Comey's latest letter

This afternoon FBI Director Comey doubled down on his earlier whitewash of Hillary Clinton.  His latest letter read, in part:

I write to supplement my October 28, 2016 letter that notified you the FBI would be taking additional investigative steps with respect to former Secretary of State Clinton's use of a personal email server.

Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation. During that process, we reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State.

Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.

There's more at the link.

I remind you that words have meanings.  Very specific meanings.  Mr. Comey's letter is clearly very carefully worded indeed, and is as important for what it does not say as what it does.  Let's look at this in greater detail.

In July 2016, Mr. Comey stated that 'Secretary Clinton or her colleagues ... were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.'  There is no doubt about this.  It was more than an error of judgment - it was a wholesale, deliberate disregard for any principles of confidentiality.  It was revealed this weekend that Mrs. Clinton used her maid - a woman with no security clearance whatsoever, not even a failed one! - to print classified information and deliver it to her, possibly including even the top-secret Presidential Daily Brief (PDB).  As Karl Denninger points out:

It is a crime to knowingly, say much less intentionally, give access to classified information to someone who is not cleared to receive and handle it.

. . .

The PDB is one of the most-seriously classified (top secret) documents routinely prepared for the President; it contains up to the minute information relating to various events and activities all over the world.

It is also a crime to allow, through negligence or worse, intentional act, someone who is not cleared to have access to a SCIF.

There is no possible argument that Hillary can raise of "retroactive" classification; that is, material that wasn't classified at the time she handed it, when it comes to the PDB since those are always classified.

That the FBI knew about this months ago, which is now a documented fact, and did not demand that Hillary be charged with myriad federal offenses related to said intentional and knowing conduct that threatened our national security is an outrage.

. . .

It does not matter what James Comey says; we are supposed to be a nation of laws and our Constitutional Republican form of government demands nothing less.  When you declare a willingness to allow someone to violate the law with impunity you, and everyone who allows you in that position of authority to do so stand with them and in direct opposition to the Constitution of the United States.

Again, more at the link.  Mr. Denninger goes so far as to headline his article, 'This Is A Federal Crime. LOCK HER UP AND THE FBI WITH HER.'

I think any reasonable person will agree that Mr. Comey has signally failed in his responsibilities towards the people of the United States.  What's more, he has to be choosing his words very carefully indeed, due to the immense political pressure undoubtedly being exerted on him right now.  If we read between the lines of his latest letter, what can we glean from what he is not saying?  I think there's quite a lot.

For example, Mr. Comey's latest letter refers only to Hillary Clinton in her capacity as 'former Secretary of State' and her handling of classified e-mails.  That's only one of five separate investigations currently under way that involve her.  He says nothing about the FBI's 'very high priority' investigation into the Clinton Foundation;  or that into Anthony Weiner (which necessarily must involve his wife, Huma Abedin, Hillary's closest aide);  into alleged corruption involving the Clinton Foundation;  and into whether Virginia governor (and Clinton confidante) Terry McAuliffe, and Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta (former head of the Clinton Foundation), broke laws concerning foreign donations.  (It was recently revealed that McAuliffe's PAC helped to secure donations totalling well over half a million dollars to the political campaign of the wife of the FBI official responsible for investigating the Clinton e-mail scandal.)

When you look at everything that's alleged, or already proven, to be involved in all of the above-mentioned investigations (you'll find more details at the links provided), it becomes incontrovertibly clear that Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and the Clinton Foundation are among the most corrupt operations ever to have disgraced the US body politic.  The bosses of the notorious Tammany Hall look like rank amateurs in comparison to the Clintons!  Notably, Mr. Comey says nothing whatsoever in his latest letter concerning any of those investigations.  He confines himself to only one aspect of the FBI's ongoing interest in the Clintons.  I think we can deduce a great deal from what he is not saying.  Surely, if he had been able to exonerate the Clintons from any blame or liability in those other investigations, he'd have done so?  Yet . . . he did not.

I think Mr. Comey knows (but cannot say) that Hillary Clinton, her husband, and all their closest operatives and colleagues, are guilty as sin.  I think he may be trying to point that out in the only way left open to him:  by what he is very carefully, very publicly, not saying.  We know all the active investigations the FBI currently has going on concerning them . . . investigations that were very carefully not referenced in today's letter.  I daresay we can draw our own conclusions from that.

I wish the law enforcement establishment in this country had acted with greater courage, honesty and integrity over the Clinton investigations.  So far, they have not.  It may be that by the time they're willing to do so, it will be too late, and Hillary Clinton will be the President-elect.

One can only hope and pray that we are spared that catastrophe, and that the electorate of the United States will select someone who, despite any number of personal failings and shortcomings, can at least be trusted not to sell this country down the river of her infinite corruption.

We have Wikileaks to thank for providing abundant evidence of that corruption.  One can only hope that Wikileaks will continue to do the FBI's job for it, and show the American public how and why Hillary Clinton is so completely, totally, catastrophically untrustworthy.  (It's telling that the Clinton campaign is already trying to discredit, in advance, any last-minute Wikileaks revelations.)

One can also hope that loyal agents, who are faithful to their oath of office (an oath I also swore), and who are frustrated beyond measure at the political co-option of their agency(ies) by the establishment, will make more information available to the voting public through whatever means are at their disposal, whether or not their agency(ies) approve of that.

Finally, I hope and pray very sincerely that all these things happen in the very short term, and that every available source of information will disseminate them speedily, so that voters can take them into account when casting their ballots on Tuesday.

Peter