Comey Unleashes the FBI to Fully Investigate Hillary Clinton's Email Scandal -- with the Blessing of President Obama

ELECTION DAY MINUS 7. What you need to know now about the Hillary & Hacks and mainstream media smears and lies campaign following the Comey letter to Congress about Hillary emails on the disgraced Weiner's laptop. • • • FIRST, A BIG MEDIA LIE AND THE FACTS. On all the Sunday morning news shows, Democrats and the mainstream media (MSM), as well as a lot of online sites, kept repeating that Comey's action was unprecedented. The fact is that several days before the 1992 election that catapulted Bill Clinton into the presidency -- on October 30, 1992 to be exact -- Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh indicted Caspar Weinberger, President GHW Bush's Attorney General and mentioned Bush, who was running against Bill Clinton to be re-elected, in the indictment. Walsh had been investigating Iran Contra for 6 years, but he chose to announce the indictment a few days before the election. AND, after Clinton won the election, the charges were dropped. So much for "Unprecedented." • • • THE FBI WAS NOT ALLOWEDTO INVESTIGATE THE CLINTON FOUNDATION. The Washington Post reported Sunday that career prosecutors at the Justice Department refused a request from the FBI’s New York field office to pursue an investigation of the Clinton family’s charity. The Justice Department’s public integrity unit said they did not have enough evidence to move forward. The Clinton Foundation says it was never contacted by the FBI, suggesting the bureau’s efforts were in a preliminary stage when prosecutors asked for DOJ permission to continue. But FBI agents in New York have tried to keep their inquiries alive, feuding with the Justice Department about the lengths to which they can go, according to people familiar with the matter. The infighting became public Sunday, when the Wall Street Journal published a detailed account of interactions between prosecutors and FBI officials over the politically sensitive subject. • The FBI already is under fire for taking actions that could influence the presidential election just a week away, after FBI Director James B. Comey revealed to Congress that agents wanted to look at a newly discovered batch of emails that were possibly relevant to the probe of Clinton’s private email server. The FBI New York field office was one of a few that -- in at least a small way -- were looking into topics that touched on the Clinton Foundation’s work, according to unnamed sources. Agents in New York wanted to examine allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest in the Clinton Foundation. It is not clear what evidence they had to substantiate those allegations, particularly through the use of subpoenas or search warrants. At a congressional hearing in July over the email investigation, Comey declined to say whether agents had looked at the Clinton Foundation : “I’m not going to comment on the existence or nonexistence of any other investigations." When Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) asked if the Clinton Foundation was “tied into” the email probe, Comey responded : “I’m not going to answer that.” BUT -- with or without Comey's help -- once more the inference of corruption raises its head in these newly revealed efforts of the Obama DOJ to protect Hillary and Bill Clinton's Foundation from FBI criminal investigation. • What actually happened in the case of the Weiner laptop seems clearcut. The FBI New York office stumbled on the Abedin emails while they were reviewing emails and other communications on the laptop considered to belong to Weiner, the officials told CNN. They immediately stopped their work and called in the team of investigators from FBI headquarters who had conducted the probe of Clinton's private email server. The investigators saw enough of the emails to determine that they appeared pertinent to the previously completed investigation and that they may be emails not previously reviewed. That is when they briefed Director Comey, who immediately wrote his letter to Congress. So, Tim Kaine is wrong when he says : "As far as we know now, Director Comey knows nothing about the content of these emails. We don't know whether they're to or from Hillary at all...Comey "hasn't seen the emails, I mean they need to make that completely plain. Then they should work to see the emails and release the circumstances of those once they have done that analysis." Wrong, Senator Kaine, wrong. • • • WILL THE COMEY ANNOUNCEMENT INFLUENCE THE ELECTION? The impact of the announcement on public opinion can't be evaluated until major opinion polls are released that were conducted wholly in its aftermath. But a Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll released on Sunday, which included data from both before and after the revelation, was bad news for Clinton. The poll found that 34% of likely voters said they were “less likely” to vote for Hillary as a result of Comey’s announcement. A clear majority of those people were Republican or Republican leaning, the Post reported, and may never have intended to vote for Clinton. But 17% of those who said they were deterred from backing Clinton leaned Democratic, and a further 9% were self-described independents. Any shift in their ranks could be pivotal in an election that was tightening even before the Comey bombshell. Also unknown is whether the FBI will make further comment on the matter before Election Day. Many experts believe such comment is unlikely given that agents only obtained a search warrant to look through the relevant emails -- some 650,000 -- on Sunday. The emails could be duplicates of messages already examined by the FBI. Yet, at the other end of the range of possibilities, the emails could lead to the criminal indictment of a president-elect, a scenario that would envelop an already nervous America in chaos. But, if Clinton loses the election on November 8, it would be all but certain that her supporters would blame the FBI. And, Trump has stated often that he believes the process is “rigged” against him, raising questions about whether his most fervent backers will accept the legitimacy of the outcome if he loses. Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on ABC's Sunday program that Clinton has “a very casual relationship with the truth.” Trump reacted to the Comey announcement by arguing that “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before.” In a statement, he warned voters not to let the former Secretary of State “take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.” • • • WHEN THE FACTS ARE AGAINST YOU, ATTACK THE MESSENGER. Team Clinton, at first shocked into silence and spluttering by the news, has now found its 'strategy' -- aggressively attack FBI Director Comey. Campaign chairman John Podesta called Comey’s conduct “inappropriate” on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, while Clinton’s running mate, Senator (Tiny) Tim Kaine (D-Va.), asserted on ABC’s “This Week” that it was “completely unprecedented.” [not true -- see above.] Those comments were part of a broader effort by the Clinton campaign to undercut Comey. In talking points sent to surrogates on Saturday afternoon and obtained by TheHill, the campaign suggested emphasizing that the Director’s actions were “extraordinary” and accusing him of having created a “misleading impression.” The talking points also noted that both the Clinton and Trump campaigns were calling upon the FBI director to make more information available -- which Team Clinton believes could show that the emails are not related to her, and the Trump camp believes they could be damning to her. • But, in what seems like an effort to be fully in contact with Congress, Comey spoke Saturday with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Judiciary Committee, said Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va). Goodlatte said he and Representative John Conyers (D-Mich.) encouraged Comey to make as much information as possible public before the election. He said the FBI chief "did not give us any response in terms of what more he could say." Goodlatte said he also asked Comey about the status of the request from the House Republicans on the referral "of potential impeachment -- I'm sorry - potential perjury charges to be brought with regard to Ms. Clinton and he deferred to the Justice Department itself." The slip about impeachment reflected the GOP promise, if Clinton is elected, to fully investigate her. • AND, on Sunday evening, WikiLeaks tweeted that it would “commence Phase 3 of our US election coverage” this week. What next??? • • • HILLARYGATE AND WATERGATE. K.T. McFarland -- Fox News National Security Analyst, who served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations -- wrote on Monday that "this Halloween is the haunting of Hillary, where her final political act could well be a ghostly spectre of her first political act, which happened some 40 years ago. She was just a year out of Yale Law School, when she went to work for House Judiciary Committee. Her job? Investigating President Nixon’s involvement in the break-in of Democratic National Committee Watergate headquarters just before his 1972 landslide re-election, and the cover-up that followed." McFarland was a young West Wing research assistant working on Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council Staff. The Watergate Scandal and Nixon’s resignation was a political earthquake that had a formative influence on many of "our generation," McFarland writes : "The comparisons of Secretary Clinton’s email scandal are eerily similar to Nixon’s Watergate scandal. The evidence against Hillary is contained in her emails with aides. The evidence against Nixon was contained in tapes of his Oval Office meetings with aides. The very fact that Hillary had a private email server was discovered almost by accident, in an unrelated investigation into the Benghazi scandal. Similarly, Nixon’s private taping system in the Oval Office was discovered almost by accident, in unrelated investigation into the Watergate break-in. The FBI has reopened its case against Hillary because they found new evidence while pursuing a separate investigation into the creepy sexual exploits of Anthony Weiner, husband of Hillary’s closest aide. The evidence of Nixon’s relationship to Watergate came from investigations into his staff’s involvement in the cover up. It was nearly two years between the Watergate break in, and Nixon’s forced resignation. Hillary’s private server was discovered over a year ago, and it will take months before the FBI can conclude its investigation. The relentless pursuit and final humiliation of Nixon were the result of years of investigations by Congress and the leaks of Deep Throat, an anonymous source within the FBI, who