Category Archives: ethics

Integrity, DoJ, and the FBI

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FBI Director James Comey has obeyed his orders from his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and her boss, President Barack Obama (D), and he’s recommending no charges be filed against ex-Secretary of State and Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her…mishandling…of classified material via her unsecured email server.

This after saying in his presser announcing his recommendation,

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

In other words, lesser people should be prosecuted, at least administratively, and (not or) have their clearances lifted.  But not Democrats.

John Fund had some questions about Comey’s acquiescence; below are some of them.  It’s important to note that Comey didn’t have the moral courage to stay past his statement and answer any questions, much less these.

You said that anyone in Hillary Clinton’s position would have at least faced administrative or other sanctions for their behavior.  Would you outline what is type of sanctions have been applied in the past?  Would someone like Hillary Clinton be granted a security clearance after violations of this kind?

You stated that the handling of top secret classified material by Hillary Clinton and her aides was “extremely careless.”  Lawyers say that is the definition of the “gross negligence” statute that provides for prosecution of anyone who allows classified information to be mishandled.  What is the difference between those terms in your opinion, and is there a legal difference?

You mentioned that some of the classified information was marked as classified when Mrs. Clinton handled those emails.  Is that not the definition of “gross negligence” that should trigger the statute mandating prosecution of those mishandling sensitive information.

There is a parallel investigation into Mrs. Clinton being conducted by the FBI into possible corruption involving the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.  What is the status of that investigation and do you believe that probe will be finished before Americans go to the polls to elect a president in November?

Did any of the deleted emails recovered from Mrs. Clinton’s email server bear on the investigation of the Clinton Foundation?

It appears that roughly one-in-15 of the work-related messages that Clinton sent or received on the private server have been classified at some level. A total of 22 emails were classified as top secret—the highest level of secrecy.  You said that we should expect some of that information is in the hands of others. Would you characterize how bad the damage to national security would be if that information be compromised?

There’s integrity, Democrat style.

Schedule Destruction

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In the course of a court-ordered (because the lady was unwilling to talk otherwise) deposition before Judicial Watch pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit (because the State Department was refusing otherwise to follow the law and provide the requested information or any reason why not), Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s close aid Huma Abedin said that Clinton had destroyed—”burned”—several pages of her Secretary of State calendar’s schedule.

If there was a schedule that was created that was her Secretary of State daily schedule, and a copy of that was then put in the burn bag, that…that certainly happened on…on more than one occasion[.]

Only copies?  That likely would be OK.  But how do we know that only copies were burned?  After all, Clinton already has said she destroyed 30,000 emails that she claims were personal—with no way anyone else can know these documents in fact were personal; Clinton did the destruction by herself, without so much as a fare-thee-well to State before she’d done it.

With an honest DoJ, this would raise questions of evidence tampering.

Hmm….

Loretta Lynch Meets

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US Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton, former Democrat President and husband of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on Lynch’s plane at the Phoenix airport Tuesday.  Lynch said the meeting was unplanned, and all they talked about was grandkids.  Oh, and Brexit.

For anyone who believes this, I might know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe in which they might be interested.

President Barack Obama (D) has already, three times publicly, instructed Lynch and through her his FBI Director to take no substantive action against Hillary Clinton: in two interviews in which he announced she’d done nothing wrong, and in his endorsement in which he said she should be President.

Bubba understands this; he didn’t go over to Lynch’s plane to shoot the breeze about inconsequentials, or to gossip about Brexit, or to tell her his terms.  He went at her invitation to hear her offered quid pro quo.

As if that’s not enough, there’s this:

Department of Justice officials filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking a 27-month delay in producing correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch.

Notice that: Wednesday—the day after Lynch met with Bubba in her private plane.  And

US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, a President Obama-appointed judge, had previously ordered the State Department to release the requested documents by July 21.

Hmm….

