03-19-2018, 07:24 AM
(03-18-2018 11:21 PM)tanqtonic Wrote: [ -> ](02-07-2018 04:06 PM)illiniowl Wrote: [ -> ](02-06-2018 08:00 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]My bottom line.
You can say what you want about Mueller and Comey and Trump and Strzok and all the rest. But the fact that Hillary is not behind bars says that there’s something rotten somewhere.
Well, you're assuming she would have been convicted by a jury, which seems objectively at least questionable, and then even if she had been, that she would have been given a jail sentence rather than probation (although not being a federal criminal lawyer I confess no knowledge of what category of offense this would have been and whether probation would have been an option under the guidelines). Yes, a prosecution likely could have proven the requisite elements, especially since intent was/is not an element. But you still would have had to get 12 (10? 8? federal courts don't always use 12) jurors (in D.C. or the Southern District of New York, no less) to unanimously convict the most famous AND the most infamous woman in the country. She would have had a defense dream team and probably would have mounted a fairly appealing "everyone does it, no big deal" defense that would have included evidence of various Republicans doing the same thing (perhaps to lesser degrees) than she did. Personally I would have put the odds of a hung jury at 80+%, acquittal (or jury nullification if you'd prefer to call it that, and I wouldn't argue) at 19+%, and conviction at <1%.
Comey took the middle option that probably most people in his shoes would have taken. He knew the DOJ (the Obama DOJ) was going to decline to prosecute Hillary no matter what he did. That is just a realpolitik fact. So Comey's options were: (1) recommend prosecution, then loudly resign in protest when the recommendation was rejected -- which would make him look petulant and kneecap the remainder of his career; (2) say nothing beyond "I sent my confidential recommendation to the AG, what she chooses to do with it is up to her" -- which would have been extremely helpful to Hillary, in that there would have been no counter-narrative to whatever a pro-Hillary Loretta Lynch would have said; (3) go even farther and curry favor with Obama/Lynch/Clinton by issuing a statement that twisted itself in knots to exonerate her -- which would have made him a hack, something he pretty clearly had too much ethics to abide; or (4) do what he did.
The crime Hillary committed was ultimately and always a political one (unless it could ever have been shown that some true national secret fell into enemy hands because of her actions, some asset was lost, etc.). So her trial was left to be a political one as well. And lo and behold she actually was convicted--and punished--in the political forum, barely perhaps, but justice was achieved nonetheless. The punishment fit the crime perfectly: She was patently not fit to be president, and so she was not allowed to be president. For the record, I am sorry that the collateral beneficiary of her loss also had to be a patently unfit person. He, too, shall pass from the stage eventually.
The ironic part of this hairsplitting over "extremely careless" or "grossly negligent" is that everyone with half a brain knows she went far and fully beyond whatever these words mean. The LAST thing Hillary Clinton is is "extremely careless." She is a meticulous, paranoid, venal control freak of the highest order (a trait not uncommon among politicians on both sides of the aisle). We ALL know that SHE knew EXACTLY what she was doing in setting up that server, and there was no oopsy-daisy about it. She wanted to keep her emails from public discovery and potential use against her in some future campaign - and I'm not even talking about Clinton Foundation graft or whatever. No politician ever wants to leave a paper trail of ANYTHING if they can help it, because even the innocuous stuff can probably be used somehow. And the second-to-last thing Hillary Clinton is is innocuous, anyway. She operates in gray areas and knew there would be something useful to a future opponent.
Comey may have spared Clinton the expense (if any there would have been, as inevitably there would have been a Clinton Defense Fund) of a trial (that she would have won, or at least not lost, anyway) but not only did he publicly rip her for her behavior, in letting her off, he solidified her (deserved) reputation for being let off where others would not be, being allowed to play by different rules, float above the law, etc. That stain cannot, could not, and did not wash off.
