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11-01-2016, 02:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-01-2016, 02:33 AM by Admin.)
The Prime Directive indeed:
Quote:The best way to understand this odd hopscotch is through the Prime Directive of Clinton investigations: We know the Clintons are guilty; the only question is what are they guilty of and when will we find the evidence?
So somehow an investigation that once upon a time was about a terrorist attack on an American consulate becomes an inquiry into Freedom of Information Act compliance, which shifts into a question about handling of classified material. A probe of sexting by the husband of a woman who works for Clinton morphs into a quest for new emails, and if the emails turn out not to be new at all (which seems likely), it will morph into some new questions about Huma Abedin’s choice of which computers to use to check her email.
Clinton has been very thoroughly investigated, and none of the earlier investigations came up with any crimes. So now the Prime Directive compels her adversaries to look under a new rock and likewise compels cable television and many major newspapers to treat the barest hint of the possibility of new evidence that might be damning as a major development.
It’s the same drive that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial on the grounds that he had perjured himself to try to cover up an affair that was uncovered in an investigation that was originally supposed to be looking into a years-old Arkansas land deal on which the Clintons had lost money. The Whitewater investigation did not reveal any crimes. So rather than wrap things up and consider the Clintons exonerated, the investigators went looking under other rocks and came up with Monica Lewinsky.
There are several rules that govern media coverage of the Clintons, but this year the Prime Directive has dominated them all. Network news has devoted more minutes of coverage to Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined, even as email investigations have not uncovered any wrongdoing. It’s inexplicable news judgment, unless you simply assume there’s a crime out there.
Clinton’s critics know she’s guilty, they're just trying to decide what she's guilty of - Vox
It's simply a whole industry devoted to this. While there are cases where legitimate questions can be asked, No investigation has ever found any criminal behaviour (or even enough to start prosecution), despite stuff like Benghazi having seven independent investigations..
While finding something would clearly be a bonus, it's not strictly necessary, simply repeating this endlessly through the right-wing echo chamber does enough electoral damage to give a crook like Trump half a chance.. Indeed:
Quote:The words “Clinton,” “email,” and “scandal” have been repeated in close succession enough times that it’s understandable that most people believe in the existence of a Hillary Clinton email scandal.
The beginning of the story, however, was not emails but rather the deaths of four Americans at the US Consulate in Benghazi. Republicans have launched more than half a dozen investigations into Benghazi, desperately trying (and failing) to uncover evidence of Benghazi-related wrongdoing on the part of Barack Obama, Susan Rice, or Hillary Clinton.
In the course of investigating things, investigators seek records, including emails. And it was in the course of seeking emails that it was initially revealed that Clinton was conducting official business via her personal email address rather than a State.gov one.
Because the Benghazi investigators assumed Clinton was guilty of something, they naturally assumed that the use of a private server was part of a conspiracy to cover up whatever that is.
But this is a crucial point: There is no reason to agree with the Benghazi investigators’ assumption that Clinton was guilty of something.
People are, normally, presumed innocent. The Benghazi incident has, in particular, been investigated very thoroughly. There was no wrongdoing. There was no crime. Since there was no crime, there was also no cover-up. And since there was no cover-up, the private server was not part of a cover-up. And, indeed, when Benghazi investigators sought access to the emails sent and received on Clinton’s server, they got them and found nothing to change the conclusion that there was no wrongdoing.
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Surprise surprise..
Quote:On November 2, days before the presidential election, Fox host Bret Baier cited two anonymous sources to issue three explosive claims: The FBI is currently engaged in a “very high priority” investigation of “possible pay-for-play interaction” between Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation that is uncovering an “avalanche” of evidence; the FBI believes with “99 percent accuracy” that Clinton’s private email server was hacked by at least five foreign intelligence services; and that these investigations “will continue to likely an indictment.”
Today, Baier issued an apology that effectively walked back all three claims.
Baier’s original reports were based on “two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations into the Clinton emails and the Clinton Foundation.” In the 24 hours following his initial claims, Fox gave the story more than two hours of airtime, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump trumpeted the story on the campaign trail.
Meanwhile, several other networks debunked Baier’s reporting. But according to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, even if Fox’s reporting is wrong, “the damage is done to Hillary Clinton” and the facts don’t “change what’s in voters’ minds right now.”
Below is a comparison of Baier’s original reports, his apology statement this morning, and reporting from other networks.
Even Bret Baier Has Now Abandoned Bret Baier's Anonymously Sourced FBI Report
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11-04-2016, 08:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-04-2016, 08:49 PM by Admin.)
I know Roger Stone claims the Clintons are responsible for lots of murders, but he's a nut case. He's not the only one demonizing her though..
Quote:LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): I think firing would probably be one of the nicest things Hillary [Clinton] did to Jim Comey if she wins. She'll probably bring him up on federal charges. "Alight, Loretta [Lynch], here’s what I want you to do. Loretta, remember I kept you in at Justice Department. Work up an indictment against Comey for treason. The man is guilty of treason because he almost -- he almost kept us back out of White House. That is treasonous." Hillary Clinton is going to have heads on a platter if she wins. Are you kidding me? Firing Comey? Fire Comey? That would be a gift to Comey, fire Comey. Comey will be lucky if he doesn't find himself having to get a food taster after all this, or a remote starter on his car. You get down with the Clintons, you’re going to get down in the mud, or worse -- or be buried under the mud, frankly. It’s a dangerous deal to get down with the Clintons.
