Posted on 10/01/2016 6:05:51 AM PDT by randita
The Bureau was clearly hamstrung by the Obama administration’s goal of avoiding prosecution.
By Andrew C. McCarthy — October 1, 2016
In a nutshell, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department permitted Hillary Clinton’s aide Cheryl Mills — the subject of a criminal investigation, who had been given immunity from prosecution despite strong evidence that she had lied to investigators — to participate as a lawyer for Clinton, the principal subject of the same criminal investigation. This unheard-of accommodation was made in violation not only of rudimentary investigative protocols and attorney-ethics rules, but also of the federal criminal law.
Yet, the FBI and the Justice Department, the nation’s chief enforcers of the federal criminal law, tell us they were powerless to object.
Seriously?
In his testimony this week before the House Judiciary Committee, FBI director James Comey inveighed against critics who have slimed the Bureau as “weasels” over its handling of the Clinton e-mails investigation. I am not one of those people. After a quarter-century in the trenches with the Bureau as a prosecutor, I am one of those hopeless romantics who love the FBI and harbor real affection for the director himself.
I genuinely hate this case. I don’t mind disagreeing with the Bureau, a not infrequent occurrence in my former career. But I am hardwired to presume the FBI’s integrity. Thus, no matter how much irregularities in the Clinton investigation have rankled me, I’ve chalked them up to the Bureau’s being hamstrung. There was no chance on God’s green earth that President Obama and his Justice Department were ever going to permit an indictment of Hillary Clinton. Jim Comey says he didn’t make his final decision to recommend against prosecution until after Mrs. Clinton was interviewed at the end of the investigation, and that he did not coordinate that decision with his Obama-administration superiors. If he says so, that’s good enough for me. But it doesn’t mean the director made his decision detached from the dismal reality of the situation. And whatever one’s armchair-quarterback view on how he should have handled it, that reality was not of his making.
But just as Director Comey rightly objects to being regarded as a weasel, I don’t much like being regarded as an idiot . . . which is what I’d have to be to swallow some of this stuff.
The FBI absolutely has control over who may be present at an interview with a subject of an investigation. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the most basic one is that an interview never has to happen unless the FBI consents to it.
In his testimony, Comey kept stressing that Mrs. Clinton’s interview was “voluntary” — contending that since she was not required to submit to it, she could impose any conditions on her agreement to do so. That is nonsense. The interview was voluntary on both sides. The FBI is never required to indulge conditions that make a mockery of its serious business.
In this regard, Comey is like a guy who ties his own hands behind his back and then says he was powerless to defend himself. If Clinton declined to submit to an FBI interview unless Mills (or the similarly situated lawyer Heather Samuelson) was permitted to be present, the investigators could simply have handed her a grand-jury subpoena. They could then have politely directed her to a chamber where she would be compelled to answer questions — under oath and all by her lonesome, without any of her lawyer legion in attendance.
But, you see, in this investigation — unlike every other major criminal investigation in which the government tries to make the case rather than not make the case — the Justice Department declined to convene a grand jury.
Regarding this highly irregular dereliction, there appears to have been no FBI pushback. In fact, Director Comey told the committee that it is often easier in a complex case to acquire evidence by striking informal agreements with defense lawyers.
That is certainly true . . . but there is nothing inconsistent about impaneling a grand jury while concurrently negotiating such deals. Indeed, this is how it is generally done, precisely because it makes defense lawyers a whole lot more agreeable. It is the same principle that applies to U.S. diplomatic negotiations: They go much smoother when the other country grasps that we have the U.S. armed forces in our back pocket. When they know the alternative is a grilling of their client in the grand-jury hot seat, defense lawyers are less apt to insist on outrageous interview conditions, and the government tends not to have to extend inexplicable immunity grants to obtain evidence that is accessible by simply serving a subpoena.
As I’ve previously explained, the FBI has no authority to convene a grand jury. That is up to the Justice Department. In this case, there was no way the Obama Justice Department was going to indict Mrs. Clinton, so it clearly resisted convening a grand jury. Doing so would have underscored the gravity of offenses that the Justice Department was working energetically, and in conjunction with Team Clinton’s lawyers, to downplay.
That is how Ms. Mills ended up in the room for Mrs. Clinton’s interview as a lawyer, after having been in the interview room herself as a subject of the same investigation.
Another funny thing about that. I mentioned that Clinton had a battalion of lawyers. They included her primary lawyers from Williams & Connolly, among the finest criminal-defense attorneys in the country. Since she had plenty of top-notch representation, she certainly did not need Cheryl Mills as a lawyer. Besides, Ms. Mills does not appear to have been practicing much law at the time. She had not functioned as a lawyer in her years as Clinton’s top staffer at the State Department. It appears that, on leaving State with Clinton, she spent her time, apart from sitting on the board of the Clinton Foundation (the Hillary campaign in waiting), running the BlackIvy Group, a development company that builds business enterprises in Africa.
