81 Extreme Carelessness: Why did it Take James Comey a Year to Clear Hillary Clinton?

Totally unlike Comey’s actions, Clinton’s deleting of the personal emails was simply doing what the rules proscribed. Yet the FBI-like the Trump campaign-was obsessed with somehow recovering her personal emails-what right to privacy? If the target is Hillary Clinton there is none.

According to the IG report, Comey and his colleagues at the Emailgate investigation knew by January, 2016 there was no there there-Clinton was not guilty of a crime. As we will see even this is too charitable but let’s begin with the IG report as our starting point. 

ENDGAME” DISCUSSIONS AND FORMER DIRECTOR COMEY’S PUBLIC STATEMENT

“Our review found that the Midyear team concluded beginning in early 2016 that evidence supporting a prosecution of former Secretary Clinton or her senior aides was likely lacking. This conclusion was based on the fact that the Midyear team had not found evidence that former Secretary Clinton or her senior aides knowingly transmitted classified information on unclassified systems because (1) classified information exchanged in unclassified emails was not clearly or properly marked, and (2) State Department staff introducing classified information into emails made an effort to “talk around” it. Although the Midyear team continued its investigation, taking the investigative steps described in Chapter Five and looking for evidence that could change their assessment, they also began discussing what witnesses referred to as the “endgame” for the investigation—ways for the Department and FBI to credibly announce the closing of the investigation.”

So ‘at the beginning of early 2016’ the Emailgate team had concluded she was likely innocent. Yet it would take seven more months until Comey decided to let the world know.

What were they doing in the mean time-call this period the missing seven months? Later there’d be another missing month give or take between when the NY FBI ‘found’ Huma’s emails on Weiner’s laptop and when Comey again  put his thumb on the scales against Clinton and for Trump with his memo-evidently, he hadn’t done enough damage with the press conference.

FN: See Chapter Good FBI Agents

As indicated in the paragraph above, one reason for the delay is they continued to obsessively search for some sort of ‘smoking gun’ or what Comey actually later called in Senate testimony “the Golden Emails”- that would change their mind about not indicting Clinton. But how fair is this to Hillary Clinton for her to  be left to continue twisting in the wind for an additional six months-an awful long time in campaign terms just on the remote chance some kind of ‘smoking gun’ could show itself? I mean  I think I’ll delay getting a job for seven months as I totally could win the lottery during this time and let’s just deny a man his freedom for seven months-we don’t have any evidence he’s the killer but heck in seven months maybe we will. Is that FBI and DOJ protocol? Probably not but then again Comey sees following protocol as weak tea, as somehow lacking in moral courage and unheroic.

UPDATE: As we saw in the last chapter-Chapter Probable Cause-you don’t open a criminal investigation because you “might” find something. In reality there was no probable cause in the first place and there certainly wasn’t to continue to milk it but not surprisingly this is what Comey did.

FN: See Chapter Why the Comey Letter on Comey’s “Golden Emails.”

(There are a few quotes in the IG report that demonstrate Comey’s ‘moral vanity.’)

The other thing they did in the six months was obsessively go back and forth on how to execute the endgame-or land the plane if you like to paraphrase Rod Rosenstein.

While Comey and his fellow Midyear agents knew by the start of the year it’s unlikely there would be charges they didn’t even begin their conversations about ‘landing the plane’ until April of 2016. So for three more months the investigation-and Clinton’s campaign -sat in limbo as her opponents-the GOP, Assange, HA Goodman, Chris Cillizza continued to foment what the Washington Post editorial page would  itself later call a minor email scandal.

FN: Landing the plane takes on even more resonance now that we’ve learned of Rosenstein’s imappropriate promises to Trump-how queasy is Comey over that?

In early April Comey begun initial discussions about finally winding down the email probe.

“Comey said that beginning in March or April 2016, he began to think of ways to announce a declination. Comey said that during this time he had a meeting with Rybicki, Yates, and Axelrod to discuss how the FBI and Department could credibly close the investigation. Based on Yates’s description of the circumstances of the meeting (described below) and FBI emails, we determined that this meeting likely took place on Tuesday, April 12, 2016.”

(Find the page number).

FN: McCabe also has his version of these conversations in The Threat

This yet again underscores Comey’s general lack of urgency in winding this down, of landing the plane. Though clearly Clinton deserved, as any subject deserves, to be promptly cleared if the facts don’t support conviction. He started thinking about announcing no charges in March, 2016 but didn’t have the first meeting on doing so until another month went by.