(03-18-2018 07:38 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ](03-18-2018 06:37 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote: [ -> ](03-18-2018 05:45 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]Why is it difficult to believe? What about his wife, who ran a race in Virginia in 2015, makes it hard to believe McCabe did not conduct an honest investigation in 2016? I do agree that, with hindsight, it's obvious McCabe should have recused himself. But the conflict of interest is(03-18-2018 03:09 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote: [ -> ]I think calling him an SOB is a bit harsh. We know two things - he has been fired for lack of candor (not explicitly lying) and he didn’t recuse himself, with the only reason he maybe should have is that, maybe Clinton was involved in having a Virginia-specific PAC steer money to her campaign a few months before she lost, and even more so than before he was made Deputy Director.
You even admitted it wasn’t clear if he should have recused himself because of this potential connection to Clinton.
I don’t think that’s too harsh at all. Saying that the waters were muddy does not mean there’s a question of whether he should recuse himself. Because the waters were muddy should have given him plenty of reason to recuse. The conflict is not that the wife was in an active campaign at the time, it’s that Hillary was. And I’m sorry, but Hillary walked after doing specific things that would have landed me in Leavenworth for 40 had I done them, and that causes me to question very seriously the honesty and objectivity of the investigation that he led. I’m sorry, but SOB fits on those facts. Whether he should have recused or not as a matter of appearances, as a substantive matter it is difficult for me to believe that he conducted an honest investigation.
And as to the outcome of the investigation, that was Comey's decision in the end, not McCabe's. I get that you disagree with the eventual outcome, but I don't see the connection of that outcome to the conflict of interest, especially since you feel like the investigation, which McCabe oversaw, provided enough evidence, in your opinion to lock her up.
My point is that once the campaign funding happened, there was a taint on any investigation in the future involving anyone who could reasonably be related to that funding. If I represented a client 30 years ago, and you want me to represent you in a suit against that client, I can’t do it.
As far as running an investigation that came up with the server evidence, it would have been hard to miss. I’m not really sure how it happened. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the actual investigation was done by FBI field staff, who are generally both objective and professional. There is every reason to believe that “the fix” was not in until this got to the McCabe/Comey level.
If you have any difficulty believing that his wife, who ran a race funded largely by a Clinton apparatchik in 2015, could or would have influenced the objectivity of an investigation into Hillary that he ran in 2016, then I have to ask, have you ever been married?
Lad the problem is that you seemingly dont understand the import that temporal issues have no bearing on my comments.
As owl#s example provides, if I represented a party for 10 mins 30 years ago, and someone asks me to represent them against that client even for a wholly unrelated matter, any acceptance would cause the appearance of a conflict; and such an appearance is deemed to *be* a conflict of interest in fact.
Timetable: wifey takes 600k from a long standing deep friend and political ally of Hillary.
Anything that MCabe does that touches on either investigating Hillary *or* investigating a chief political rival of Hillary from that fing point forward *is* a conflict of interest based solely on the most minimal case of simply the appearance of that conflict. Period.
Clinton foundation, the jury rigged server, and the issues with Weiner gate all fit that bill, as does the genesis of russiagate and the fisa being rooted in the work product of the steele memo.
To be blunt, notwithstanding the 'appearance' issue with the above, I think it stunningly apparent that the rogue server issue prosecution and investigation was deliberately tanked within the Doj and FBI.
But even when one disagrees with the preceding paragraph, just based on the appearance issues alone McCabes contnued forays into matters Clinton show a stunning level od grotesqueness or a stunning level of idiocy.
I guess my issue is that it isn’t clear where a conflict of interest is no longer present when there’s an n-th degree of separation. It’s very clear that if n=0, that there would be a conflict of interest. But as you start expanding n, so many variables go into the equation that I don’t think it’s crystal clear, for a number of reasons.
And one comment, hasn’t it been borne out that it’s unclear how “rooted” the ex-Trump aide surveillance was in the dossier? We know it was included, but since the application hasn’t been released, and both sides disagree about how significant it should role was, isn’t saying the FISA app was rooted in it a bit misleading?