As I Always Suspected - Obama Pressured Comey, Comey Buckled , A Revolt Was Threatened and Here We Are!

What motivated Comey, in my un-informed opinion, it was a threatened revolt within The FBI.
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I listen to Trump's speeches and much of what he says I agree with but my problem is the puerile way in which he delivers what he as to say. Adlai Stevenson gave some memorable speeches, Kennedy had some soaring lines, Reagan's delivery was fabulous and his speeches were good, even great. Even GW made some excellent speeches but his Texas twang made them less exciting.

Trump does not measure up to any of these and when he ad libs he really loses me. Still voted for him over pant lady.

All I can say is that I would not like to be Huma.  She has dumped her creepy husband and probably is on the verge of being thrown under the bus herself. So much for being a woman close to Hillary when it comes down to 'for whom the bell tolls!'

Even I don't have 650,000 e Mails to my credit. (See 1, 1a, 1b and 1c below.)

Bernie may have been fed up about those "damn e-Mails" and Hillary agreed but The FBI Agents were interested and forced Comey's hand.
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Good riddance! (See 2 below.)
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Now let's hear it for Frank Feldman:

A man walks out to the street and catches a taxi just going by. He gets into the taxi, and the cabbie says,

"Perfect timing. You’re just like Frank." 

Passenger: Who?" 

Cabbie: "Frank Feldman. He’s a guy who did everything right all the time. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank Feldman every single time."  

Passenger: "There are always a few clouds over everybody." 

Cabbie: "Not Frank Feldman. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand-Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone and danced like a Broadway star and you should have heard him play the piano. He was an amazing guy." 

Passenger: "Sounds like he was really something special."

Cabbie: "There’s more. He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody’s birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order and which fork to eat them with. He could fix anything. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Feldman could do everything right." 

 Passenger: "Wow, what a guy!" 

 Cabbie: ‘He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams.Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank,he never made a mistake, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never answer her back even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too. He was the perfect man! He never made a mistake. No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman." 

 Passenger: "How did you meet him?" 

 Cabbie: “I never actually met Frank. He died and I married his wife.
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Kim arrives tomorrow and she e Mailed she has a ton of things to do the minute she arrives because of Comey etc. but tonight she devotes her Mommy time to her three fabulous kids as they Trick or Treat and she promised me they would not be dressed in a manner that would offend.
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Dick
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1)FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe

Laptop may contain thousands of messages sent to or from Mrs. Clinton’s private server

By Devlin Barrett

The surprise disclosure that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are taking a new look at Hillary Clinton’s email use lays bare, just days before the election, tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.

Investigators found 650,000 emails on a laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, and underlying metadata suggests thousands of those messages could have been sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.

It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the FBI; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.

Officials had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails—which they received over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter—because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.

The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.

The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a teenage minor, they had recovered a laptop. Many of the 650,000 emails on the computer, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.

1a) Joe DiGenova: FBI agents refused orders to destroy laptops and they still exist

By Thomas Lifson

Joseph DiGenova, a former US Attorney and Washington, DC superlawyer is no flake. He has plenty of contacts within the FBI and a reputation to protect. So I take his words on Sirius/XM’s David Webb show quite seriously, as reported by Kerry Picket of the Daily Caller:

Washington D.C. attorney Joe DiGenova said on The David Webb Show on SiriusXM Friday night that despite the FBI agreeing to destroy the laptops of Clinton aide Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson as part of immunity deals made during the initial investigation of Clinton’s email server, agents involved in the case refused to destroy the laptops.
“According to the agreement reached with the attorneys who handed over their laptops, the laptops were to be destroyed per the agreement after the testimony was given –the interviews were given – – by the attorneys. The bureau and the department agreed to that,” DiGenova said. “However the laptops contrary to published reports were not destroyed and the reason is the agents who are tasked with destroying them refused to do so. And by the way the laptops are at the FBI for inspection by Congress or federal courts.”
DiGenova said the laptops have already been subpoenaed and the FBI is waiting for Congress to ask for them.

If this is true, it indicates that a serious rebellion was underway in the FBI, with agents refusing a direct order.  Although I am no lawyer, I suppose they might have regarded the order as illegitimate, part of a conspiracy to destroy evidence. It is possible that Comey knew of this rebellion, and that this knowledge shaped his decision to write to Congressional leaders on the resumption of the investigation.

Now that DiGenova has gone public, how long until the laptops are subpoenaed?

