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So, what about Part II? — 28 Comments

  1. Posted at Power Line earlier:

    This is how it is playing. Comey had two choices. Referral or no referral.

    In the case of a referral the content would be confidential. Lynch sits on it for a week then says her prosecutors decided not to indict. Case closed and take the flak.

    In the case of no referral then the same thing. Attorney work product. No disclosures.

    In both cases there would be leaks but anonymous only. A known leaker is subject to criminal sanctions for a number of reasons.

    Comey pulled a Captain Kirk a la the Kobayashi Maru. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru).

    He stood up there, made sure everyone understood that he had a gun to his head, and told the whole story. Now he’s telling it again in detail in a public Congressional hearing.

    The smartest people in the room found out they weren’t.

  2. Roy Lofquist:

    I disagree.

    If the FBI had made a recommendation to prosecute and Lynch refused, that would have been a greater scandal and people would have known the fix was in. Plus, Lynch had already said she would abide by the FBI’s recommendation.

    Plus, Comey is saying stuff today that is preposterous, including (apparently; I haven’t seen the video) that the law should take into account intent and therefore he took into account intent! Plus, Gowdy proved that intent could have been proven, even though it isn’t necessary (and why Congress wrote the law the way it’s written, to include gross negligence instead).

    “Everyone” understands Comey had “a gun to his head”? Dream on. He doesn’t even sound like he had a gun to his head, and Hillary supporters and LIVs certainly don’t “understand” that he did.

  3. GOWDY: …I’m going to ask you to put on your old hat. False exculpatory statements – they are used for what?

    COMEY: Well, either for a substantive prosecution, or for evidence of intent in a criminal prosecution.

    GOWDY: Exactly. Intent, and consciousness of guilt, right? Is that right?

    COMEY: Right.

    GOWDY: Consciousness of guilt, and intent. In your old job, you would prove intent, as you just referenced, by showing the jury evidence of a complex scheme that was designed for the very purpose of concealing the public record. And you would be arguing, in addition to concealment, the destruction that you and I just talked about, or certainly the failure to preserve. You would argue all of that under the heading of intent.

    You would also be arguing the pervasiveness of the scheme: when it started, when it ended, and the number of emails, whether they were originally classified or up-classified. You would argue all of that under the heading of intent.

    You would also probably, under “common scheme or plan,” argue the “burn bags” of daily calendar entires, or the missing daily calendar entires as a common scheme or plan to conceal.

    Two days ago, Director, you said a reasonable person in her position should have known a private email is no place to sand and receive classified information. And you’re right: an average person does know not to do that. This is no average person: this is a former First Lady, a former United States Senator, and a former Secretary of State that the president now contends is the most competent, qualified person to be president since [Thomas] Jefferson. He didn’t say that in ’08, but he says it now.

    She affirmatively rejected efforts to give her a state.gov account, she kept these private e-mails for almost two years, and only turned them over to Congress because we found out she had a private e-mail account.

    So you have a rogue e-mail system set up before she took the oath of office; thousands of what we now know to be classified e-mails, some of which were classified at the time; one of her more frequent e-mailed comrades was, in fact, hacked, and you don’t know whether or not she was; and this scheme took place over long period of time and resulted in the destruction of public records – and yet you say there is insufficient evidence of intent?

    You say she was “extremely careless,” but not intentionally so. Now, you and I both know intent is really difficult to prove. Very rarely do defendants announce, “On this day, I intend to break this criminal code section. Just to put everyone on notice, I am going to break the law on this day.” It never happens that way. You have to do it with circumstantial evidence – or, if you’re Congress, and you realize how difficult it is to prove specific intent, you will formulate a statute that allows for “gross negligence.”

  4. The average person sucks at logic…
    In my job as a professional logician/mathematics… (programmer), i find that they do not even realize that what they think is logical cant be!!!! management does this all the time and do not like being told that what they think is being represented cant or isnt represented.

    odd example:
    i was coming to an elevator, and put my hand in to get the doors to open. inside was a female manager, and a male manager carrying something for her… (so much for equality)…

    she then decided to tell me about how unsafe it was to do that… despite the millions of elevators in use and no lost fingers or arms are common… i said that any such accident would prove the rule of it not happening given design and liability…

    when we left the elevator she yelled out after starting this bs thing “what world do i live in, in which the exception proves the rule”.. she things the exception disproves the rule, which is not true… because what would it be an excdeption to?

    anyway, i yelled back the same world in which cicero of rome said the exception proves the rule if not an exception.

    classical logic… classical leftist wrong..

