HOW WILL FBI’S INVESTIGATION EFFECT HILLARY’S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN?

…Here’s the graph of the Results of the FBI’s Investigation.

 

The FBI agreed that there wasn’t enough evidence that could win a case in court.

 

One issue always occurs when you write a political Blog with a number of followers.  When someone like the well-respected head of the FBI, Mr. James B. Comey, says that a high-level politician was “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” those followers immediately then want to know, “Well, what do you have to say about the comments from the FBI Director?”

 

The reality is that Director Comey was totally correct.  Here is the complete statement that Comey had about Ms. Clintion and her use of a personal e-mail server: “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

 

The problem with all the Republicans trying to make this into a big deal from a legal point-of-view is that even though this was clearly bad judgement on Hillary and on her husband’s part, it was not something that was done intentionally, and at the time it was done, many actions weren’t even against the rules.  Against the State Dept. guidelines, yes…today’s strict rules, no.

 

I was actually embarrassed when I saw how the FBI Director was treated by the House Committee that called an emergency meeting, just to grill Director Comey.  The Director had to sit for 4 hours of grilling by the House Committee.

 

For weeks, these same Republicans had been calling Director Comey the most honest and highest integrity individual in Washington D.C..  But when the FBI team unanimously agreed to not bring charges against Hillary for her personal e-mail server, these same “Comey Supporters” did a 180° turn and started verbally attacking the Director.

 

The way this e-mail kerfuffle came about in the first place, was that the personal e-mail server had first been installed in the Clinton’s home as a server for her husband, the former US president’s and his on-going business.  When Hillary became the New York Senator, she then began using the server for her senate communications, which was also not against the rules or the government guidelines.  (In fact, for US Senators, using a personal server is still not against the rules.)

 

Once Hillary became Obama’s, Secretary of State, she unfortunately continued to use the same e-mail server without any thought as to what was proper and what was potentially dangerous to US security.

 

Was it careless, yes, it obviously was, especially with so many other areas of the government being hacked into from the outside.

 

So, just how bad was what she did?

 

Clinton has said she didn’t send any secret or classified e-mails from the server, but of 60,000+ e-mails, only 110 e-mails were found to have been sent that were classified.  However, 2000 e-mails were later classified “after the fact”.

 

Of those 110 e-mails, eight e-mails contained so called “Confidential info”, 36 contained secret info and 8 contained top-secret information.  But many of the “Confidential” e-mails that were discovered in Hillary’s e-mails were not properly mark with a confidential header.  Therefore, there was no way for anyone to know that it contained “Confidential” info unless you caught the (C) at the beginning of a paragraph to signify a “Confidential” paragraph.  Some of the Hillary e-mails had also been improperly marked with the (C) marking.

 

Needless to say, if the shoe were on the other foot, and if this had been done by a Republican presidential nominee, the Democrats would also be screaming for the individual’s head.

 

But, the issue that Director Comey had to look at was the point he made saying: “What was done was careless, but to charge someone for this, there needs to be ‘intent’ and ‘motive’.  According to all the moths of their investigation, all he was able to prove was that the former Sec. of State had acted carelessly, but she was not found to be attempting to do something with intent or that was even illegal at the time it occurred.

 

Of course, the difference is that the Republicans want to call this “gross negligence”, not just “carelessness”.  Director Comey stated that the whole FBI investigating team had agreed that it did not believe it was gross negligence.

 

What hasn’t been discussed in public is that some of the material was not clearly marked as to it’s classification and some of the classified items were what they call “Call Lists”.  Anyone receiving the lists would need to know how to use these “call lists”, which would not be info that someone outside of the State department would even understand.  Even if they did, it was probably useless information that would mean nothing outside the state department.

 

Here is what Hillary’s team has had to say about the final report from Director Comey:

 

“We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. “As the Secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again. We are glad that this matter is now resolved.”

 

The Clinton campaign had no advance warning of the timing or the contents of Director Comey’s announcement.  Comey said he had not coordinated or reviewed his statement with any part of the government.

 

Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies were relieved after Comey virtually erased the possibility that she might be indicted. Although he said the FBI was referring the decision to the Justice Department, Comey added that “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” The reason he’s saying this is, as a former prosecutor, he knows there isn’t the evidence that could win a case in court.  And besides that, it would be highly unusual for federal prosecutors not to follow the FBI’s counsel.

 

Of course, Mr.  Trump went ballistic when he heard the news.

 

“Folks, the system is rigged,” Trump said in a statement. “The normal punishment, in this case, would include losing authority to handle classified information, and that too disqualifies Hillary Clinton from being President. The final jury will be the American people, and they will issue the verdict on her corruption, incompetence, and bad judgment on November 8th.”

 

How the hell would Donald Trump know “what the normal punishment from the FBI would be?”

 

When the news came down, Clinton herself was boarding Air Force One with President Obama and they were headed to North Carolina for the president’s first opportunity to campaign for, and endorse, Hillary in front of a teachers union reception.

 

Here are what some of the Democratic leaders have to say about the Director’s presentation:

 

Former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), believes that the political fallout from the email controversy has already occurred.  “The criticism of her, the damage she suffered from having made a big mistake and having been irresponsible for using that server, has already happened,” Frank said in an interview. “She’s already paid a political price for it.”

 

Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-VA), who is also a potential Clinton running mate, Kaine told reporters in Richmond: “I never believed this was going to be something in the criminal realm or even close to it. I have expected to get to this place where this is in the matter of lessons learned.”

 

As expected, senior Democrats expect Trump and his allies to bang the drums about the email controversy for the remainder of the political campaign.  But the reality is, without an indictment, little will probably have any currency with those “persuadable voters”.

 

“Comey cut the legs out from under the only narrative that could have hurt her,” said the Democratic strategist Bob Shrum. “I assume that Trump will continue to try to make hay out of this, and I think it will go about as well as the Republicans did on Whitewater or Benghazi or anything else. I just think it’s fundamentally over.”

 

But the Republicans are trying to swiftly capi­tal­ize on the situation. Trump continues to go after Clinton for what he called “illegal activities” and “bad judgment,” and he even suggested that the Obama administration was protecting her from prosecution.

 

Of course, as usual, Trump never explains how the president was doing that, but then again, some things never change.

 

The possibility of a criminal indictment for Clinton had loomed for months over her campaign.  But for Obama’s term as the president, he has been enjoying some of his best approval ratings of his presidency.   Many are saying that is due to the possibility of a Trump presidency, this is causing some Americans to look at the current president and to already start to miss a very competent individual.

 

I am hoping for this nation’s sake that Hillary’s e-mail issues are behind her, but who knows what the GOP will be pulling out of their hat?  Needless to say, the GOP and their nominee are not going to let this subject die.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016