FBI recommends against indictment of Secretary Clinton

[LetterRip]

Not terribly surprising, but somewhat surprising.

A number of talking heads have stated that her 'extreme carelessness' was 'gross negligence' - but they seem to be using the informal usage of the meaning of gross negligence rather than the legal definition.

[msquared]

I have no problem with them not pressing charges, but I would think this would hurt her chances in the general. I mean that level of carelessness?  If any other candidate had done this, they  would be out of the running.

msquared

[Fenring]

Pretty standard result. As long as elections are run by $10 billion super-pacs things won't change.

[Fenring]

Funny comment from someone on Reddit:

"She intentionally wiped her server, yet was found to have no malicious intent...I feel like I'm taking f***ing crazy pills."

[AI Wessex]

I have no problem with them not pressing charges, but I would think this would hurt her chances in the general. I mean that level of carelessness?  If any other candidate had done this, they  would be out of the running.

msquared

Not this year, given who she is running against.  Before that, the occupants of the clown car were competing to outdisqualify each other as hard as they could.  Frankly, we're no longer in any Kansas I would recognize on the political landscape, and Kansas isn't either.

[Wayward Son]

Funny comment from someone on Reddit:

"She intentionally wiped her server, yet was found to have no malicious intent...I feel like I'm taking f***ing crazy pills."

I think he was inadvertently referring to Bush.

[Seriati]

It fascinates me that this is getting so little attention.  It seems like the left is in shock, and waiting for the right to get out-raged and overstep so they can counter attack.  It's really beyond explanation how the FBI said what it did and didn't recommend charges, and beyond belief that they would expressly state that someone else who did the same thing would probably be charged at the same time.  It's also got to be difficult to reconcile the claim that Hilary is the competent choice, with her essentially not being charged because of her reckless disregard and incompetency was so obvious that it couldn't be viewed as intentional conduct (it's absolutely incorrect that it wasn't gross negligence).  Not that Trump is a winner either but come on.

[LetterRip]

Seriati,

It's really beyond explanation how the FBI said what it did and didn't recommend charges, and beyond belief that they would expressly state that someone else who did the same thing would probably be charged at the same time.

It is baffling to me how many people have misheard or misread his statement.  He said no such thing.  He said

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

and Hillary Clinton isn't employed at the State Department any longer, so she can't be fired/demoted and the FBI doesn't have the authority to remove her security clearance.

[TheDeamon]

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

and Hillary Clinton isn't employed at the State Department any longer, so she can't be fired/demoted and the FBI doesn't have the authority to remove her security clearance.

In theory, her security clearance went away after she stepped down as Secretary of State, as any and all such clearances are "need to know" only, and once she stopped serving in an official capacity, that "need to know" went away. But as a former Secretary State, and possibly even as a former First Lady, chances are very good she exists in a grey area as an ongoing "consultant" who is freely given access to a lot of sensitive materials anyway due to her previous experience. I understand that's something of an ongoing thing for former Presidents as well, if they choose to receive such briefings.

[scifibum]

Seriati,

It's really beyond explanation how the FBI said what it did and didn't recommend charges, and beyond belief that they would expressly state that someone else who did the same thing would probably be charged at the same time.

It is baffling to me how many people have misheard or misread his statement.  He said no such thing.  He said

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

and Hillary Clinton isn't employed at the State Department any longer, so she can't be fired/demoted and the FBI doesn't have the authority to remove her security clearance.

If you're consuming from right wing sources, they are deliberately feeding that distortion to their audiences. 

Pretty much all the GOP politicians who have made a public comment have deliberately done the same thing. 

Their incredulosity during the 4 hour interrogation of Comey was more of the same. 

Funny comment from someone on Reddit:

"She intentionally wiped her server, yet was found to have no malicious intent...I feel like I'm taking f***ing crazy pills."

Not sure how much you are taking this at face value, but what the FBI found is that routine administrative migrations and cleanups occurred and actually stated that they were pretty confident there was no misconduct involved. 