I don’t mean to imply that Ms. Mills is anything but an able lawyer. I’m just suggesting that she doesn’t seem to have been someone you’d have called in 2014 if, like Hillary Clinton, you’d gotten jammed up in a criminal investigation. That’s what you call Williams & Connolly for.
But you might call Cheryl Mills, who was right by your side at the State Department while you were doing those things that got you jammed up, if your goal was to envelop those things in an obstructive fog of purported attorney-client privilege.
The FBI was not required to treat a conspiracy to obstruct justice as if it were good-faith assistance of counsel. Nevertheless, co-conspirator Mills was laundered into lawyer Mills.
When Mills lied to agents about not knowing of the Clinton homebrew server while at State — a story that doesn’t pass the laugh test — this false account was shrugged off as one of those innocent, unresolvable failures of recollection.
The classified information on Mills’s private laptop was excused, according to Comey’s testimony, because it merely duplicated (for purposes of sorting through e-mails) what was on Clinton’s server — a rationalization that, even if true, is not a defense to recklessly storing classified information on a non-secure computer.
Then, when case agents sensibly wanted to scrutinize the laptop, the Justice Department gave Mills immunity in exchange for this item whose production could have been compelled by a subpoena. On this, Director Comey’s account, again, is puzzling. He rationalizes the immunity grant as an appropriate way to deal with the complications of searching a lawyer’s computer, which is bound to contain privileged communications with many clients. But quite apart from the fact that Mills these days seems to have only a single “client,” the director is mixing apples and oranges. Immunity is conferred to shield a suspect from criminal liability, not to shield a lawyer’s clients from government intrusion into their privileged legal communications. There are other protective procedures for the latter situation.
Moreover, Comey kept telling lawmakers that Mills had gotten only limited “act of production” immunity. This is simply wrong. As I explained last week, act of production immunity covers only the testimonial aspects of the act of surrendering an object one is being compelled (usually by grand-jury subpoena) to produce. It means the government may not use your production of the object as proof that you (a) possessed something that is potentially incriminating and (b), by handing it over, implicitly admitted it was the object described in the subpoena. Pace Comey, act-of-production immunity does not prevent the government from using the contents of the object against the person who surrenders it. But under the immunity grant to Mills, prosecutors forfeited exactly this right. That is not “limited immunity”; that is the gratuitous enlargement of gratuitously granted immunity.
The FBI relies on this airbrushing of Mills to suggest that she wasn’t really much of a suspect; therefore, we’re to believe, the fact that she sat in on Clinton’s interview, though perhaps a bit irregular, is no big deal.
But it is a very big deal for at least three reasons.
First, Comey says he didn’t decide not to seek an indictment of Clinton until after Clinton’s interview. If that is so, then the FBI had to know that allowing Mills to be present at the interview could have jeopardized any eventual prosecution of Clinton. In such a prosecution, Mills would have been a key witness. But Clinton’s lawyers would have claimed that the FBI let Mills sit in on Clinton’s interview to help Mills get her story straight. They would have accused prosecutors of exploiting Mills, a former member of the Clinton legal team, to pry into Clinton’s privileged strategic communications with her other lawyers.
Second, though Comey says the FBI is in no position to enforce attorney ethical rules that barred Mills from representing Clinton at the interview, this was not just an FBI interview. According to the director, several Justice Department lawyers also participated. Those lawyers, too, are bound by the ethical rules. They had an obligation to object to this unseemly arrangement and to do what was in their considerable power to prevent it.
Finally, as Shannen Coffin has pointed out, Mills was not just violating an ethical rule. Her representation of Clinton runs afoul of federal law. Section 207 of the penal code makes it a crime for a former government official to attempt to influence the government on behalf of another person in a matter in which the former official was heavily involved while working for the government. It was against the law for Mills, as an attorney, to attempt to influence the Justice Department’s consideration of the case against Clinton.
I couldn’t agree more with Director Comey that the FBI is the world’s greatest law-enforcement agency. I just think that when Cheryl Mills tried to walk into Hillary Clinton’s interview, the FBI should have enforced the law.
— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.
Hogwash.
The FBI should be disbanded. Current employees (all of 'em) should be barred from any future employment by the federal government.
A new agency should be formed with one mission -- one mission only -- root out corruption in the federal government.
His first run-in came in the mid-1990s, when he joined the Senate Whitewater Committee as a deputy special counsel. There he dug into allegations that the Clintons took part in a fraud connected to a Arkansas real estate venture gone bust. No charges were ever brought against either Clinton..."
"In 2002, Comey, then a federal prosecutor, took over an investigation into President Bill Clinton's 2001 pardon of financier Marc Rich, who had been indicted on a laundry list of charges before fleeing the country. ..."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/politics/who-is-james-comey-fbi-director-things-to-know/index.html
__________________________________
"The Whitewater controversy (also known as the Whitewater scandal, or simply Whitewater) began with investigations into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s."
Whitewater Convictions
Jim Guy Tucker: Governor of Arkansas at the time, removed from office (fraud, 3 counts)
John Haley: attorney for Jim Guy Tucker (tax evasion)
William J. Marks, Sr.: Jim Guy Tucker's business partner (conspiracy)
Stephen Smith: former Governor Clinton aide (conspiracy to misapply funds). Bill Clinton pardoned.
Webster Hubbell: Clinton political supporter; Rose Law Firm partner (embezzlement, fraud)
Jim McDougal: banker, Clinton political supporter: (18 felonies, varied)
Susan McDougal: Clinton political supporter (multiple fraud). Bill Clinton pardoned.
David Hale: banker, self-proclaimed Clinton political supporter: (conspiracy, fraud)
Neal Ainley: Perry County Bank president (embezzled bank funds for Clinton campaign)
Chris Wade: Whitewater real estate broker (multiple loan fraud). Bill Clinton pardoned.
Larry Kuca: Madison real estate agent (multiple loan fraud)
Robert W. Palmer: Madison appraiser (conspiracy). Bill Clinton pardoned.
John Latham: Madison Bank CEO (bank fraud)
Eugene Fitzhugh: Whitewater defendant (multiple bribery)
Charles Matthews: Whitewater defendant (bribery)
Ultimately the Clintons were never charged, but 15 other persons were convicted of more than 40 crimes, including Bill Clinton's successor as Governor, who was removed from office.[40]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_%28controversy%29#Convictions
or,
https://web.archive.org/web/20090326122112/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitewater_%28controversy%29
I agree. IMO, it is corrupt to the bone and too concentrated on responding to political expediency than anything else. They haven’t stopped sh!t.....all they have after the fact is “we were ‘tracking’ so and so” “but we lost them, etc. blah, blah, blah......
If you work for the FBI, you are working against America, IMO.
Too SOFT!! Cheryl Mills is as CORRUT as Hillairy and COMEY COMBINED!!!
When the director of your country's lead law enforcement agency reveals himself to be nothing more than a common criminal, as Director Comey just did, you know your country has become just another Banana Republic, and Obama pulled it off in less than eight years.
When you don’t hold corrupt leaders accountable, you get more corrupt leaders.
Under the current corrupt leaders, your ox may not get gored, but under the next set of them, it certainly may.
It’s clear as day that the DOJ, under a Democrat administration, has not and is not going to enforce the law. That has set the stage for a future GOP administration to follow suit, if they so desired.
It’s a slippery slope, and we’re well on the way down it.
Oh Andy....why haven’t ANY of your beloved FBI AGENTS RESIGNED????? Because they are CORRUPT ALSO!!
Comey is so damn corrupt with Clinton cash from his past jobs and even now he has ties that he should have recused himself. Comey’s brother is a lawyer who works for the Clinton’s. This FBI sucks with Comey plus other Obama appointees. J edgar Hoover is rolling over. Comey got contracts from the Clintons before this job.
Among the connected, giving friends a pass seems to be a widespread affliction.
There's a saying in government, "Personnel is policy." As I observed when Congress was singing Lynch's praises, if she were praiseworthy, she wouldn't have been nominated. Comey wouldn't be there if he were honest. The weasel words support this.
McCarthy faults Comey for "tying his hands behind his back, then claiming he's powerless." He should perhaps look in the mirror in regards to turning a blind eye to Comey's actions, then saying he sees no corruption.
The FBI, the SCOTUS, DOJ, CIA, CONGRESS are all corrupt.
More holes than a Peter Comey audit
of the Clinton Foundation?
FBI Director Admits Classified Information Was On Cheryl Mills’ Computer
Hannity.com ^ | Sept 29, 2016 | Hannity.com Staff / FR Posted by Trump_vs_Evil_Witch
FBI Director James Comey admitted in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that they found "some" classified emails on the computers of longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Cheryl Mills and another top aide. Both aides, however, were given immunity in the case, which conveniently protects them from being prosecuted from anything found on their computers.
When asked if these classified emails constituted a crime, Comey first dodged the question asking “if what was a crime,” and then offered a somewhat roundabout response: “you’d have to know what were the circumstances... [and] the intention around it.”
But House Republicans charge that it’s a cover up. Mills, they believe, is the lawyer who oversaw the scrubbing of Mrs. Clinton’s email archive.(Excerpt) Read more at hannity.com ...
The FBI agents are careerists, with families, mortgages, bills to pay It’s not in their DNA to disobey orders or rock the boat. I expect that most of these men and women are highly competent but they have been suffering from a lack of leadership. Trump needs to give the FBI agents a 30-day immunity period to disclose evidence of corruption within the upper ranks of the agency, following which there will be no deals. Same with the IRS.
“Find me the greedy sons of bitches and we’ll put them in charge of every department. It’s easy to control greedy sons of bitches.”
George Soros on running the government of The United States.
How many holes are in the witnesses
(some just before Trial and testifying)
murdered by HSBC-Soros-Clinton-Comey-Lynch?
Rightly? He's part of the corrupt Clinton/DNC machine. Google Comey Lockheed HSBC for details.
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