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Comey, Who Investigated Hillary Clinton For Using Personal Email For Official Business, Used His Personal Email For Official Business (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Former FBI Director James Comey, who led the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of personal email while secretary of state, also used his personal email to conduct official business, according to a report from the Justice Department on Thursday. The report also found that while Comey was "insubordinate" in his handling of the email investigation, political bias did not play a role in the FBI's decision to clear Clinton of any criminal wrongdoing.
The report from the office of the inspector general "identified numerous instances in which Comey used a personal email account (a Gmail account) to conduct FBI business." In three of the five examples, investigators said Comey sent drafts he had written from his FBI email to his personal account. In one instance, he sent a "proposed post-election message for all FBI employees that was entitled 'Midyear thoughts,'" the report states. In another instance, Comey again "sent multiple drafts of a proposed year-end message to FBI employees" from his FBI account to his personal email account.
The report from the office of the inspector general "identified numerous instances in which Comey used a personal email account (a Gmail account) to conduct FBI business." In three of the five examples, investigators said Comey sent drafts he had written from his FBI email to his personal account. In one instance, he sent a "proposed post-election message for all FBI employees that was entitled 'Midyear thoughts,'" the report states. In another instance, Comey again "sent multiple drafts of a proposed year-end message to FBI employees" from his FBI account to his personal email account.
Ok, fight!
I do not envy reporters who get stuck having to slog through a 500+ page report written by government drones just to condense it down into a 500 word article. That has to be enough to make a severe insomniac feel like they have narcolepsy.
You are a conservative.
Well... I'll never! Color me shocked ... shocked, I TELL YOU!
What I don't understand about Comey is that he all but threw the election to Trump while panning Trump left and right.
That was the issue with Clinton. Handling classified material improperly. Bid difference.
I don't respond to or upvote ACs
this is what we get. Meh.
Obama was one of 13 people who communicated with Hillary! via that server.
Eating the peanuts out of Vlad Putin's shit for a living isn't making America great again, sorry traitor Drumpftards. You collude, you lose. We've never had so many "witches" pleading guilty and cooperating. Your house is on fire.
Strzok and Page also used personal email to conduct FBI business. And yes, it was probably illegal - their work-related communications must be subject to FOIA’s disclosure provisions.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
Cybersecurity needs to be a real concern in Washington, for everyone, regardless of party. This tit for tat thing will only backfire since everyone is guilty.
Who the hell _cares_?
Can we maybe talk about how Trump's administration is moving to end protections for pre-existing conditions? That's kinda big news if you're a human being with a body.
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Comey wasn't Secretary of State sending top secret information pertaining to foreign Governments....
Keep things in perspective.
The OIG report also says Comey claims he didn't know Anthony Weiner was married to Clinton's chief of staff Huma Abedin...
Director of the FBI.
I've long suspected that use of personal email accounts is so rampant in government that if the FBI did prosecute, half of congress would be torn between destroying their own emails and trying to dig up anything the other party sent them from a person address. It's only a big deal with it can be turned into a political weapon.
Enjoy watching Trump die in Federal Prison, not even living long enough to BEGIN his state sentences... lol. #Make Leavenworth great again
Go back to the Bush administration and Colin Powell had a personal server too... and he too used it for business... .. but, but, but, but, but ..... HILLARY!!!!
1,2,3 the righties scream
Meanwhile the IG report drops and results in no new indictments, no firings... a big nothing burger... yawn.
so nothing confidential at all, just employee memo drafts?
From the report:
"In addition, we identified instances where FBI employees improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events. We will separately report on those investigations"...
And nothing was ever heard of it again.
But nothing nearly so juicy as the previously unreported text from the FBI agent to his mistress, saying "We will stop it" referring to Trump being elected.
It was unreported, because in the texts the BFI gave congress, that line was removed...
Not redacted. Removed.
Is that enough perspective for you?
I mean who hasn't used a work device to send a home message, or vice versa? And this is frequently against official (but routinely ignored) policy too.
Inappropriate use is an issue, and I don't agree with what Clinton did, but it's mainly a matter of scale and duration. The occasional lapse is hardly worth talking about.
It's also a problem when anyone thinks they are above the law or exempt from the rules. Ahem.
...and butthurt is strong in the liberal fortress of Slashdot. :)
Trump 2020, damn right!
The Trump administration uses anything they can to divert the attention of the public and the press away from the inhumane, anti-American, anti-Christian (which I only mention because that's supposedly the base of his supporters), and downright evil shit that he and his appointees keep committing against the United States, it's citizens, and the human race in general; so it is with this, it literally doesn't matter.. Don't fall for it, kids. Keep your eye on the ball.
'Foreign actors' accessed Hillary Clinton emails, documents show
Fox News link just to piss off the Clintonistas - might as well pick that one, as they're all true.
(U) Comey was investigated former Secretary of State Clinton for her handling of classified materials.
(U) Unclassified materials were found on an insecure personal server that she had set up to work from home
(U) She claimed that she had no knowledge that any of the documents on that server were classified -- meaning some variety of confidential (C), secret (S), or (most likely at her level) top secret (TS). She believed it was all unclassified (U)
(U) Her claim is fucking ridiculous, because in classified documents every page, heading, sentence, and bullet point, and source reference is preceded by note just like this: (U) (FOUO) (C) (S) (TS)
(U) Is this painful to read? This is the sort of thing that she claims was missing from her documents.
(U) You can't get such documents off of the secure network. To get such documents on her private server, she or a lackey uploaded them.
(U) For her story to carry water, she would need someone with clearance level similar to hers to print, re-type, scan, and emailed her such documents, all while lying to her about doing so.
(U) She fucked up. Badly. It may have hurt her chance to become the de facto ruler of the world.
(U) Most people who get caught for lesser fuck-ups end up going to jail.
Enough with this crap.
Her two immediate predecessors did not better and, IIRC, at least one higher up in the Trump administration. After Clinton’s fake failing, Trump’s server got pinged by a Russian bank. More than anyone’s said about Clinton’s server -- which, there was no reason for anyone to believe existed.
Meanwhile, had anything bad come of the breach (such as it was), it would have been known long before 2016.
Stated so, this is all just BS. But the Times’ junkie-like obsession with bashing the Clintons every chance they get, and given the corporate media’s laziness in echoing Times reportage, it did a huge disservice to the nation, to say the least.
What? Comey undermined Clinton _twice_. First when he publicly excoriated her for her personal email server use in June and then when he announced a new investigation just two weeks before the election.
If anything, he was Trump's tool.
Comey to me was never a guy who should have been in the FBI period. He appeared to me to be more of a politician then a guy who should be leading our national law enforcement agency. But he a lot of company in terms of this non professionalism at the FBI.
to her credit she didn't throw him under the bus for it.
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You'll find them on both sides of the aisle.
The Trump administration wants you to see this, so that you will come away thinking Comey did a shitty job of prosecuting a terrible crime in the spirit of covering his own ass. Naturally conservative echo chambers like slashdot are happily sharing this breaking news with all of us because it's good for the Administration. Once sufficient doubt is sewn regarding the Clinton email matter, it can be opened up again and used as another giant distraction so we don't notice what other atrociously illegal things the Trump administration is doing this week.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Then how did those darn Russians get her emails? The alternative to badly secured server hacked by Russians is the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Pick your poison carefully.
The DNC email leak was from the DNC, not the Clinton server (and was years after Hillary left the Secretary of State office). It was done by phishing John Podesta's account: https://www.apnews.com/dea73ef...
https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/03/ap-investigation-russia-hack-dnc-clinton-emails/
> Classified, actually. Top Secret is considerably higher; "classified" is not the same as "top secret".
There was a top secret picture of North Korea on there, though, as we know from other emails discussing that same fact and saying they were worried about it.
Note that there's an appendix at the end for classified info that we didn't get.
Clinton had her own email server in her bathroom. Comey probably used gmail/aol/yahoo. There's a difference.
IIRC - Hillary wasn't cleared - she was just given a free pass because 'no-one would prosecute her'
...of "bbb-but her emails" as the nation crumbles from within....*sigh*.
I would send myself emails as reminders for things I needed to do at home and in the morning, I'd send work or reminders back to work via email too. I never did this with anything sensitive.
Comey did the same thing. Basically, he worked on a speech or document that was going to be public in a day or so anyway. No confidential or higher material was involved. No harm.
If Comey is ever found to have sent classified materials to gmail, lock him up.
Ms. Clinton had 83 classified (Secret or above) email threads (not just a single email) traversing her unclassified server. The woman belongs in jail for each 1 of those. Period. She doesn't belong in jail for having an external email server or using it for personal or political things. Also, the people in her staff who removed the Classified markings and sent the emails to her server need to be in jail too. Those messages should never have been off an air-gapped network. They seriously need jail time for this conspiracy.
Comparing Ms. Clinton's violation with Comey's just shows how little people understand.
Oh my god. Is this site run by Fox now? Why is this even here?
not from the Left. The right wing is way, way better at it. They rely heavily on authoritarianism, which naturally lends itself to violence.
