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Congress Opens Probe Into FBI's Handling of Clinton Email Investigation (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two House committees announced Tuesday that they would conduct a joint probe into the FBI's handling of the Clinton e-mail investigation. The Clinton investigation concluded with no charges being levied against the former secretary of state who was running for president under the Democratic ticket. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said in a joint statement that they are unsatisfied with how the probe into Clinton's private e-mail server concluded. Among other things, the chairmen want to know why the bureau publicly said it was investigating Clinton while keeping silent that it was looking into President Donald Trump's campaign associates and their connections to Russia.
"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status," Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a joint statement. "The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic, and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight."
"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status," Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a joint statement. "The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic, and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight."
One wonder if Gowdy will manage to show up for more than 20% of the witness testimony this time. Or is he just going to implicitly acknowledge that this is a gigantic waste of time and money, and serves as nothing other than a distraction from what a colossal clusterfuck the Trump presidency has been thus far?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
You keep doing it, ad infinitum.
You're reading this wrong. The article isn't about why wasn't Clinton prosecuted, but rather why of the two FBI investigations into the leading presidential candidates, how come only one (Clinton) was talked about widely whereas the other one (Trump) was kept quiet until after the election.
Given the short-sightedness and willingness to accept double-standards on the Trump side however, had the FBI publicly announced they were looking into Trump, he would have claimed he was the underdog and that "The Man" was out to persecute him and probably have increased his voter base.
If itâ(TM)s ok to investigate Obama over his birth certificate.. an offense allegedly and speculated to have been committed decades ago, why canâ(TM)t we investigate Trumpâ(TM)s draft dodging? Last I checked draft dodging was a crime. Some other guy had to go die in Vietnam because Trump paid his way out of the draft. Anyway at the very least we should investigate how bone spurs can disappear over time. You never know, Trump might get the Nobel prize for medicine for such a discovery.
Actually, half of the present administration is using personal email for official business. Oops!
The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic, and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight.
LOL
*snort*
That ranks up there as one of the biggest piles of unadulterated bullshit I've ever seen. I don't care which tribe you subscribe to, everyone should realize that our justice system is anything but evenhanded or impartial.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Yeah, I gotta think this committee's going to uncover some stuff they weren't intending to uncover. Kinda how the Lewinsky affair took out several high ranking GOP congresscritters as collateral damage.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Holy fuck, can we stop with the pissing an moaning about politics on slashdot? That ship sailed a long, long time ago. Get over it or move the fuck on. It's not like this site is loaded with content in the first place.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
How about the simple fact that Clinton's investigation was concluded before the election and the FBI found nothing? With Trump they are still investigating. I don't know if Trump has done anything wrong but FBI should not divulge the results of an investigation before the investigation is done. That seems common sense.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status".
Ha ha, very funny. Of course they don't! The rich, powerful, and politically connected always get EXACTLY the same treatment as the poor from the justice system.
Being on good social term with the judge, the DA, or the Attorney General could never do an accused person the slightest good. And the prosecution would be just as likely to frame up a wealthy, influential political donor as the lowest miscreant.
Yes, folks, thank goodness it's a government of laws, not persons!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Yeah, I gotta think this committee's going to uncover some stuff they weren't intending to uncover.
Actually, some of the evidence against Hillary was collateral damage from the investigation of Anthony Weiner's sexting. The laptop he used for sending penis pics had emails between Hillary and Huma Abedin.
"I could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot someone, and people would still vote for me."
Yes, Trump fuckers. I will post this delightfull quote from your beloved peodophile in chief every chance I get, or untill I'm IP banned.
And downmodding me to hell won't change the fact that you knowingly, freely, and willfully elected for president a man who thinks that you're all fucking morons, and told you to your face.
No harm was done. There's just a lot of speculation and all these "what could have happened." fantasies - no actual evidence.
The ONLY reason the emails were even discovered was because of the Benghazi witch hunt. And as we found out, it was all because the Pentagon didn't have any "military assets" (as they put it) close enough to respond. NOTHING to do with Clinton.
So, I'm bored now. The emails are an irrelevant issue.
In the meantime, I'm concerned about what's going to happen to NAFTA, healthcare and the ACA, and what's up with Trump's executive order allowing the Pentagon to pull service people out of retirement. WTF is he going to do?
The last thing this country needs is yet another endless war.
Congress claims ignorance that they didn't know that we had troops in Niger.
Simply put, any Senator that states they didn't know is either full of shit or has no idea what they are doing at a very, very important job. The United States, among other countries, have been in a variety of different African countries since 2003 in the "War on Terrorism". Niger hosts US and French troops publicly, but it's no stretch of the imagination that other countries are operating there too in less public operations. African countries have become a boon to recruitment in terror organizations.
