The Clinton Scandals

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Clinton and Lincoln.. The right-wingers are already walking away with this one, what did Clinton actually say?

During a talk before the National Multi-Housing Council in 2013, she talked about the need to keep political negotiations secret, for instance, citing the example of Abraham Lincoln's wheeling and dealing to get the 13th amendment passed. "I mean, politics is like sausage being made," she said. "It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position."

Wikileaks releases excerpts of Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches

Is this shocking? No. If all political negotiations became public, very little would get done, she's merely stating a simple fact of politics. Lobbyist grip on Congress only became firm when every vote became open, and they could keep score of who voted what, then shame people.

This is how small minorities can hold the whole government hostage, for instance the few Cuban exiles on the Cuban trade embargo, which has been rather counterproductive..

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The Wikileaks October surprise went out like a candle, at least so far..

The real value of the WikiLeaks documents is one the hackers may not have intended. The documents, particularly the speech extracts, portray Clinton as she is: a hard-headed centrist who believes that electoral politics inevitably involve making compromises, dealing with powerful interest groups, and, where necessary, amending unpopular policy positions.

Addressing a General Electric Global Leadership Meeting in January, 2014, she said, “I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be.” Answering a question in March, 2014, at an event organized by Xerox, she said that the country needs two “sensible, moderate, pragmatic parties.” 

These sentiments won’t win over many Sanders supporters. But they might actually reassure moderate Democrats, independents, and even some Trump-loathing Republicans who are thinking about crossing party lines.

As a centrist Democrat, Clinton believes that more needs to be done to raise wages, reduce inequality, and promote social mobility. Her campaign platform includes a range of proposals aimed at helping working families and their children, which would be financed by substantial tax increases on the very wealthiest Americans. Many of these policies presumably hadn’t been formulated when she gave her speeches, and, even if they had been, she didn’t get into specifics, at least according to the extracts that have been made public so far. But she did talk about the millions of Americans who are struggling financially.

The Illuminating but Unsurprising Content of Clinton’s Paid Speeches - The New Yorker

On the latter:

Trump's plan features gigantic tax cuts for the wealthy and Clinton's features big tax increases on the wealthy. For the record, here's how they pencil out:

 

TPC estimates that Clinton's plan would raise $1.4 trillion over ten years and reduce the federal deficit by $1.6 trillion. Trump's plan would cost $6.2 trillion and increasethe deficit by $7.2 billion. Needless to say, that's just for the tax plans themselves. Clinton's overall budget proposal would be roughly revenue neutral once you account for her spending proposals. Likewise, Trump's plan might be slightly less of a deficit buster if he cuts spending somewhere—though he's ruled out most areas of the budget for spending cuts and hasn't identified any specific cuts in the few areas left.

The Final Numbers Are In: Trump's Tax Plan Is a Huge Windfall For the Wealthy | Mother Jones

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Here is some of the Clinton Wikileaks that you won't read on Breitbart, Drudge, Infowars, or Fox..

“Have we just walled ourselves off from those people and have no reason to understand or care about them?” she asked at the General Electric Global Leadership Meeting. “I think that’s unfortunate, because, you know, we need to get back to Henry Ford paying his workers a high wage because he wanted people to buy his cars. You know, economic growth will take off when people in the middle feel more secure again and start spending again.” In the same speech, Clinton called for efforts “to make sure that people have those ladders of opportunity that somebody like me took advantage of. And so, inequality to me is the other side of the coin of growth, and we need to do—we need to take care of both.”

The Illuminating but Unsurprising Content of Clinton’s Paid Speeches - The New Yorker

Lock her up! This is insane! haha..

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Politics is like sausage making, you need a public and a private position...

Priti Patel has said revealing Britain’s negotiation position during talks with European Union leaders over the country’s departure from the bloc would be akin to revealing her hand in a high-stakes game of poker.

The international development secretary, who was a prominent leave campaigner and is said to be among the ministers on Theresa May’s Brexit committee, said a debate in the House of Commons over the terms of UK’s departure would give the game away to Brussels.

Brexit debate in parliament would give game away to Brussels, says minister | Politics | The Guardian

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Mrs Clinton’s former congressional colleagues—including the Republicans she wooed assiduously on Capitol Hill, though they had sought to destroy her husband’s presidency, and her, in the 1990s—speak even more admiringly of her. “I got on very well with her, she’s a likeable person. When it comes to dealing with Congress, she’d be a big improvement on Barack Obama,” says Don Nickles, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma who helped wreck the health-care reform Mrs Clinton tried to launch in 1993, and with whom she then worked to extend unemployment benefits. “She’s hard-working, true to her word and very professional,” says Tom Reynolds, a former Republican congressman who collaborated with her in upstate New York. “That’s not just in the Senate. She’s been like that all her life.” 