Laura Ingraham Suggests Hillary Clinton May Try To Kill FBI Director After Election
And Limbaugh, suggesting Sanders would have been killed if he hadn't endorsed Clinton..
Quote:RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): No, they couldn't find Bernie Sanders today if he had done that. Nobody would know where he happened to go, they wouldn't be able to find him. If Bernie Sanders had done what your hypothetical suggested, walked out on that stage and done an open revolt, he'd ave gotten off the stage, but that would have been the last anoybody saw of Bernie Sanders.
Limbaugh Conspiracy: If Sanders Didn’t Endorse Clinton, It “Would Have Been The Last Anybody Saw Of Bernie Sanders”
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From The New Republic
“Trump has amassed such a collection of Four-Pinocchio ratings—59 in all—that by himself he’s earned as many in this campaign as all other Republicans (or Democrats) combined in the past three years.” Todd acknowledged the differential in his segment, but failed to drive the point home.
Robert Mann
It’s not just the Post either. PolitiFact published a comparison of Clinton and Trump on its Truth-O-Meter, and the vast majority of her statements were all or partially truth. The vast majority of his statements were all or partially false.
As The Atlantic’s conservative senior editor, David Frum toldThe Ezra Klein Show over the weekend, “Hillary Clinton tells lies, but she never forgets that the truth is there.” She might shade the truth or hide it, misrepresent it or even evade it—as all politicians sometimes do. What she rarely does is deny it outright.
Trump, of course, does that constantly. As Vox put it succinctly a month ago, he “has spent his entire campaign gaslighting America by denying that he ever said or did things that we have clear video or text evidence that he did, in fact, say or do.”
Clinton’s honesty needn’t be graded on a Trumpian curve. In August, Kevin Drum at Mother Jones concluded “Hillary Clinton Is One of America’s Most Honest Politicians,” citing the chart above, of PolitiFactscores for 20 of America’s most prominent pols. Drum noted that The New York Times reached a similar conclusion; Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of the Times, called Clinton “fundamentally honest and trustworthy” in her Guardian column in March, citing PolitiFact and her own reporting.
Clinton can even be honest to a fault. Several times during this campaign, she has told a truth at her own political expense. In March, she told CNN that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” since “we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels”—a harsh but accurate assessment of the future of such jobs. Her broader quote was about helping the affected workers by bringing them clean energy jobs, but Trump hammered her for it nonetheless. Last month, CNN reported, “Hillary Clinton might lose Ohio because she badmouthed coal.”
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Quote:Something missing from 95 percent of Clinton emails coverage is the fact that the use of a private email server has literally no bearing on these allegations. You are not supposed to discuss classified information over email, point blank. You’re not supposed to use a .gov account or a Gmail account or a private server or any other kind of email. The government has special secure channels that you are supposed to use for classified information. This is important because it leads to the conclusion that where the investigators left the matter — there was some classified information mixed in with Clinton’s work emails but not in a criminally culpable way — is fairly banal.
Clinton’s critics know she’s guilty, they're just trying to decide what she's guilty of - Vox
Quote:In the alternative universe where Clinton runs against a generic Republican politician, the media might have turned the emails into a sensationalized feeding frenzy. A taste of what might have been can be found in this report from The Hill about a May 21, 2015 exchange: “Top Clinton aide in leaked email: 'Can we survive not answering questions' from press?” As you learn from a close reading of the story, the headline is misleading. The aide proposed to Podesta “not answering questions from press at message events” – events designed to drive a campaign theme. The proposal wasn’t a total media blackout.
Moreover, Podesta’s response was negative: “If she thinks we can get to Labor Day without taking press questions, I think that’s suicidal.“ In fact, Clinton participated in a few press conferences that summer. But you don’t learn that from The Hill, which instead offered, “At one point, Clinton went 275 days without holding a formal press conference until breaking the drought in September.” That’s true … in 2016. It was not true in the summer of 2015 when the email exchange took place.
The truth is, if we saw the raw email from the Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush or Bernie Sanders campaigns we would surely see similar political calculations over tricky issues, deliberations how to quash negative media narratives and intemperate comments made about adversaries or even allies. (Whereas the Trump campaign emails are probably in their own category of insanity.) What we see in the Podesta emails is the grist of political life. It’s doesn’t make our politicians fundamentally dishonest or our democracy a sham.
The Russian government, which American intelligence believes stole the emails and fed them to WikiLeaks, doesn’t necessarily expect to elect Trump, but wants to, as The Economist put it, “discredit and erode universal liberal values by nurturing the idea that the West is just as corrupt as Russia.” Vox’s Zack Beauchamp fears that "Russia has weaponized the American press” to achieve that goal: “This is how Russia gets us. Once WikiLeaks publishes a trove of newsworthy emails, the press is stuck in a corner: Doing its job will help a hostile foreign power manipulate the American election and arguably even help weaken faith in the press itself. And that’s why Putin’s plan is so devilish: He’s undermining the credibility of two key American institutions in one go.””
