Want a hint? Very well. Ponder this: The Breitbart crowd has been focused on Weiner's online activities for a long, long time. If there is one computer in the universe that the Breitbarters would want to hack into, that computer is the one. I have long believed that Weiner was, in fact, hacked.
And with that, here is my original post...
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You may already be sick of stories about the latest email pseudoscandal. But this piece in TPM deserves your attention. An "insider" who knows how such things are done reports that a review of everything on the Abedin/Weiner computer shouldn't take very long -- a matter of days at most.
Human review of thousands of documents can be time-consuming, but the FBI has software which can pinpoint whether the documents duplicate known items, and whether anything is classified or relevant to a given inquiry.
So far, everything seems to point to the scenario outlined in my preceding post on this topic: Hillary didn't like reading long documents on her Blackberry, so she had Huma send them to her own account for printing out at home. For reasons given below, it seems obvious that none of this stuff was classified -- the State Department has a separate system for classified materials. So far, reports indicate that nothing new was found on the Abedin/Weiner laptop.
According to that Politico story from last month (see link in the post below), Huma told the FBI a long time ago that she forwarded messages to her personal account in order to use her printer at home. This NYT story confirms the point.
Almost immediately, it became clear to investigators that the Weiner case might reignite the Clinton inquiry. Mr. Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, and F.B.I. agents in the earlier investigation had interviewed her and reviewed her emails looking for classified information."Automatically backed up"? Hmm. Y'know, that idea makes a lot of sense. That sort of thing has happened to me, and has probably happened to you.
On Oct. 3, F.B.I. agents seized several electronic devices from Mr. Weiner: a laptop, his iPhone and an iPad that was in large measure used by his 4-year-old son to watch cartoons, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Days later, F.B.I. agents also confiscated a Wi-Fi router that could identify any other devices that had been used, the person said.
While searching the laptop, the agents discovered the existence of tens of thousands of emails, some of them sent between Ms. Abedin and other Clinton aides, according to senior law enforcement officials. It is not clear if Ms. Abedin downloaded the emails to the laptop or if they were automatically backed up there.
I feel comfortable in presuming -- provisionally -- that this scenario is likely. If you feel the same way, then we can toss out the allegations that Huma and her husband shared the same computer.
What about the claim that Huma defied instructions to turn over to the FBI all relevant computers and devices? Did she in any way deliberately mislead investigators?
My understanding is that she was the original owner of that machine, and that she gave it to her husband. After she handed it over to him, she probably didn't give it another thought.
Think about it: He could have peeked at her email account without her knowledge, using the password stored in the browser. Millions of husbands have checked up on their wives in this fashion.
This procedure would result in Huma's email messages being stored locally on that laptop.
Obviously, this scenario reeks of hypocrisy, given Weiner's own recreational activities. Feel free to insert your own joke here; I'm too tired to come up with a witticism.
Can I prove this scenario? No. But it seems logical and common-sensical, dunnit? After all, he had given her ample grounds for divorce, and he would have been tempted to see if she was talking to friends about the big D. Both her username and password were right there on that machine.
If I am right, can we fairly say that Hillary allowed Weiner to access state secrets? No.
NO NO NO NO.
Let's say it yet again: None of the emails were from Hillary or to Hillary. As we've seen from previous releases, people in the State Department were passing around lots of internet articles and non-classified reports. Stuff like that. There was a lot of open-source stuff to read, or at least to skim. (I imagine that someone in Hillary's position has to do a lot of speed-reading.)
We have no reason to believe that any of the material forwarded to Huma's account was classified. In fact, we can safely presume the opposite. For two reasons:
1. As noted above, the FBI has had this computer since October 3.
2. As noted above, the FBI has software which can examine a document cache at lightning speed. As they say: There's an app for that.
Today is October 29. Twenty-six days is plenty of time to discover classified material. If the FBI had found anything of that sort, Comey would have said so. Conclusion: Huma was simply sending innocuous texts home for printing, and anyone who says otherwise is mountain-izing a molehill for political purposes.
Added note: I wrote the above last night. This morning I read Michael Isikoff's report that FBI agents did not yet have a warrant to review Abedin emails on the Weiner computer. Say what? How is that even possible? They've had the bloody machine since the beginning of this month!
If you have an answer to that poser, please leave a comment. Meanwhile, let's return to last night's post...
Comey's motive. Until today, my presumption was to give the Comey the benefit of the doubt, and to categorize his remarkable letter as a CYA exercise. I'm still open to that notion. But some recent news stories (like this one) now have me leaning toward the theory that he did what he did for partisan reasons. (Comey is a Republican.)