Around 55% of Americans have an unfavourable view of her; about the same number do not trust her (see chart). Yet, among those who know Mrs Clinton, even critics praise her integrity. She is a politician, therefore self-interested and cynical at times—yet driven, they say, by an overarching desire to improve America. More surprising, given the many scandals she has been involved in, including an ongoing furore over her use of a private e-mail server as secretary of state, not many of those who have dealt with her seem to think her particularly shifty. Even some of her foes say the concern about her probity is overblown. “People can go back decades and perhaps criticise some of the judgments that were made,” Michael Chertoff, who was the Republican lead counsel in one of the first probes into Mrs Clinton, the Senate Whitewater Committee, but has endorsed her, told Bloomberg. “That is very, very insignificant compared to the fundamental issue of how to protect the country.”

Coverage of the scandals has been even more misleading. On Benghazi, which bothers Mr Trump’s supporters especially (at his rallies, people reel off lists of witnesses they say Mrs Clinton has had killed) seven official investigations have shown she has no case to answer. Her speeches and activities at the foundation have also been exaggerated; both were politically fatheaded but, on the evidence available, not corrupt. Because she was culpable over her “damn e-mails”, in Mr Sanders’s phrase, it is a more complicated case. Yet the prevailing view of the scandal, promulgated by the media and Mr Trump, that her misdeeds were serious enough to warrant an FBI indictment, always looked fallacious, and so it proved.

A 250-page FBI report into its investigation into the affair, describes Mrs Clinton inheriting an institution with shambolic communication procedures, which she and her too-pliant aides perpetuated. It suggests her e-mail arrangement was motivated chiefly, as she maintained, by her desire to send private and personal e-mails from a single device, her BlackBerry. That was partly because Mrs Clinton is so technophobic she does not know how to use a desktop computer.

It is also reasonable to assume the arrangement was intended to give her maximum privacy. Either way, it was permitted. The problem was that 193 e-mails containing classified information were exposed to Mrs Clinton’s private server, which was not permitted. Yet the FBI, predictably, concluded Mrs Clinton’s offence was not premeditated, a usual condition for a prosecution in such cases. In the annals of political misdeeds, future historians will not pause on Mrs Clinton’s e-mails long. But they will marvel at how an exaggerated belief in her malfeasance almost created the conditions for Mr Trump to seize the White House.

Hating Hillary | The Economist

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Well, we did stress above in this thread more than once that Comey is a republican..

Which is why all these right-wingers screaming of foul play and whitewash was always nonsense, and indeed:

Political analysts freak out at FBI director after agency reopens Clinton email probe

• Oliver Darcy
  

Political analysts reacted to news on Friday that the FBI was reopening its probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server by suggesting the justice system was perhaps acting unfairly on Donald Trump’s behalf.

Analysts questioned FBI Director James Comey’s decision for announcing the news in a short, somewhat vague letter to Congress.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote on Twitter that “Comey needs to provide full info immediately.”
“Otherwise he has clearly made a partisan intervention, betraying his office,” the famed economist wrote.

Comey is a Republican, but has established a reputation over his decades of work as being a hard-nosed officer of the law. Nevertheless, many individuals questioned whether the FBI director was allowing his political persuasions to act with bias.

“It’s almost as if Comey is a Republican,” ThinkProgress justice editor Ian Millhiser tweeted.
"Why this late hit from Comey? He's getting dinged as corrupt by Republican friends and is trying to redeem his reputation,"agreed MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter. "Pretty lame."

"Why is FBI doing this just 11 days before the election?" wondered Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican.
Others merely complained that Comey's letter was too vague and did not offer the public enough information just 11 days before an election.
"It's insane," wrote Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama. "He at least owes the country a press briefing - anything more than a vague letter."

"Comey's letter is weirdly cryptic and seems almost designed to provoke questions it doesn't answer 10 days before the election," The Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald echoed.

Questions of whether the FBI was acting unfairly or with a political agenda was a particularly ironic twist in the campaign. For weeks, Trump has been dismissed by many of the same journalists and analysts for declaring without evidence the justice system to be "rigged." 
On Friday, the shoe appeared to be on the other foot.

