Discussion > President Trump
Um, I explicitly said the two cases were not equivalent, you also miss the point, which is the astonishing hubris and hypocrisy of the Trumps, and the amazing double standard displayed here depending on who is breaking the rules.
The FBI recommended no criminal charges should be brought. No judge would prosecute after that.
Same difference.
Phil Clarke
“
The parallels between Ms Trump’s conduct and that of Secretary Clinton are inescapable.“In both her use of personal email and post-discovery preservation efforts, Ms Trump appears to have done exactly what Secretary Clinton did – conduct over which President Trump and many members of Congress regularly lambasted Secretary Clinton and which, they asserted, demonstrated her unfitness for office.”
Letter to Congress from American Oversight, the watchdog whose records request uncovered the extent of Ivanka's malfeasance.
Phil Clarke
Phil
judges don't prosecute ... in this area the prosecutors would be the Federal DOJ - they decide - you seem to have a tenuous grasp of how this all works today.
Information which is formally classified for state security purposes is a whole different thing to Ivanka's social calendar
tomo
A distinction that makes no difference. After the FBI recommended no action the Attorney General announced there would be no prosecution. Anyone who thinks otherwise is engaging in magical thinking.
Phil Clarke
As I understand it Ivanka Trump is unlikely to have transmitted sensitive information using private emails but did conduct government business. I further understand that it is a federal regulation that any such communications have to be submitted within 20 days for archiving. This she did not do. However, her supporters and apologists claim that this only occurred in the earliest days when she was ignorant of the regulations.
What I find difficult to understand is why she should ever have been ignorant of any regulations about use of private emails when conducting government business. She was heavily involved in the election campaign of her father. A campaign that consisted of an attack on his opponent for email misuse. How on earth could she be unaware of the regulations and not consider that her behaviour would not be governed by the same rulings and might present a potential embarrassment to her father? Hardly the actions of a competent Presidential Advisor.
Supertroll
ST
I'd agree with that - given the ongoing stuff about HRC's garage servers - it does seem that the emails were archived but that the archive wasn't handed over to the relevant department ( who are?..... - that much hasn't been made clear)
Phil
- having a bit of trouble thinking today? Since the FBI didn't actually investigate Hillary, exonerating her from wrongdoing seems a wee bit OTT.
tomo
Utter shock, felt sure it would constitute TDS
Supertroll
ST
not really - only a total bonehead would think that anything they did inside/close to the White House would get a free pass - especially a family member who has a job there... that said, like I said before - at least she's kept the archive eh?
tomo
How on earth do YOU know this? That every email sent by IT is accounted for, or that what is archived came from IT's cache and not from the recipients? You can only assume this AND THAT'S BIAS.
Supertroll
Dear Messrs. Chairmen: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.
I am very grateful to the professionals at the FBI for doing an extraordinary amount of high-quality work in a short period of time.
Sincerely yours,
James B. Comey
Director
On what planet is this not the FBI investigating Clinton's mail trail? 3
Phil Clarke
Phil
unfortunately Phil - it's on this planet. Hilary's IT man and 125 refusals to answer a question pleading the 5th Amendment ? - and other details of what Comey did and didn't do - regardless of what he said he did....
ST - guilty of bias there I admit. However nobody on the Dem side wailing about it has challenged the proffered explanation - or that the records exist but are not on the official record - or that no classified documents were involved. The direct comparison to HRC's antics is the reason it's been waved around to distract from and dilute the attention given to upcoming court appearances.
tomo
Hilary's IT man and 125 refusals to answer a question pleading the 5th Amendment ?
A PR stunt by Judicial Watch.. I wouldn't give those bstrds anything either.
Is that it?
Phil Clarke
So he didn't plead the 5th then?
- right-oh
tomo
That's not what I said. JW were told in advance that he was going to plead the fifth and they went ahead anyway, just to get their headline. Pure political circus and you fell for it.
All you have done is exposed your lack of hard evidence to back up your claims. I repeat, is that it?
Phil Clarke
Phil
he pled the 5th, he was dim enough to identify himself and trawl for admin bodges so dodgy that he attracted attention on Reddit , there have been repeated (and as yet *unverified*) claims that the private servers were *fully* compromised by Chinese State actors, he bitbleached discs and hammered other hardware to pieces.
All the actions of an innocent and totally above board operation - that's it - since you ask.
tomo
Nothing much then. None of that is proof of guilt. He also co-operated fully with the FBI investigation (the one you deny the existence of), in return for immunity, which one repeats, found no grounds for criminal action against Clinton.
No grounds = no case to answer = Not guilty.
Thank for confirming the limitations of your evidence.
