I think Clinton knows this election is now a long-shot and Comey gave her the
Coup de grâce.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of joe harcz Comcast
Sent: Thursday, November 3, 2016 4:58 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Is Reckless Comey Seeking Revenge on Critics via
FBI Twitter Account?
I remember the cointelpro days and was indeed one of countless thousands hit by
it including many on this list. I also remember the Church Committee and the
nominal reforms. I agree with this post as things are getting dangerous once
again.
----- Original Message -----
From: "S. Kashdan" <skashdan@xxxxxxx>
To: "Blind Democracy List" <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2016 10:47 AM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Is Reckless Comey Seeking Revenge on Critics via FBI
Twitter Account?
Is Reckless Comey Seeking Revenge on Critics via FBI Twitter Account?
By Adele M. Stan [1]
AlterNet [2], November 1, 2016
http://www.alternet.org/print/election-2016/reckless-comey-seeking-rev
enge-critics-fbi-twitter-account
Something very dangerous is happening in the Federal Bureau of
Investigation: The nation's foremost law enforcement agency appears to
be at war both within itself and with the Department of Justice, of
which it is a part. The disagreements all involve our national
politics, and the FBI's appropriate role in them, leaving the American
people with yet another major institution on their do-not-trust list.
The government is coming ever more undone.
The chaos at the FBI and in the Justice Department burst into public
view on Friday, October 28, 11 days before the 2016 presidential
election is scheduled to take place. That's when FBI Director James
Comey issued--against the wishes of DoJ officials and counter to
department guidelines--his now-infamous letter informing the chairmen
of eight congressional committees that agents investigating a possible
sex crime by former congressman Anthony Weiner had found emails on his
computer--to and from his estranged wife Huma Abedin--that may be
pertinent to the bureau's investigation of Democratic presidential
nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her
tenure as secretary of state. (Then, as she is now, Abedin was a
Clinton aide.) He hadn't seen the emails, he said, and didn't know
what was in them, leaving a lot of people scratching their heads and
wondering if he just wasn't trying to sway the election.
In the meantime, as noted in a letter to Comey from Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid, the FBI was investigating links [3] between the
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the government of
Russia. There again, it may well be that the FBI hasn't uncovered any
actionable information, but its director has not seen fit to write a
letter to Congress in order to inform committee chairs that it has
discovered a server used by the Trump Organization, possibly to
conduct [4] traffic between itself and the Alfa Bank of Russia.
According to news reports, the Bureau has also investigated [5] the
Trump Organization's use of the server, but doesn't know what's been
transmitted on it. Kind of like Anthony Weiner's laptop, except that
it involves a foreign government that is also believed by leaders of
U.S. intelligence agencies to be behind the hacks of the emails of the
Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee and the chairman of the Hillary Clinton for President
campaign. (The Intercept published an article Tuesday claiming to
debunk the theory [6] of the "Trump server"
communicating with Alfa Bank.)
So it seems that, from a law enforcement perspective, the FBI behaved
properly in not sending word to Congress about the server, or any
as-of-yet unproven links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
But that same standard was not applied in the case of the Weiner
laptop.
It's been reported that Comey was feeling pressure not just from
Republicans who are furious with him for not indicting Clinton for her
use of her private server for the conduct of government business, but
also from his own agents. And it would seem that Comey feels stung by
the criticism he's taking from Democrats regarding the letter he sent
to Congress on Friday.
Now comes word, via Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal [7],
that agents who were investigating allegations of influence-peddling
involving the Clinton Foundation were incensed when higher-ups at the
Justice Department urged them to tread carefully so as to adhere to
department guidelines against taking action that could influence an
election, and that members of the Department's anti-corruption unit
didn't think the FBI had a strong case.
It seems as if whoever controls a Bureau Twitter account called
@FBIRecordsVault [8] has struck back against all those Clinton
surrogates who are calling foul on Comey. The account, whose purpose
is the posting of documents released through Freedom of Information
Act requests, appears to have been dead for a year--no postings since
October 7, 2015. Suddenly, on Tuesday, it sprang to life with a
handful of posts, one a nothing-burger on Fred Trump, father of the
Republican standard-bearer, and another on an old investigation of the
Clinton Foundation [9] and President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc
Rich, then a fugitive hedge-fund manager whose wife had donated to the
DNC and the Clinton Foundation. It was Comey who brought the criminal
case against Rich, Bloomberg News reports [9], and is said to have
been "stunned" by Clinton's pardon of the financier. The documents
linked to in the tweet don't say much of anything, but the tweet
itself does reinforce in the public mind the controversies advanced by
Clinton's enemies about the foundation. It's not the fact of the tweet
that's at issue--the material was released via FOIA--but the timing of
it from an account that was only reactivated on Sunday.
Over the years, leaders and members of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation have given the American people many reasons from which
to draw the conclusion that, in matters involving the American
political landscape and the people who inhabit it, the Bureau cannot be
trusted.
Among them, of course, are the FBI's attempts to undermine Rev. Martin
Luther King at the height of the civil rights movement, and the
bureau's infiltration of civil rights and anti-war groups in the 1960s
through its COINTELPRO [10] operation, and a similar operation that
targeted the American Indian Movement.
In subsequent years, the Bureau was seen as more or less chastened and
rehabilitated, thanks to the 1976 Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the
United States Senate, popularly known as the Church Committee (named
for its chairman, Sen. Frank Church of Idaho).
Now we have entered a new era, one in which the director of the FBI is
acting so recklessly as to harm the very process of democracy--either
that, or he's lost control of the agents he's supposed to be leading.
Either way, he's made a choice to let chaos reign in the closing days
of a presidential campaign.
Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's senior Washington editor, and a weekly
columnist for The American Prospect. Follow her on Twitter @addiestan
[11].
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Seeking Revenge on Critics via FBI Twitter Account? [12]
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/reckless-comey-seeking-revenge-c
ritics-fbi-twitter-account
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/adele-m-stan
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-
alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump
[4]
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/wa
s_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_rus
sia.html
[5]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-dona
ld-trump.html?_r=0
[6]
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/01/heres-the-problem-with-the-story-c
onnecting-russia-to-donald-trumps-email-server/
[7]
http://www.wsj.com/articles/laptop-may-include-thousands-of-emails-lin
ked-to-hillary-clintons-private-server-1477854957
[8] https://twitter.com/FBIRecordsVault
[9]
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-01/fbi-surprises-wi
th-files-on-bill-clinton-01-pardon-of-marc-rich
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
[11] http://www.twitter.com/addiestan
[12] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Su
