80 Was There Probable Cause for Comeygate? The Criminal Investigation Without a Subject

UPDATE:

Substantively this chapter is also there. There is some question of placement of some of the stuff above the start of the actual chapter. So substance is there but some questions on chronology-how much of the stuff at top to use and if so where?

UPDATE 2.0: Overall the puncutaiton is good too. Only real problem is a few issues with placement and spacing.

UPDATE 3.0: For some reason some of the spacing around the Lanny Davis book quotes disappears on in the draft. Again the substance is excellent but there is annoying formatting issues in certain paragraphs nothing seems to fix.

So: Emailgate, James Comey, Dean Baquet and the anatomy of a fake scandal. In looking at the opening of Emailgate you learn that it opened just like it ended-with Comey’s moral ad hockery-his substituting his own Kantian moral judgments to the actual rules of the DOJ or as the IG report puts it-as we will look at below-insubordination; and the weasel words of Dean Baquet’s New York Times.

August 30, 2018

UPDATE: Does having this date serve any purpose? Maybe…

So let’s start from the beginning: was there probable cause for the damn email probe in the first place? From the start there was a lot of confusion over wether it was a criminal investigation into Clinton or simply a review of the State department protocols behind its system for email security and record keeping. It seems the initial report that Clinton was under investigation was a mistake and despite Comey’s feeling “a little queasy” about Loretta Lynch’s use of the word “matter not investigation” it is a fact that Clinton never was formally the subject of the Midyear investigation, in fact it was an investigation without a subject.

Still Comey and his team became apoplectic when Obama’s Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, accurately pointed this fact out in answer to the question of wether the WH thought that Clinton would be indicted in January, 2016 per the IG report. 

“On January 29, 2016, in response to a question about whether the White House thought that former Secretary Clinton would be indicted, Earnest stated:”

“That will be a decision that is made by the Department of Justice and prosecutors over there. What I know is that some officials over there have said is that she is not a target of the investigation. So that does not seem to be the direction that it’s trending, but I’m certainly not going to weigh in on a decision or in that process in any way. That is a decision to be made solely by independent prosecutors. But, again, based on what we know from the Department of Justice, it does not seem to be headed in that direction.”

Yet this-completely accurate statement-was treated like some sort of five star car alarm fire by the Comey team. It’s amazing that with Emailgate accurate statements were treated like obstruction of justice. Comey for his part heaped scorn on Loretta Lynch for saying matter ‘rather’ than ‘investigation.’

“On Sunday, October 11, 2015, an interview of then President Barack Obama was aired on the CBS show 60 Minutes. During this interview, Obama characterized former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server as a “mistake,” but stated that it did not “pose[] a national security problem” and was “not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.” Obama also stated that the issue had been “ginned up” because of the presidential race. Two days later, on October 13, 2015, Obama’s Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, was asked whether Obama’s comments “should be read as an attempt to steer the direction of the FBI investigation.” Earnest replied that Obama made his comments based on public information, and they were not intended to influence an independent investigation. Former President Obama’s comments caused concern among FBI officials about the potential impact on the investigation. Former EAD John Giacalone told the OIG, “[W]e open up criminal investigations. And you have the President of the United States saying this is just a mistake…. That’s a problem, right?” Former AD Randy Coleman expressed the same concern, stating, “[The FBI had] a group of guys in here, professionals, that are conducting an investigation. And the…President of the United States just came out and said there’s no there there.”

LOL. So what are they saying now that Trump is referring to the Russia investigation as a witch hunt 20 times every single day? Predictably nobody’s heard a word from Giacalone or Coleman or anyone else over at Trumpland  the FBI.

FN: If it did lead to the freakout Obama’s accurate statements did it hasn’t ever been publicly revealed-of course not, at Trumpland cum GOPland stuff only leaks when it’s a Democrat being investigated.

UPDATE: Interestingly these two-“Former EAD John Giacalone” and “Former AD Randy Coleman” were also the two agents in the very early stages-actually on July 23, 2015- of the Emailgate investigation who thought it necessary to hand deliver a handwritten note notifying Deputy AG Sally Yates that the FBI-as Lanny Davis opines it was likely Comey himself-had opened up the But Her Emails probe on July 10, 2015; yet another day which will live in infamy for Comey along with July 5, 2016, and October 28, 2016.

FN: Location 944

This was kind of interesting first of all because this was the third time the FBI had notified Yates of the Emailgate Midyear investigation Yates in the space of 13 days that they’d opened up the investigation. Interestingly too that by early 2016 the two gung ho FBI agents-at least they were gung ho about investigating Clinton’s emails were former agents. In light of the role that allegedly former agents would have in leaking Emailgate information. Were they two of the leaking agents? As we’ll see in 2016 many supposedly former agents continued to show up to work everyday to bitch and conspire against Clinton.

Indeed, in 2018 the GOP Congress having already prematurely shutdown the Russia investigation opened up a kind a parallel investigation going back to Her Emails again-even though by then she’d been out of public life for two years-ie they were essentially investigating a private citizen.

One witness Chuck Grassley and his GOP co-conspirator friends had was: “Former EAD John Giacalone” 

Giacaloe had been asked if

“when you retire from the FBI, it’s my understanding that, you know, you turn your equipment in, you surrender your badge, you surrender your gun, they walk you to the door, and they literally throw you out on the street. Youcannot get back into the building again without going through some escort procedure. Is that correct?”

Pg 9

LOL as Giacalone went on to explain this was far from correct. In fact he had what is called “green badge status” that pretty much allows former senior FBI agents to come and go into the building at will. Indeed, the more you learn about green badge status, the more clear it becomes that the life of a “former” senior FBI official is pretty sweet-you sort of retain all the perks and upsides of having all that power and intel info at your fingertips while being gainfully employed-officially-somewhere else with a much higher salary than the government pays-Giacalone relates how he was making “only $180,000 a year” at the FBI while his daughter’s college tuition was $120,000.

But green badge status enabled him to make a lot more elsewhere while retaining access to NY FBI headquarters-the info, the intel, etc.

End UPDATE

CF: Chapter A for the fact that during 2016 the FBI was considered Trumpland-we can only imagine what it was like once Trump got in-thanks to the FBI’s help.

UPDATE: Now we’ve learned that the alleged Deep State at large is refusing to say anything in public that disagrees with Trump’s lies and illusions.

See Chapter A for more on the way the intel agencies have been completely penetrated by Trump’s political preferences.

End UPDATE

UPDATE 2.0: More recently we have learned that many in the FBI refused to investigate J6 as they felt sympathy for the insurrectionists see Chapter Trumpland.

So during the Emailgate investigation even accurate statements by the Obama WH or Clinton campaign were treated as obstruction of justice. But as disdainful as Giacalone was at the suggestion that Emailgate was anything short of a criminal investigation-and as ‘queasy’ as Comey very well may have felt about Lynch’s characterization of it as a ‘matter’ rather than an ‘investigation’ her neologism did have the convenient characteristic of being true.

“Apparently, when then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch attempted to have the FBI’s purported investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server labeled a “matter,” she might have been more honest about it than those charged with actually investigating.”

“Among the explosive admissions made by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz during his testimony Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee was the fact that Clinton was never a subject of the FBI’s investigation. In fact, no one was:

“Nobody was listed as a subject of this [Clinton email] investigation at any point in time.”

“Horowitz’ report further clarifies she was never a target of the investigation, either.”

Um, ee, er, well? So when Clinton said she wasn’t a subject she was telling the truth no matter how queasy it very well may have made Comey and how many times Chris Cillizza ridiculed her.

So at the end of the day it was Comey not Loretta Lynch who was wrong

Without a subject or target of the investigation, it also meant Clinton could be interviewed without being under oath. Both terms have very specific meanings within the Justice Department:

  • Subject — “a person whose conduct is within the scope of a grand jury’s investigation.”
  • Target — “a person for whom a prosecutor or grand jury has substantial evidence linking him to the commission of a crime.”

“This contradicts former FBI Director James Comey’s sworn testimony before Congress, his own interview with the Office of Inspector General, as well as his new book, all of which described Clinton as the subject of an investigation. He added that goal of the investigation wasn’t to determine who mishandled the information, but when Clinton mishandled it herself.”

So he gave false information in his book and false testimony to Congress and the IG-as we will see in subsequent chapters this was hardly the only time Comey gave false information to Congress.

UPDATE: I have since reread Lanny Davis’ excellent book on Emailgate cum Comeygate that a good part of this chapter is based on and in light of this will have (a lot)more to say about what Comey has said about wether or not this was a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton below. For now suffice it to say what it comes down to is Comey has tried to have it both ways-since the beginning July 10, 2015  the day he opened that damnable fake investigation-which is why I call it Emailgate-it doesn’t deserve the dignity of being treated as anything but what it was-a GOP partisan boondoggle.

End UPDATE

FN: Meanwhile, despite Comey’s ‘queasiness’ over calling it a ‘matter not investigation’ he was very willing to assure Trump on multiple occasions that he wasn’t under investigation-that didn’t make Comey queasy. 

According to Andy McCabe, James Baker felt that this was a distinction-the Trump campaign was under criminal investigation but that Trump somehow wasn’t was if not ‘queasy’ then rather too Jesuitical. 

End FN

“On Monday the fifteenth, I met again with the Russia team. From January until Comey was fired, we had been having discussions with him about how to handle the topic of whether the president was under investigation. Jim Baker said, Even though we don’t have a case open on the president, we do have a case open to see whether his campaign coordinated with the Russians in a way that would have been illegal or improper; and as the leader of his campaign, by definition some of his activity and behavior would be within the scope of the investigation. Baker thought it was jesuitical—basically, too cute by half—to say the president was not under investigation. But Comey chose to give the president the reassurance that, at that moment, he himself was not.”

