----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2016 18:32:48 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic@linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [skeptic] Fw: Re: Check out WikiLeaks Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com): [Snip conspiracy-minded material from one George Armstrong]
This reply by George Armstrong makes several assumptions about the e-mail server(s) used by Hillary Clinton. I can't follow the history at all. Perhaps Rick Moen and others can inform us of what may have happened in this chain of events.
I don't follow the loose talk about this stuff very closely, but perhaps I'm qualified to comment because I own/operate an e-mail server. ;-> Some law enforcement agency, perhaps NYPD, is claimed at some point in the recent past to have executed a search warrant on home computers owned by ex-Representative Anthony Weiner and his estranged, now-separated wife Huma Abedin. Huma Abedin is now Secretary Clinton's top aide. The actual investigation appears to be over claims that Weiner e-mailed lewd photographs to a 15-year-old girl. The only thing otherwise that's recently happened is that FBI Director James Comey, who is coincidentally a longtime Republican Party member, sent an extremely vague single-page letter to Congress on Oct. 28 that caused all sorts of uproar. It said that new emails had surfaced in a case unrelated to the closed investigation into whether Hillary Clinton or her aides had mishandled classified information, and that the messages “appear to be pertinent to the investigation”, but that "the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant". You can read that here, but it really doesn't say anything more specific: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html Speculation is that he's referring to some e-mail or e-mails from someone to someone else about something that (as it turned out later) was found on one-time couple Weiner and Abedin's laptop computer, but neither Comey nor anyone else is saying anything else at all, and it's quite possible that Director Comey doesn't even know those things. Anyway, Federal agents have been going through what are said to be a fairly incredibly large number of e-mail on Weiner and Abedin's laptop computer -- I saw "650,000 emails" mentioned in a _Wall Street Journal_ story -- and that thousands of out of those hundreds of thousands might have been to of from the Clinton private e-mail server during the period when Secretary Clinton was Secretary of State during the first Obama administration, which might have been work-related for Clinton or of course not. There's a prediction that figuring out what if anything is of interest to the FBI in that avalanche of e-mail will occupy many weeks, but the point is that there's no indication that Secretary Clinton is the focus of any investigation in this matter at all. It is entirely against all norms for FBI to make comment on investigations, especially if it might raise waves right before an election, and Comey has gotten strong criticism from predecessors and pretty much everyone else for doing so, some of that criticism kindly on the order of "Jim Comey's a good guy but he really made a bad mistake here" and some a lot less so. Standard procedure is for FBI to investigate wherever the leads seem to indicate, using warrants and other legal means, and eventually those either produce indictments or don't. When FBI is doing its job, people they're looking into don't know that they're under investigation until long after the fact when they've been either indicted or not. Separately from that, Russian computer criminals furnished WikiLeaks with a dump of e-mails to/from Democratic campaign manager John Podesta after he was tricked into clicking a "phishing" e-mail in his GMail account, giving the criminals access to all mail he'd sent or received, and a bunch of those were internal campaign communication for the Clinton campaign. For the Secretary of State to operate a separate private e-mail server and send/receive work e-mails there is against department policy but _not_ criminal behaviour, i.e., not a violation of law. Which is how it's been done many times in the past, e.g., by Colin Powell and others. And separately from -that-, there's been a whole lot of loose blather accusing Secretary Clinton of destruction of evidence or various alleged crimes for operating a family e-mail server at all on which sometimes mails related to her job arrived or originated, none of it really amounting to anything. See this column by conservative legal scholar Eugene Volokh, for context: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/08/26/no-hilla... And Benghazi blah blah blah blah blah. I might have missed what the question was. ;-> _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic@linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick@linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2016 20:27:08 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic@linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [skeptic] Fw: Re: Check out WikiLeaks Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Because I'm occasionally a bit of a masochist, I've been teasing my Trump-supporting friend Ruben Safir of Brooklyn. Since some of what I replied to him in the latest of a long series of exchanges is probably relevant to Terry's query, I reproduce that below. Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2016 11:54:50 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: hangout@nylxs.com Subject: Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Meanwhile, in the land of 'Who, me?' Hey, look whose killfile doesn't work! Maybe you've decided you'd like a lifeline back from CloudCuckooLand to conventional reality? Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn@panix.com): [...]
Meanwhile, this is not the role of the Secretary of State so either it is lost upon you, which I doubt because your a very smart man, that she is under criminal investigation....
