Multiple times in Wednesday’s hearing, James Comey has defended issuing a letter to the Senate less than two weeks before the election to notify them that additional information had appeared concerning Hillary Clinton’s email issue. But his reason for issuing the letter has a fatal flaw—one that contradicts Comey’s own testimony.
As Comey presents it:
- Agents involved in the Anthony Weiner investigation came to Comey and notified him that there was evidence of email on Weiner’s laptop which was “potentially relevant” to the Clinton investigation.
- Though the agents did not have a search warrant and had not looked at the emails, they had examined metadata (how this was done is unstated) that indicated emails sourced from Hillary Clinton’s accounts.
- The agents indicated that there were thousands of such emails. Comey later gave a number of 40,000, though it was unclear if this was all email on the device or only those related to Clinton’s account.
- The agents wanted a search warrant in order to examine the emails directly.
With that situation, it’s what Comey did next that was critical: He asked the agents if the emails could be examined for relevance before the election. Comey claims that the response from the agents was that there was “no way, no way” that the examination could be completed in the 11 days remaining.
Faced with this information, and after some consultation with his staff, Comey issued a letter to Congress to inform them of a change in the status of the case—a letter which Comey admits he knew would be leaked immediately—in advance of examining the emails. Comey paints this as a conflict between “speaking and concealing.” However, that conflict only exists if the intent of the investigation is to affect the election.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2p9qUad
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment