Tag Archives: fbi

Emailgate Takes Yet Another Dismal Turn

by NealHalliday Posted on October 28, 2016

Mother Jones

I slept badly last night and feel kind of crappy this morning. I was hoping I could just stare at the ceiling for a while and then put up some catblogging and call it a week. But no. Email mania is back. Here’s the letter FBI Director Jim Comey sent to a rogue’s gallery of committee chairmen this morning regarding its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server:

In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as assess their importance to our investigation.

Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.

Translation: We have some emails we got from somewhere. That’s all I can tell you. NBC’s Pete Williams adds this:

Paul Krugman is PISSED:

Donald Trump is CHUFFED:

“We must not let her take her criminal scheme to the Oval Office,” Trump said, adding, “I have great respect that the FBI and Department of Justice have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. Perhaps finally, justice will be done.”

Wasn’t Trump saying just a few weeks ago that the FBI was hopelessly corrupt and couldn’t be trusted? I’m pretty sure he did.

Bottom line: There are some emails. They aren’t from Hillary Clinton. They weren’t withheld from the investigation. The case isn’t being “reopened.” That is all.

Speaking for myself, I’m willing to back any bet that anyone wants to make that this whole thing is a complete nothing. Republicans will be lathering away for the next 11 days, but there’s no there there.

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Emailgate Takes Yet Another Dismal Turn

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FBI Taking Another Look at Clinton Emails

by ShennaZoxygres Posted on October 28, 2016

Mother Jones

The FBI has come across emails that may be related to the closed Hillary Clinton email server investigation, according to a letter FBI Director James Comey sent several congressional leaders on Friday. The emails appear to have come from devices belonging to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide.

“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He added, “the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”

Immediately on Twitter, Clinton foes started crowing. So did Donald Trump at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, minutes after the news broke. “They are reopening the case into her criminal and illegal conduct that threatens the security of the United States of America,” Trump said, as the crowd chanted, “Lock her up!” Trump continued, “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office. I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made.”

Trump added that the FBI’s decision not to recommend charges “was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood” and that now “perhaps finally justice will be done.”

A little more than an hour after news of the FBI letter broke, the New York Times reported that the new information came to light after the FBI seized devices belonging to Abedin and Weiner.

Shortly after the New York Times report, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta issued a statement calling Comey’s decision to make the announcement 11 days before the election “extraordinary”:

Upon completing this investigation more than three months ago, FBI Director Comey declared no reasonable prosecutor would move forward with a case like this and added that it was not even a close call. In the months since, Donald Trump and his Republican allies have been baselessly second-guessing the FBI and, in both public and private, browbeating the career officials there to revisit their conclusion in a desperate attempt to harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

FBI Director Comey should immediately provide the American public more information than is contained in the letter he sent to eight Republican committee chairmen. Already, we have seen characterizations that the FBI is ‘reopening’ an investigation but Comey’s words do not match that characterization. Director Comey’s letter refers to emails that have come to light in an unrelated case, but we have no idea what those emails are and the Director himself notes they may not even be significant.

It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.

The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining. We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July.”

Read Comey’s full letter below:

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This story has been updated with information from the New York Times report and Podesta’s statement.

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FBI Taking Another Look at Clinton Emails

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McCabegate Is the Latest Scandal That Will Totally Destroy Hillary Clinton

by stephenagee641 Posted on October 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Today in the category of…oh, forget it. I don’t have the heart for snark. It’s just so goddamn tiresome. The Wall Street Journal headline on the right describes the latest pseudo-scandal in Hillaryland, and it’s obviously intended to make you think there’s yet more fishiness in the Clinton family. In a nutshell, here’s the story:

In early 2015, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe recruited Dr. Jill McCabe to run for state Senate.
Various organizations under McAuliffe’s control donated lots of money to her campaign.
She lost.
Several months later, McCabe’s husband was promoted to deputy director of the FBI. Because of that promotion, he “helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.” This was presumably in addition to the hundreds of other things that a deputy director has oversight responsibility for.

There’s literally nothing here. Not “nothing substantial.” Not “nothing that other politicians don’t do.” Literally nothing. There’s not a single bit of this that’s illegal, unethical, or even the tiniest bit wrong. It’s totally above board and perfectly kosher. And even if there were anything wrong, McAuliffe would have needed a time machine to know it.