This was after there’s already been two lost months-January and February-when Comey and his fellow Emailgate agents knew there were no charges. What was going on then, in the the first three months between when they had all concluded there were no charges and April 12 when Comey had his first meeting with Sally Yates?

And let’s be clear this is not hperbole-it was clear by January, 2016-to be generous; as we  saw in the last chapter it’s likely they knew, Comey certainly knew, long before that Clinton wasn’t guilty-that she was very unlikely to be charged.

FN: It’s quite arguable Comey and his Republican Friends at the FBI knew all along always knew there was unlikely to be charges.

“Notes obtained by the OIG from a meeting between Toscas and then EAD John Giacalone on December 4, 2015, confirm that the lack of intent was the subject of ongoing discussions. According to the notes, Giacalone asked the team, “Still [do not] have much on the intent side, right?” The notes show that the team members present at the meeting agreed with him. Giacalone, who retired from the FBI in February 2016, said that there were “no smoking guns” showing intent when he left.

“Similarly, other notes show that prosecutors met with NSD supervisors on January 29, 2016, to discuss the lack of evidence supporting prosecution. The notes state: Don’t see prosecutable case at this point. A lot of stuff done from Ops Center [lower level State Department staff] —> up. HRC is receiving. Want to insulate DOJ from criticism about how we did this work. No daylight [between] FBI management and investigative team agents re: view of criminal liability.”

pg. 164-165.

Note that even in December, 2015 it was clear there was no evidence of intent. Yet the last two sentences from the January, 29. 2016 meeting give a sense of foreboding-while it was clear she wasn’t guilty, the FBI and DOJ were worried about the political reaction to a not guilty finding-even though she was not-uh, guilty.

This highlights how big the failure was, under Comey, to conduct the investigation in a nonpolitical way. Throughout the entire Emailgate fiasco you see Comey and friends politicizing the investigation in ways that hurt Clinton to reassure her haters in the GOP, and to an extent on the Bernie Left-a la HA Goodman-and in the Chris Cillizza cum Dean Baquet MSM that the investigation was not being politicized to help her. Essentially her basic   civil and privacy rights and due process were trampled on to assure her political opponents that she wasn’t getting special rights.

Essentially the FBI bent over to prove she wasn’t being treated especially well by treating her especially badly.

FN: Here you also have to think of Andy McCabe’s leaking the fact of the FBI’s-wholly unpredicated and unjustified-fishing expedition into the Clinton Foundation on October 31, 2016-perhaps there’s a certain poetic justice for McCabe to end up being hoisted by his own petard. Trump and his GOP co-conspirators-many of them no doubt continue to reside at the FBI aka Trumpland-accused McCabe of trying to help Clinton. In fact McCabe was doing the same thing Comey was-treating Clinton grossly unfairly to reassure the GOP Right that she wasn’t getting special treatment. Trump would use what McCabe did to Hilary as the excuse to drum him out 26 hours before his pension just as he used Comey’s unfair and wrongheaded treatment of Hilary as a pretext for firing him.

End of FN

Among the many violations of rules and her rights from the July 5 presser, it also clearly violated her privacy rights for someone not charged with any crime to be publicly ripped to shreds by the FBI Director a couple of weeks before the party conventions.

The IG report documents a particularly arresting conversation over ‘optics’ in late March, 2016.

“On March 30, 2016, Prosecutor 1 sent an email to Prosecutor 2 stating, “Read the Ruth Marcus column in the [Washington] Post if you haven’t yet.”132 The column referenced in the email discussed the public skepticism that would result from a decision not to indict former Secretary Clinton and recommended that the Department consider releasing a detailed investigative summary. It included a hyperlink to a public report released by the Department in 2010 that summarized the investigation into the 2001 anthrax letter attacks. The column also highlighted the need for a credible government official to provide the public with information about the investigation, noting, “Senior Justice officials will be mistrusted whatever they say, but what about FBI Director James B. Comey, who served in the Justice Department under George W. Bush?” Apparently after reading this column, Prosecutor 2 replied, “It is not dissimilar from some of the thoughts running through my head in the middle of the night…or what I tried expressing at that disastrous meeting we called with Toscas a couple months ago.”

Pg. 178

So was Comey’s presser originally Ruth Marcus’ idea?! Marcus like most of the MSM in 2016 exhibited a good deal of Hilary Derangement Syndrome-she had thought Trump made a good point in late 2015 when his response to Clinton’s criticism of him as a sexist was to change the subject by blaming Clinton for her husband’s affairs. Yes, Marcus pronounced primly, Bill’s past is fair game. 