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If you consider earlier entries in this thread, you'll notice that we stressed several times that FBI director Comey is a Republican.

Indeed..

"By providing selective information, [Comey] has allowed partisans to distort and exaggerate in order to inflict maximum political damage," Podesta said. "And no one can separate what is true from what is not because Comey has not been forthcoming with the facts. What little Comey has told us makes it hard to understand why this step was warranted at all." Comey told Congress that the team in charge of looking into Clinton's server briefed him Thursday on new emails it found "in connection with an unrelated case." Podesta suggested that the emails the FBI has could be duplicates of ones Clinton has already released.

Podesta blasted the decision.

"Director Comey was the one who wrote a letter that was light on facts, heavy on innuendo, knowing full well what Republicans in Congress would do with it," he said. "It's now up to him to give the public answers to the questions that are now on the table."

Clinton campaign blasts FBI Director Comey over email investigaiton - Business Insider

Question: How can anyone now still question his earlier decision not to prosecute Clinton??

Remember, all these right-wingers cried wolf, arguing he was part of this huuuuge cover-up, conspiracy, etc. etc.

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What if Reid is right?

Hmm, from Business Insider:

But Reid's comments may be the fiercest condemnation yet of Comey. The outgoing Senate minority leader said Comey's actions may have violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that ensures "that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion."

Reid argued that Comey has demonstrated a double standard, making an explosive claim that the FBI director was withholding information about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia.

"In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity," Reid said.

He continued:
"The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."

"By contrast, as soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible."

Reid echoed the frustrations of several of Clinton's surrogates, who have insisted that the newly discovered messages may very well be duplicates of ones already reviewed by the FBI.

"The clear double-standard established by your actions strongly suggests that your highly selective approach to publicizing information, along with your timing, was intended for the success or failure of a partisan candidate or political group."

Comey was a registered Republican for most of his life, although he said in July that he is no longer registered with any party.
Reid, who is not seeking reelection in November, ended his letter to Comey bluntly.

"Please keep in mind that I have been a supporter of yours in the past. When Republicans filibustered your nomination and delayed your confirmation longer than any previous nominee to your position, I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant," he said.
"With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong."

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Quite a contrast with the hysteria in Trump land:

Former White House ethics lawyer Richard W. Painter contended in a New York Times opinion piece published Sunday that the FBI director broke the law with his letter to congress announcing the FBI was examining new emails related to its probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

Painter argued that FBI Director James Comey violated the Hatch Act, which ensures "that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion," by making "highly unusual public statements about an FBI investigation concerning a candidate in the election." Painter said he brought those concerns to the Office of Special Counsel and the Office of Government Ethics with a a complaint against the FBI. "The letter was sent in violation of a longstanding Justice Department policy of not discussing specifics about pending investigations with others, including members of Congress," wrote Painter.

He also referred to such a disclosure on the eve of a general election as an "abuse of power." Painter served as an ethics lawyer for George W. Bush's administration from 2005-2007. In the piece Painter discloses that he supported GOP candidates during the primaries, but eventually pivoted to Hillary Clinton.

Ex-White House lawyer: FBI Director broke law with 'unusual' letter - Business Insider

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How's this for even-handedness..

FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election and ultimately ensured that the FBI's name was not on the document that the U.S. government put out, a former bureau official tells CNBC. The official said some government insiders are perplexed as to why Comey would have election timing concerns with the Russian disclosure but not with the Huma Abedin email discovery disclosure he made Friday. 

According to the former official, Comey agreed with the conclusion the intelligence community came to: "A foreign power was trying to undermine the election. He believed it to be true, but was against putting it out before the election." Comey's position, this official said, was "if it is said, it shouldn't come from the FBI, which as you'll recall it did not."

FBI's Comey opposed naming Russians, citing election timing: Source

And also no disclosure of this..

The FBI has been conducting a preliminary inquiry into Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort's foreign business connections, law enforcement and intelligence sources told NBC News Monday. Word of the inquiry, which has not blossomed into a full-blown criminal investigation, comes just days after FBI Director James Comey's disclosure that his agency is examining a new batch of emails connected to an aide to Hillary Clinton. And it comes a day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized Comey's revelation and asserted that Comey possesses "explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government."

FBI Making Inquiry Into Ex-Trump Campaign Manager's Foreign Ties