Honest to God, I’m so tired of this stuff I could scream. I’ve been joking about it lately by appending gate to every dumb little non-scandal that’s tossed in Hillary’s direction, and I guess I’ll keep doing that. But our illustrious press corps needs to pull its collective head out of its ass. If you’ve got real evidence of Hillary being engaged in something fishy, go to town. I won’t complain. But if all you’ve got is a thrice-removed, physics-challenged gewgaw that proves nothing except that you know how to play Six Degrees of Hillary Clinton,1 then give it a rest. It just makes you look like those monomaniacs with thousands of clippings glued to their wall and spider webs of string tying them all together.

Just stop it.

1Here’s how it works:

  1. Make a list of the entire chain of command that had some oversight over the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. That’s going to be at least half a dozen people.
  2. Make a list of all their close family and friends. Now you’re up to a hundred people.
  3. Look for a connection between any of those people and the Clintons. Since FBI headquarters is located in Washington DC and the Clintons famously have thousands and thousands of friends, you will find a connection. I guarantee it.
  4. Write a story about it.

See how easy this is? But please don’t try it at home. This is a game for trained professionals only.

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McCabegate Is the Latest Scandal That Will Totally Destroy Hillary Clinton

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Here’s an Interesting Little Nugget From the FBI Records Release No One Is Talking About

by AlyssaU7785 Posted on October 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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The FBI released on Monday the fourth and last batch of interview summaries related to its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private home email server during her time as secretary of state. The files to date have summarized Clinton’s July 4 weekend interview with agents, the technical details behind the server, and some complicated aspects of the relationship between the State Department and the FBI.

But they also included another interesting nugget.

In a summary from May 25, 2016, one of the US Secret Service agents assigned to protect former President Bill Clinton told FBI investigators that he was also “asked to do network assessments and troubleshoot IT issues at the Clinton Foundation” in addition to his full-time job of protecting the former president. His apparent “information technology (IT) skills” were tapped to assist “in a case related to the theft of information on the Clinton Foundation information systems.” The agent also told the FBI that after being contacted by longtime Clinton aide Justin Cooper, he helped another Clinton aide, Bryan Pagliano, research a security issue with the Clinton’s home email server.

The US Secret Service is tasked with protecting the president, former presidents, and a handful of other high-ranking US politicians, along with foreign dignitaries who visit the United States. The agency, among the nation’s oldest federal law enforcement organizations, also investigates threats against those it protects and investigates crimes related to financial fraud. It’s unclear whether the work the agent described would violate any department regulations. The Secret Service did not respond to questions about the matter. The Clinton campaign and the Clinton Foundation also did not respond to any questions.

Cooper and Pagliano have both been embroiled in the private email server controversy from the very beginning. They helped the Clintons set up the email server in the first place, according to Politico Magazine, and Pagliano maintained the home email server as someone who worked for Hillary Clinton both at the State Department and privately. In 2015 he invoked his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination during one of the lawsuits related to records about the server, and was one of five people who were given limited immunity deals from the FBI as part of its investigation into the case.

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Here’s an Interesting Little Nugget From the FBI Records Release No One Is Talking About

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FBI Now Pretty Sure Russia Is Behind Anti-Clinton Hacking

by ThaddeuPoupinel Posted on September 28, 2016

Mother Jones

The Wall Street Journal reports that the FBI is increasingly convinced that the recent hacks of the DNC and other organizations are being led by Russia:

A fuller picture of the operation has come into focus in the past several weeks. U.S. officials believe that at least two hacking groups with ties to the Russian government, known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, are involved in the escalating data-theft efforts, according to people briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of the cyberattacks.

Following successful breaches, the stolen data are apparently transferred to three different websites for publication, these people say. The websites—WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and a blog run by Guccifer 2.0—have posted batches of stolen data at least 42 times from April to last week.

WikiLeaks has published U.S. secrets for years but has recently taken an overtly adversarial tone toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Cybersecurity experts believe that DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0 often work together and have direct ties to Russian hackers.

