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Thursday, July 7, 2016

The Comey Hearing

The FBI director James Comey testified before a congressional committee today.  I thought it would just be a circus, but it wasn't.  Comey actually said that he thought Hillary Clinton may not have understood the markings on the documents she emailed and that those markings indicated the documents were classified.  Got that?  The secretary of state doesn't understand that the top secret documents bearing the marks of being classified are actually classified?

That was bad enough.  Comey, however, also said that when Clinton was questioned last Saturday, it was not recorded and she was not under oath.  The lack of an oath is not that important, but the lack of transcription is a critical detail.  It tells me that the FBI was not serious in its questioning of Clinton.  Remember, the FBI very often prosecutes people for telling lies to federal investigators.  Comey detailed numerous lies told by Clinton to the public.  If she had repeated those lies to the FBI investigators, she could have been charged with obstruction of justice.  Of course, the way to prove that obstruction is to record what Hillary has to say.  Imagine her saying that she never sent or received classified information on her email.  With a recording of the statement, Hillary is easy to convict of obstruction.  Without a recording, it would just be the word of the agents against the word of Hillary Clinton.  A conviction is highly unlikely.  If Hillary told the agents that she wanted to and did just use one device for convenience (which is another lie she told America), that too would have led to a conviction for obstruction -- but only if it were recorded.

In short, the lack of recording of the interview shows that the FBI went into that interview planning NOT to prosecute.  It's supposed to be an investigation, not the confirmation of a preconceived plan.

Then there's the matter of intent or more precisely lack of intent by Hillary.  There will be countless articles written about that subject.  One thing is certain, however, there clearly is proof of intent.  It doesn't have to be intent to give national secrets to our enemies; it needs to be intent to store those secrets in a way that opens them up to theft.  Hillary clearly intended to use her unsecure server, and that is all that is needed.

At this point, Hillary won't be indicted.  Nevertheless, it sure stinks that she gets away with what looks like criminal actions on what seems to be who she is rather than what she did.  Trump is right; the system is rigged.

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