So while the GOP is claiming that Agent Strzok somehow threw the Clinton investigation in her favor, without any specific proof other than he didn’t like Trump — or Bernie Sanders, or Martin O’Malley, or Chelsey Clinton — CNN has discovered that rather than being in favor of Clinton, Strzok wanted to pursue her investigation thoroughly, but was concerned the FBI Director Comey was putting things out in the public so much because that happens to be against DOJ Protocols.
Strzok, who co-wrote what appears to be the first draft that formed the basis of the letter Comey sent to Congress, also supported reopening the Clinton investigation once the emails were discovered on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop, according to a source familiar with Strzok's thinking. The day after Strzok sent his draft to his colleagues, Comey released the letter to Congress, reigniting the email controversy in the final days of the campaign.
Strzok did, however, harbor reservations about Comey making a public announcement just days before the election and sent a text message to that effect, two sources said. And Strzok's text messages provided to Congress show him grappling with the fallout of making the letter public, according to a CNN review of his texts.
This new information reveals a more complicated portrait of Strzok than many of his critics have painted in public. Republicans have seized on text messages between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who were often critical of Trump, to characterize the two -- who were having an extramarital affair -- as part of an effort to go easy on Clinton and get tough with Trump.
So the reality the FBI is “biased against Trump” story just suffered a potential fatal blow.
As 538.com has documented — the Comey Letter essentially swung Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — all of which were less than 1% — from Hillary’s column to Trump’s.
Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.
...
That Comey’s decision to issue the letter had been so unorthodox and that the contents of the letter were so ambiguous helped fuel the story. The Times’s print lead on Oct. 30 was about Clinton’s pushback against Comey, and a story it published two days later explained that Comey had broken with precedent in releasing the letter. It covered all sides of the controversy. But the controversy was an unwelcome one for Clinton, since it involved voters seeing words like “Clinton,” “email,” “FBI” and “investigation” together in headlines. Within a day of the Comey letter, Google searches for “Clinton FBI” had increased 50-fold and searches for “Clinton email” almost tenfold.
Clinton’s standing in the polls fell sharply. She’d led Trump by 5.9 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s popular vote projection at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 28. A week later — after polls had time to fully reflect the letter — her lead had declined to 2.9 percentage points. That is to say, there was a shift of about 3 percentage points against Clinton. And it was an especially pernicious shift for Clinton because (at least according to the FiveThirtyEight model) Clinton was underperforming in swing states as compared to the country overall. In the average swing state, tipping-point state.
...
So you could postulate that the Comey letter had only about a 1-point impact. Perhaps Clinton’s lead would have been whittled down to around 4.5 points anyway by Election Day because of mean-reversion. And she led in the final polls by about 3.5 points. Yes, she also underperformed her final polls on Election Day, but that could reflect pollster error or undecideds breaking against her for other reasons, this case would say — there was no particular reason to attribute it to Comey.
Nonetheless, Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 percentage point, and those states were enough to cost her the election. She lost Florida by just slightly more than 1 point. If the Comey letter had a net impact of only a point or so, we’d have been in recount territory in several of these states — but Clinton would probably have come out ahead. I call this the “Little Comey” case — sure, the Comey letter mattered, but only because the election was so close.
|
ADJUSTED VOTE MARGIN |
|
|
CLINTON VOTE MARGIN |
SMALL COMEY EFFECT* |
BIG COMEY EFFECT* |
CLINTON’S ELECTORAL VOTES HAD SHE WON |
Michigan |
-0.2 |
+0.8 |
+3.8 |
248 |
Pennsylvania |
-0.7 |
+0.3 |
+3.3 |
268 |
Wisconsin |
-0.8 |
+0.2 |
+3.2 |
278 |
Florida |
-1.2 |
-0.2 |
+2.8 |
307 |
Nebraska’s 2nd C.D. |
-2.1 |
-1.1 |
+1.9 |
308 |
Arizona |
-3.5 |
-2.5 |
+0.5 |
319 |
North Carolina |
-3.7 |
-2.7 |
+0.3 |
334 |
Georgia |
-5.1 |
-4.1 |
-1.1 |
350 |
Ohio |
-8.1 |
-7.1 |
-4.1 |
368 |
Texas |
-9.0 |
-8.0 |
-5.0 |
406 |
Iowa |
-9.4 |
-8.4 |
-5.4 |
412 |
Even a small Comey effect could have cost Clinton the 270 electoral votes she needed to win
*Adjusting for a small Comey effect adds 1 percentage point to Clinton’s vote margin. A big effect adds 4. Hypothetical scenario starts with the 232 electoral votes Clinton actually won, ignoring faithless electors.
Strzok was right that the issue should have been thoroughly investigated — and it was ultimately — but DOJ protocols shouldn’t have been violated in order to feed Congress information right before an election. In fact that may be exactly why Andrew McCabe held onto the information about the emails on Weiner’s laptop for 3 weeks before Comey sent his letter to Congress.
“The DOJ should do everything possible not to influence an upcoming election at any level,” Steve Miller, a 17-year veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago, told TPM. “So if the reports are true that he slow-rolled it, that would be, in my view, consistent with DOJ policy. Nothing remotely nefarious jumps out at me.”
“I can’t imagine any DOJ policy was violated here,” Miller added.
Instead Comey violated protocol — and it was that decision which prompted the Inspector General investigation which has discovered all the texts and emails, including these, between Strzok and Page.
The former FBI director’s disclosures “never should have happened,” Nick Akerman, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the Watergate investigation, told TPM.
Indeed, it was Comey’s extraordinary departure from regular procedure that appears to have prompted the January 2017 launch of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s probe in the first place. But the wide-ranging probe turned up the text message exchange between two FBI employees that Republicans have used to claim an anti-Trump plot at the bureau. The Post report suggests that McCabe’s handling of the Clinton emails has since also become a major focus.
How ya like Dem Apples eh?
Thursday, Feb 1, 2018 · 1:22:17 AM +00:00
·
Frank Vyan Walton
Some comments have argued that Comey may have released the letter — which was quickly leaked — because the NY Office of the FBI, which had already leaked to Trump surrogate, former NY US Attorney and Mayor Rudy Giuliani about the Abedine emails, and has been described as “Trumpland” (which may be why Strzok and Page were keeping their criticisms of Trump private in their text messages), would likely have leaked further if he hadn’t acted.
Thursday, Feb 1, 2018 · 4:10:03 AM +00:00
·
Frank Vyan Walton
Well guess what? The memo that House Intel voted to release isn’t the memo that arrived at the White House because Devin Nunes changed it.
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Wednesday accused Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) of “secretly [altering]” the anti-FBI memo before sending it to the White House.
“The White House is therefore reviewing a document the committee has not approved for release,” Schiff explained, demanding it be withdrawn and resubmitted for a vote before the House Intelligence Committee.
Fuckery upon Fuckery.