Most of these leaks have been designed to hurt Hillary Clinton, who Vladimir Putin apparently hates. Meanwhile, Trump advisor Carter Page has left the Trump campaign over accusations that he’s a little too chummy with the folks in Russia responsible for all this hacking. Page says the whole thing is ridiculous, but apparently his erstwhile friends in Trumpland are throwing him under the bus anyway:

The Trump campaign has been distancing itself from Page. Although Page was one of Trump’s originally announced foreign policy advisers, campaign manager KellyAnne Conway told CNN on Sunday that Page is not really involved at with the campaign at this point.

“I have not spoken with him at all, in fact, meaning he’s not part of our national security or foreign policy briefings that we do now at all, certainly not since I have become campaign manager,” she said….Other Trump campaign sources told me that Page was never really part of Trump’s inner circle….Page has never met with Trump one on one and hasn’t been deeply involved in Trump foreign policy speeches or events, they said.

So…he was just some guy whose name they used so they’d look like they had some advisors. Apparently they’d rather publicly fess up to lying about their campaign announcements than take a chance that Page might become a liability. What nice folks.

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FBI Now Pretty Sure Russia Is Behind Anti-Clinton Hacking

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The Lead-Crime Era Is Now Firmly Behind Us

by Aracely82H Posted on September 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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The FBI reported today that the murder rate in the US was up 11 percent in 2015. That’s a pretty big jump, and I don’t want to minimize it. Before we panic too much, however, it’s worth noting that the overall violent crime rate was up only 3 percent. The absolute number of murders is fairly small, which means that it tends to be more volatile than the overall violent crime rate.

If you’re wondering how I’ll make a connection to lead, here it is: this is probably a sign that we’re now firmly in a post-lead crime era. Thanks to the ban on leaded gasoline, the number of teenagers born in a high-lead environment has been falling for 20 years, and that’s produced a steady decline in the violent crime rate. But by now, pretty much everyone under the age of 30 has grown up in the unleaded gasoline era, and we’ve made only modest progress in reducing lead further.

What this means is that lead abatement has run its course. From now on, unless we do something about the remaining lead in soil and paint, crime rates will reflect other factors: drugs, guns, poverty, race, policing, etc. Unleaded gasoline has done what it could, and now the rest is up to us.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s worth noting that this applies mostly to North America and Europe. In much of Asia, South America, and the Middle East, leaded gasoline held on a lot longer. In those places, we likely have another 10-20 years of declining crime rates thanks to a reduction in the number of kids who grow up with lead poisoning.

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The Lead-Crime Era Is Now Firmly Behind Us

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Clinton Admits She "May Have Short-Circuited" in Characterizing Emails

by FelipaHagelthor Posted on August 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton admitted Friday that she may have “short-circuited” when claiming in a recent television interview that the director of the FBI had stated that her public comments about her private email server were “truthful.”

Speaking at a conference of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington, DC, Clinton sought to smooth over an apparent contradiction between her statements and those of FBI Director James Comey regarding her handling of classified emails on her server. Clinton explained that what she meant in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace was that Comey had said her statements to the FBI were truthful, and that what she said to the FBI was consistent with the statements she had made publicly.

“I may have short-circuited it and for that I, you know, will try to clarify because I think, you know, Chris Wallace and I were probably talking past each other because of course, he could only talk to what I had told the FBI and I appreciated that,” Clinton said. “But I do think, you know, having him say that my answers to the FBI were truthful and then I should quickly add, what I said was consistent with what I had said publicly. And that’s really sort of, in my view, trying to tie both ends together.”

Clinton has faced increasing criticism for not holding press conferences, unlike her publicity-hungry GOP rival Donald Trump. She took questions from reporters at Friday’s conference after laying out a number of policy proposals on criminal justice reform, federal spending in “underinvested” communities, and other issues. The reporters were quick to ask her about the subject where she’s faced the greatest scrutiny: her emails.

Clinton said the three classified emails she sent on her private server were not physically marked as such, so she didn’t know they were classified when she sent them.

Watch Clinton’s full speech and Q&A session below.

Link – 

Clinton Admits She "May Have Short-Circuited" in Characterizing Emails

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The Border Patrol Is in Chaos. Can Its New Chief Make a Difference?

by YAZSammy65 Posted on July 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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A new chief took over the US Border Patrol this month, and for the first time in 92 years, it isn’t someone who rose through the ranks. Mark Morgan—a former FBI official who once specialized in intelligence and counterterrorism—has stepped in to lead the scandal-plagued group once described as “America’s most out-of-control law enforcement agency.”

Predictably, Morgan’s hiring has caused a stir among Border Patrol agents, who expected one of their own to take the helm. The Border Patrol union—which recently endorsed Donald Trump and has vocally opposed Obama’s immigration actions—urged Morgan to remember that those who protect the border every day are “the real experts in border security.” Joshua Wilson, a spokesman for the union’s San Diego chapter, asked the Los Angeles Times, “How can someone who has never made an immigration arrest in his career expect to lead an agency whose primary duty is to make immigration arrests?”

But Border Patrol critics have been pushing for a shakeup at the top for years. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the umbrella agency that encompasses the Border Patrol, is the largest law enforcement agency in the country with 44,000 armed officers, double the size of the FBI and larger than the New York Police Department. Since its rapid expansion in the wake of 9/11, critics have said that CBP’s training and capacity to investigate employee misconduct hasn’t kept up, leaving new recruits green and often unaccountable.

Here are some of the biggest complaints about the Border Patrol in recent years:

Corruption

Reports of corrupt Border Patrol agents have led journalists and politicians to question whether officers are doing enough to secure the borderlands against illegal drugs and gang activity. In fact, CBP as a whole has long been plagued by allegations of corruption within its ranks. A recent investigation by the Texas Tribune and Reveal found that at least 134 officials have pleaded guilty or been convicted in the last 12 years on corruption charges, often for allowing drugs and undocumented immigrants to cross into the United States. Fifty-two of those were Border Patrol agents.

For example, two brothers, both Border Patrol agents in San Diego, made more than $1 million smuggling 1,000-plus undocumented immigrants across the border, according to the Justice Department. Another agent in El Paso allegedly smuggled weapons, including high-powered pistols and flare guns, into the country with the help of his girlfriend. In Texas, yet another agent has been linked to a gruesome cartel-linked beheading. He now faces murder and organized crime charges. A CBP spokeswoman told Mother Jones that the agency plans to cooperate fully with that investigation. CBP also says that it does not tolerate corruption within its ranks and that the overwhelming majority of its officers and agents perform their duties with honor.

Abuse

Numerous reports have indicated that Border Patrol agents and other CBP employees often operate with impunity. The advocacy group American Immigration Council reported that more than 800 abuse complaints against CBP agents were filed between 2009 and 2012—and only 13 resulted in disciplinary action. In one case, a Border Patrol agent was accused of kicking a pregnant woman and causing her to miscarry. Another group of agents was accused of stripping an undocumented immigrant, leaving him naked in a cell, and calling him a “faggot” and a “homo.” Yet another allegedly forced female immigrants into sex. A CBS News investigation also found that sexual misconduct within CBP is significantly higher than at other federal law enforcement agencies. And in 2012, Border Patrol agent Luis Hermosillo was sentenced to eight years in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a Mexican tourist. (CBP has said that it has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual assault.)

To make matters worse, the agency has also been notoriously slow in processing complaints. Among those cases that were closed, CBP took an average of 122 days to come to a decision. The rest were often in limbo for more than a year. After R. Gil Kerlikowske became CBP commissioner in 2014, he created a CBP Integrity Advisory panel to assess the agency’s progress toward greater accountability. However, as recently as this March, the panel described the agency’s internal affairs team as “woefully understaffed” and its disciplinary system as “broken.” The panel recommended that CBP add 350 criminal investigators to look into employee misconduct. (The agency has made room in next year’s budget request for 30 new investigators and is seeking $5 million for cameras, including body cameras.)

Interestingly enough, Morgan has experience overseeing such internal probes: In 2014, he served as acting assistant commissioner for internal affairs at CBP, during which he launched an investigative unit dedicated to criminal and serious misconduct.

High-Profile Deaths

More than 50 people have died during altercations with CBP agents since 2010, including at least 19 US citizens. Several of those incidents involving the Border Patrol have gained nationwide attention. In 2011, Jesús Alfredo YanÌ&#131;ez Reyes was shot in the head after allegedly throwing rocks and a nail-studded board at Border Patrol agents attempting to take his companion into custody. The next year, a Mexican teenager named José Antonio Elena Rodríguez was walking along a street near his hometown when an agent on the other side of the border opened fire, killing Rodríguez. Another cross-border shooting case, in which unarmed teenager Sergio Adrian Hernandez Güereca was shot near El Paso, is currently being considered by the Supreme Court.

