The White House Mess

DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

I don’t know how you’ve decided that timeline makes sense, but it absolutely does not.

The _FBI_ had not finished wrapping up the investigation as of June 27. Hillary Clinton would not be interviewed until July 2. The DoJ could not possibly make any sort of decision until the FBI had finished the investigation.

Moreover, it wasn’t Lynch that was supposed to make a decision anyway. There is a special committee of prosecutors at the Justice Department who would have made that decision. They make decisions on possible political cases and make sure all the conflicts of interest are out of the way.

So the timeline was supposed to be: 1) FBI finished investigation. 2) It is given to the DoJ. 3) A committee of prosecutors at the DoJ approves moving forward with it. 4) Lynch signs off on the committee’s decision, or overrides it.

This entire process would have certainly taken another month, and Lynch’s action would be at the very end of that.

Lynch, of course, recused herself from that process, saying she would sign off on whatever the people at the DoJ said. This…wouldn’t really speed things up any.

Now, it turns out, instead of all that, Comey decided himself not to refer any possible charges, but even that took a week after June 27, mostly because the investigation literally wasn’t over yet. (I think basically he was waiting to see if Hillary Clinton would lie under oath, because he didn’t have anything else.)

If there had actually been charges, presumably that would have taken even more time to put together and refer up the chain.

At which point the decision would have to be made by the DoJ committee. Which could take who knows how long to even meet, and then they have to start going over stuff.

Even assuming some sort of super-human response time from both the FBI and the DoJ committee, there’s no possible way anything could have been on Lynch’s desk before the end of July.

I mean, seriously, you’re claiming that somehow Lynch was supposed to make a decision about something that was supposed to work its way up out of and through two different groups of people, and that would happen ‘in a few hours or days’, whereas it took almost a week for the first group to stop their work because they decided _not_ to pass it on. There is no possible way that hypothetical makes sense.Report

DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

It’s farcical to claim the process “would have certainly taken another month” when the process actually took 8 days, including unusual events we both think slowed things down.

Uh, no. I do not agree with that, and I think it is factually incorrect. There was absolutely nothing in what did happen that would have slowed anything down, unless you are arguing the press conference itself did that. (Which I guess you can argue if you want, but that at most adds a few hours.)

As I said, and you completely ignored, the ‘process’ was, as far as anyone knew at the time, ‘FBI finishes up their investigation, FBI puts everything together in one package, the DOJ’s special committee decides to prosecute or not, the AG gets it on her desk to sign off on it or not’.

What took place over those ‘seven days’ was ‘FBI finishes up their investigation’, and that was it.

Even what the FBI itself was doing was shortened, because presumably the ‘get all the evidence well-documented and ready to hand over to the prosecutors’ stage did not happen. I.e, a case that law enforcement sends to trial is automatically going to be more work for said law enforcement than one it give up on and does not, even if it gives up at the very end.

And note I’m basically allowing you to beg the question that the evidence was all already collected, except for the obvious ‘interview Hillary’ part. In a counterfactual world where the FBI did choose to keep pursuing the case, it seems likely they would have collected even more evidence, which would, of course, result in a longer delay. Hell, just scheduling a single additional interview would have taken a week.

You’re clearly wrong. Presumably people closer to the process (including Bill) at the time would have also known that.

That’s twice you’ve indicated you have information that the process was close to finished, but failed to state it.

See, the thing is, I suspect you’re correct. I bet you did read something that said it was ‘close to wrapping up at the end of June’.

…and that was said earlier. As a guess. Just as a general ‘This is how long investigations generally last’.

I bet you have absolutely nothing that indicates it was about to wrap up and Bill’s behavior delayed it.

..also, in what universe is Bill ‘close to the process’? Isn’t your premise based upon the idea that he _isn’t_, that he needed to talk to the AG and had to do it that way?

Why not call?

Are you asserting that, instead of a public meeting, with witnesses, (At minimum Secret Service) above Lynch’s plane, you would have rather Bill Clinton communicated privately via phone with Lynch?

Actually, here’s my real question: Do you think that Bill Clinton could not have come up with some way of getting a message to Lynch privately? Or, just as likely, Hillary?

Do you think that various members of the government, especially people who were of the same party and worked for the same administration (although at different times) could not have come up with some staffer they know that would pass messages along? That Hillary, from her time as Sec of State, didn’t still know people at State, or, heck, that she didn’t still know people at the DoJ? And let’s not forget she was a Senator (From New York, the state that Lynch had as USA.), or that people stay in politics (Not just elected officials but staff also.) long enough that Bill Clinton probably knows a bunch of them also.

This is the dumbest theory ever. If Bill Clinton wanted to communicate something with Lynch, he very easily could have.

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Note in the actual real world, talking to the AG is a pretty stupid way to try to stop this investigation anyway. That’s way too late in the process.

As I have repeatedly pointed out and you ignored, when possible ‘political’ prosecutions show up in front of the DoJ, there is a special committee of prosecutors and former judges to make sure the cases are not pursued if they are invalid and politically motivated, and are pursued if they are valid but political motivations try to quash them. There is literally a committee that exists to explicitly stop what you are trying to assert would happen. (Sadly this is only true, or at least only public, for the DoJ’s prosecutors, and not the FBI or anyone else involved in process.)

Which means…let’s pretend there was a real case. And let’s pretend Bill convinced Lynch to squash things, and no one cared he met with her. (Or he intelligently did it in _secret_ like a non-stupid person.) So there would be two possible ways she could do that:

1) Lynch could try to order Comey to drop the investigation, which he…would not have done so that’s pointless. I guess she could then try to convince Obama to fire him for that? (I am sure firing Comey because he will not drop an investigation will turn out well and provoke no outrage at all.)