It fascinates me that this is getting so little attention. 

And here I'm frankly astonished.  WHAT? 

[cherrypoptart]

This situation reminds me of when the decision of John Roberts on Obamacare was read and some of the media after giving it a once over said that Obamacare had been declared unconstitutional because when they read John's comments it was all about how wrong the law was and it wasn't until you got to the end where he basically said that much like Einstein's theory on light being simultaneously both energy and matter so too was Obamacare simultaneously both a fine and a tax, passed as definitively not a tax but a fine but Constitutional only as a tax. Needless to say Einstein was not pleased.

So too did this here Comey fellow go all into all the reasons why Hillary was beyond any doubt guilty of gross negligence and intentionally both sharing classified information with numerous people without the clearance to see it such as her lawyers but also guilty of deleting that information when she said in no uncertain terms that she did no such thing, among many other blatant lies and violations of the law. But nevertheless she is not guilty because... well just like with Obamacare there is no rational justification for the decision. Corruption is the only reasonable explanation. That... or insanity.

Of course the American people with have their own say on the matter in the next election though truth be told seeing as how most of these are the same corrupt or insane (or to be far too generous perhaps just willfully naive) people who voted for Obama that may offer little to no consolation.

[Pete at Home]

Seriati,

It's really beyond explanation how the FBI said what it did and didn't recommend charges, and beyond belief that they would expressly state that someone else who did the same thing would probably be charged at the same time.

It is baffling to me how many people have misheard or misread his statement.  He said no such thing.  He said

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

and Hillary Clinton isn't employed at the State Department any longer, so she can't be fired/demoted and the FBI doesn't have the authority to remove her security clearance.

Meanwhile, Sanders gets boo'd and heckled at closed door democratic pressure meetings because he hasn't yet endorsed a presidential candidate who isn't worth a security clearance.

[Greg Davidson]

Okay, this faux scandal is drying up. And of course those still rolling around in self-generated outrage don't actually care about the issue of classified leakage, or the use of private email for government work.  Because the current Secretary of Defense used his private email to conduct government business for a year. Where are the hearings on that? The Congressional Committee to investigate? Crickets.

I wonder what the next faux scandal will be. I figure that a new one will be released in August, and then another one after she is elected, maybe in December. Republicans will huff and puff, the House majority will put together investigations, and they'll start holding hearings in March.  It will run for about 18 months and, as usual, will wind up with a final report that fails to validate the wild conspiracy theories that were spun.

[Pete at Home]

don't have to look far for the next clinton scandal, Greg.  Her fbi witness laid it right out in his Petraus analogy -- obstruction of justice. fbi repeatedly conceded that Hillary had said the thing that was not to the Congressional investigation.  Remember Mr. bill went down (no pun intended) not for going down, but for lying about it.

[ScottF]

Whether it's faux outrage or not I keep trying to figure out why. Why would you feel compelled to setup an email server in the basement of your house instead of just using your employer's standard configuration already in place?

I used to work for a (very) large software company and it never occurred to me that maybe I should configure my own email server out of my house instead of using our internal setup. Obviously it would be in direct violation of my employment terms, but beyond that....why even bother?

[TheDrake]

Whether it's faux outrage or not I keep trying to figure out why. Why would you feel compelled to setup an email server in the basement of your house instead of just using your employer's standard configuration already in place?

I used to work for a (very) large software company and it never occurred to me that maybe I should configure my own email server out of my house instead of using our internal setup. Obviously it would be in direct violation of my employment terms, but beyond that....why even bother?

There are a lot of times to sidestep official IT doctrine. My biggest violation was hooking up personal devices to the email server as clients, but I heard of others who forwarded all their work email to gmail for the superior search capabilities.

Usually this happens because IT is typically viewed as a necessary cost, not something with an ROI. So it normally falls behind current technology because migrating is a big "extra" cost. If access, ease of use, or other features become too far behind available technology, people will tend to go rogue. Of course, typically this isn't a proper IT solution, so security and disaster recovery are often completely neglected.

In this case, you are talking about an email server possibly set up by the same people who wrote health.gov 1.0. Take a good look at www.state.gov - it looks about 10 years out of date just from a style perspective.

I make no claim that this was Hillary's motivation, or that it is justifiable.

I think the harder thing to figure out is why her private and public emails were not more separated. I keep hearing about how she had a bunch of email that was not work-related on her oddball server. Just too lazy to set up a second server for that, but did have a separate address? Or was she sending random emails on her work address, for personal stuff like her pedicure appointment?

[Fenring]

Or was she sending random emails on her work address, for personal stuff like her pedicure appointment?

We haven't been told whether she had a personal, personal address, used for pedicures, but her claim at any rate is that her main email address was used for everything, including work, private, and anything else (such as private work, like the Clinton Foundation).

[scifibum]

She's the same age as many other people who get extremely annoyed at having to learn multiple systems and remember multiple logins in order to function in the digital world, so it wouldn't surprise me if she insisted that she needed to have only one email address because the alternative was "too complicated".  That's not remotely a good excuse for what she did, but it's plausible (and fits with the error in her claim that she didn't want to have to tote around multiple devices).  She also has a reputation for being pretty harsh with staff, so I can also imagine why people didn't successfully argue her out of it. 

[Fenring]

She's the same age as many other people who get extremely annoyed at having to learn multiple systems and remember multiple logins in order to function in the digital world, so it wouldn't surprise me if she insisted that she needed to have only one email address because the alternative was "too complicated".  That's not remotely a good excuse for what she did, but it's plausible (and fits with the error in her claim that she didn't want to have to tote around multiple devices).  She also has a reputation for being pretty harsh with staff, so I can also imagine why people didn't successfully argue her out of it.

Yeah, this is the one argument that I think is actually completely implausible. The amount of trouble she went through to set up this private server, including the trouble she went through with her own staff, with state, getting the hardware together and assigning a company to take care of it, and all the issues she had with security concerns (like telling her staff to remove classified markings and just email the things to her) and with people not even receiving her emails, makes it pretty clear that this setup was not at all the easier path if indeed she was merely an old-timer who didn't want added technological complexity muddying up her work. She made things far, far more complex for herself than they had to be, and she was quite adamant it be this way despite many attempts to get her to use the government system. Without comment of the 'why' of it right now, it's pretty clear she knew exactly what she wanted and forced the issue. The "I didn't want multiple devices" excuse has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[scifibum]

I'm not drawing the same impression that you are about how much hassle it was, but I'm not really invested in that theory regardless.  I also think (and think I've said)  it was motivated by a desire for control and (she hoped) privacy/secrecy.

[Pete at Home]

I think Scifi's argument is quite plausible, but don't think it gets Hillary off the hook.

She's the same age as many other people who get extremely annoyed at having to learn multiple systems and remember multiple logins in order to function in the digital world, so it wouldn't surprise me if she insisted that she needed to have only one email address because the alternative was "too complicated".  That's not remotely a good excuse for what she did, but it's plausible (and fits with the error in her claim that she didn't want to have to tote around multiple devices).  She also has a reputation for being pretty harsh with staff, so I can also imagine why people didn't successfully argue her out of it.

Yeah, this is the one argument that I think is actually completely implausible. The amount of trouble she went through to set up this private server, including the trouble she went through with her own staff, with state, getting the hardware together and assigning a company to take care of it, and all the issues she had with security concerns (like telling her staff to remove classified markings and just email the things to her) and with people not even receiving her emails, makes it pretty clear that this setup was not at all the easier path if indeed she was merely an old-timer who didn't want added technological complexity muddying up her work. She made things far, far more complex for herself than they had to be, and she was quite adamant it be this way despite many attempts to get her to use the government system. Without comment of the 'why' of it right now, it's pretty clear she knew exactly what she wanted and forced the issue. The "I didn't want multiple devices" excuse has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

I don't think Scifi said that she didn't want multiple devices.  (Hillary said that and the fbi even essentially admits that was a lie).  What Scifi said was that she didn't want different logins and passwords.

I think the stronger case against her now is obstruction of justice and lying to Congress.

[AI Wessex]

That's not remotely a good excuse for what she did, but it's plausible (and fits with the error in her claim that she didn't want to have to tote around multiple devices).

That pertains to her initial objective.  The "multiple devices" came later when she added an iPad.  So, you can't really apply her statement about wanting to have only a single device to the later change.  AFAIK, she did use a single email address for both personal and professional messages.  Not sure why Comey didn't clarify that.

[Fenring]

I don't think Scifi said that she didn't want multiple devices.  (Hillary said that and the fbi even essentially admits that was a lie). 

I know he didn't directly say that, but I was assuming he was paraphrasing what Hillary herself said her intent was, since as far as I know she didn't specifically mention not wanting multiple logins.

[Pete at Home]

I don't think Scifi said that she didn't want multiple devices.  (Hillary said that and the fbi even essentially admits that was a lie). 

I know he didn't directly say that, but I was assuming he was paraphrasing what Hillary herself said her intent was, since as far as I know she didn't specifically mention not wanting multiple logins.

SciFi isn't one of the ones in this discussion that's a total stooge for Hillary. 

[Fenring]

SciFi isn't one of the ones in this discussion that's a total stooge for Hillary.

I know. Never said he was

[Gaoics79]

Yeah, this is the one argument that I think is actually completely implausible. The amount of trouble she went through to set up this private server, including the trouble she went through with her own staff, with state, getting the hardware together and assigning a company to take care of it, and all the issues she had with security concerns (like telling her staff to remove classified markings and just email the things to her) and with people not even receiving her emails, makes it pretty clear that this setup was not at all the easier path if indeed she was merely an old-timer who didn't want added technological complexity muddying up her work. She made things far, far more complex for herself than they had to be, and she was quite adamant it be this way despite many attempts to get her to use the government system. Without comment of the 'why' of it right now, it's pretty clear she knew exactly what she wanted and forced the issue. The "I didn't want multiple devices" excuse has to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

No doubt her carelessness and unsophistication did not extend to the task of deleting irrelevant "private" e-mails. I'm sure those will have been scrubbed clean beyond hope of recovery. We'll just never know her recipe for tuna casserole.

[Fenring]

Hillary denies Comey's conclusion that she was "extremely careless with emails."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-fbi-emails.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

Which is funny if you think about it, because if she wasn't careless it means she was careful, which means what she did was knowing and deliberate. Maybe I'm crazy but that makes her sound worse, not better. I can't say her PR skills have improved any lately...

[Fenring]

Also, in light of saying Hillary did nothing wrong despite being extremely careless, I wonder how to square that with this answer by Comey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbFSkqS5Iac

FBI Director: “No Doubt", Non-cleared People Had Access To Clinton’s Classified Emails

"How many people without a security clearance had access to that server?"

Comey responds, "I don't know the exact number as I sit here - it's probably more than 2 less than 10."

Regardless of whether Hillary knowingly sent or received classified information, or whether it was classified prior to sending, we knew it was definitely classified later on, prior to the investigation. Some of the emails even contained TOP SECRET information, again, they argue, so marked after sending. So now Comey is saying that multiple people with no security clearance (i.e. civilians) were given access to this TOP SECRET material. Isn't that already a crime? I find Comey's position on this confusing at the moment.

[AI Wessex]

We'll just never know her recipe for tuna casserole.

But if she did post it some would wonder if it was her own or where she got it,  whether she actually followed it,  and most importantly why she decided to release it at that particular moment. I think an investigation is needed.