Comey: Loretta Lynch Attempted to Influence Clinton Email Investigation

The Weekly Standard ^ | June 8, 2017 | By Mark Hemingway

[hattend]

So, is Lynch on her way to Venezuela to escape prosecution?

Has she been frog-walked yet?

Why isn’t the FBI at her house yet?

If they don’t put her in custody she might commit suicide by shooting herself in the back six times.

[monkeyshine]

I’ve suspected for a while that this ‘investigation’, and even possibly the special prosecutor, would inevitably be forced to look into impropriety in the Obama admin. The issue is joined at the hip in large part because the sources for the Trump allegations come from the Obama White House’s unmasking of wire taps.

And a Special Prosecutor has wide discretion to follow whereever the investigation leads. It would only take a few bits of testimony to force him to expand the scope into whether Obama Admin staff broke the law, and/or whether there was “collusion” with Russia (and others) on the part of the WH, the Dept of State, and the Clinton Campaign. Very often it seems that whatever the Dems are accusing their opponents of doing turns out to be what they were doing. In particular, Clinton had many dealings with Russia and Russian oligarchs - and not all of them were official State Dept business. The largest single donor to the Clinton Foundation was the Russian behind the Uranium One deal. He also paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech. And Clinton was central in bringing dozens of US tech firms into Russia’s “technology park” in Skolvoko outside Moscow, which the FBI later said was not a tech park but a sophisticated industrial espionage scheme. Turns out that every single company she arranged to transfer technology into Russia were also donors to the Clinton Foundation.

The whole “Trump+Russia” thing just feels like misdirection to me. I never did believe any of it - it made no sense that ex-KGB officer and long time strongman of Russia would need Trump to tell him where to hack, and it makes no sense that Trump the multi-billionaire capitalist would need Russia to lend support. The fact that there are a few thought leaders in the media who have been pushing this narrative for 6-9 months now without a shred of evidence feels a little desperate. And we all know, it is in the public record, that a number of key opinion makers in the media colluded directly with the Hillary campaign about which stories to write and how to write them... just another example of how the finger pointing about “Trump using Russia to create fake news” is misdirection. We know for a fact that this is what Clinton was doing with the US media.

[sheana]

I didn’t watch the dog and pony show. I hope someone asked him if he wrote a memo about it. Surely some fine, upstanding Republican did.......didn’t they?

[mass55th]

I didn’t watch his whole testimony, but he was asked if he’d written notes/memos about conversations/phone calls with any other President, or any other individuals, and I think he said he didn’t believe he ever did.

[mass55th]

"And a Special Prosecutor has wide discretion to follow whereever the investigation leads."

And today with Comey claiming Lynch put pressure on him regarding the Clinton investigation, gives Mueller the fuel to take it further. If he doesn't follow up on Comey's allegations, then we know he's not doing his job. If anything, Comey should be charged with not reporting a known attempt at obstructing a Federal investigation.

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[Blue Highway]

Shouldn’t this open up an investigation on Loretta Lynch and James Comey now? Will Sessions do this now?

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Yes is should. But I’m not holding my breath.

[NetAddicted]

Haven’t read the comments, yet, but mess is a Southern term, and Lynch is from North Carolina.

[t4texas]

Another somewhat obscure point is that the information collected by means of FISA warrants may very well be thrown out as inadmissible. This will automatically require judicial review of how and why surveillance occurred, names were unmasked and proper procedures followed. Catch 22?

[monkeyshine]

That is interesting. I don’t know how the FISA courts fit inside the general hierarchy of our legal system. Presumably the right to appeal exists but to which court?

Catch-22 is the name of their game. Once they appoint a special prosecutor someone goes down. But often it has nothing to do with what the investigation was pursuing. Invariably someone gets called to give testimony and they lie about something trivial or inconsequential or unrelated. I’m no fan of Bill Clinton but his case is the perfect example. Ken Starr was appointed Special Prosecutor to investigate Whitewater. But these SPs will follow every lead they get. In the end Starr couldn’t build a case on Whitewater but caught BC in a lie about sex.

People lie about things that will embarrass them, or others, or to hide something unrelated to the primary reason for the investigation. And then they are charged with perjury. I gotta admit I am troubled at this. BC lied, but he lied about something that is not illegal. And it would never have come out had there been no investigation of Whitewater. So these SPs end up creating if not the exact definition of a catch-22 something akin to it. A person will be charged for lying about something that is not a crime and would never have been asked about it because it is not a crime if not for the broad discretion the SP has to pursue any lead. I am troubled by this as a matter of law, as a Constitutional matter.

Back to the FISA issue, though a slightly sideways thought, I am not a fan of the Patriot Act nor how the NSA and other agencies can spy on anyone surreptitiously. Of course if the NSA is capturing data on a US citizen without a FISA warrant they cannot introduce the evidence but that is totally besides the point. Once the NSA has the evidence of an ongoing criminal enterprise it is fairly easy for them to lead law enforcement towards the criminal act which they will then set up surveillance and gather the evidence after the fact. The guy who led the Silk Road website is assumed to have been trapped in this manner. This would be a violation of 4th Amendment but the provenance of the information is never revealed and the suspect can never challenge the case against him on 4th amendment grounds.

[okie 54]

Lynch and Comey both were just doing what their leader 0bummer told them to do

[KC Burke]

Somehow, Comey as the fired past head of the F.B.M. sounds more realistic.

[t4texas]

Ergo! I believe FISA’s purview is primarily to aid in identifying misdeeds by means of the intelligence gathering function itself and litigation arising from such activities are brought in the normal channels at the federal level. To this end, the abusive use of FISA powers, e.g., rampant surveillance of private citizens and unmasking of same for political purposes would be such an instance (or “matter” in the parlance of Loretta Lynch.) Violations of this sort would be heard in the federal district court where the deeds were perpetrated. FISA has already been very critical of the Obama administration’s use of this tool which likely the limit of what that particular body can do in such an instance.