Thursday, November 03, 2016

The latest Clinton Foundation crap-flap

I take it you've read this from the WSJ. Everyone's talking about it. Matthew Miller, who describes himself as a "recovering flack from DOJ," offers the perfect summary.
So FBI agents:
1. Started probe based on laughable "Clinton Cash" book.
2. Found nothing.
3. Were told to move on by FBI & DOJ.
4. Leaked!
More than that. The FBI agents are, in essence, a secret conclave of Breitbarters who derived most of their hot leads from Peter Scheizer's deceptive book Clinton Cash. For the true background of this propaganda opus, see here and here.
Schweizer has a disreputable history of reporting marked by errors and retractions, with numerous reporters excoriating him for facts that "do not check out," sources that "do not exist," and a basic failure to practice "Journalism 101."
Schweizer is also the president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), a right-wing group that purports to investigate “government corruption.” Stephen Bannon, who is taking a leave of absence from his role as chief executive of Breitbart News to serve the same role with the Trump campaign, is also the executive chairman and co-founder of GAI. The group has been heavily funded by the Mercer Family Foundation, which is run by Rebekah Mercer.
Schweizer disclosed during an August Fox News appearance that "earlier this year at [the FBI's] request," he had met with "two people from the bureau to talk about some things related to the Clinton Foundation, specifically things that were in Clinton Cash."
In other words, the book is a Breitbart op.

A number of news stories have made it clear that Rudy Giuliani has been meeting with these FBI guys; obviously, they want to see Giuliani take Comey's job as FBI head (or perhaps Attorney General). God help us all if that happens. I would not be surprised to learn that the NY FBI agents causing the trouble here have received assurances of career advancement if they help Giuliani attain his goal -- which can only happen, of course, if Trump wins.

Comey is not the enemy here. I said that in an earlier post, and was pleasantly surprised to find a writer who agrees.

3 comments:

Missy Vixen said...

Comey may not be the enemy, but he got himself into this mess when he refused to announce there was no recommendation to indict until the Clinton/Lynch tarmac meetup and threw his hissy fit of a press conference.

Alessandro Machi said...

Guiliani is insane. I mean he's literally insane. The FBI agents following him have to be among the dumbest agents out there. The FBI could clean house instantly by removing any agent who actually is in talks with Guiliani.

Michael said...

Comey may not be evil, but he's certainly incompetent -- or at least not competent enough to manage the FBI.

But while on the subject, let's not forget the incompetence of Attorney General Lynch, whose original screwups got us into this mess.

1. She let Bill Clinton board that plane.
2. Realizing her mistake, she let the decider be the FBI instead of one of her deputy AGs.
3. Instead of just going with the FBI's rec and announcing the decision herself, she put Comey in a tricky position he was unable to cope with.
4. Instead of just announcing the decision, Comey weighed in with his personal opinion of Clinton's carelessness -- an absolute no-no. If they aren't being charged, say so and NOTHING MORE.

All of that incompetence before we even get to the subject of the Ny office. There's a lot of blame to go around.

But I'm not convinced that Comey's hands are actually clean. Everybody assumes he did this because he was in fear of the leaks coming out of his NY office. I'm not so sure he wasn't in cahoots with that office. Apparently Comey has been involved in Clinton investigations before. Also, wasn't he involved in the Marc Rich case? Does he harbor some Clinton hate over that pardon?