Location 3596.

FN: So Comey’s ‘queasiness over being ‘too Jesuitical’ is in effect only if the subject is a Democrat.

Let’s just take a moment, however, to appreciate how serious this mistake in fact was. You have Comey and his friends at the FBI misleading the public for 15 months that she was under criminal investigation-the MSM eagerly repeating the canard again and again and again-while the Breitbart crowd and GOP trumpeted and amplified it from the roof tops. And it turns out she wasn’t. It turns out the characterization that she and her campaign team gave was completely accurate.

And let’ s just say-it matters-pun intended-that it was a matter not a criminal investigation. When Comey exonerated her of wrongdoing-while dirtying her up politically-on July 5, 2016 a large majority of the public-about 60%-thought she should have been indicted. This is thanks to the fake news propagated by Comey and the MSM who kept drilling into everyone’s head that she was under criminal investigation even though she wasn’t.

As noted in  our analysis of the media coverage in part A, this created the false expectation that it was quite possible if not likely that Clinton would be indicted while in fact this possibility was always very remote-as the IG report itself makes clear.

So where did this very harmful canard, this zombie claim that everyone knew was true as everyone repeated it ad nauseam come from?

Would you believe it came from Dean Baquet’s NY Times? Fitting, no doubt-if March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, the But Her Emails election of 2016 ended just as it begun-the NYT’s shoddy reporting based on its shoddy Emailgate obsession and shoddy Clinton Derangement Syndrome (CDS) and, of course, Comey’s insubordination-of which we’ll look at far more below.

As stated at the top of this chapter-Emailgate ended like it begun-Comey’s insubordination and the NYT’s weasel words. Again more below, Dear Reader.

Indeed, kudos to Lanny Davis-Bill Clinton’s Whitewater lawyer now representing Michael Cohen-for being one of the few to write about Comeygate.

He has a very helpful eytmology on the development of the canard that Hillary Clinton was being criminally investigated by the FBI. And yes-this canard begun with the NYTimes again getting ahead of its skis in its zeal to foment  a negative narrative about Hillary Clinton. It turns out that much of the confused canard that was Comeygate begun with the NYTimes shoddy reporting-sound familiar? Just like we had the Times shoddy reporting and anti Clinton zeal to thank for Whitewater-this nothingburger of a faux scandal became the Ken Starr’s leaky fishing expedition that was an answer-impeach Clinton-in search of a question-for what actual charges?

UPDATE: Starr’s presence on Trump’s legal defense team at his Senate impeachment trial says it all about him-it was never about principle with him but partisan hackery-he was a GOP partisan hack then and he’s a GOP partisan hack now.

FN: Again  along with Comey, Putin, Roger Stone, and Assange, Dean Baquet is another major goat of our constitutional crisis-by goat I don’t mean the greatest ever basically the opposite he and his Clinton hating friends arethe worst-the bad reporting, the Clinton Derangement Syndrome, the Emailgate fixation-how much of this mess is thanks to Baquet’s awful editorial decisions as President of the NYT?

And Baquet’s a hardheaded guy who’s absolutely determined not to learn a thing from 2016. 

While the Washington Post has adopted the slogan Democracy Dies in Darkness Baquet continues to play the usual false equivalence both sides do it game. If WaPo’s slogan is Democracy Dies in Darkness the Times’ seems to be we won’t be baited into being too tough on “President Trump.”

Can you imagine the Times during the time of Hitler: we won’t be baited into being too tough on Hitler. 

FN: Turns out the Times had a number of such headlines.

This is one  example but there were many over the years right through till he invaded Poland.

End FN

The line between his bloopers and “President Trump” is a fairly straight line: The NYT’s broke Emailgate then wrongly reported she was under criminal investigation, then had that outrageous carpet bomb of Emailgate coverage after Comey’s indefensible and damnable letter. Then there was the Times absurd attempt to demonize the Clinton Foundation.

FN: Partnering with yellow journalist Peter Schweitzer.

End FN

But the Times weaponized the letter both before the fact then magnified and amplified it 1000 fold after in overkill on its headlines to such absurd proportions it’s simply stunning.

FN: Then there was ‘the FBI sees no clear links between Trump and Russia.’

So basically 2016 ended as it begun-with the NYT”s shoddy Emailgate obsession.

No Trump-Russia story, or any Trump scandal has ever gotten the level of freakout of the NYT”s on October 29, 2016. This cover ought to be on Baquet’s tombstone.

Similarly the Times actually wrote a late piece to debunk Russiagate after the Comey letter broke and this was just like how in 1972 the Times completely buried Watergate before the election. Yet the conservatives get mileage calling it a liberal paper?

UPDATE on NYT:

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But Her Emails: Why all Roads Still Lead to Russia Copyright © by nymikesax. All Rights Reserved.

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