This is not clearly the case, at all. FBI is attempting to determine whether unstated persons might have committed unstated crimes. Certainly Clinton _might_ be the focus of FBI's current interest. But nobody outside the alt-right, white-power Trumpista crowd has said so, and certainly the FBI hasn't. In the current matter (the mind-bogglingly vague Director Comey letter, dropped into the press 11 days before the election), there has been no indication whatsoever about what is being investigated, nor what was in the e-mails Comey spoke of on Anthony Weiner's computing device. It's a whole lot of non-information and innuendo. He said merely that e-mails had been found on Weiner's computer that 'could be linked to the probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails', but absolutely nothing about what on God's green earth that means, nor about what those e-mails contain or who sent what to whom. And he lamely added, "I don't know whether or not this [new] material may be significant." And then he refused to explain himself, and waltzed off in a cloud of zero public transparency (the same transparency that he claimed was his byword and objective, a few months ago during his July public appearance). There is actually no reason to believe that he even knows _what_ the mysterious e-mails say -- judging by his comprehensive talking around that point. It is inherent in FBI 'investigations' that one often has no clear idea whether a criminal indictment will be issued by some AG at the end of the process or not, and if so against whom. You always have to wait until you see whether FBI have decided there's something to refer to the Justice Department, and if Justice Department decides to open a case. What _is_ clear is that Director Comey went (through misadventure?) rogue, ignoring long-standing guidelines that the Justice Department or the FBI not release information about investigations within 60 days of an election. And Comey's publicly a longtime Republican. What's bad about that is that this is indistinguishable from a Joe McCarthy slur in violation of the ethics of his office, and against the advice of the Justice Department, tactically timed so that the truth cannot be known until long after the innuendo's damage has occurred. I don't think it _was_ that (but rather a mistake), but it's unfortunately indistinguishable in its effects from one. Comey's basically made sure nobody will ever respect or trust him again. He'll be paying the personal cost the rest of his life, including probably losing his job shortly after the election no matter _who_ takes the Presidency. Because at best he's revealed to be a political liability, loose cannon, and clumsy hack, and at worst a hatchet-man rather than an FBI Director. This colossal professional mistake -- again, being decently charitable about it being a gaffe rather than a tactic -- provably isn't anywhere near enough to change the election outcome for the Presidency, in part because there just aren't undecideds left unless a few hermits and fishermen swept out to sea suddenly show up -- and because 22 million people have already cast early-voting and absentee ballots. But it's possible a few Senate seats might swing. I honestly do feel bad for Director Comey. Pretty much everyone has commented that this was a clear, large blunder, but I doubt he has any avenue remaining for fixing that mistake.
they are investigating her __routinely hiding government documents__ on her private email server in order to hide them from other government agencies which are assigned to oversee her in her role as a government official.
No, they haven't said what they're currently investigating. Nor whom they are currently suspecting, and what they're suspecting that person or persons of.
One is private business. The other is government business. Even you can understand they are not the same thing.
As has been repeatedly established including by the head of the FBI, this is a bad practice indulged by her and by many at the State Department, before her -- that is not illegal in itself, but against State Department guidelines having no legal force. And she stopped doing it because it was a bad idea, and admitted that it had been a mistake, period. Following which an investigation occurred concluding in no grounds for prosecution. (Which can change in the future, but that is always the case.) All of the efforts to turn that into criminal activity have so far been as laughable as the "Hilary assassinated Vince Foster" and 'Hillary assassinated Ron Brown" idiocy, and I have little expectation that the unbelievably non-specific Comey letter will do so, either. It seems obvious to me that the idea is to drum up a furious round of innuendo for nine more days, and then it'll all vanish into Breitbart / Infowars conspiracy hysteria, and no longer have big money behind promoting it. And you'll have been among the many who'll have been played for a sucker. So, you willing to bet that $100, or not? I'm willing to take your money at the end of 2017. [RM note: Safir had claimed Secretary Clinton would be 'in jail' in the near future] Oh, and by the way, you never addressed upthread questions like: So, here's a question that I figure even a voter willing to fall for the Border Wall Paid for by Mexico scam can understand: Let's say you're an Algerian ISIS terrorist looking to commit destruction inside the USA. Do you (1) apply for immigration to the USA, going through the current incarnation of 'extreme vetting', or (2) get a tourist visa? Speaking of that, the very easiest way (out of many) to see that the Border Wall Paid for by Mexico is idiotic is to remember that over half of all illegal immigrants in the USA arrived lawfully and merely stayed after their visas expired. Border walls inherently cannot address that. Mr. Trump: Thinks global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese(!). Seriously alleged in public that there is no California drought. Doesn't understand the military and intends to 'fire generals'. Thinks he understands military matters better than professional military people do (and in that as so many other things is a poster child for Dunning-Kruger effect. Has been a serial abuser of women and then lies about that. Has a cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear weapons. Would casually take steps to undermine NATO. Proposes massive deregulation to benefit the rich. Is incompetent in foreign affairs. Is incompetent in basic economics. Wants to introduce economic protectionism and thinks this won't hurt us. Has the self-control of a two-year-old. Is delusional (or worse) about immigration. Is happy to base his entire campaign on sexism, racial hatred, religious bigotry, nativism, hatred of immigrants, and conspiracy thinking. Encourages lawbreaking. Uses the rhetoric of a 1930s dictator, except dumbed down to 4th grade reading levels. Whimsically wants to discard just about every democratic norm, the First Amendment, and peaceful transfer of Executive Branch power. Wants to send reproductive freedom back to the Dark Ages. Goes into Twitter rage-spews over 1970s beauty contestants at 3-5am. Goes on Twitter attacks against bereaved Gold Star parents. The list can go on and on. One of these candidates is flawed but competent, the other would be a menace even as dogcatcher, and cannot be taken seriously. He's not the leader of anything. He's an emotionally labile buffoon. And the Comey bullshit is a fart in the wind, compared to that. _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic@linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick@linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----