provided a steady drip of information about Nixon administration wrongdoings." • McFarland has a good point, but we should remember that if President Nixon had only destroyed the Watergate tapes, he could have ridden out the scandal and his presidency might have survived. But Nixon didn’t destroy the tapes. McFarland's point is that Hillary learned the wrong lesson from Watergate : "Presumably Clinton thought she had learned that lesson -- always be able to destroy the evidence -- which is why she set up a private email server before joining the Obama administration. She wouldn’t have known in advance what she would need to keep out of prying eyes -- perhaps it would be the pay-to-play scheme that linked foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation to her decisions as Secretary of State. Perhaps it was the 'off the books' policy initiatives like her role in the Iran nuclear deal, or supplying arms to 'friendly' Libyan or Syrian rebel groups that turned those weapons on our own people. As long as she had a private server, she could decide later what history would know -- and if she ever got into trouble she could always delete the emails. She could do what Nixon had failed to do -- destroy the evidence. But it now seems unlikely that the evidence was ever really destroyed. WikiLeaks has some of the emails. Some may have been on the computers of her aides – or their spouses." • • • Dear readers, the Washington rumor mill is freneticaly spinning with 'the word' that some in the FBI are in near-open revolt over Director Comey's July refusal to recommend that the Department of Justice proceed with the Clinton investigation. Former assistant FBI director James Kallstrom said on Sunday that FBI Director James Comey and the rest of the FBI leadership were responsible for holding back the investigation, not the rest of the FBI : “The agents are furious with what’s going on, I know that for a fact.” Was a new Deep Throat about to emerge, as in Watergate? We have no idea where this new FBI investigation will lead. Maybe, McFarland suggests : "as with Nixon and Watergate, Secretary Clinton’s most trusted aides will be forced to testify against her to protect themselves. Maybe the Justice Department will charge Secretary Clinton with a crime. Maybe the political fallout will be so significant that she will lose the election. Maybe she will be elected but unable to govern effectively because her presidency will be dogged for months, and even years, by investigations and scandals." No one can know that now. • BUT, we do know that this scandal is not going away. The FBI now has its warrant to plow through the Weiner laptop's emails for Hillary-related information. Investigators will now look at whether the newly uncovered emails contain classified information or other evidence that could help advance the Clinton email probe. Law enforcement officials who are technical experts say it is generally not difficult to create software to analyze such emails, searching for terms like “secret” or “top-secret” or any mention of places with classified operations, such as Pakistan or Iraq. Agents should also be able to figure out quickly how many of the emails duplicate those that have already turned up. What will take more time, they say, is making conclusions about whether any of the emails include classified information. That process, former FBI officials have said, could be cumbersome and drag on after the election. Investigators would have to read those for potentially relevant information, and, if there are questions about their classification, send them to other agencies for review. • Team Clinton and its Hillary & Hacks operatives can attack FBI Director Comey with everything they have -- it will no longer matter -- Director Comey has unleashed his agents and they will not retreat. Vitally important, Comey and the FBI have received the full support of President Obama. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that Obama "believes FBI Director James Comey is a man of integrity and is not trying to influence the US presidential election" by announcing scrutiny of additional emails linked to Democrat Hillary Clinton's private server. Earnest also said he has no "independent knowledge" of how Comey had arrived at his decision to make public the FBI email investigation or "what factors were considered" in his decision to discuss the issue publicly. Earnest said he would neither "defend nor criticize" Comey's decision to disclose the FBI's renewed probe.He also said there are significant institutional responsibilities that the Department of Justice must fulfill. He said Comey is in a tough spot, but the FBI director is in the best position to defend his actions in the face of significant criticism. • The Hillarygate email scandal is now inevitably set on a course for full investigation and decision by the DOJ. If Trump is elected President, the investigation will proceed without interference. If Hillary is elected, the Republican House and senior Senate GOP leaders will have to fight every inch of the way to break through what will be stonewalling and corrupt attacks on the 'messengers' on a scale that America has never before witnessed. • The Clinton campaign has called for "full transparency" from the FBI regarding the emails described in the Comey letter. There is at least one piece of advice Hillary should heed : Be careful what you wish for.