watergate break-in scandal, he was talking about his low tax rate and was insisting that his lack of direct participation in taxation was legal.

The whole point is to lay your connections bare, show that you pay your share, show what your lot in life actually is.

Trump says, hey, it is none of your business who he is, who he is connected to, what his lot in life is; he's just running for President, he's not required to convince you of all that. And it is true; nothing requires him to campaign in a way that meets the minimum requirements of the mainstream voters.

And WTF does being audited have to do with any of it? You should be telling the truth perfectly during an audit. He hasn't even made any sort of specific case as to why being under audit makes an different. As in, on the level of verbs, what does he think will happen? What is the concern? No answer.

You say something about "criminal" stuff in regards to Clinton, but I don't think that word means what you think it means. I suggest looking it up.

How many people really support her?

[dfenstrate]

Democrats... what the hell were you thinking when you supported Hillary?

The super delegate system, plus some rigging at the DNC, ensured there was never really a choice. Potential qualified competitors realized that Hillary had all the super delegates bought and paid for, so they didn't even bother. Bernie was dug up as an 'opponent', a sham primary was had- it got a little out of control- and in the end, the pre-determined outcome was obtained.
I think few people really support Hillary. They're just being obedient to the party.

Re:What event?

[ScentCone]

seriously. What event? Aside from the scandal itself what, exactly, did Hilary do that was a) a criminal offense and b) revealed in the emails?

The emails revealed that she was incredibly reckless in handling classified information - some of it SAP-level stuff so sensitive that it can't even be talked about when it's 100% redacted, content-wise. People lose their careers and their liberty over such carelessness. And we're now seeing evidence of pervasive corruption as her family was enriched while their family business sold access to her while she was in office. So, you're either simply not paying attention or (more likely) you know all of this and are a Shillary.

While I'm on it, which is it? Is she a fool who couldn't run an email server or a Machiavellian genius who successfully evaded the FBI and an entire political party's attempts to bring her to justice?

False dichotomy.

She's had a long career of throwing underlings under the bus or having her party cover for Clinton Machine mis-steps. So yes, incompetence (but mostly arrogance). And no, she hasn't evaded the FBI or congress ... she's still hip deep in the mess she created.

Re:Popcorn's ready...

[RoccamOccam]

You say something about "criminal" stuff in regards to Clinton, but I don't think that word means what you think it means. I suggest looking it up.

I agree with everything you said about showing your tax returns. Trump should do it - but he is under no legal obligation to do so. But Clinton has acted criminally - the decision not to prosecute her was left to a Democrat political hack. That doesn't change the fact that what she did was criminal.

Re: Popcorn's ready...

[fustakrakich]

I blame the public schools for removing critical thinking concepts from their curriculum.

That's their job. What parent wants to give their kid one more reason to start another argument? It's hard enough to make them shut up and eat their vegetables without filling their heads full Voltaire and Kant.

Re:What Bothers You About It?

[jeff4747]

First, those of us who have had security clearances are well aware we would be in prison if we had done something similar. Dual-track justice systems are not popular.

Second, It's a giant fucking land mine that could easily install Trump.

There's a lot of hints about "pay for play" at State via the Clinton Foundation. Give the CF a pile of money, and you get goodies from the State department. Like approval for arms sales, or removing your country from certain lists so your literal slave labor factories sell goods to the US.

While no "smoking gun" on pay-for-play has yet been found, there's still quite a mountain to go through just in Clinton emails. The FBI and two US Attorneys are investigating the foundation itself....And the foundation can't seem to pass an audit (IIRC, the foundation has "corrected" 5 years of tax returns so far). All of that could explode if "bad" emails are found.

There's also certain "unsavory" diplomatic actions, like turning the condemnation of the coup in Honduras into support for the coup. An "unfortunate" email on that subject could be a problem with a certain gigantic demographic group the Democratic party is increasingly reliant upon.

Finally, it's just a really, really, really fucking stupid decision. And presidents who make really, really, really fucking stupid decisions are not good for our country (see: Bush, George W).

Re:Criminal

[MrDoh!]

At this point, I doubt it. I just don't think he can avoid the twitter meltdowns. Soon as someone/anyone prods him about his stances, he pushes yet further right it appears. No, the chance to look moderate is long past, the media is now working against him, he's blown it (intentionally perhaps).

Hint: options that do not exist are not "sane"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a basic matter of definition. It's not sane to be planning to ride a unicorn in a hores race.

Barring some severe disruption like nuclear war, a massive plague, an assassination, a severe medical event, or the FBI growing a spine and suddenly deciding laws mean things for the elites too, the next POTUS will be either Hillary Clinon or Donald Trump.

You can pretend otherwise and crawl into your "safe space" and not vote, or vote green, or vote libertarian, etc and essentially hand your vote to somebody else and spend the next four years pretending your hands are clean of whatever bad things whichever winner does or says, or you can vote.

Your choice is actually simple:

The lifetime political hack whose experience is: beign married to a governor, married to a president, given a senate seat and voting for war, given a cabinet job and screwing it. A person who has a life-long history of hiding/stealing/destroying government documents to thwart congress, the courts, and the public (from her Watergate activities (1970s), to whitewater(1980s), the White House travel office docs(1990s), the FBI background files(1990s), the StateDept/Benghazi/ClintonFoundation emails(the 2000s and 2010s). A person who claims to have been penniless when leaving the White House in 2000 but become worth $100,000,000.00+ in only a few years by making NOTHING but speeches to bankers and foreign government leaders. This is a person who has been entrusted with government power and regularly and repeatedly abused it, and always gets away with it, a person who, along with her supperters, exhibits supreme confidence that she always gets away with corruption. She rejects the traditional concept that any politician has legitimate political opponents and instead has spent 20+ years insisting that her opponents are illegitimate "enemies" arrayed against her in a "vast right wing conspiracy". This is positively Nixonian, and just as rare in US presidential politics as it is toxic.