Phil Clarke
I would like some context and links, but I predict disappointment.
There are legitimate reasons to destroy hardware that is going out of service and held confidential information. Likewise secure deletion of obsolete records. Again I would like to know the context, but I see no hard evidence of guilt there.
As I understand it the context of Pagliano pleading the fifth was a blatent fishing expedition by Judicial Watch (a group with a Trumpesque relationship with the truth), long after the FBI investigation, which he co-operated with, had closed and concluded there were no grounds for a criminal prosecution. Again I can see many good reasons not to play ball.
The FBI examined all the mails, I am going to stick my neck out and suggest you have not. That makes theirs the more informed opinion. Out of interest, how many of the mails were marked classified at the time Hillary received them?
To be clear I am not defending Clinton's stupidity. She made a crass error of judgement while running for a job for which good judgement is a chief qualification. She handed her opponent a propaganda own goal and torpedoed her USP of experienced stateswoman/safe pair of hands. It is not completely absurd to suggest (especially with Comey's late reopening of the investigation) it cost her the 1000,000-odd votes that handed the Donald the presidency.
I just see alarmist claims of criminality and crucial intelligence being put at risk as overblown.
Phil Clarke
Phil
China has been very busy indeed - on an absolutely epic scale - I doubt that you are familiar with firewall logs and the sheer quantity of attacks - so let me spell it out for you - The US Secretary of State conducting state business over machines administered by a provincial "IT specialist" is *not* merely stupid - it is absolutely culpable negligence at best. iirc Clinton staff have already volunteered that classified information was transferred.
There are questions to be asked and answered over what Sid Blumenthal et al got up to wrt Libya and further stuff wrt Ukraine - and that is just for starters. There is much unexplained about the Clinton relationship with Russian oligarchs and assorted ex-Soviet regimes (while HRC was in-post) and it must be assumed - really - that much business was transacted via those garage servers.
It is clear that Clinton staff only moved to destroy records and hardware when it became clear that they might be subject to scrutiny. From the Clinton perspective it is a legitimate move to destroy incriminating evidence - why else plead the 5th? - iirc that's what the 5th revolves around - or am I missing something?
Your assertion that the FBI inspected *all* the emails simply isn't true.
That Clinton used a local IT guy and ran a fairly standard "home business" set up connected to the Internet shows a level of hubris that is truly epic - it's The Secretary of State of The United States of America we are talking about here not a provincial tat vendor with a web shop and Amazon and eBay accounts.
tomo
Phil Clarke
a BBC publication ? how droll
From a Guardian contributor too ? - and an expert in Vegan latex condoms to boot.
She's chums with those quacks at Tavistock clinic who were setting out to medicalise Climate Change Deniers if I'm not mistaken - charming....
as ever - GFY
tomo
Nov 22, 2018 at 11:11 AM | Phil Clarke
You are defending a conspiracy. You just haven't figured it out for yourself yet.
golf charlie
Then there are the news outlets who present the evidence that completely contradicts them, yet talk about it as if it fully supports their narrative.
Radical Rodent
Radical Rodent, the biggest annual gathering of Conspiracy Organising Parties is known as COP. This year's will be COP 24, and held in Katowice, Poland.
Wealthy US Democrats will fly there to tell other people how much money they could make by running media companies specialising in scarey stories.
Unlike his predecessor, Trump is not going to force US Taxpayers into funding con artists from around the world.
golf charlie
Hardly the actions of a competent Presidential Advisor.
Nov 21, 2018 at 4:57 PM | Supertroll
Extend that logic, and Cook's fabricated 97% Consensus Conspiracy did con President Obama, with fairly catastrophic consequences, Obama believed it was true.
golf charlie
Phil
The FBI does not find people "not guilty" - ICYMI - courts do that.
The use of insecure email or other methods of communication to transfer documents or information above a particular classification is a strict liability Federal crime. As to what punishment if any is handed out - well, that's down to a court / judge. What is clear is that Sidney Blumenthal was acting on information provided by Hillary / team while not a Federal employee (even the Feds fought bringing him into the tent) and that information with high security classification passed over Clinton's garage servers - likely being read by Beijing.
You have not demonstrated equivalence between Ivanka and Hillary at all.
The fact that Comey and some other as yet unspecified seniors similarly broke those communication rules (that would have a footsoldier summarily dismissed / jailed) is still in process of investigation. What does not appear to be at issue is that those same seniors ignored repeated warnings from informed staff that there were significant exploitable flaws in US spook communications that could be (and were) easily exploited - resulting in the deaths of quite a few people and the collapse of US intelligence assets - particularly in China - hubris sometimes seems an inadequate word.