Update. Clarice Feldman has a theory as to how this information came to Joe DiGenova. She labels it speculation:

How would Joe know? The agents have a nondisclosure  agreement BUT Joe's a lawyer bound to preserve the confidences of his client so they could hire him, tell him, and no one could compel him to disclose his source.

Update: Lee Cary sends this video with former FBO ssistant Director Tom Fuentes reminding us that there are three FBI investigations underway related to Hillary: Weiner sexting to a minor, Hillary's email security, and Cinton Foundation fraud. A trifecta!

1b) FBI Gets Warrant to See Huma-Weiner Emails

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Federal investigators have secured a warrant to examine newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton's private server, U.S. media reported on Sunday, as a prominent Democrat accused FBI Director James Comey of breaking the law by trying to influence the election.

The warrant will allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to examine the emails to see if they are relevant to its probe of the private email server used for government work by Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

FBI officials were unavailable for comment on the status of their investigation. Reuters could not independently confirm that the search warrant had been issued.

Comey came under heavy pressure from Democrats on Sunday to quickly provide details of the emails, as Clinton allies worried the prolonged controversy could extend beyond the Nov. 8 election and cast a shadow over a Clinton transition if she wins the White House.

Comey's disclosure of the email discovery in a letter to Congress on Friday plunged the final days of the White House race between Clinton and Republican Donald Trump into turmoil. Clinton had opened a recent lead over Trump in national polls, but it had been narrowing even before the email controversy resurfaced.

U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Comey on Sunday suggesting he violated the Hatch Act, which bars the use of a federal government position to influence an election.

"Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law," Reid, a senator from Nevada, said in the letter to Comey.

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook questioned Comey's decision to send a letter notifying Congress of the email review before he even knew whether they were significant or relevant.

Comey's letter was "long on innuendo, short on facts," Podesta said on CNN's "State of the Union" program, and accused the FBI chief of breaking precedent by disclosing aspects of an investigation so close to the election.

"We are calling on Mr. Comey to come forward and explain what's at issue here," Podesta said, adding the significance of the emails was unclear.

"He might have taken the first step of actually having looked at them before he did this in the middle of a presidential campaign, so close to the voting," Podesta said.

Comey's letter was sent over the objections of Justice Department officials. But those officials did not try to stop the FBI from getting the warrant, a source familiar with the decision said, because they are interested in the FBI moving quickly on the probe.

Sources close to the investigation have said the latest emails were discovered as part of a separate probe of former Democratic U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Weiner is the target of an FBI investigation into illicit text messages he is alleged to have sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.

Sources familiar with the matter said FBI agents working on the Weiner investigation saw material on a laptop belonging to Weiner that led them to believe it might be relevant to the investigation of Clinton's email practices.

Trump has highlighted the issue as proof for his argument that Clinton is corrupt and untrustworthy.

"We have one ultimate check on Hillary's corruption and that is the power of the vote," Trump told a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday. "The only way to beat the corruption is to show up and vote by the tens of millions."

Comey, who announced in July that the FBI's long investigation of Clinton's emails during her time as secretary of state was ending without any charges, said in his letter the agency would review the newly surfaced emails to determine their relevance to the investigation of her handling of classified information.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Sunday showed Clinton with a statistically insignificant 1-point national lead on Trump. About a third of likely voters in the poll said they were less likely to back Clinton given Comey's disclosure.

Clinton, who told a Florida rally on Saturday that Comey's letter was "deeply troubling," did not address the issue directly on Sunday but referred vaguely to voters overcoming a "distraction."

"There's a lot of noise and distraction but it really comes down to the kind of future we want and who can get us there," she told a packed gay nightclub in Wilton Manors, Florida, where hundreds of supporters who could not get in lined the streets outside.

"We don't want a president who would appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn marriage equality," she said.


1c)

The FBI Director’s Unworthy Choice

Comey acceded to the apparent wish of Obama that no charges be brought against Clinton.

By Michael B. Mukasey

We need not worry unduly about the factual void at the center of the FBI director’s announcement on Friday that the bureau had found emails—perhaps thousands—“pertinent” in some unspecified way to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails while she was secretary of state.

True, we don’t know what is actually in the emails of Huma Abedin, Mrs. Clinton’s close aide, but we can nonetheless draw some conclusions about how FBI Director James Comey came to issue his Delphic notice to Congress, and what the near-term future course of this investigation will be. Regrettably, those conclusions do no credit to him, or to the leadership of the Justice Department, of which the FBI is a part.

Friday’s announcement had a history. Recall that Mr. Comey’s authority extends only to supervising the gathering of facts to be presented to Justice Department lawyers for their confidential determination of whether those facts justify a federal prosecution.