The lifelong businessman and real estate developer, who built his image over the years with lots of high-profile pop culture goofyness up to and including a reality TV show, and complementing/funding/hosting nearly every politician in both parties and many celebrities. A guy whose politics were mostly squishy and unknown and not particularly controversial until he tossed his hat into the ring a year ago. Social conservatives are afraid he's actually a social liberal. Fiscal conservatives are frightened that he is actually a [gasp!] populist/agrarian/leftist on economics. He's a guy whose rise to political power has been fuelled more by pointing out the (easily identifiable) failings and lies of regular politicians and promising to "fix" some of the big unresolved issues that a huge part of the population is angry about never seeing solved, without being very sepcific about his plans for the fixes. This is a person who has been accused of abusing people with his businesses but has never been found to have done so more than any other businessman with a similar sized empire, and who cannot be analyzed for abuse of government power because he has never had any. He cannot hold up his government resume because he has never worked in government.

The one is a certainty, and certainly very corrupt. The other is an uncertainty, and of uncertain governing stability.

THAT is the choice: known corruption or unknown possible instability. Anything else is pixie dust.

Re:Popcorn's ready...

[Aighearach]

The head of the CIA is a Republican.

Please, that word, "criminal" doesn't mean what you think it means. Look it up . It doesn't mean, "me not likee."

Re: What Bothers You About It?

[jeff4747]

My understanding is that FBI director Comey decided that a prosecutor would not be able to persuade a jury that she intentionally did anything illegal

The relevant statute does not require intent. It only requires negligence. Intent is covered under a different statue.

Negligence has been sufficient to get convictions in the past. Those people had the misfortune of not running for president during their investigation, so there was a much different outcome.

Diplomacy...Our enemy today is our friend tomorrow...England, Spain, Germany, Japan, Viet Nam, Iraq...

We aren't talking about a long-term shift in geopolitical alignment. We're talking about the administration starting with condemning the coup until Clinton's office caused a change in direction. It should be noted the junta rapidly started the usual seat squad thing, and Honduras post-coup has the highest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere.

Again, another decision that is bad if her speeches are to be believed.

I agree, stupid decisions. I wonder why nobody managed to talk her out of all this.

From the outside, it appears she values secrecy and control above all else. The email server. She hid the Rose Law Firm billing records for years (Giving Starr enough time to find Lewinsky). Her 1993 health care reform efforts were also done in secret among a clique of her making, which is one of the primary reasons those efforts failed spectacularly.

If that guess about her is accurate, then she is not going to want to take "no" very well, and there are plenty of reports that her inner circle is unwilling to oppose her on anything.

Re:Hillary's a WITCH! Burn her!

[Mike Van Pelt]

Yeah, a lot of stuff about Hillary is fabricated. And likewise, a lot of stuff about Trump is fabricated. In both cases, though, what we have video of actually coming out of their mouths is sufficient.

Hillary, I am convinced, is an enemy of the Constitution. There are a lot of anti Second Amendment "quotes" attributed to her which are completely made up. However, her proposal to implement something like Australia's gun laws -- which were, indeed, outright bans and confiscation -- is completely contrary to the to clear and declarative words of the Constitution. If she wants to repeal the Second Amendment, fine, get the votes for it and do it. But if "The Right of the People ... Shall not be infringed" can be abolished without the amendment to make it constitutional, then what possible protection do you imagine might exist for other rights which are the more weakly stated "Congress shall make no law." Not to mention rights that are emanations conjured out of penumbras.

Think about that. "Your Guys" are not forever and always going to be the ones running Washington DC. NEVER advocate giving "your guys" powers that you would be uncomfortable seeing in the hands of the "other guys."

I don't know if Hillary has learned anything from the email server thing. Her response has been one part "I didn't do anything wrong" and one part "I didn't do it nobody saw me do it you can't prove anything." Anybody who has ever held any sort of security clearance knows full well what would have happened to them if they had done what she did. Ask anyone who has ever held a clearance to access TS/SAP stuff what would happen to them. The FBI Director, in declining to recommend prosecution, added a statement that basically said "But nobody else had better try this, because they will suffer consequences, because they are not Hillary Clinton."

I absolutely abhor having anyone in public office who thinks they are above the law. And that goes exponential when the top law enforcement officials of the country agree that, yes, they are above the law.

Re:Popcorn's ready...

[silentcoder]

The decision was made by a republican - and made on a basis that a LOT of such decisions are made: insufficient evidence to secure a conviction.

The thing about the favour-the-accused legal systems of the free world is they ALSO favour the accused when the accused is rich and powerful. If you can come up with a way to change that without destroying liberty for everybody else who doesn't have those resources I would like to hear it - but for now, it's the worst system in the world except for all the others.

Re:Popcorn's ready...

[pastafazou]

1st, Comey is no longer a registered Republican.
2nd, Obama appointed Comey to the position, so mentioning his previous affiliation with the Republicans carries no weight whatsoever.
3rd, insufficient evidence to secure a conviction is a falsehood. They have proof of multiple transmissions of classified information. There's absolutely zero chance that they couldn't get a conviction on the charge of mishandling classified information. They don't need to prove intent to mishandle or any other difficult to prove charges. Mishandling of classified information is pretty cut and dried. Did her emails contain classified information? Absolutely 100% yes. Was the information marked as classified? Absolutely 100% yes.