Not that coincidentally following the nuclear bomb revelations of the Michael Wolff book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” it appears that the GOP and DOJ have decided to go full on distraction and obstruction by implementing several moves against Hillary Clinton and opponents of Trump.
First they’re reopened the investigation into Clinton’s Emails:
Justice Department officials are taking a fresh look at Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as secretary of State, The Daily Beast has learned.
An ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who is familiar with the thinking at the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters described it as an effort to gather new details on how Clinton and her aides handled classified material. Officials’ questions include how much classified information was sent over Clinton’s server; who put that information into an unclassified environment, and how; and which investigators knew about these matters and when. The Sessions ally also said officials have questions about immunity agreements that Clinton aides may have made.
Now all of these questions were previously answered in the Comey investigation. Only three emails contained paragraphs marked with (C) for “Confidential” — which is an internal State Dept designation for information that is not to be shared with other countries, but can be shared with the nation that originated the intel — and two of these were left marked that way by mistake.
Some classification markings found in email messages on Hillary Clinton's private server were the result of "human error" and the related information was not considered classified at the time it was sent to her, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.
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"It appears that those...that those markings were a human error. They didn’t need to be there. Because once the secretary had decided to make the call, the process is then to move the call sheet, to change its markings to unclassified and deliver it to the secretary in a form that he or she can use," Kirby said. "And best we can tell on these occasions, the markings — the confidential markings — was simply human error. Because the decision had already been made, they didn’t need to be made on the email."
So the view that Clinton and her staff trafficked in dozens or even hundreds of classified documents on open email system is in fact — a myth. But now the DOJ is yet again chasing that myth one more time.
This is on top of today’s release of the original first draft of Comey memos about that investigation where Clinton was essentially exonerated and there was never any suggestion that charges would be requested, even though there were changes made to the memo the underlying conclusion didn’t change.
One of the more contentious changes describes the handling of Clinton’s emails and the transmission of over 100 emails via an insecure private server. Comey first wrote that Clinton and her staff were “grossly negligent” in the handling of her emails; in this case, the phrase “grossly negligent” is a principle for behavior that could be subject to misdemeanor or felony mishandling of classified information charges. However, that descriptor was changed to “extremely careless,” which functions as a synonym as well as a de-escalation of the FBI’s findings.
That said, even in the original draft, it’s evident that Comey never intended to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton or her staff. In the statement, Comey indicated that charges on misdemeanor or felony mishandling of classified information involved a mix of four criteria — “clearly intentional misconduct,” “vast quantities of materials exposed” that would reasonably support the conclusion of “intentional misconduct,” “indications of disloyalty to the United States” and/or “efforts to obstruct justice.”
“We see none of that here… I am completing the investigation by expressing to Justice my view that no charges are appropriate in this case,” Comey concluded in 2016.
There was some suggestion in that original memo that “extremely careless” description could have led to potential charges of negligence for handling classified material — which would have been against Clinton’s staffer, not her herself — but Comey also found that no similar prosecution had ever been attempted or had been successful.
Now, it’s possible that the Session’s DOJ just might try to do exactly that.
They’ve also started an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
The U.S. Justice Department has begun an investigation into whether the Clinton Foundation conducted “pay-to-play” politics or other illegal activities during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, The Hill reported on Thursday, citing law enforcement officials and a witness.
The newspaper said FBI agents from Little Rock, Arkansas, where the foundation began, had taken the lead in the investigation and interviewed at least one witness in the past month. Law enforcement officials told The Hill that additional activities were expected in coming weeks.
Ok, we’ve already got just about all of the Clinton Foundation emails — because the Russians Hacked and released them over a year ago and there was no evidence of this among them. Also Huma Abedine’s emails have been released and again, and despite the kerfuffle of her sending herself her own laptop passwords, there’s no hint that she helped the Clinton Foundation donors get favors.
In fact she didn’t allow Clinton Foundation’s Doug Band to push her to help a donor get a meeting they wanted — quite of few of them didn't get anything.
The emails show that, in these and similar cases, the donors did not always get what they wanted, particularly when they sought anything more than a meeting.
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State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Monday that there is “no clear sign” donors received access for their contributions.
The emails released Monday showed how requests from donors would often come through Doug Band, a longtime Bill Clinton aide who helped create the foundation, with Abedin as a primary point of contact. Band declined to comment on the newly released emails, and attorneys for Abedin did not respond to a request for comment.
There is no indication from the emails that Abedin intervened on behalf of Casey Wasserman, an L.A. sports executive who in 2009 asked Band for help getting a visa for a British soccer star trying to visit Las Vegas. Band indicated that the office of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) had already declined to help, given the player’s criminal record. A Boxer spokesman described the request to her office as “routine” but one with that Boxer did not assist, “given the facts of the case.”
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Band and Abedin also responded dismissively when asked if they had any ideas on how to help Bono get his space station transmission: “No clue,” they each responded in turn.
When Doug Band requested the reinstatement of diplomatic passports for Clinton’s staff in order to help free two journalists being held by North Korea — Abedine really didn’t help with that either.
“Need get me/ justy and jd dip passports,” Band wrote to longtime Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. “We had them years ago but they lapsed and we didn’t bother getting them.”
[To which the State Dept. replied]
“Diplomatic passports are issued to Foreign Service Officers or a person having diplomatic or comparable status because he or she is traveling abroad to carry out diplomatic duties on behalf of the U.S. Government,” the official said.
“Any individuals who do not have this status are not issued Diplomatic passports. Even when issued, Diplomatic passports are only given enough validity to facilitate a bearer’s travel while in such status. After that, the passport expires.
“The staff of former Presidents are not included among those eligible to be issued a Diplomatic passport.”
So even when it was something for Hillary’s own husband — he still didn’t get what he wanted.
And even the meeting with the Crown Prince of Bahrain was not really that sketchy as official channels were used throughout.
The appeal appears to have had more success in the case of Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain. In June 2009, Band emailed Abedin that the prince would be in Washington for two days and was seeking a meeting with Hillary Clinton. “Good friend of ours,” he added.
Abedin responded that the prince had already requested a meeting “through normal channels” but that Clinton had been hesitant to commit. Two days later, Abedin followed up with Band to let him know that a meeting with the prince had been set. “If u see him, let him know. We have reached out thru official channels,” she wrote to Band.
And then it appears that Republicans in the Senate have decided to make their first criminal referral to the DOJ in the Russia investigation and it’s not about anyone in the Trump campaign, it’s against Christopher Steele for supposed “false statements” for how he says he distributed his dossier.
In a letter dated Thursday and sent Friday to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, the senators claimed to have evidence that the ex-spy, Christopher Steele had violated a law prohibiting the making of false or misleading statements to federal authorities.
The attached memorandum was classified and thus not released to the press, but the senators in their letter said it was “related to certain communications between Christopher Steele and multiple U.S. news outlets regarding the so-called ‘Trump dossier’ that Mr. Steele compiled on behalf of Fusion GPS for the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee and also provided to the FBI.”
Now Steele was an FBI Informant who had voluntarily given his information to the FBI and whom they’ve trusted for quite some time as described by the founders of Fusion GPS.
Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?
What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.
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We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.
The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.
This is in addition to GOPers in the House using a subpoena to go after the funding of Fusion GPS, even though they admitted they were paid both by Republicans and the DNC, although Steele himself never even knew their funding sources.
A federal judge on Thursday denied a request by Fusion GPS, the private intelligence firm behind the so-called Trump dossier, to block a subpoena issued by the House Intelligence Committee on the firm’s bank for certain financial records.
In court filings Friday morning, Fusion GPS indicated that it planned to appeal the decision and asked the judge, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, to put Thursday’s order on hold.
So the playbook is to go after Steele — even though he didn’t start the Trump/Russia investigation, Papadopoulos bragging to the Australians did, he only confirmed contacts that the FBI already knew about — go after Fusion GPS and go after Clinton — yet again — all to distract and divert from the much more clear allegations of criminal activity, such as using their position to enrich themselves with Foreign Gifts and Favors at Trump’s Hotels and properties, the Kushner family trying to sell U.S. Visas at $500,000 each to Business investors in China, trying to drop Russian Sanctions for no good reason then gutting the State Dept Division that implements them, giving away code-word classified information to the Russians not to mention money laundering, conspiracy, lying to the FBI and Obstruction of Justice by trying to get Comey to drop the case against Flynn, then firing him for not doing it and generating false statements that Don Jr. met with Russians over the issue of adoptions instead of trying to get dirt on Hillary in exchange for easing sanctions on Russia and on and on that have been perpetrated by the Trump Administration.
This is all on top of the new New York Times report that Trump was screaming “Where’s my Roy Cohn” when Sessions was about to recuse himself for the Russia investigation, and Session’s staffers tried to “get dirt” on Comey from Congress.
Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.
Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.
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Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.
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Two days after Mr. Comey’s testimony, an aide to Mr. Sessions approached a Capitol Hill staff member asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the F.B.I. director. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.
Trump claimed in this article that Eric Holder had “protected” President Obama over the IRS scandal and the Fast and Furious scandal with the ATF — but the fact is neither one of those are real scandals, they weren’t part of any wide-ranging partisan plots and Obama and Holder had nothing to do with either one of them.
When you have no valid defense, you go on offense. And brother, are these guys offensive.