    Master List of Logical Fallacies
    http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/ENGL1311/fallacies.htm

    ergo ipso facto: logic is not how you convince people…

    if that was true, i would be rich, because i could sell my technology… but its not, so my tech languishes while people get backing for stuff that wont ever work…

  5. by the way, the logical fallacy the left loves to use and abuse because its guarded by ego is:

    The Argument from Ignorance (also, Argumentum ad Ignorantiam): The fallacy that since we don’t know (or can never know, or cannot prove) whether a claim is true or false, it must be false (or that it must be true). E.g., “Scientists are never going to be able to positively prove their theory that humans evolved from other creatures, because we weren’t there to see it! So, that proves the Genesis six-day creation account is literally true as written!” This fallacy includes Attacking the Evidence, e.g. “Some of your key evidence is missing, incomplete, or even faked! That proves I’m right!” This usually includes “Either-Or Reasoning:” E.g., “The vet can’t find any reasonable explanation for why my dog died. See! See! That proves that you poisoned him! There’s no other logical explanation!” A corrupted argument from logos. A fallacy commonly found in American political, judicial and forensic reasoning.

  6. The public’s disinterest, denial and embrace of the left’s platitudes, promises and bromides may not yet be at its low point. Even the harshest dose of reality cannot awaken some.

    Sheep don’t fight, they flee and when they can’t run away, they shiver in fear awaiting their fate.

  7. A person in hrc’s position as SOS does not set up a personal server to conduct official business for any purpose other than to avoid scrutiny. A person in hrc’s position does not destroy records that are in a fact records that are the property of the federal government of the United States of America except to avoid the possibility of detection for illegal actions. To quibble over intent or lack of intent is absurd.

    By her actions and lies uttered in public it is obvious that there was intent. But intent is a red herring throw out by Comey to excuse his lack of (pardon the expression) balls and integrity. Comey covered his behind, pure and simple. Yes, Comey laid hrc’s crimes on the table, but he failed to fulfill his oath of office, no medals in my book that excuse his actions.

  8. “Why bother? Why bother to argue logically, as Trey Gowdy did so brilliantly in the video of the hearing that I displayed in today’s previous post? Logic and reason only matter if the American people are predisposed to hear them and care about them.”

    We were trained from youth to respect the power of reason. It was part of the process of respecting the right of others to their own lives, and to the boundaries they were presumed to be entitled to and which should not be transgressed – lest such actions violate their inherent rights and human nature – without a universally recognizable, valid and justifying reason which was indifferently applied.

    Now, let’s take a look at what I have just written above and see what the problem is. The obvious problem is that none of the fundamental intellectual assumptions which inform that approach are believed by our postmodern “fellow citizens” and the intellectual vanguard and opinion leaders of present-day secular “society” to be tenable any longer – or perhaps worse, as of any personal interest to them from their subjective vantage point.

    – Rejection of a specific “human nature”. Check.

    – Rejection therefore of any notion of inherent rights, discovered through an analysis of man’s inherent ends, or teleology. Check.

    – Rejection of the concept of “right reason” therefore, in favor of a purely instrumenatlized version of reason as calculations that get you what you want; not that tell you also what you should desire. Check.

    – Rejection of the idea that political action should have limits. Check

    – Rejection of the idea that there is an objective truth which can be accessed by any reasonable adult in his age of maturity. Check.

    And this is just a partial and un-elaborated list.

    What could you possibly hope to accomplish in trying to “reason” about limits or right actions with someone – someone who has happily, and even proudly, embraced reduction to a locus of self-justifying appetite in what is ultimately deemed an officially pointless existence – like that?

    They are not interested. They do not feel obligated to make the effort unless it has something to do with “feelings”. And if their demands on you, kill you, then, so what?

    The only thing, it occurs to me, that even gets their goddamned attention, is an attack on their “value” – which in their case means their social acceptability and the esteem in which they are held.

    Hence their constant, incessant, obsession with inclusion, acceptance and affirmation. As well as their incessant efforts to ensure that the socioipolitical and legal system is fixed so that you never have the option to withhold, disengage, or fall-back on some secure ground in order to recoup your energies.

    And of course what is the one thing most Christians and conservatives are terrified of doing? Telling another face to face that they are not fit or worthy as they presently are, to be considered as peers in freedom.

    Too hurtful. Even though that might be the only thing that will wake a few of them up – the emotional shock of an in their face rejection so wounding as to make them stop and think about why they are seen as so toxic.

    Course, my other great idea – telling them what effect their actions were having on us, proved stillborn; when, as I recently mentioned for the second time, a half-relative, his antennae vibrating with preemptive paranoia, blew the place up in a first strike tactic.

    So, it is possible that, if you did resolve to say to someone: “You know, you are really not fit to be free as you are right now. And the cost of underwriting your mindless undisciplined neediness is too great to be sustained”, they might just blow their explosive vests up before you even got half of the words out of your mouth.

    If that is the case, then we are just going to have to face the facts that some collectivists among “us” (both managers and clients both) are determined and willing to politically coerce and even kill others, in order to extract from these others, what the non-collectivist others neither need, nor want, from them.

    We can either do that, face the facts and adjust, or just shrug and let our cherished illusions and emotional delusions regarding fellowship and likeness, lead us to the grave; or the totalitarian state: which amounts to more or less the same thing.

  9. I think Comey has turned the “criminal intent” requirement into a bizarre new hurdle. If you think I’m implying that perhaps a criminal intent requirement might exist even for a “gross negligence” statute like 18 USC § 793(f), your thinking would be correct.

    BUT, the criminal intent would be met by Hillary Clinton’s intentional actions.

    Hey, when I’m intentionally driving at 118 mph in a 65 mph highway zone, I’m being intentionally grossly negligent, even though I have absolutely no intent to cause anyone harm and I have a really good reason for traveling at a high speed (I must get to an ex parte hearing in Riverside ASAP and, after all, I am an officer of the U.S. federal court).

    Giving the benefit of the doubt to her, Hillary Clinton intentionally kept ALL her email messages, both work and personal, on a private server because she wanted to keep personal email messages away from eyes prying into State Department business.

    So, Hillary Clinton intentionally acted with gross negligence in keeping work email messages off of the State Department system.

  10. In modern society there is so much information available that no single person can be on the cutting edge of everything. Therefore everyone relies on recognized experts in the field to explain the meaning of information.

    In this case James Comey is an expert who has been praised by conservatives as well as lefties as an honest civil servant. The only way to convince most people that HRC was guilty of crimes is to impeach James Comey’s testimony.

  11. Where conservatives are headed is to that dread day, when we are forced to recognize, that many of our relatives, friends and countrymen are beyond redemption. That they have set themselves against fact, logic and reason.

    They have drunk deeply of the left’s kool-aid and, there is no cure because they’d rather commit suicide, taking all of us with them, even their children, than part with their ‘opiate’.

  12. Dennis,

    Comey’s ‘testimony’ is beyond impeachment. His sterling reputation, long polished to a flawless shine of impartiality, ensures that any criticism from the right must be shameless partisanship and thus without merit.

  13. Fortunately some (only some) of us Dirt People still grok Natural Law.

    We’re going to have to go all the way back to the very basics in order have any chance of rebuilding what has been lost these past 250 years.

    250 years because I sense that something went badly wrong at or about the so-called Enlightenment. Others would have it the Reformation, and David Stove thought we took a wrong turn at Socrates. It’s debatable. But there’s something slightly off in Western intellectual DNA and it needs rooting out.

    Unfortunately this is going to hurt.

  14. “Logic and reason only matter if the American people are predisposed to hear them and care about them.” [Neoneocon]

    “There will be no check or balance on Hillary Clinton. Not the Congress (D or R), not the courts, not the media, not the bureaucrats.

    [snip]

    Which leaves Donald Trump as the only alternative, not merely because he is less awful than Hillary Clinton — leprosy is less awful than Hillary Clinton — but because the election of a tacky jerk like Donald Trump is the only thing that could ever motivate the elite to rediscover checks and balances upon executive power.” [Kurt Schlichter]

    The link:

    http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2016/07/07/you-need-to-suck-it-up-and-vote-for-trump-n2188770

  15. DNW Says:
    July 7th, 2016 at 6:39 pm
    …The only thing, it occurs to me, that even gets their goddamned attention, is an attack on their “value” — which in their case means their social acceptability and the esteem in which they are held.

    Hence their constant, incessant, obsession with inclusion, acceptance and affirmation. As well as their incessant efforts to ensure that the socioipolitical and legal system is fixed so that you never have the option to withhold, disengage, or fall-back on some secure ground in order to recoup your energies.

    And of course what is the one thing most Christians and conservatives are terrified of doing? Telling another face to face that they are not fit or worthy as they presently are, to be considered as peers in freedom.

    Too hurtful. Even though that might be the only thing that will wake a few of them up — the emotional shock of an in their face rejection so wounding as to make them stop and think about why they are seen as so toxic.

  16. (to continue)
    I am starting to understand why so many of the old-time preachers were of the “fire and brimstone” school: it’s the only thing that will get some people’s attention.

  17. Tim Broberg:

    That Politico link is from April, and somewhat outdated because it does not incorporate some new information Comey disclosed.

  18. I was interested in this from Politico (lots of interesting info altogether; someone did a lot of work — back in APRIL)
    “Many experts believe Petraeus would have escaped criminal charges but for the false statements to the FBI, which may have tipped the case towards prosecution.”
    Did Petraeus admit to lying, because since the FBI doesn’t tape or transcribe interviews, why should we take their word for it?

    As a counterweight to Politico, try this article:
    https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2016/07/07/for-any-reasonable-prosecutor-damage-to-national-security-would-outweigh-extremely-careless-hillarys-largely-irrelevant-intent/?singlepage=true
    “But more importantly, a reasonable prosecutor considering charges would not myopically obsess over Clinton’s state of mind. Far more weighty in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion would be two factors Comey did not cite at all in his presentation: (a) Congress’s purpose in criminalizing the grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, and (b) the harm actually done to the United States which, viewed from the perspective of the intelligence community underwritten by 50 billion American taxpayer dollars annually, was surely immense.”

  19. AesopFan:

    It is my understanding, from previous reading (doing this from memory), that Petraeus was threatened with prosecution for a greater offense and his admissions came as part of a plea bargain in which authorities charged him with a lesser offense.

  20. HRC: Too Big To Fail. She jeopardized national security for selfish reasons but she didn’t realize she was jeopardizing national security? Cmon. One can’t help but wonder about the mixture of Clinton Foundation and government stewing in her emails. Also, were there emails to or from POTUS or the White House? And classified?
    There’s no decency left in the Democrat Party.

  21. neo-neocon Says:
    July 8th, 2016 at 12:54 am

    ***
    Thanks – I remember that now.
    But they could have threatened to “remember” what he said as something other than what he did say: that is the danger in depending on objectively unsupported testimony, especially of law-enforcement entities that have been honestly mistaken, if not outright lying (in the past for sure, possibly now, certainly in the future If Things Go On).

  22. That’s always been an iffy proposition in any population, but right now it’s at an ebb lower in this country than at any point I can ever remember in my lifetime..

    What about 9/11 28 pages still hidin from the US population

  23. So this is the new norm!

    No matter what the evidence … just reinterpret the law!

    That is what has happened several times now. The Supreme Court has done it which is part of their job to interpret the law but not so sure of reinterpreting settle law.

    DOJ under Holder has done it.

    DOJ under Lynch is doing it now.

    And now we have the FBI doing it.

    Obama is the catalyst for all of this. We have become no more than a quasi dictatorship!

    The world laughs at us.

  24. She jeopardized national security for selfish reasons but she didn’t realize she was jeopardizing national security?

    Is anyone going to prosecute the Democrats for intentionally getting Americas killed in Iraq under Bush II, in order to score political points?

    No? Then the Democrats have been jeopardizing national security for decades, Vietnam included, and Americans have done nothing. Now they wonder why it got so bad?

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