Basically if you are living in a first world nation and your government is worried about global terrorism, then it is safe to say that your country more than likely has a shit load of special units in Africa doing all kinds of really risky stuff. Every Senator is basically given that general overview before diving deeper into the details.
This is yet another effort in futility by the congress. They are spending too much time and resources on probes against one and another. They need to be discussing the economy and how to create even more jobs, compete with China and a few others countries that are threatening to overtake the US in terms of global economic domination.
Yeah, it sounds crazy when you put it that way: "free stuff".
Maybe not so crazy when you specify what the stuff is. Education, for example. Health care. In both these cases insufficient access has an impact on society wider than the directly affected people. Stuff you end up paying for. Because when people have no money, they can still cost the rest of us.
A lot of people would be willing to pay more for the consequences of squalor than to risk someone getting something "for free". It's a principled position, you see. I'm more of a pragmatist, myself.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We've got hundreds of special forces troops running around in Niger. Some of them got caught in an ambush and fought their way out of it losing 4 team members. It's not a fucking video game. People make mistakes and people die. I don't know if you know this or not but Trump doesn't go on those missions. It was a routine mission and likely the first anyone in the administration knew about it was when they found out 4 soldiers were killed. I served in the eighties and we had people die from training exercises or just working. Turning 18 year old guys loose with heavy equipment can lead to that. One rolled an off road fork lift, one electrocuted, one rolled a 2 1/2 ton truck. It's dangerous work even when people aren't shooting at you. It's the fucking military. Check out how many Sailors die every cruise.
And... Have been told in no-uncertain terms that it will not be tolerated any more and have stopped doing this. Not to mention that nobody is now claiming they lost these E-mails or that the were not work related, OR contained classified information...
SO... Not the same thing here..
Just incase you don't remember, Hillary reprimanded one of her ambassadors for this very thing near the start of her stint as Secretary of State... Signed the memo and all...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You mean the hearings where people like Clinton, Comey and Lynch are able to give nonanswers, declare ignorance in the face of questions they should be able to give answers to, and generally be completely evasive?
Have you ever watched those hearings? They only serve to show how unaccountable you are when your political faction can run interference.
A common meme is: "The Republicans already tried to look into this and couldn't make anything stick. So clearly Hillary Clinton was innocent and the Republicans are just digging for dirt and hoping to find something." Variations on this have already been posted in this discussion.
What's extraordinary here is that the Director of the FBI intervened personally on Hillary Clinton's behalf. He wrote a draft of his speech exonerating her before the FBI ever interviewed her. Her aides were given broad immunity, which is usually used to compel people to talk[1], but then they were allowed to just say things like "I don't remember". Hillary Clinton, or someone working for her, wiped her email server after a subpoena was issued requiring her to hand it over to Congress, and there were absolutely no consequences from that. A usual FBI investigation would collect as much evidence as possible as early as possible, but that wasn't done in this case... the Anthony Weiner/Huma Abedin copies of Hillary Clinton emails were found during an investigation of Weiner, but they should have been found earlier. When the FBI is actually investigating they are thorough about collecting evidence. They should have grabbed every computer Hillary ever touched, and as Huma Abedin was an aide to Hillary, every computer Huma ever touched. (They could have copied the hard disks and given the computers back right away.)
Most extraordinary of all: the Director of the FBI claimed that "no reasonable prosecutor" would prosecute Hillary Clinton as no proof of ill intent was found, yet the laws she broke do not require intent but only require proof of mishandling of data.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447209/hillary-clinton-e-mail-investigation-grand-jury-subpoenas
Consider what happened to David Petraeus. He was guilty, but what he did wasn't even a tenth as serious as what Hillary Clinton did. But the Director of the FBI didn't whitewash the investigation for him, so his career was over. (By the way, he didn't go to prison, so he still got better treatment than the "little people" would get. Consider the case of Bryan H. Nishimura. I would say that what Nishimura did wasn't even a thousandth as serious as what Hillary Clinton did, but he was treated much more harshly than she was. Note that he wasn't charged with any "intent", just the mishandling of data.)
I'm pretty sure that if a member of the Trump administration mishandles classified data, he or she won't get the special treatment that Hillary Clinton got. But the Democrats will get a President elected again sometime in the future and I would like to get a precedent established that the laws apply to Democrats as much as to Trump and his staff. I know that the law is not enforced perfectly even-handedly in this country (or any country in the real world) but I am appalled at the epic whitewashing done on behalf of Hillary Clinton to protect
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
GP: trump says his voters are morons.
YOU: Trump tells the truth. BUT HILLARY!!!111oneeleven!111
Me: well, you certainly proved Trump correct.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Answer to first question: You grew up and realized it was a fairy tale.
Investigations only _start_ when the opposing party gets control of the process. Even then, the mutual dirt they have on each other keeps the serious stuff by the powerful out of the light of day. Like teenage kids with MAD dirt on each other, nobody is going to be the first.
Which is why the RNC is afraid of Trump. He isn't in on it. He will send Hillary to prison, even if it ultimately sends half of DC to prison. We can only hope.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What does the Niger incident have to do with this, other than to serve as yet another 'whataboutism'.
You're complaining about a double standard, for a probe investigating a double standard, i.e. the unusual activities of the DOJ and the FBI in relation to Clinton. This kind of corruption spanning multiple branches of government can't be just brushed aside just because the parties involved were able to run out the clock. There needs to be answers, there needs to be accountability.
It happens to be democrats on the receiving end this time, and hopefully with republicans too there can be transparency and accountability with the public. I say a pox on both their houses, it is in the public interest to know the truth.
Destruction of evidence and lying to congress is considered to be criminal acts, and there seems to be an increasingly amount of evidence of that occurring. The immunity deals, the refusing to seize laptops as evidence, the allowing key witnesses to attend Clinton's unrecorded 'interview', needs to be examined under greater scrutiny. Of course the biggest question is why he declared the decision to not press for indictment occurred at the end of the investigation, and not months prior as the internal memo seems to indicate.
Maybe if we're lucky, we'll get another outburst of "We're not weasels!" from Mr.Comey after his mask of false sincerity begins to crack under pressure.
Same thing. AFTER the hypocrisy of course.
About time someone started investigating the investigation.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I know you're trolling with your CNN propaganda, but could you be less lazy about it?
We had the attorney general of the united states, meet with the spouse of a subject under active FBI investigation in a private meeting that lasted half an hour, and then refused to recuse herself afterwards. We have a director of the FBI who leaks his own internal memos, seemingly purposefully ignores evidence on laptops and celphones, ignores the destruction of the devices, and then claims that there was insufficient evidence of intent when that isn't even a factor to be considered under the statute.
We have immunity deals handed out, with witnesses like Cheryl Mills being proved a liar when she claims ignorance of the server, witnesses being allowed to serve as legal aid to Clinton during interviews, and even more oddities. There's other questions, such as if the donations to the campaign to Comey's wife may have had a bearing on how this investigation was handled.
But according to you this hearing is all to be a smokescreen for nothingburger TrumpRussia, for a news media that sat on the Urianium One story for over five years. Go peddle your bullshit elsewhere.
I might think you are a diddler. I might even be looking into it. Maybe I could hold a press conference stating that you are being investigated for diddling. I might think the same of your neighbor, but he's 'special' so I won't tell anyone until I'm done. I sure hope my investigation exonerates you. I would hate for anyone to have the wrong impression just because I said you were being investigated for diddling.
Do you even have any idea what the cost of living is in Denmark? If the income is the same a Dane pays more taxes, higher prices for homes or apartments, higher restaurant prices, clothing costs, higher prices for gas, higher prices for all utilities, etc.... Some of these higher prices are very daunting as they are 100-160% higher than in the US. That means more than double what those things cost in the US. For example, a pair of Levi's 501 jeans in the US averages $41.48 nationally. In Denmark that same pair of jeans is $108.49. All things considered a Dane's purchasing power is 16% lower than someone of comparable income in the US. Meaning, of course, that overall a Dane is 16% poorer than the equivalent American.
There is no free ride.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Did you know that 72% of doctors and 104.3% of economists agree that only 6% of people would benefit from having enough money to live indoors and buy food?
*Of course* there's no free ride! That Dane is part of a society whose members have decided it is better (and cheaper) for everyone to band together and buy a shit load of stuff collectively (healthcare, social care etc) rather than buying it individually. So your jeans are cheaper, but your healthcare is waaaaaaaay more expensive. And guess what? No-one drops dead or loses a house from not being able to afford jeans, but they sure as hell do if they can't afford healthcare.
Danish healthcare expenditure totalled 10.8% of GDP in 2014.
US healthcare expenditure totalled 17.1% in the same year.
The Danes spent an average of $5199 on healthcare in 2016, of which $4374 was for government / compulsory services. Americans spent an average of $9892 on healthcare in the same year, of which $4860 was for government / compulsory services. Yes, you actually spent 12 US Levi jeans *more* per year on government / compulsory services in 2016 than the Danes, despite their being able to provide a universal service for that money, while you put up with terrible safety nets, all because of the ridiculous state you've allowed your health system to get into, by being so in thrall to the notion of the free market as a political construct (although obviously not an actual political objective in US health policy for the Republicans or the Democrats).