Mollie Hemingway: 11 Takeaways from the IG Report

BTW: Mollie Hemingway is up on Special Report very soon.

Hemingway's top 11 takeaways from the report. Here are three points:

6. FBI Almost Got Away With Ignoring Clinton Emails On Weiner Laptop

In September 2016, when an investigator in the Southern District of New York found hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails and Blackberry messages on a laptop being searched in relation to an investigation of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, he immediately alerted his supervisors. They alerted the FBI, who sat on the information for weeks, only acting after the New York office complained repeatedly.

By October 3, the case agent assigned to the Weiner investigation expressed concern that the FBI appeared to be sitting on what he’d told them. Later he told the IG:

The crickets I was hearing was really making me uncomfortable because something was going to come crashing dowm... And my understanding, which is uninformed because... I didn't work the Hillary Clinton matter. My understanding at the time was I am telling you people I have private Hillary Clinton emails, number one, and BlackBerry messages, number two. I'm telling you that we have potentially 10 times the volume that Director Comey said we had on the record. Why isn't anybody here?

Like, if I'm the supervisor of any CI squad in Seattle and I hear about this, I'm getting on with headquarters and saying, hey, some agent working child porn here may have [Hillary Clinton] emails. Get your -ss on the phone, call [the case agent], and get a copy of that drive, because that's how you should be. And that nobody reached out to me within, like, that night, I still to this day I don't understand what the hell went wrong.

And I told her, I'm a little scared here. I don’t know what to do because I'm not political. Like I don't care who wins this election, but this is going to make us look really, really horrible. And it could ruin this case, too. And...I said the thing that also bothers me is that Comey's testimony is inaccurate. And as a big admirer of the guy, and I think he's a straight shooter, I wanted to, I felt like he needed to know, like, we got this. And I didn't know if he did.

Although all the relevant information was given to the FBI by September 29, they came back to the agent weeks later to ask questions he'd repeatedly answered. But the FBI agents claimed that the information they learned in late October was new to them. The IG says this is not true: "By no later than September 29, the FBI had learned virtually every fact that was cited by the FBI in late October as justification for obtaining the search warrant for the Weiner laptop."

The FBI claimed that they didn’t take action on the laptop because "1. The FBI Midyear team was waiting for additional information about the contents of the laptop from NYO, which was not provided until late October. 2. The FBI Midyear team could not review the emails without additional legal authority, such as consent or a new search warrant. 3. The FBI Midyear team and senior FBI officials did not believe that the information on the laptop was likely to be significant. 4. Key members of the FBI Midyear team had been reassigned to the investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election, which was a higher priority."

The IG said these excuses were hogwash, saying that the first was "unpersuasive," the second "illogical," the third "inconsistent" and "insufficient," and the fourth "unpersuasive and concerning." The overarching feeling of the report is that the FBI leaders who handled both the Clinton and Trump probes worked very hard to pretend the Weiner incident didn't happen, only being forced by the New York office's insistence that protocol be followed.

7. Breathtaking Bias

Some FBI defenders latched onto the IG’s claim that he "did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specificinvestigative decisions we reviewed." All that means is that none
of the politically biased texts specifically said political bias was leading them to make certain decisions. Of course, that would be a weird thing to find in any case.

What the investigators found, however, was breathtaking anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias from five of the key employees handling the Clinton email probe. No evidence was found of pro-Trump bias. And this evidence of profound bias is only for those who were foolish enough to record their extreme views. The IG also apparently had no texts from Justice Department officials, perhaps because Justice didn't preserve them.

[A lot of texts omitted -- see the article for the, well, full article -- ace.]

In the preparation to interview Clinton as part of the criminal probe, Page tells a handful of her colleagues to take it easy on Clinton. "One more thing: she might be our next president. The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear."

After each text exchange, the IG report includes defenses from the agents, some even harder to believe than the previous:

August 8, 2016: In a text message on August 8, 2016, Page stated, "[Trump's] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Strzok responded, 'No. No he's not. We’ll stop it.' When asked about this text message, Strzok stated that he did not specifically recall sending it, but that he believed that it was intended to reassure Page that Trump would not be elected, not to suggest that he would do something to impact the investigation.

Sure, hoss.

All five of the FBI employees were referred back to the FBI for disciplinary action.

Hemingway wrote this in a tweet:

This is a maddening aspect of this: You have people in documentary evidence, something inarguable, stuff they wrote which was then recorded in perfect form forever, expressing their insane bias, and then, when asked what they meant by things like "We'll stop him," they say "Oh, by 'We'll stop him,' I only meant that I would adhere to my FBI oath and follow every FBI policy to the letter."

Really? That's what you meant?

Over and over again, these people claim they don't remember having written these things and then claim that they must have meant [insert advice from lawyer on how to lie without getting hit with a perjury charge here].

Oh, is that what you meant to say? Because you picked some very strange words to say what you claim you meant to say.

John Sexton at Hot Air has further examples of this tendency of lawyered-up FBI agents claiming, "Oh, when I said 'I'm... With... Her,' I only meant I was with Lady Justice with her blindfold on to shield her eyes from any political bias."

Now, absent a smoking gun admission of lying, it's hard to prosecute people for lying. It's hard to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

But the fact that the media (including liberal "Republicans" like Jonathan Last) are claiming "Oh, see, they said 'We'll stop him' just meant 'We'll stop Putin's aggressions' and so that takes care of that!" is... well, it's not unexpected at this point, is it?

Back to Hemingway's article:

8. Clinton Got Breaks, But Some Backfired

While Comey harmed Clinton with how he handled his public announcements about her case, the IG report paints an investigation that was overall quite favorable toward her and her associates. During the Robert Mueller investigation, the federal government has played hardball with Trump associates, ringing them up on false statement charges, raiding their offices, arresting them without warning, and encroaching on attorney-client relationships. For Clinton, a much different approach was taken.

To take just one example, look at the case of Paul Combetta, an employee who handled the migration of Clinton’s email accounts across servers then later deleted the emails. Clinton probe members were sure he was lying about the deletion of the emails in violation of a congressional preservation order. In repeated interviews, he claimed he didn't delete her emails.

The agents had an email where he talked about the "Hilary coverup operation." They decided that wasn’t a big deal. One agent said he believed Combetta should have been charged with "false statements for lying multiple times." But overall they decided it was just so confusing, that the failure to tell the truth was "largely due to a lack of sophistication and poor legal representation." They gave him immunity, and he started singing. He admitted deleting the emails "despite his awareness of Congress's preservation order and his understanding that the order meant that 'he should not disturb Clinton’s email data on the PRN server.'" Sounds nice.

What she's referring to is that Hillary Clinton and her staff got an order from Congress to preserve all records, but Combatta deleted the emails anyway. And then lied about that, until the FBI helpfully gave him immunity for prosecution for defying a lawful order and for lying.

And does this refer to further instances of the immunized-for-no-clear reason Combatta "lying his ass off"?

And see this Kim Strassel thread for more, including a bit about Combatta's Mystery Immunity.

Thought: The press and the liberal Republican wing are very, very worried that Trump will pardon figures associated with him and thereby end prosecutorial threads.

This is a hypoethetical concern (though real).

Meanwhile, there is strong evidence that Loretta Lynch's DOJ and a phalanx of I'm-With-Her FBI agents gave immunity to all of Hillary's flunkies in exchange for nothing -- no "flipping" on the boss, just "here's your immunity, we now have no further leverage on you, even though you committed crimes we could prosecute" -- and the media and liberal wing of the GOP has no problem with that.

The possible hypothetical future issuance of pardons to Trump aides-- very concerning.

The actual proven factual issuance of immunity to Hillary's henchmen -- meh, College Boys With Guns did it so it's all copacetic.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:49 PM

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