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FBI: Review of New Emails Doesn't Change Conclusion on Clinton (cnn.com) 733

FBI director James Comey told Congress Sunday that the new scrutiny of emails related to Hillary Clinton has turned up nothing that would cause the bureau to recommend charges against her. The conclusion comes nine days after rocking the presidential race with word that a new trove of emails had been discovered. "During that process, we have reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of State," Comey wrote. "Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton." From a report on CNN:"We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited. Now Director Comey has confirmed it," tweeted Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. Comey's last-minute announcement gives Clinton an opportunity for an I-told-you-so moment -- but it's unlikely to undo the political damage of his initial announcement. Trump and his allies have seized on that announcement, using it claim Clinton is likely to face criminal charges. "If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis," Trump claimed Saturday night in Reno, Nevada. "In that situation we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt." The political benefit for Trump has been that Republicans who'd been skeptical of their party's nominee have largely followed vice presidential nominee Mike Pence's calls to "come home" to the party -- finding Trump less objectionable than Clinton.
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FBI: Review of New Emails Doesn't Change Conclusion on Clinton

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  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @04:14PM (#53224519)

    That's pretty damn impressive.

  • What about her maid? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @04:36PM (#53224621) Journal
    You know, the one who printed out all those classified e-mails [nypost.com] for Hillary and others to read. Is she exhonerated as well? I mean, we already know that Weiner is cleared, even though he had a laptop full of classified e-mails from Hillary and his wife...
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It all falls under the heading of "stupid but not prosecutable".

      People mishandle classified information all the time. The FBI occasionally emails it out in response to FOI requests. People are only prosecuted when it's malicious or there is evidence that the documents were leaked and used against the US as a result.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        You mean like the sailor that took a picture in a classified area? [washingtontimes.com]

        Petty Officer Saucier was charged last year with one count of unlawful retention of national defense information and one count of obstruction of justice after prosecutors said the sailor used his cellphone to take snapshots in classified engine room on the USS Alexandria, a nuclear submarine where he worked as a mechanic at the time, then attempted to destroy evidence when he learned an investigation had been launched.

        Or David Petraeus [wikipedia.org].

        In January 2015, officials reported the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors had recommended bringing felony charges against Petraeus for allegedly providing classified information to his biographer, Paula Broadwell (with whom he was having an affair), while serving as the director of the CIA. Eventually, Petraeus pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information.

        Or John M. Deutch [wikipedia.org]

        Deutch had agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets on Friday, January 19, 2001, but President Clinton pardoned him in his last day in office, two days before the Justice Department could file the case against him.

        [Not holding my breath for an Obama Pardon either]

        Or Sandy Berger [wikipedia.org]

        was an American political consultant who served as the United States National Security Advisor for President Bill Clinton from March 14, 1997, until January 20, 2001. Before that he served as the Deputy National Security Advisor for the Clinton Administration from January 20, 1993, until March 14, 1997.

        On July 19, 2004, it was revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating Berger for unauthorized removal of classified documents in October 2003 from a National Archives reading room prior to testifying before the 9/11 Commission. The documents were five classified copies of a single report commissioned from Richard Clarke covering internal assessments of the Clinton Administration's handling of the unsuccessful 2000 millennium attack plots. An associate of Berger said Berger took one copy in September 2003 and four copies in October 2003, allegedly by stuffing the documents into his socks and pants. Berger subsequently lied to investigators when questioned about the removal of the documents.

        In April 2005, Berger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material from the National Archives in Washington.

        Or Bryan H. Nishimura [fbi.gov].

        According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers. Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. He carried such classified materials on his unauthorized media when he traveled off-base in Afghanistan and, ultimately, carried those materials back to the United States at the end of his deployment. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system

        • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @11:02PM (#53226605)

          I'm familiar with all of those cases, and they all contain one, if not two, critical elements that Clinton's lacks.

          1) They all knew the information was classified when they mishandled it.

          2) In most of the cases they shared either that information with someone they knew to be unauthorized, or looked like they were going to.

          • 1) You're telling me the Secretary of State didn't think she'd be getting classified e-mails to her server?

            2) You mean like the maid? [nypost.com]

            • 1) Classified emails weren't ever supposed to be sent over anything but the system explicitly for classified intelligence. Should she have realized people would screw up? Sure, but people make mistakes. She shouldn't be thrown in jail anymore than the senders of those emails.

              2) If she didn't know the information was classified then she wasn't knowingly sharing it with an unauthorized person.

  • Comey (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @04:41PM (#53224661)

    Everyone told me Comey was irresponsible and wasn't worth listening to last week. Why should we care what he says now?

    • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      Totally agree. This "result" just further confirms it.

      • by Kohath ( 38547 )

        Just yesterday I heard the FBI spent years investigating an online cult the didn't exist [slashdot.org]. Those guys are discredited. Just in time too. What a coincidence!

      • by Tesen ( 858022 )

        Totally agree. This "result" just further confirms it.

        Heh. The irony, the Trump camp was cheering on the FBI when the new emails were found, and now that the emails have been cleared, the Trump campaign claims Comey has botched the investigation from the beginning. At least I can agree with them on that, Yes, he botched it, he should not have sent the letter to congress about the new emails until he actually found something, this DOES NOT change the conclusion, it just proves that he is a fucking idiot (or out to prove something), but that does not invalidate

    • I'd say the fact that he strongly hints that discovery of wrongdoing has been reversed in a week tells me Obama should show him the door. If he isn't a corrupt partisan, he's an incompetent.

    • Because of logic (Score:4, Informative)

      by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Monday November 07, 2016 @04:08AM (#53227649)
      YOu either discard both his statement or take both his statement to heart. Choosing and picking which one you want to hear, is partisan politic at its worst : it means you are paying attention to only what fit your worldview/echo chamber and discard what rocks your boat. Note that it works both way : those who wanted to ignore comey last week and take him seriously today (probably pro Hilary) are as guilty as those who wanted to take comey seriously last week and not seriously today (probably pro trump).

      Anyway, if you are taking comey seriously all the way, or discarding him all the way , the same conclusion come : the email re-review is not relevant.
  • The GOP will ensure that no matter the composition of the house and senate after this week, nothing will be allowed to progress under President Clinton. No supreme court vacancies will be filled, and no bills that have the least bit of "liberalism" in them will ever make it to the white house. There is a growing number of elected GOP politicians promising to start impeachment on her ASAP as well.

    It appears we would have been better off electing a Ficus Tree instead, it would have operated on a much smaller budget.
    • by Karl Cocknozzle ( 514413 ) <kcocknozzle@hotma i l . com> on Sunday November 06, 2016 @06:01PM (#53225123) Homepage

      Then our only choice for moving forward is to take away the GOP's majority in both houses of congress.

      It is totally unacceptable for one party to simply choose to "negate" the results of elections that they do not like, and we've already had significant damage done to the credibility of our government, economy, and currency because of it, and another 2-8 years of gridlock would be a huge (yuuuuuuuuuuge) mistake.

    • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      The GOP will ensure that no matter the composition of the house and senate after this week, nothing will be allowed to progress under President Clinton. No supreme court vacancies will be filled

      I suppose there is no reason for the incoming Democratic Senate not to exercise "the nuclear option" regarding Supreme Court nominations, then.

  • For the next 4 years. That's the kind of stability you can vote for on Tuesday. Why take a chance on an uncertain future when you could pick someone with a proven track record?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      Well this is after 30 years of investigation for perceived slights by anti-American interests to supporting those who don't like to work, namely all the Republican congressmen. There is no protection of America or defense of American interests by those scum who prefer to not work while taking pay checks for gossiping.
  • by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @06:32PM (#53225303)

    There's 2 forums that I read a lot, basically lurk on, and occasionally post. One is Slashdot, and the other is Fark.
    I like Slashdot because sometimes some very smart techie people will post interesting insights into techie issues.
    Fark, of course, is mostly known for snarky frat-boy humor.
    But! I'm embarrassed to say that Slashdot users, whom I gave way too much credit for intelligence, are proving to be trolls, knuckle-draggers, and mouth-breathers of the very worst sort.
    Whereas Fark seems to have some very intelligent and balanced conversations about some of the very same subjects, including politics.
    Just goes to show, basement-dwellers might know how to hack, but you wouldn't want to hang out with any of them.
     

  • by taustin ( 171655 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @06:54PM (#53225425) Homepage Journal

    No, not the whitewash of Clinton's mishandling of classified data. I accept what the head of the FBI told Congress (under oath), that Secretary Clinton is too stupid to understand what she was doing was illegal. OK, fine.

    But there's at least 110 emails sent to her that contained information that was classified at the time it was sent. That's the whitewash. Each of those emails represents at least three federal crimes:

    Removing the classified data from secure computers
    Removing the fact that it's classified
    Sending it through a non-secure channel.

    That's a minimum of 330 serious crimes by the people who sent those emails. There is no investigation of those people, and there will be one. No one will ever go to prison for those crimes. I'm guessing that most of them were sent by Clinton appointees, insiders who would be very, very embarrassing to Clinton should they be prosecuted. But we'll never know, because the White House (and it can't come from anywhere else) has whitewashed the entire affair.

    That's the coverup.

  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @06:55PM (#53225439) Journal

    This changes nothing for most people (just like with the previous FBI 'bombshell').

    That's because the vast majority of people pick a candidate early on and don't change their pick no matter what happens.

    All this bullshit about the polls going back and forth is nonsense. The media ALWAYS try to portray it as a neck-and-neck horse race when it almost never is.

    I mean, hello? Remember McCain-Obama and Romney-Obama? Each time the media played it up as a "virtual dead heat OMG!!1!", and each time it was a fucking landslide. It's the same this time around.

    But I digress. Only the genuinely brain-damaged "undecided" voters would change their vote at this late stage, and frankly if you're still undecided at this point you're really too stupid to be entrusted with voting.

    Whatever side you pick, how could anyone be moronic as not to see the difference between the two candidates or to not have made a choice months ago?

    It's not like the candidates are similar or have even slightly overlapping views. Whatever choice you make, that choice should have been clear to you early on.

    The "undecided" voters don't mean shit. They've never swayed an election and they never will. There just aren't enough of them to matter.

  • by Chewbacon ( 797801 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @09:11PM (#53226177)

    Obama could simply pardon her, even before the trial. Ford did it for Nixon. It may cost her the election.

This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks.

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