Update: Lynch on Friday said she’ll “defer to career prosecutors and the FBI” on matters related to the Hillary Clinton investigation.  A DoJ official prior to her actual announcement:

Determinations as to whether to charge any individual, as well as the findings of the investigation, will be made by career prosecutors and investigators who have been handling this matter since its inception[.]

But what does “defer” mean–she’s explicitly not recusing herself from the case?  What’s the practical value of those determinations being made by career prosecutors and investigators?  Deferral doesn’t mean she’s not retaining final decision-making.  Those prosecutors and investigators will still be working for Lynch after they’ve wrapped things up.

And Lynch has already amply demonstrated her level of integrity with that meeting with Bubba and her subsequent move to try to suppress release of those Clinton Foundation emails she’s been ordered to release.

UpUpdate: At her Colorado news conference Friday, Lynch confirmed that she will defer to her career FBI investigators and prosecutors but will not recuse.

There’s also this tidbit, it turns out, from Christopher Sign of ABC 15 in Phoenix:

The former president steps into her plane. They then speak for 30 minutes privately. The FBI there on the tarmac instructing everybody around “no photos, no pictures, no cell phones.”

Is there any remaining doubt that FBI Director James Comey is as deeply in Hillary Clinton’s (and Bill Clinton’s, whose Clinton Foundation also is under criminal investigation, supposedly) back pocket as Comey’s boss, Lynch?

Look Who’s Talking

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Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton chastised Republican lawmakers on Sunday for a “paralyzed” Congress, saying they’ve fueled populist anger by refusing to “do their job.”

It’s Congressional Democrats and a Democratic Party President who are blocking the spending and tax cuts that would stimulate our economy and let people get back to work.

It’s a Democratic Party President whose Executive Branch creates rule after regulation that limits what people can do with their private property and that stifles innovation and economic growth, and it’s Congressional Democrats who block efforts to pull those rules and regulations back.

It’s Congressional Democrats who deliberately prevented the House from functioning at all because they couldn’t impose their minority will on the House, denying even the people’s House the ability to act democratically.

It’s Congressional Democrats who continually attack our 1st Amendment rights—every single one of them—and our 2nd Amendment rights, forcing Congress to spend valuable time protecting Americans’ individual liberties instead of positively pursuing the people’s business.

It would be good if the Democrats actually did start doing their jobs, instead of being cynically disruptive.

It would have been good had Clinton done her job as Secretary of State, instead of foisting off on us her Russian overcharge reset, with Russia now occupying Crimea and other parts of Ukraine.  It would have been good had Clinton done her job as Secretary of State, instead of napping through her 3pm call for help from our Benghazi consulate.  It would have been good had Clinton done her job as Secretary of State, instead of ignoring security strictures and running her State email communications, including classified correspondence, from her private, unsecured, unprotected email server.

It would have been good had Clinton done something positive during her stay as Secretary of State.

Criminal Negligence

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Further to the matter of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email server and her State Department’s handling of them.

…revelations from new court-released documents in a lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. They show the State Department temporarily turned off security features in 2010 so that emails from then-Secretary of State Clinton’s personal server would stop going to the department’s spam folders.

That’s not just dumb (or, in the words of Colonel with whom I once worked, the dumbest thing I ever heard), it’s got to be criminally negligent.

It’s too easy—and a very routine thing to do—to fish (as opposed to phish) out of those spam folders Clinton’s emails, both those from her and those to her.  It’s too easy—and another very routine thing to do—to adjust the spam filters to pass acceptable emails.

And: it’s too easy—and yet another very routine thing to do—to block access, any access, from an unsecured server of any purpose to State’s official business network, much less its classified network.

As Bob Gourley, former Chief Technology Officer for DIA, put it,

You’re putting not just the Clinton server at risk but the entire Department of State emails at risk.  When you turn off your defensive mechanisms, and you’re connected to the Internet, you’re almost laying out the welcome mat for anyone to intrude and attack and steal your secrets.

Of course Clinton’s State Department IT staff knew this.

Of course Clinton, who was the ultimate State Department classifying authority for this sort of thing as well as for all matters related to security, knew this.

Elections have consequences.