In 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum, a policy and research group focused on law enforcement agencies, issued a report criticizing CBP agents’ practice of shooting rock-throwers and vehicles that don’t pose an immediate threat to agents’ lives. The report noted that in some fatal incidents, the shots appeared to have been taken “out of frustration.” The agency eventually changed its use of force policy, but its initial response was to challenge the recommendations and suppress the report for weeks.

Since then, CBP has announced that its agents have been using force less frequently. The agency says on its website that last year, use-of-force incidents fell by roughly 26 percent. The American Civil Liberties Union, however, reports that the number of people hurt or killed during encounters with CBP agents actually increased during that same time period.

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The Border Patrol Is in Chaos. Can Its New Chief Make a Difference?

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Don’t Worry About the Polls. Nothing Much Really Happened Today.

by KatheriKSJL Posted on July 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton has had a couple of poor showings in the polls recently, but I mostly shrugged them off. It was inevitable that she’d take a hit from the conclusion of the FBI email probe, but those kinds of things are almost always temporary. And it’s only July, anyway. Polls won’t start to mean too much until the middle of August.

That’s just my two cents, but Greg Sargent reports that it’s pretty much the opinion of the pros too:

I spent some time talking to senior Democrats today, and the basic feeling among them is this: Yes, it’s very possible Clinton did take a real hit from the FBI news. But if so, they see this as more of a temporary dip than anything else. They see the polling right now as mostly useless, since we will know a lot more about the race once both candidates choose their vice presidential running mates and the conventions take place later this month.

….One senior Democrat with access to a lot of private polling tells me that some surveys in states and districts where Clinton should be leading are showing her tied or slightly behind. But this senior Dem thinks the data probably reflects a momentary dip due to bad coverage of the FBI mess….Top Dem pollster Mark Mellman, for instance, conceded that Clinton may have taken a real hit. But he noted that the current polls, if anything, still show her up after a very tough stretch, leading into a period that could prove more favorable to her.

The fact that a man like Donald Trump is even within shouting distance of becoming president is reason enough to be nervous. But small blips in the polls don’t really add anything to that. If you’re the jittery type, stay away from the poll madness until next month.

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Don’t Worry About the Polls. Nothing Much Really Happened Today.

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Republicans Driving Their Train Over a Cliff Yet Again

by VeolaPedigo1606 Posted on July 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Remember when Republicans held hearings in 1998 about Bill Clinton’s Christmas card list? We are getting into that territory again. Driven into madness by James Comey’s decision not to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton over her private email server, Republicans promised last week to demand that the FBI investigate her for perjury instead. Today they made good on that promise. Let’s listen in:

The letter from U.S. Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) asserts that evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation involving Clinton’s email practices “appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony” and asks federal authorities to “investigate and determine whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes.”

….At a hearing last week, Chaffetz asked whether the FBI had specifically investigated Clinton’s previous statements, which he considered to be false. Comey said to open a criminal investigation, he would need a referral from Congress. “You’ll have one. You’ll have one in the next few hours,” said Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Of particular interest might be a statement Clinton made to the House Select Committee on Benghazi in October 2015 that “there was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received.” Comey has said that investigators found three such emails with the notation “(C)” — meaning confidential — contained within the text.

Got that? Out of 30,000+ emails, the FBI found a grand total of three that were marked confidential. But note the following:

Confidential is the lowest grade of classification. It’s all but meaningless.
Comey testified that all three emails failed to include the normal headers for classified information. Any experienced person reading them would have noticed that and probably missed the fact that a single classification mark was embedded somewhere in the text.
The State Department says two of the three emails were wrongly marked anyway—which Hillary Clinton and her staff probably knew.

At most, then, we have the bare possibility that out of four years worth of emails, Clinton might—maybe—have failed to notice a proper classification mark on one of them. Why? Because it didn’t include the proper header to warn readers that classified information was somewhere in the body of the email.

This is what Republicans want the FBI to spend time investigating. It makes the Christmas card hearings look positively reasonable.

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Republicans Driving Their Train Over a Cliff Yet Again

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