Why the WikiLeaks Attack Fizzled | RealClearPolitics
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Is this surprising?
Quote:Fox News scandalized a newly released, illegally hacked email that purports to show "a multimillion dollar deal between Hillary Clinton's State Department and Morocco," according to Fox's Abby Huntsman. Huntsman claimed that the email, which was about "setting up a speaking engagement for Clinton," reveals "more pay to play," suggesting that Clinton took the donation in exchange for her speaking appearance while Secretary of State. However, the emails were written in January 2015, and the meeting -- which Clinton ended up not attending after all -- was in May 2015, both of which were after Clinton left the State Department and was acting as a private citizen.
Fox News’ Latest Inaccurate Clinton “Pay-To-Play” Claim Happened Two Years After She Left The State Department
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Quote:President-elect Donald Trump won’t subject Hillary Clinton to a criminal inquiry — instead, he’ll help her heal, his spokeswoman said Tuesday. “I think when the president-elect who’s also the head of your party … tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content, to the members,” Kellyanne Conway told the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” who first reported that the president-elect would not pursue his campaign pledge to “lock up” Clinton, his Democratic opponent. “Look, I think, he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them,” Conway, who is now on the Trump transition team, said in her interview.
Trump won’t pursue charges against Clinton, Conway says - MarketWatch
Why not? Because in all likelihood, there is no case..
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Quote:The House committee investigating the deadly terror attack in Benghazi today released its report. After a two-year, $7 million investigation the eighth investigation to date, the authors of the report make no new accusations and provide no new evidence of wrongdoing against the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Fox's Shepard Smith: Benghazi Committee Took 2 Years And Spent $7 Million But Found "No New Evidence"
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01-13-2017, 02:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-13-2017, 02:06 PM by Admin.)
Sooo, no comment on investigations in Trump's ties with Russia, not even after the elections, but two very public and very unprecedented interventions on Clinton's emails during the campaign, hmm..
Quote:Comey responded by saying, “I would never comment on investigations, whether we have one or not, in an open forum like this. So I really can’t answer it one way or another.” Considering his notorious behavior with respect to the Hillary Clinton email server investigation, this naturally elicited some incredulous reactions, notably from Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who followed up quickly by asking if Comey planned to answer Wyden’s question. And when Comey repeated his statement, King archly replied, “The irony of your making that statement here — I cannot avoid.”
Then Comey attempted to cover his gaffe by saying that he is known to be “politically tone-deaf” and then patted himself on the back, saying that was “how it should be.” But he has given the appearance of a blatant double standard on this ever since it was revealed that the FBI knew about alleged Russian interference and Comey refused to divulge it prior to the election, citing ethics rules barring the FBI from interfering in elections. Needless to say, Comey had no such scruples when he broke longstanding policy by making dramatic public characterizations of Hillary Clinton’s alleged misconduct after he declined to prosecute, and then days before the election dropping his outrageous announcement about finding more emails on a Clinton aide’s computer — which turned out to be nothing more than duplicates. For a man who is politically tone-deaf, he certainly seems to sing off-key in ways that favor one side over the other.
Donald Trump’s new Russian scandal: We don’t know how much is true — but we know James Comey behaved shamefully - Salon.com
And it becomes even more galling in conjunction with a compelling case that this has cost Clinton the election. Below is only sliver, the whole article draws evidence from four different directions:
Quote:The effect of Comey’s late intervention into the election is also clear in the national polls. As neuroscientist Sam Wang showed, Clinton’s margin over Trump falls dramatically in national polls directly after the Comey letter and never recovers. At the time, statistician Nate Silver noted that the Comey letter coincided with “a swing of about 3 points against her” — a massive swing in a tight election. These public polls are supported by internal polling from both campaigns suggesting that Comey was a massive blow to Clinton at a pivotal moment in the election.
4 pieces of evidence showing FBI Director James Comey cost Clinton the election - Vox
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The FBI wasn't partisan, right? All of a sudden he's "not commenting on ongoing investigations." But he did so several times during the election with Clinton's emails, against procedure, while he's not even commenting after the election on a potentially much more damaging investigation..
Quote:Embattled FBI director James Comey has refused to clarify whether his organization is investigating Donald Trump’s ties to Russia in a closed briefing on Friday for members of Congress, angering legislators who recall his high-profile interjections about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Guardian has learned. Comey’s lack of candor in a classified setting, intended to brief members on the intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, follows a public rebuff this week to senators seeking clarification.
In that earlier hearing, Comey said he would “never comment” on a potential FBI investigation “in an open forum like this”, raising expectations among some attendees of Friday’s briefing that Comey would put the issue to rest in a classified setting. But according to sources attending the closed-door Friday morning meeting, that was not the case. As such, frustration with Comey was bipartisan and heated, adding to intense pressure on the director of the FBI, whose conduct in the 2016 election itself is now being investigated by an independent US justice department watchdog.
Angering Congress, James Comey won't address Trump-Russia inquiry privately | US news | The Guardian
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