RUTHFULLY YOURS

What was the Clinton telos? The end point, the aim of all their lying, cheating, criminality, dishonor, and degradation?

Given the latest Wiener scandals coming on top of the latest WikiLeaks scandals, we wonder, what did the Clintons really wish to end up as — and why? Are they Goethe’s Faust or tortured souls crushed by the weight of their money bags in Dante’s Fourth Circle of Hell?

For a few criminals, remorse comes with old age; but for the Clintons, near-70 was to be the capstone, the last chance to trump all their prior shenanigans. They were artists of amorality, and the election of 2016 was to be their magnum opus.

Collate the FBI reopened investigation, WikiLeaks Podesta trove, revelations about the Clinton Foundation, the e-mail–server scandal, the DNC disclosures, and the various off-the-cuff campaign remarks of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and one then ponders what was the point of the Clinton shakedowns, the loss of reputation, the crude lawbreaking, as they neared their seventh decade. To paraphrase Barack Obama, in his progressive sermonizing on making enough money, did the two ever think they had enough money, enough honors, enough power already?

The Hillary/Bill fortune — generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary’s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies — hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money. The Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer.

Long gone was the Scrooge-like need to write off used underwear as charitable tax deductions or to play 4-trillion-to-one odds in rigging a $100,000 cattle-futures profit on a $1,000 “investment,” or Hillary’s decade-and-a-half as a corporate lawyer masquerading as a children’s advocate. How pathetic the minor league Whitewater cons must seem now to the multimillionaire Clintons — such a tawdry ancient example of amateurish shakedowns when compared with the sophistication of real profiteering through the humanitarian-sounding, high-brow, corrupt Clinton Foundation.

The chorus of NeverTrumpers is wailing ever louder as election day and Hillary’s supposed victory approach. After more than a year of complaining about Trump crashing their political soiree, the Republicans attacking Trump still don’t seem to get how their own behavior contributed to the perception that they are out-of-touch elites disdainful of the Republican masses.

A recent example comes from premier NeverTrumper Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal. In his column Stephens bids farewell to a Republican Party stupid enough to nominate Trump, contrasting it with his imagined Golden Age of Republican policy excellence that Trump and his followers have destroyed. One policy in particular, immigration, reveals the distance between the political and pundit elite and the voting masses that helped make Trump the nominee:

At a 1980 Republican primary debate in Houston, candidates George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan were asked whether the children of illegal immigrants should be allowed to attend public schools for free. Mr. Bush said they should. “We’re creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law,” he lamented.

Reagan agreed. Instead of “putting up a fence,” he asked, “why don’t we . . . make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then, while they’re working and earning here, they pay taxes here.” For good measure, Reagan suggested we should “open the border both ways.”

Where, in the populist fervor to build a wall with Mexico and deport millions of human beings, is that Republican Party today?

Take Bush senior’s statement first. It repeats basically the same clichés that the bipartisan Gang of Eight recycled in 2013 during their push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, another euphemism for amnesty. All those hard-working, family-values illegal immigrants are embryonic conservatives, we were told, who just need legal status and social recognition so they can “come out of the shadows,” as John McCain said, and start voting Republican. The political apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: son Jeb ended his presidential ambitions by calling illegal immigration an “act of love.”

Democrats are in panic mode a week out from Election Day as they try to spin away the FBI’s newly announced discovery of a hoard of two-thirds of a million potentially sensitive emails apparently related to Hillary Clinton’s catastrophic tenure as America’s top diplomat.

Partisan hack James Carville is spewing wild conspiracy theories.

I think it is an outrage and I think the fact that the KGB is involved in this election is an outrage and I think the American people ought to take their democracy back regardless of what the press wants to do and the excuses they want to make for [FBI Director James] Comey. That’s what I think.

He added, “this is in effect an attempt to hijack an election. It ought to be called for what it is.”

Just this past July, Comey was praised by Democrats far and wide for his wisdom in opting not to pursue Clinton. There is evidence federal officials tried to hinder various investigations of Clinton and the endlessly corrupt Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which functions as a bribe processing center for would-be president Hillary Clinton.

