FBI Agreed To Destroy Laptops of Clinton Aides With Immunity Deal, Sources Say (foxnews.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from Fox News: Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday. Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public -- in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said. The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee fired off a letter Monday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking why the DOJ and FBI agreed to the restrictive terms, including that the FBI would destroy the laptops after finishing the search. The immunity deals for Mills and Samuelson, made as part of the FBI's probe into Clinton's use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state, apparently included a series of "side agreements" that were negotiated by Samuelson and Mills' attorney Beth Wilkinson. The side deals were agreed to on June 10, less than a month before FBI Director James Comey announced that the agency would recommend no charges be brought against Clinton or her staff. Judiciary Committee aids told FoxNews.com that the destruction of the laptops is particularly troubling as it means that the computers could not be used as evidence in future legal proceedings, should new information or circumstances arise.

Comments

Re:Hail Cesar!

[bitchtits]

And Heil Trump!

Re:Slashdot Howto?

[sjames]

See that link to the story? Don't click.

Re:When DOJ & FBI obstruct justice...

[unixisc]

who prosecutes them? The people who signed off on that deal should be prosecuted.

Precisely!!! James Colmy sent Scooter Libby to jail for blowing the cover on Valerie Plame, even though the person actually responsible was Richard Armitage. While now looking the other way while Clinton gets away w/ far more. If Trump gets elected, Colmy should not only be fired, but tried and have his sorry ass tossed into jail. With Hilary if possible!

Re: Needs to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Except trump has committed no crimes and has not abused his power of being a public official for his own gain . Hillary has over and over . Not a big trump fan he is unpredictable but that is better than what we know Hillary will do . Lie cheat and steal

Re:But what about Benghazi and Whitewater ???

[ScentCone]

This is just a witch hunt... just like Benghazi and Whitewater and a bunch of other "scandals".

You mean just like Benghazi, where we see that she was indeed looking you in the eye and lying to you about what happened, all for political reasons right before an election? And where in the course of looking into what happened, it was found that she completely blew off all of the rules and laws surrounding federal record-keeping, and was handling classified data in her house and passing it around to uncleared staff and lawyers? That Benghazi?

And do you meant the Whitewater affair that uncovered all sorts of lawbreaking and classic Clintonian throwing-under-the-bus of other people, including Clinton loyalists, in order to avoid prosecution? That Whitewater?

Re:Trump versus Clinton

[ScentCone]

Hillary has repeatedly admitted that using a personal email server was a mistake.

Which is, as you know, a completely BS thing to say. She didn't "make a mistake" (other than in the sense that she didn't understand the inevitability of being caught), she deliberately and purposefully set out to get around federal rules and laws regarding record keeping and the handling of sensitive information. That wasn't a mistake, it was completely deliberate. And her incessant lying about it ever since makes that very plain. You don't dole out immunity like candy to her staff over "a mistake."

Re:And yet...

[manwargi]

Watch the documentary Clinton Cash and then describe which one of the nominees is more ethical.

Re:And yet...

[Kiuas]

You do not have to choose between just Trump and Clinton. It doesn't have to be a crook or a thief.

While this is theoretically true, in practice the american political system is currently such that all elections are decided between 2 parties.

A two-party system often develops in a plurality voting system. In this system, voters have a single vote, which they can cast for a single candidate in their district, in which only one legislative seat is available. In plurality voting (i.e. first past the post), in which the winner of the seat is determined purely by the candidate with the most votes, several characteristics can serve to discourage the development of third parties and reward the two major parties.

Duverger suggests two reasons this voting system favors a two-party system. One is the result of the "fusion" (or an alliance very much like fusion) of the weak parties, and the other is the "elimination" of weak parties by the voters, by which he means that voters gradually desert the weak parties on the grounds that they have no chance of winning.[6][7]

A prominent restrictive feature unique to this system is purely statistical. Because the system gives only the winner in each district a seat, a party which consistently comes third in every district will not gain any seats in the legislature, even if it receives a significant proportion of the vote. This puts geographically thinly spread parties at a significant disadvantage. An example of this is the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom, whose proportion of seats in the legislature is significantly less than their proportion of the national vote. The Green Party of Canada is also a good example. The party received approximately 5% of the popular vote from 2004 to 2011 but had only won one seat (out of 308) in the House of Commons in the same span of time. Another example was seen in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, when Ross Perot's candidacy received zero electoral votes despite getting 19% of the popular vote. Gerrymandering is sometimes used to counteract such geographic difficulties in local politics but is controversial on a large scale. These numerical disadvantages can create an artificial limit on the level at which a third party can engage in the political process.

(Source: wiki article on Duverger's law

There are ways of setting up the system so that it favors multiple parties, but this requires large-scale reform towards some variant of proportional representation. And herein lies the core of the issue: since the existing parties both clearly benefit from the status quo which essentially makes it impossible for them to lose power, there's de facto no change they will be interested in reforming the political system or funding for that matter.

As far as I can see (as a non-American) the only change the people have to change the system would be getting it done through local levels (ie. through for example article 5 convention).

Re:Needs to stop

[TheRaven64]

Add to that, Clinton is a Washington insider, Trump is not. They're both going to try to do bad things, but the establishment hates Trump and will try to stop him. Clinton might actually succeed.