FN: Chapter A for more.

Of course, because it’s on Hillary to make up for what her husband’s affairs did to her. Because Bill had extramarital affairs this lets Trump off the hook on the matter of sexism. In any case, it’s rather stunning that Comey’s indefensible press conference may have been the brainchild of Ruth Marcus.

FN: The outrageous sexism in American politics continues as Congresswoman Katie Hill was forced out based on the revenge porn of her former abusive husband.

Let's be clear this is not a win for #MeToo but the opposite a very qualified and competent bisexual Dem woman was bullied into resigning by revenge porn https://t.co/YPmKxRKKQf

— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) January 31, 2021

UPDATE: There were rumors that Pelosi and the Dem leadership pushed her out but Congresswoman Hill denies it. 

As much as I love Joe there’s a reason he didn’t get her awful press despite them being pretty similar ideologically-the most blatant example was when Tulsi Gabbard defended Biden’s Iraq vote-when Clinton run the Left insisted that her Iraq vote was disqualifying.

Chapter A for a lot more on the very different treatment Biden 2020 received than Hillary 2016 despite them being pretty similar in terms of ideological history, resume, career trajectory, etc.

End FN

As for Comey, wherever the idea of him doing a presser to-finally-announce Clinton wasn’t guilty came from-maybe Ruth Marcus-he quickly made it his own while misleading both his fellow FBI agents as well as the DOJ over the next three months. While he presented his doing a lone presser as just one of a number of options, in truth he’d already decided he was going to do it no matter what.

For her part, regardless of how large a factor Marcus’ article was in Comey’s damnable decision to do that Presser, it was symptomatic of the larger savvy MSM narrative and it was a big part of the problem. Marcus’ premise was that Clinton alone had no right to privacy or due process. Instead even if she were innocent she still had to be dirtied politically-anything less would somehow be ‘suspicious.’

Marcus claimed the public would be very suspicious of a declination-what her predication was in this belief she didn’t say. In reality-and this is a point we discuss in more detail on Chapter Ezra Klein-the trajectory in the Emailgate narrative wasn’t that the public told the media how important Her Emails were and how suspicious they would be if Clinton weren’t indicted but rather the media continued to tell the public this is how it felt. This goes to Klein’s point that a big cause of the problems with the Beltway press is that they live in this imaginary world where they just report the news without in any way shaping it.

FN: As we will see in more detail in later chapters particularly Chapter Why Comey Wrote the Comey Letter, this is Comey’s MO in terms of management technique-having a ‘free and open debate’-even though he’s already decided on what he wants to do.

(Find quotes in IG about his conversations with others in Midyear investigation).

More on that later. First, let us just be very clear-there was no intent, it wasn’t a close call as he himself told the GOP Congress in July, 2016 after the presser. Yet, most of the public believed the opposite-60% believed she should have been indicted. 

Again this was the result in large part of collusion between the anti Clinton leakers at the FBI and the MSM savvy pundits who created this false narrative.

Comey had justified his hamhanded intervention as necessary for the education of the public. Yet his words and actions had the opposite effect: they only served to further confuse and mislead people.

No doubt a big part of why there was expectation of a Clinton indictment, was the irresponsible way Comey dithered and delayed the landing of the plane-he had built the false expectation of a Clinton indictment by dragging out and milking the process for all those months when he knew the chances of indictment were remote.

And let’s be clear, as I noted above, even the notion that Comey and friends only figured out that there was no there there as far as convicting in January, 2016 is far too charitable. As Lanny Davis documents, it simply doesn’t take anywhere near a year to go through 30,000 emails or-if you for some reason include her personal emails that her lawyer rightfully deleted-62,000 emails.

Location 943.

No more than two days. This is a point that is also germane on the question of what took Comey so long to release his memo after being informed of Abedin’s emails that had been ‘found’ on Weiner’s laptop. It’s not clear how Comey ever believed it would take so many months to go through the emails on Weiner’s laptop-how could he be this unaware of current FBI technology?

FN

But that’s for a future chapter. Spoiler alert-I frankly believe Comey-and his Emailgate people-have lied up and down all around and up again on this missing month. Because the idea anyone believed it would take this long just doesn’t pass the laugh test.

End FN

For now, let’s dwell on Lanny Davis’ fateful question: