Guest Post by The Zman
Thinking about what comes next in this most bizarre of campaign seasons, it occurs to me that this is a good lesson in how nothing exists in isolation. Every decision has consequences. Those consequences may not be obvious and they may not show up until much later, but no action exists without a reaction. It’s the old gag about the time traveler going into the past, stepping on a spider, only to return to a world ruled by super intelligent insects. It is formally known as the Butterfly Effect.
In the early days of the Clinton administration, Team Clinton hoped to put a fellow crook in the job of attorney general. That way, they could make sure they had a member of the family blocking the inevitable criminal probes that follow the Clintons around like an odor.They tried Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, but both failed to get confirmed. They settled on Janet Reno, a dull-witted bureaucrat just happy to have the work. They put her in the job for the same reason crooked southern politicians install their retarded brother in-law as sheriff. She was too dumb to get curious.
It mostly worked, but her stupidity also kept her from blocking cases that would prove to be embarrassing to the family. A real pro in the job would have headed off the intern problem, for example, before that got to Ken Starr. In fact, Kimba Wood is clever enough to have quashed the whole special prosecutor thing entirely. In other words, putting a stupid person in the job worked up until they needed a clever person in the job. You can be sure that Janet Reno does not get Solstice cards from the Clinton family.
Team Obama tabbed James Comey to the job of Director of the FBI primarily because he was harmless. Republicans had no problems with him and Democrats were not afraid of him. That’s not to say he is a crook. He’s just one of those careerists, who make a point of doing no more than the job requires. You run into thee guys all over government because they never get curious and ask too many questions. Politicians love these guys because they look like Boy Scouts, but they never cause any trouble.
For most of what the FBI does, having a straitlaced guy like Comey at the top works just fine. He’s an able administrator, who will be respected by his staff for being fair and sticking to the rules. His lack of political ambition means he can get along with the rank and file. So much of what the FBI does is just process, they need process guys to make sure the processes are followed. The Bureau has not been the swashbuckling crime fighters we see in TV for generations. It’s mostly bureaucrats processing paper.
The decision to put him in the top job looked like a genius move until last week. Having a go-along-to-get-a-long guy handling the Clinton problem made it easy to push him into a favorable decision. The trouble is, he is an honest guy with a conscience and apparently his conscience finally got the better of him. The same qualities that made it easy for the politicians to push him around, made it easy for his subordinates to push him to take on the Clinton Crime Family in the most spectacular way imaginable.
My bet is more than a few people in the Obama White House are thinking they should have found a crook to put into that job. If not a crook, at least someone with ambition for a life in DC after his term at the Bureau was up. That’s the kind of guy who would look for a way to make everyone happy, because he wants friends in town, not enemies. Comey is looking a lot like a guy who will be happy to retire to some small college job teaching law, after he finishes up his public service at the Bureau.
Now the Democrats have the worst possible problem. When they want to train all of their weapons on Trump and his defects, they now have to peel off a few divisions to attack Comey and the FBI. The trouble with that is it means this story stays on the front page. The Clinton campaign is about focusing everyone’s attention on Trump’s flaws so people don’t notice her corruption and unpleasantness. Now they have to choice but to talk about her corruption and everyone gets reminded of her unpleasantness.
What makes this even worse for Clinton is the subtext of this election is the systemic rot in the form of lying and rule breaking. The reason Trump’s line about the system being rigged resonates is most people think the pols are lying and the media is covering for them. This is the sort of story that presses on that wound. In the fullness of time, the face of this era of corruption will be Hillary Clinton. She is everything that is wrong with politics. This e-mail caper and the current drama over it just reminds everyone of why they’re pissed off.
One thing I can say for sure, this is definitely the most interesting election season I can remember.
And I’m pretty old.
Huma Abedin: “I Have No Idea How The Emails Got On Weiner’s Computer”
by Tyler Durden
Oct 31, 2016 7:58 AM
With the FBI having obtained a warrant to begin poring over the 650,000 reported emails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer, attention shifts to just what the FBI may find, with Democrats alleging that much of the thousands of emails allegedly sent from Huma Abedin’s computer are duplicates or otherwise innocuous, while critics alleging more deleted and/or confidential emails may emerge. On her, behalf, however, long-time Hillary aide Huma Abedin has told the FBI she was not aware any of her emails were on the laptop investigators seized as part of its probe info Anthony Weiner’s investigation.
According to Politico, the FBI engaged in a back and forth over the weekend with Abedin or her attorney, when Abedin explained the situation.
“She says she didn’t know they were there,” a source familiar with the investigation said. This is a sensitive topic for Abedin and the Clinton campaign, because on previous occasions, Huma – under oath – disclosed that all the emails in her possession had been accounted for and handed over to the FBI.
As CNBC adds,”there are a number of scenarios that would explain how the emails got onto the laptop without Abedin’s knowledge, including that they were somehow automatically backed up from the cloud. But investigators will want to know how this happened and if there is any indication that Abedin misled them about the existence of emails.
It is a large project. Agents determined there were as many as 650,000 emails on the laptop, dating back years. The number of emails related to the Clinton investigation is likely to be much smaller.
On Saturday, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said Abedin had been fully cooperative with the FBI investigation. “I don’t think she knows anything more than what we’ve seen in the press to date,” Podesta said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I’m sure…if people—proper authorities want to ask her questions, they’ll ask her questions, but she’s been fully cooperative in this investigation.”
The FBI is now filtering the emails using a software program that will separate out any emails that investigators have not seen before. Those will be kept in a separate file and will be examined by FBI agents to see if they contain classified material or information relevant to the Clinton probe. It is not clear what FBI Director James Comey will do with the information once the FBI obtains it. Standard practice is for the FBI not to comment on investigations — but this is not a standard situation. “We’re in uncharted territory,” the source said.
It is possible that Comey could indicate publicly what the FBI finds before Election Day next week, but that decision has not been made yet.
How many times in our lives can a presidential election be swayed by a Weiner investigation? It is like a Cosmological Event.
What Weiner investigation? This is more of a setup. The feds were all over the Weiner’s knob jobs and somehow missed 666,000 emails while probing his hard drive for dick pics? And then they find the whole load just days before the ejaculation? Hard to believe.
Boy, if Hoover was still in charge, he’d have been all over Weiner’s ramrod. Instead, these assholes dropped the balls. Comey’s minions couldn’t find the emails with both hands if they were shoved up their collective asses.
The emails were reportedly in Abedin’s Yahoo account. Its a cloud service unless you very carefully with expert knowledge set yahoo up as a pop or imap server.
I suspect they were never physically present on the Weiner laptop. Only the signon needs to be there to access the yahoo cloud.
So, the warrant was probably to access the yahoo system. We are not being told the details of how the abedin emails were recovered.
What does this mean for ordinary folk?
When you have information in the cloud, its available to everyone. There is no privacy or confidentiality.
There is also no 5th amendment because your information is on 3rd party servers. Their information can be retrieved under commercial data laws just like your phone bill.
Beware.
Put Clinton sorry ass in prison for life. That’s a good start.
This was posted in a comment over at Marketwatch:
Stephen Foster writes:
Let us hope that Huma has upended the opening of the Horror Show of the millennium — starring Hillary Hugo Chavez Clinton staggering around the Oval Office refreshing her late morning martini; with a supporting cast of William Jefferson Clinton playing “Bill the Sexual Predator”, cigar in hand prowling the White House halls in search of a teenage intern (based on a true story), and a cameo with Chelsea wandering around her $6,000,000 Manhattan penthouse asking herself who her real
father is. The Sopranos without the class or the charm.
Weiner and Lady Weiner, perusing the long list of Clinton helpers cast into flames, no doubt are reviewing witness protection programs.
Huma is going to jail, she’s going to man up and take one for the boss. Of course, Hillary will pardon her for the good of the nation, to speed up the healing process for the nation.
Fuck it, the White House is one small step for a man, one gigantic step for a woman. It’s impossible. I give up. Good luck ever getting laid again, guys.
EC,
You’re awfully full of piss ‘n vinegar for a guy who is about to need a barcode identification tattoo (Beaner bars) to be able to stay in the country under President Trump. You should abandon all hope at this point.
Zman has wrapped it all up and put a bow on it. I am not
arguing against him/people are weighing in.
Nonetheless, Comey (and his bro) have a checkered past, and
I continue to believe he is another cog in the Dem Clinton machine
and he is doing some tap dances now in an effort to save his own
butt from disgrace and banishment.
Suzanna… you gotta appreciate my comment above about weiner investigations determining presidential elections.
Well, this is embarrassing, Maggie begging for approval from Suzanna the nice lady of TBP.
Give it up, Maggie, you either get boobs or brains. That’s the way nature works.
EC, I have left you alone and stopped commenting to you or in threads you participate in honoring your abrupt albeit odd request that seemed out of nowhere unless you know what it is that I know.
And, you do NOT.
I happen to have boobs, brains and bunnies. Although the Chubbies are ready for slaughter, they have been given a pardon by their buyers, who came to see them over a cold one last weekend and decided they were too darned cute to kill and they’ll buy me another bag of feed until they decide. I am thinking about a line of home-canned meats: Chubby Bunny Nuggets, Chubby Bunny Stew, Chubbypfeffer, and, for those who remember Pig’s Feet, Chubby Bunny Ears.
Now, if I could just come up with a marketing plan.