But Democrats have suddenly flipped sides, denouncing Comey as an enemy of the republic now that he has opened an investigation into the newly discovered emails.

Carville, long known as the “Ragin’ Cajun,” is apoplectic because he thinks these emails could change the dynamics of the election.

The old Clinton hand may be right.

Investigators found 650,000 emails on a laptop computer they believe was used at home by disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D) and his wife, longtime senior Hillary aide Huma Abedin. The computer is reportedly the same device serial pervert Weiner used to send sexual messages to an underage girl.

“Underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter,” reports the Wall Street Journal. Some of the information emailed may have been classified.

The WikiLeaks emails prove that Obama knew that Hillary was using a private email system.

As an experienced prosecutor, FBI director Comey knew that Hillary would argue in her defense that Obama knew about her using the private unsecured email system. Obama did not stop her, did not object, and corresponded with Hillary on her system. Given these facts, Hillary would argue she did not have the intent to violate the statutes because her superior, the command in chief, the president, conversed with her on her private email system. Hillary would argue, How can I have the intent to violate the law when the president knows I use the private email system he uses to contact me? Leaving aside that it is Hillary making the argument, it is a reasonable and powerful defense against the charges.

Comey recited the facts sufficient to establish a prima facie case that Hillary violated the law. This should have been enough to recommend indictment because one can infer intent from the facts. The facts were clear enough to warrant an inference that Hillary acted with intent. It is then up to a judge or jury, the trier of facts, to draw the inference. The trier of facts may or may not draw the inference, but the facts are sufficient to warrant an indictment. But Comey must have known that Obama knew about her use, and that Obama did not object or tell Hillary to stop. The FBI review of the emails must have shown emails to and from Obama and aides to Obama. Accordingly, Comey would have concluded that Hillary did not have the criminal intent because she believed that Obama was OK with her use of a private unsecure email server.

A review of Comey’s statement of July 5 shows (emphasis added):

1. “From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.”

Donna Brazile is all over the news right now and the villain of the day on most conservative websites for her role in obtaining presidential debate questions in advance and then providing them to the Clinton campaign ahead of the actual televised event. There is much outrage over her clearly dishonest and unethical behavior, with her laughable denial captured on FOX News, looking full face into the camera and lying as only a Democrat pol can when confronted with the hard evidence. Even the leftist media is seeking a bit of separation from this obvious cheater, as CNN has fired her as an on-air contributor.

But all this outrage is misdirected; Brazile merely provided the heads-up, very detailed for sure, as she not only gave the Clinton campaign the word-for-word question about a very emotional public issue – contaminated drinking water in Flint, Michigan – but also provided a physical description of the female questioner so there could be no mistaking when and where the stolen response needed to be used. Brazile even noted that the questioner had a rash from her public water contamination. As you could expect, armed with all that forbidden information, Clinton managed to be right on top of this emotional public issue during the debate, demonstrating how she’s a thoroughly prepared leader for America, right?

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! What this now exposed situation makes abundantly clear is that this contemptible woman, her loathsome campaign staff, and the despicable Democratic Party leadership, when offered the chance to cheat, even with tens of millions of Americans watching, had no reluctance to do so. Hillary Clinton went out there on that debate stage forearmed with at least one answer that we know of (and who knows how many others?), looked straight into those cameras just like dishonest Donna Brazile, and cheated before the entire world. And this is the person the Democratic Party offers to America to be entrusted with our futures and our nation with all our national wealth?

Crooked Hillary, indeed…and she infects all those around her.

Partisans of Hillary Clinton insist the public has too much information about the FBI’s various inquiries into the Democratic presidential nominee and her associates. On its face, that claim seems reasonable. After all, Anthony Weiner is involved.

On Friday we learned, from director James Comey’s letter to Congress, that the FBI is once again investigating Mrs. Clinton’s illicit private email server. Two days later (and also in today’s print edition) The Wall Street Journal published a thorough report by Devlin Barrett revealing that for months the bureau has also been investigating the Clinton Foundation, “to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling.” That probe has met with resistance from Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department.
Late Friday the New York Times broke the news of the Weiner angle. The FBI has been looking into allegations, reported in September by DailyMail.com’s Alana Goodman, that the former congressman “carried on a months-long online sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl” who he knew was a minor. (In a statement to DailyMail.com, Weiner professed his innocence, though only of this particular allegation: “While I have provided the Daily Mail with information showing that I have likely been the subject of a hoax, I have no one to blame but me for putting myself in this position. I am sorry.”)

In 2010 the Times described Weiner as “one of the most eligible bachelors on Capitol Hill.” The occasion was Weiner’s marriage to Huma Abedin, a top aide to the most qualified person for anything ever. Weiner and Abedin, who “was once featured in a Vogue fashion spread,” were wed by Mr. Most Qualified, a k a Bill Clinton.

Abedin, who uses her maiden name (can you blame her?), had an account on Mrs. Clinton’s private server. According to the Times, FBI agents on the Weiner case found emails “pertinent” to the server investigation on a device Weiner and Abedin had shared. The Journal’s Barrett reports the Weiner laptop contained 650,000 emails.

That’s a gross figure, in more ways than one, but “underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state.” Agents couldn’t tell for sure because their warrant covered only the Weiner investigation. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reports, they obtained an additional warrant to look for material relevant to the server investigation.

The Post notes that “an announcement from the FBI in early October, when the emails were discovered, might have been less politically damaging for Clinton than one coming less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 election.” That didn’t happen, it appears, because Comey wasn’t briefed on the find until last week.

According to the Journal, early this month “New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command. . . . Mr. McCabe then instructed the email investigators to talk to the Weiner investigators and see whether the laptop’s contents could be relevant to the Clinton email probe.” Comey was told only after that determination.

Here are four words this columnist never thought he would type: Hillary Clinton is right.

Mrs. Clinton is right, at least, to this extent: When an FBI director links a presidential candidate to a criminal investigation 11 days out from the election, he owes the American people more than a vague promise to get back to us down the road.

Mrs. Clinton has responded by calling on Mr. Comey to release the emails the bureau has discovered on a home computer used by her aide, Huma Abedin. She demands this only because she is confident it will never happen.
Certainly there exist many practical obstacles to releasing the emails uncovered, including the inadvertent disclosure of classified information. Nevertheless, as unlikely as release may be, the case for more public information has become crucial now that the Justice Department has indicated this Clinton investigation, like the one before it, will go nowhere.

How do we know this? Mr. Comey may speak of going forward. But the objections of Justice suggest that it will again ensure that any investigation will be hindered by a lack of search warrants and subpoenas—and that whatever the FBI may turn up will never be put before a grand jury.

Justice inadvertently gave us a sign of just how important these tools are in a press release earlier this month touting the guilty felony plea by retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright for lying to the FBI in connection with the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. In it, Justice boasts about using all the tools at its disposal to get the general, including “subpoenas, search warrants and document requests”—tools the FBI mostly lacked while investigating Mrs. Clinton.

A truly independent press corps might help here if it were not bent on validating Donald Trump’s complaints about a rigged system. In the dominant media narrative, not only is Mr. Comey now derided as “political,” his decision to investigate this newly discovered batch of emails is said to have been forced by “conservative” FBI agents.

Mr. Comey may indeed be in the thick of a huge battle within the bureau. But the main objections from FBI agents and former FBI agents have little to do with electoral politics and everything to do with investigative procedure.

FBI agents are professional investigators. In a case involving a former secretary of state who is now a candidate for president, they would expect their director to be telling his agents to make sure every “i” was dotted and every “t” crossed. And doing the same himself.CONTINUE AT SITE

As the Hillary Clinton/Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner sage unfolds, this morning a variety of unnamed NYPD sources have leaked a fascinating story to various media and social media outlets: the NYPD was investigating Anthony Weiner for sexting a 15 yr old and stumbled on tens of thousands of emails in a folder labeled “life insurance” on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Those emails, as we now know, contain content that is in some way shape or form are related to Hillary Clinton and her FBI investigation. The information was found by the NYPD Special Victims unit, who had a warrant per their involvement in the Weiner case.

Internal NYPD sources indicate that they discovered these files almost a month ago and turned them over to the FBI two weeks ago. These reports coincide with reports over the weekend of the NYPD’s involvement as they have investigated Weiner over the last month. Admittedly it’s speculative but is it difficult to imagine the FBI and DOJ attempted to keep this latest discovery quiet but were pressured to by the NYPD who would or could leak them themselves? Reports from a wide variety of news outlets indicate the DOJ refuses to give the FBI a warrant to review the evidence now in its possession – Comey revealing the presence of such evidence is a likely concession to the NYPD’s refusal to remain quiet.

Presuming NYPD involvement is true, a number of truths are immediately evident:

Hillary may be able to hush the corrupt DOJ and FBI. Hillary cannot hush the men in blue from the NYPD who Hillary has no impact or authority over.
This story will dominate the news cycles between now and November 8th. As sources from inside the NYPD leak out information related to the case, and content of Huma’s emails becomes widely known, Hillary’s criminal involvement will be the only relevant news story. NYPD are fine men who serve their city well but remaining silent in the face of an interesting news stories is not one of their strengths.
The NYPD has a long history of rising to the occasion in times of dire need. Although the circumstances on this occasion would be unique, it certainly would qualify as their most heroic act as the NYPD is quite literally standing up to the Obama and Hillary controlled corrupt FBI and DOJ.
Hillary will throw Huma under the bus effective immediately. Already today Huma is not traveling with the Clinton campaign and you can expect Hillary will continue to divorce herself from Huma, given the NYPD involvement indicates she is no longer in control of the investigation.

How rich of Hillary Clinton to complain now that FBI director James Comey is threatening the democratic process by commenting publicly about a criminal investigation on the eve of an election.

Put aside that Comey did not say a single thing last week that implicates Clinton in a crime. The biggest coup for Clinton in the waning months of the campaign has been Comey’s decision not to prosecute her — a decision outside the responsibilities of the FBI director and publicly announced in a manner that contradicts law-enforcement protocols. There has been nothing more irregular, nothing that put law enforcement more in the service of politics, than that announcement. Yet, far from condemning it, Mrs. Clinton has worn it like a badge of honor since July. Indeed, she has contorted it into a wholesale exoneration, which it most certainly was not.

Just to remind those whose memories seem so conveniently to fail, Comey is the FBI director, not a Justice Department prosecutor, much less the attorney general. The FBI is not supposed to exercise prosecutorial discretion. The FBI is not supposed to decide whether the subject of a criminal investigation gets indicted. The FBI, moreover, is not obligated to make recommendations about prosecution at all; its recommendations, if it chooses to make them, are not binding on the Justice Department; and when it does make recommendations, it does so behind closed doors, not on the public record.

Yet, in the Clinton e-mails investigation, it was Comey who made the decision not to indict Clinton. Comey, furthermore, made the decision in the form of a public recommendation. In effect, it became The Decision because Attorney General Loretta Lynch had disgraced herself by furtively meeting with Mrs. Clinton’s husband a few days before Comey announced his recommendation. Comey, therefore, gave Mrs. Clinton a twofer: an unheard-of public proclamation that she should not be indicted by the head of the investigative agency; and a means of taking Lynch off the hook, which allowed the decision against prosecution to be portrayed as a careful weighing of evidence rather than a corrupt deal cooked up in the back of a plane parked on a remote tarmac.

Now, suddenly, Mrs. Clinton is worried about law-enforcement interference in politics. And her voice is joined by such allies as Jamie Gorelick (President Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general) and Larry Thompson (Comey’s predecessor as President George W. Bush’s deputy attorney general and an outspoken opponent of Donald Trump). Like Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Gorelick and Mr. Thompson were delighted by Director Comey as long as his departures from orthodoxy were helping Clinton’s candidacy. But now, as they wrote in the Washington Post on Saturday, they are perturbed by the threat Comey purportedly poses to “long-standing and well-established traditions limiting disclosure of ongoing investigations . . . in a way that might be seen as influencing an election.”