There’s Spiking, and There’s Spiking

The NLMSM has been spiking bad news about Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton until very recently (when it’s begun merely slanting the news).

Now it’s becoming clear how the upper levels of bureaucrats and political appointees in the Barack Obama/Loretta Lynch Department of Justice have been trying to spike investigations into Clinton’s…misbehaviors…both in relation to her private, unsecured email server on which she handled State Department official business, including classified business contained in some 2,000 emails, and in relation to her Clinton Foundation.

Recall that FBI Director James Comey has reopened the FBI investigation of Clinton and her private, unsecured email server.  The reopening was triggered by some 650,000 (!) emails by and to Clinton senior advisor and confidante Huma Abedin found on a laptop shared by her and her husband, Anthony Weiner, in the course of the FBI’s investigation of Weiner over his alleged sexting with a minor.  We’re starting to learn just how obstructive the Obama/Lynch DoJ have been in attempting to keep both the email and the Foundation investigations blocked.

Anticorruption prosecutors at the Justice Department told the FBI at the meeting [a February update on the progress of FBI field agents’ investigation into the Clinton Foundation] they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people [participants in the meeting] said.

February—that’s how long the DoJ’s obstruction of the investigation has been going on.  They’ve been trying to keep the investigators’ hands tied for nine months.

According to a person familiar with the probes, on Aug 12, a senior Justice Department official called Mr [Andrew, FBI Deputy Director] McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. Mr McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use overt methods requiring Justice Department approvals.

“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said.

And

In September, agents on the foundation case asked to see the emails contained on nongovernment laptops that had been searched as part of the Clinton email case, but that request was rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn. Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of classified information.

Read Devlin Barett’s whole piece in The Wall Street Journal at the above link.

The DoJ plainly needs a thorough house-cleaning and fumigation after this election.

What Happens Next?

You’ve all heard that the FBI has reopened the criminal investigation into Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; her use of a private, unsecured email server to conduct State Department official business; and the passage through that system of classified emails, some of which she received copies of, some of which she relayed, some of which she originated, and with at least one of which—after a classified fax transmittal attempt failed—she instructed the originator to strip off the markings and send the thing unclassified through her unclassified system.

What happens now?  Some possibilities occur to me.

  • President Barack Obama (D) instructs his Attorney General Loretta Lynch to halt the renewed investigation
  • Obama pardons Clinton in advance soon, as in before the election in a few days
  • Clinton gets elected with the FBI’s investigation still running, and then Obama instructs Lynch to halt the renewed investigation
  • Clinton gets indicted, likely after the election since even a renewed investigation will take time to run to completion, and Obama pardons her
  • In the unlikely event the investigation survives the interferences and continues until after President-elect Clinton is inaugurated, Clinton has Lynch (her minion rewarded with continuation as AG) halt the investigation, or she pardons herself

Most likely, though, this investigation will peter out with a sham conclusion, just as the original investigation did.

If that last is the case, though, then why would FBI Director James Comey reopen it at all?  My speculation: all those “angry FBI agents” who were disgruntled over the handling of that earlier investigation answered Comey’s “‘twarn’t me” memo with a letter back to Comey containing words to the effect of, “Reopen this investigation and let us do it right, or we’ll resign.  Loudly.”

Which lets the investigation go forward, but leaves Comey, Lynch, Clinton, and Obama in position to quash it at a suitable later time—and with a Clinton administration in place, little recourse for the rest of us.

Clinton’s Emails and Anthony Weiner

The FBI appears to have no search warrant with which to search the laptop and cell phone(s) that Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s senior aide and close confident Huma Abedin shared with her (now estranged) husband Anthony Weiner (at least as I write this Sunday).

The FBI still must dicker with Loretta Lynch (D) and her Department of Justice:

As of Saturday night, the FBI was still in talks with the Justice Department about obtaining a warrant that would allow agency officials to read any of the newly discovered Abedin emails….

“We do not have a warrant,” a senior law enforcement official said. “Discussions are under way [between the FBI and the Justice Department] as to the best way to move forward.”

The best way to move forward.  Which, of course, includes whether Lynch will allow the FBI to move forward at all.

There’s another item here that comes to mind, though, that stems from this aspect of the investigation of Weiner over his sexting escapades.

Did Weiner have access to any classified government documents on his laptop and iPhone[?]

It seems all too likely that these emails that Abedin has on the shared laptop (if not also on the iPhone (or iPhones—might Weiner have had more than one?)) include emails that have Clinton as a CC (or BCC) addressee, emails TO Clinton, emails FROM Clinton, or some combination of those alternatives.

Whether Clinton-involving emails are present or not, it’s all too likely, also, that at least some of Abedin’s emails that don’t include Clinton in distribution contain classified information.  In either case, it now seems imperative that the FBI include steganographic analyses of the imagery Weiner sent (and received?) on his iPhone(s), and on the shared laptop.

Update: Instapundit is reporting that Bret Baier is reporting that Weiner is cooperating with the FBI, so warrants aren’t needed.  Additionally, the Washington Examiner is reporting that the FBI has obtained two warrants for searching the Abedin/Weiner laptop.

No Wonder Chelsea Was Upset

In a newly released memo written by Teneo CEO, President Bill Clinton senior advisor, Clinton Foundation consultant Douglas Band, Band spent 13 pages outlining how he

raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president.

And [emphasis added]

The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc…..”

Bland’s term, “Bill Clinton Inc,” not mine.

This is the level of integrity and the depth of conflicts of interest we can expect if Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is elected in a short couple of weeks.

Guilty

Concerning Eric Garner’s chokehold death, Attorney General Loretta Lynch (D) has made up her mind.  NYPD officers are guilty of murder, and she wants a prompt hanging, no more delays.  Those impertinent New York City-based FBI agents, all of whom have recommended against Federal charges against the officers, have been relieved of their duties on the case and replaced en masse by FBI agents from…elsewhere.  Lynch’s DC-located Civil Rights Division of her DoJ have taken the matter over.

Never mind that a State investigation has already been completed, and the State’s prosecutor failed to get a grand jury to indict—in an environment (not limited to New York) where a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich—any of NYPD’s finest in the case.

Lynch Knows Better.