Actually, no, strike that, none of that has anything to do with Lynch anyway. Both of those are Lynch asking someone else to do something, and don’t make any sense to approach her for. If Bill or Hillary wanted to try to quash the investigation that way, they should have approached either Obama or Comey.

So we are left with one option:

1) Lynch could wait until the investigation finishes, at which point it gets handed to the DoJ, specifically, to the committee to ensure it is treated fairly. They decide it is legit, at which point she blatantly and in full view of the public overrides that committee’s outcome (And the FBI’s recommendation.) and chooses not to prosecute.

I remind everyone, Bill is a lawyer, and knows pretty well how the DoJ works.Report

DavidTC in reply to Dark Matter says:

Assuming Bill and HRC have some idea of the timeline seems a more reasonable assumption than thinking neither of them had any useful gov connections.

Assuming they have an idea of the timeline doesn’t mean you get to come up with an extremely unlikely timeline and then ascribe it to reality. Moreover, it was you who suggested they were far enough outside the process that they needed to schedule some sort of meeting with her.

Moreover, I was not suggesting they would _write down_ something for a staffer to present. I am suggesting they would use a staffer to arrange a secret meeting. One not happening in such a blatantly obvious place.

That Phoenix runway was as private as he could reasonably get without attracting attention, of course it failed for that last part.

Ah, yes, airport tarmacs, a place where, notably, anyone is allowed to wander around without others noticing, and no one keeps records of anything.

Wait, no, I’m thinking of public parks, or, really, any other place in the nation except airport tarmacs, which are literally one of the most restricted locations. Except unlike most extremely restricted locations, it isn’t operated by the Federal government, which means that Lynch couldn’t try to keep the meeting secret by abusing her power and ‘classifying’ it.

Man, thinking about this, an airport tarmac is literally the stupidest possible place for someone to get out and wander around and try to keep a meeting secret.

Wonderful. The AG has no influence at all. So why, when the AG decided to almost-but-not-quite recuse herself, did the decision end up with the head of the FBI instead of this committee?

It didn’t have anything to do with the recusal. The FBI always had the ‘ability’ to stop the investigation without referring charges (I mean, that’s probably how half their investigations end. They can’t find evidence that they think would stand up in court, or determine there was no crime, so close the case.), it’s just that everyone was confused that they had done so in _this_ instance.

If you go back and actually read what everyone said at the time, it was ‘WTF?’. Admittedly, half that confusion was Comey deciding to have a press conference where he berates Hillary for apparently legal actions, which is really strange and a bit fascist for law enforcement to do.

But the other half of that was ‘Uh, it is rather weird for the FBI to be making this decision alone on an investigation that spanned months and is objectively political.’

I mean, that meant there were basically two alternatives: 1) The entire investigation was bogus, and the FBI had no evidence at the end, which means that entire process was really long and stupid and the FBI was behaving in a political manner investigating that long, or 2) The FBI did have some evidence (Even if not enough to convict.), in which case it should have gone to the DoJ committee (And possibly been shot down.), and failure to attempt that was the FBI behaving in a political manner.

For the record, the answer there is #1….the entire investigation was basically operated and constantly leaked by rogue New York agents who hate the Clintons as a political attack.

It was actually clear, from the start of the investigation, that the entire idea of Hillary being charged with something was bogus. You only commit a crime if you take or copy actual classified documents (Which basically requires smuggling them out of some secure facility, as that is the only place they exist.) or deliberately tell someone you know doesn’t have clearance something you know is classified. Hillary Clinton could have discussed classified nuclear launch plans over her email (Which, legally, is exactly as secure a channel as email on government servers, aka, not secure at all.), and that information could have been _actually intercepted_ by foreign agents due to her carelessness and truly damaged the US, and she _technically would have committed no crime_.

But there are people in the FBI’s New York office with a huge grudge against the Clintons. See also their deliberate hiding of additional emails, for weeks, until immediately before the election, with the hope that the emails would not gone through until after the election.

And so they conflated ‘Hey, here is some possible classified information sitting in an unclassified place, it is the job of the FBI, as the counter-intelligence agency that operates on US soil, to check to see what that is and if anything leaked’, which was correct, with ‘The FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton for possible criminal actions’, which was _not_ true.

But Comey didn’t really have the power to stop them without things looking worse.

And why did Comey testify that Bill’s meeting with the AG convinced him there was no way Justice could handle this?

Because Comey was attempting to short-circuit what he _assumed_ would happen: Clinton would win the election and this would result in years of hearings about whether or not the Department of Justice had made the decision not to prosecute in a politically biased manner, as part of the Republican’s official policy of ‘investigate the Clintons, and then investigate the investigations of the Clintons, and then investigate the investigations of the investigations of the Clintons, and then investigate the Clintons some more’.

Comey instead said ‘The FBI and I think investigation is pointless and no law was broken (Which is correct), and I won’t have the DoJ’s process get dragged through the mud like that, so I will put all the focus on myself, while making it clear that while I think that Hillary’s behavior was not ideal, it was not illegal’.

It’s the same reason that Comey held a press conference to announce the additional emails, which is not something that normally would have been announced: Part of the FBI had become politicized, and in that case, were about to leak it.

Now, I am not making any judgement on whether or not Comey’s behavior was a good thing or not. I tend to think Comey allowing this rogue group of agents to witch-hunt the Clintons for years sorta indicates he wasn’t a very good head of the FBI, especially as they were clearly committing things that aren’t allowed. (Constantly leaking information about active investigations to the press, for example.) Whether or not this was the correct way to deal with the situation he himself allowed to get out of hand is unknown by me.Report