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This is what a smear campaign looks like.
Sigh. Political games are not headlines, but I guess the morning show folks need something to cluck about.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Why would you ever used your personal email for business?
That makes no sense.
These people have no separation between life and work?
It's the perfect way to do it. That way they remain untouchable. And the Hillary crybabies are unstoppable This is what you people vote for. Knock yourselves out!
The DNC emails are much more damaging. I suppose that's why everybody is ignoring those. The sports fans just don't care.
Trump/Clinton - 2020!
It has nothing to do with government. Comey is a conservatives. Conservatives are almost always hypocrites.
Hope they did not use their personal twitter
On page XII in the report, the IG says the department “identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters.”
The IG expressed “profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered our review.”
The contact between FBI agents and the media extended to receiving “improperly receiving benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”
“The harm caused by leaks, fear of potential leaks, and a culture of unauthorized media contacts is illustrated in Chapters Ten and Eleven of our report, where we detail the fact that these issues influenced FBI officials who were advising Comey on consequential investigative decisions in October 2016,” the report states.
The IG is forceful in its opinion that the problem with leaking is not “with the FBI’s policy, which we found to be clear and unambiguous.” Instead, the leaking phenomenon “appears to be a cultural attitude among many in the organization.”
According to charts provided in the IG report, one reporter had contact with 12 FBI officials, including an FBI executive and unit chief.
Another reporter contacted an assistant director 21 times and a special agent 23 times, according to the IG. Some FBI employees were in contact with multiple reporters, with one special agent contacting various journalists 32 times.
She wiped server and instructed her team to break their phones..wow...no obstruction there...geez no bias from muellers team nor comeys based on the text... /sarcasm
If Comey were out to undermine Hillary!, why'd he leave off the fact that Hillary! and Obama communicated via her blatantly illegal email server?
If Comey were out to undermine Hillary, why'd he water down to "it's possible" the known fact that "foreign actors" had accessed her email, including getting access to classified data?
If Comey were out to undermine Hillary, why did he allow Strzok to water down his findings from "gross negligence"?
If Comey were out to undermine Hillary, why'd he go beyond FBI policy to make up some crap about "no reasonable prosecutor"? When it's neither the job nor the policy of the FBI to make those decisions?
The only reason Comey came out with the report about finding Hillary emails on perv Weiner's laptop right before the election was known Hillary! partisans Strzok and McCabe slow-rolled the investigation for a month or two - Strzok explicitly to focus in his presumable "insurance policy" (Russia! Russia! Russia!) in order to try to make good on his, "We'll stop him." promise.
Isn't that funny?
If you're going to blame Comey for Hillary's loss, you have to admit that had Hillary not broken the law by setting up that server and putting classified information on it, Comey never would have had reason to "undermine" her.
(U) Her claim is fucking ridiculous, because in classified documents every page, heading, sentence, and bullet point, and source reference is preceded by note just like this: (U) (FOUO) (C) (S) (TS)
(U) Is this painful to read? This is the sort of thing that she claims was missing from her documents.
It's also the thing the FBI claims was missing from her documents:
Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey.
(U) You can't get such documents off of the secure network. To get such documents on her private server, she or a lackey uploaded them.
Or someone wrote up some information in an email, either not realizing it was classified or not realizing it shouldn't be sent over email, and clicked send.
(U) Most people who get caught for lesser fuck-ups end up going to jail.
No one doing what Clinton did would be sent to jail, all of the examples of people going to jail are for far more deliberate mishandling of classified data.
I stole this Sig
you wouldn't call it histrionic. One of the reasons everybody thought Trump would lose is his running mate is a bonefide Kool-Aid drinker. Seriously, look up some eps of his old radio show. That guys nuts, and he's the second most powerful man on earth right now.
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I swear, on Slashdot, Trump & Hillary have become Godwin's Law 2.0
It is nearly impossible NOT to find a reference to one or both of these idiots in every single topic. Every Damned One. O.o
Swamp dwellers protect their own.
Imagine a scenario in which YOU are hired by the federal government to do a job and you:
[1] Do all your work on a private account, that's not accessible to government archivists, investigators, and oversight comittees (contrary to law)
[2] Delete your content from that private account when you get a subpoena for it
[3] Have your underlings tell the courts and congress that there IS no such private account
[4] Go on national television and claim you do not know one of your peers is doing these things even though you yourself are sending them mail on that account.
Think YOU would get away with it?
The rule of law is gradually being destroyed, and has been since the Clinton administration back in the 1990s. We're all supposed to be subject to the same laws and treated the same when we run afoul of them - that's why the statues of Lady Justice always portray her as blindfolded.
Incidentally, Comey and Hillary both did #1, Hillary did #2 & #3, and Obama did #4
Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey (particularly since the firing had ZERO impact on the investigation).
First, the Constitution gives the president the authority to fire ANYBODY in the executive branch for ANY reason, so the obstruction case was always a silly tactic to mislead ignorant people, but to proceed...
Rosenstein recommended Trump fire Comey, and then Rosenstein appointed Meuller to go after Trump for the firing...making this even sillier, but now this Inspector General report makes clear that Comey actually WAS incompetent and corrupt and needed to be fired. It turns out he did not know basic fasts that were VERY publicly known, and he himself was guilty of some of the same actions Hillary was doing (hiding official business from the courts and from congressional oversight, and from the folks at the national archives by doing it in a private account off of government servers). somehow we are now supposed to believe that Trump obstructed justice by firing an incompetent and corrupt guy who was he was advised to fire for incompetence and who an independent review has now found was even more incompetent that anybody previously knew.
Wow. just....wow.
It is not illegal for the God Emperor. In no law does it state the God Emperor cannot do as he pleases! Why do you hate America? #MAGA
No one doing what Clinton did would be sent to jail, all of the examples of people going to jail are for far more deliberate mishandling of classified data.
Again, wrong. I have personally done produced evidence for investigations that have sent people to jail for less than Clinton did.
One guy brought in a personal computer to practice his tech skills on, because he wasn't allowed to do "non-work" on the government's computers. When people reported him, he lied about the computer belonging to him. He spent 18 months in jail.
In 20 years as a cleared information security contractor, I have seen a few dozen people violate the rules. The #1 rule is that accidents happen - and when reported honestly, will be forgiven. Deliberate violations and lying will ALWAYS result in prosecution.
Unless your name is 'Clinton'.
Guillotines 2020
The DNC email leak was from the DNC, not the Clinton server (and was years after Hillary left the Secretary of State office). It was done by phishing John Podesta's account:
There were three distinct leaks: one from the Clinton server, one from the DNC and one from Podesta. The Podesta leak has nothing to do with the DNC leak and the phished Podesta account is on gmail.
And since trump's entire "evidence" for how he should win was Hilary was under invesgitation "Crooked Hillary", him being likewise under investigation would AT LEAST remove his chants to the knuckledragging crowd.
Last March
CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante asked Mr. Obama when he learned about her private email system after his Saturday appearance in Selma, Alabama.
"The same time everybody else learned it through news reports," the president told Plante.
Yesterday's IG report (footnote of page 89):
President Barack Obama was one of the 13 individuals with whom Clinton had direct contact using her clintonemail.com account.
Lying to the press might not be a crime, but it looks like he was in on it.
A lot of the time intent is the only thing that makes something illegal.
I drive down the street, I try to run you over. Only intent makes it different.
The Trump administration uses anything they can to divert the attention of the public and the press away from the inhumane, anti-American, anti-Christian (which I only mention because that's supposedly the base of his supporters), and downright evil shit that he and his appointees keep committing against the United States, it's citizens, and the human race in general; [...]
So what has he done that's so evil? He might be a bull in a china shop and lack tact, but I'd say that he's getting more and better results than any other American president that I can remember (since the mid-90s).
You can of course provide proof that there was in fact a leak from the Clinton server, because you want to set the same high standard as the post you replied to. You just forgot to add it. Amiright?
How people feel about Jared and Ivanka using their own private server since before the campaign, and continuing to do so today?
Or trump using an unsecured phone after the inauguration, with rumors of that still happening?
Or Mike Pence using his AOL account email to discuss matters of homeland security while Governor and during the campaign?
The #1 rule is that accidents happen - and when reported honestly, will be forgiven. Deliberate violations and lying will ALWAYS result in prosecution.
Unless your name is 'Clinton'.
Except the point is she didn't deliberately expose the classified records, and if you believe she didn't realize classified information ended up on there then she didn't lie either.
I stole this Sig
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
He must be the most honest man in government.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Except it was actually deliberate and Hillary Clinton clearly lied to the FBI about it:
"They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They're working on it."
Clinton responds "If they can't, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure."
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/01/08/boom-in-newlyreleased-email-hillary-orders-aide-to-strip-classified-marking-n2101680
Really isn't any reasonable way to accept Hillary Clinton's explanation that the "heading" was just the state department logo and not the classification markings in the context of a conversation about sending classified information.
Once again, NOT illegal, just contrary to policy
Doesn't anybody remember that the state department's official server was hacked as well?!
Nothing major has come out about info leaked other than the usual BS about secrets causing harm and any actual minor harm likely traces back to the official government servers that were hacked and likely continuously get hacked at various points.
This is also the state department we are talking about, the department of artful lying (aka diplomacy.) They strategically leaked things since their inception! Like the double agent who's not punished for their treason because that was part of the whole plan...
They may screw up now and then but some mistakes are INTENTIONAL and when the public gets whipped up about things they do not understand the people in the know are just irritated and ignore it because they know better. (hubris has it's downsides... Clinton had plenty of it, along with just about anybody who's been in the know for a while.) Again, this is the state department we are talking about; and while you don't want others to see your hand, everybody knows your a serious poker player and nobody still can see the cards not yet dealt. You might want others to see a few of your cards "by accident" so they believe your bluff later.
Besides, the email thing is a matter of policy, not law-- the only places the law applies is classified info leaking; some of which was not classified at the time of the email which is impossible stuff to prosecute in the legal system because it's ex-post-facto. So then you have the accidental leaks which lack motive so they have minor punishments and finally, the intentional leaking of secrets which sometimes are unofficially part of a larger more complex game. You have to wonder about those larger games of misinformation when the people do not get punished in a normal way... (unless they are a fall guy nobody cares about.)
The bigger issue behind all this is organizational complexity; you have jobs that need to be smaller because nobody can comply with all the laws and policies without a few full time legal advisors besides the unintentional limitations they try to work around in order to do their jobs. The other side is that some positions require a breadth of power while also being too complex for a single person to handle effectively no matter how smart they are. This is a problem in any system... when do you subdivide and how many troubles does the loosened coupling create? The world is growing more complex and the organizations to deal with that have to adapt and scale with it; aside from growing pains, we are not doing much thoughtful adaptation and ignorantly believe our old ways are up to task
Why does Comey's personal email for business get an article on \. and not that FBI (Peter Strzok / Lisa Page) was telling itself “we'll stop” Trump from becoming president?
Except it was actually deliberate and Hillary Clinton clearly lied to the FBI about it:
"They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They're working on it."
Clinton responds "If they can't, turn into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure."
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/01/08/boom-in-newlyreleased-email-hillary-orders-aide-to-strip-classified-marking-n2101680
Really isn't any reasonable way to accept Hillary Clinton's explanation that the "heading" was just the state department logo and not the classification markings in the context of a conversation about sending classified information.
Was the information in question actually classified or just inside a document that was classified due to the presence of other information?
Not saying it wasn't deliberate in this instance, but it's still not clear what the intent or result was.
I stole this Sig
"Maybe it's because she has almost no credibility and the only ones voting for her were doing it of party reasons, anti-trump reasons, or for gender reasons."
Good points. It seemed to me that she was often surprisingly lacking in logical understanding.
However, look at this article: Hillary Clinton Jokes About Wiping Email Server 'With A Cloth Or Something'. Hillary: "What? Like with a cloth or something?" she asked, then laughed. "I don't know how it works digitally at all."
That was NOT "joking". Hillary is now 70 years old. Most people her age don't understand computer technology, and don't want to understand.
I said "Most people her age don't understand computer technology, and don't want to understand." Most people, not all.
I've known many people who responded like the stories say Hillary did.
My opinion: Hillary Clinton showed many, many times in many ways that she was not deeply logical. She exhibited the behavior of people I've known who didn't want to try to understand technology.
Did Hillary Clinton give any deeply insightful ideas when she was Secretary of State? None of which I am aware. It seemed to me that she lacked depth everywhere, not just concerning technology.
This story, Understanding Hillary, says she is admired by her co-workers, and only weak in elections. It has seemed to me that she is weak everywhere in public.
The upthread poster didn't say she had the authority to declassify material. They said that she had the authority to say whether a given storage location is secure. The executive order quoted above says that the agency head has that power, so that seems accurate.
Summary is written as if Comey was engaging in hypocrisy - ignoring the fact that Comey bent over backwards to clear Hillary while at the same time the DOJ was prosecuting others for mishandling classified evidence. Using Dembot talking points like the emails weren't "marked as classified" which is asinine, as the information was 'born' classified. And that she didn't have intent to mishandle evidence, which 1) is crap given that she blasted the Bush administration for using private email 2) intent is irrelevant. It's like statutory rape: either it happened or it didn't. Doesn't matter what the person's intent was.
You no more need to be a prosecutor to see the double standards in play than you need to be a Supreme Court justice to see the five conservatives were full of shit on their back-to-back rulings on gay wedding cakes and Muslim travel bans. You only need not have your head planted deep in one's partisan ass.