Justice officials reminded the FBI of the department’s position “that we don’t comment on an ongoing investigation. And we don’t take steps that will be viewed as influencing an election,” said one Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the high-level conversations.Speaking of partisanship: A Trump surrogate on CNN pissed me off today -- moreso than usual. Once again, he repeated the Big Lie that Clinton staffers destroyed cell phones in order to eliminate "incriminating information."
“Director Comey understood our position. He heard it from Justice leadership,” the official said. “It was conveyed to the FBI, and Comey made an independent decision to alert the Hill. He is operating independently of the Justice Department. And he knows it.”
Why do the hosts of these programs allow these propagandists to spout lies without rebuttal? Time to repeat a point made in a number of previous posts. Once more into the breach dear friends...
Anyone who knows anything about how cell phones work can tell you that information is stored on the SIM cards, all of which were accounted for. In destroying the hardware, the staffers thought that they were operating in accordance with regulation -- although, in truth, it doesn't matter if the phones were destroyed or re-purposed or used to create an avant-garde artwork. Without the SIM card, a phone is just plastic and metal.
The Trumpers have nothing left but pathetic lies and ultra-deceptive, ultra-aggressive trolling. The question is: Will the Big Lie tactic be enough to secure victory?
8 comments:
Ascended Madoka forgive me, but part of my mind wishes that Huma would get mad enough to "Bobbittize" that trouble-making SOB Weiner.
Too bad that hypothetical crime would fall under state, rather than Federal, jurisdiction--if it were Federal, Prez Hillary could just pardon her.
While I'm thinking evil thoughts, it wouldn't break my heart if Putin suddenly quit breathing, either.
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Amazing, isn't it, how quickly fear dissolves our veneers of morality and civility?
"Without the SIM card, a phone is just plastic and metal." ?? This is not true; a phone also has its own memory.
(Side note: I remember watching a news organisation, probably the BBC, make a big thing of how some "black bloc" anarchist types switched SIM cards in their phone handsets during a demonstration, supposedly so as to avoid being tracked. This is such rubbish! It is obvious that when a phone communicates with the network it gives both a number for the SIM and a number for the phone, and so if a phone containing a SIM is kept switched on, and then all of a sudden a new SIM is put into it, the tracking software knows that it's the same phone with a different SIM. So many young people are so naive! The prevalence of phone love keeps us a million miles from operating a rule of ban phones on demonstrations, and consider everyone with a phone to be a cop - with the exception perhaps of a few well-trained individuals designated as equipped to take photographs for evidential purposes precisely against the police. That's a measure of how deep in the shit we are. "Down with capitalism" except when it's Google etc. Sheesh!)
b, that's true enough. But the SIM card contains the contact information and those messages which have not been discarded -- and that's the important bit, for purposes of our present discussion. When I switched my SIM card from a damaged old phone to a functional newer one, my service continued just as before.
whatever reason the emails are there-the emails are actually there=
The FBI now has a reason to look at them
Should Comey have revealed it. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. i'm sure many have been looked at even if no warrant.
No matter what he did he would have criticism.
He did assure congress there was no more investigation.
as soon as they started vetting these emails it was going to get out
No good answers here just partisan ones
Gerry, you don't understand.
These emails were not on Hillary's server. They were neither from her or two her. They were forwarded to Huma's personal email account, which I presume was Yahoo or Gmail or something like that.
There is no reason to believe that they include any classified messages. In all likelihood, these were articles from the internet.
Under the circumstances, Comey should have kept silent, as the FBI always does if it isn't going to indict someone.
Does anyone feel sorry for the dude? Because I do. I also feel sorry for his parents
If Anon means Weiner, then hell to the no.
I don't feel sorry for Weiner or Assange.
Both of them decided to think with their little heads rather than their big heads.
I fart in their general directions. Their mothers were hamsters, and their fathers smelt of elderberries.
Selah.
Also in Isikoff's article: "A Yahoo News review of Abedin’s interview with FBI agents last April — when the Clinton email probe was in full swing — shows that the longtime Clinton aide hinted that there might be relevant material on her husband’s personal devices. But agents do not appear to have followed up on the clues." - https://yhoo.it/2eS2dKs
Huma turned over all of HER equipment, AND INFORMED THE FBI IN APRIL that there might be some on the devices where these were found.
IF THE FBI HAD FOLLOWED UP, WE WOULD HAVE KNOWN IN MAY OR JUNE WHAT WAS IN THESE EMAILS.
Comey should resign.
P.S. I, too, wondered why they couldn't use text matching software.
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