Nonetheless, in July he announced that “no reasonable prosecutor” would seek to charge her with a crime, although Mrs. Clinton had classified information on a private nonsecure server—at least a misdemeanor under one statute; and although she was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information such that it was exposed to hacking by hostile foreign nations—a felony under another statute; and apparently had caused the destruction of emails—a felony under two other statutes. He then told Congress repeatedly that the investigation into her handling of emails was closed.

Those decisions were not his to make, nor were the reasons he offered for making them at all tenable: that prosecutions for anything but mishandling large amounts of classified information, accompanied by false statements to investigators, were unprecedented; and that criminal prosecutions for gross negligence were constitutionally suspect.

Members of the military have been imprisoned and dishonorably discharged for mishandling far less information, and prosecutions for criminal negligence are commonplace and entirely permissible. Yet the attorney general, whose decisions they were, and who had available to her enough legal voltage to vaporize Mr. Comey’s flimsy reasons for inaction, told Congress she would simply defer to the director.

That July announcement of Mr. Comey, and that testimony by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, also had a history.

When the FBI learned that two of the secretary’s staff members had classified information on their computers, rather than being handed grand-jury subpoenas demanding the surrender of those computers, the staff members received immunity in return for giving them up. In addition, they successfully insisted that the computers not be searched for any data following the date when Congress subpoenaed information relating to its own investigation, and that the computers be physically destroyed after relevant data within the stipulated period was extracted.

The technician who destroyed 30,000 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails after Congress directed that they be preserved lied to investigators even after receiving immunity. He then testified that Clinton aides requested before service of the subpoena that he destroy them, and that he destroyed them afterward on his own initiative.

Why would an FBI director, who at one time was an able and aggressive prosecutor, agree to such terms or accept such a fantastic story?

The search for clues brings us to an email to then-Secretary Clinton from President Obama, writing under a pseudonym, that the FBI showed to Ms. Abedin. That email, along with 21 others that passed between the president and Secretary Clinton, has been withheld by the administration from release on confidentiality grounds not specified but that could only be executive privilege.

After disclosure of those emails, the president said during an interview that he thought Mrs. Clinton should not be criminally charged because there was no evidence that she had intended to harm the nation’s security—a showing required under none of the relevant statutes. As indefensible as his legal reasoning may have been, his practical reasoning is apparent: If Mrs. Clinton was at criminal risk for communicating on her non-secure system, so was he.

That presented the FBI director with a dilemma that was difficult, but not complex. It offered two choices. He could have tried to proceed along the course marked by the relevant laws. The FBI is powerless to present evidence to a grand jury, or to issue grand-jury subpoenas. That authority lies with the Justice Department, headed by an attorney general who serves, as her certificate of appointment recites, “during the pleasure of the President of the United States for the time being.”

However, the director could have urged the attorney general to allow the use of a grand jury. Grand juries sit continuously in all the districts where an investigation would have been conducted, and no grand jury need have been convened to deal with this case in particular. If she refused, he could have gone public with his request, and threatened to resign if it was not followed. If she had agreed, he would have been in the happy position last week of having discovered yet further evidence that could be offered in support of pending charges. If she had refused, he could have resigned.

There is precedent within the Justice Department for that course. During what came to be known as the Saturday night massacre in 1973, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned rather than follow President Nixon’s order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Indeed, on his own telling, Mr. Comey threatened to resign as Deputy Attorney General unless the George W. Bush administration changed its electronic-surveillance program, although the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court later approved the feature to which he had objected.

Instead, Mr. Comey acceded to the apparent wish of President Obama that no charges be brought. There is precedent for that too—older and less honorable. It goes back to the 12th century when Henry II asked, “who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” The king’s eager subordinates duly proceeded to murder Archbishop Thomas Becket at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral. That choice—to follow the sovereign’s wish—left Mr. Comey facing only further dishonor if he did not disclose the newly discovered emails and they leaked after the election.

And what of the future? Mr. Comey reportedly wrote his letter to Congress over the objection of the attorney general and her deputy. Thus, regardless of what is in the newly discovered emails, the current Justice Department will not permit a grand jury to hear evidence in this case. And because only a grand jury can constitutionally bring charges, that means no charges will be brought.

Which is to say, we know enough to conclude that what we don’t know is of little immediate relevance to our current dismal situation.

Mr. Mukasey served as U.S. attorney general (2007-09) and as a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York (1988-2006).

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2) Sayonara, Harry Reid

The retiring Democrat did lasting damage to the Senate by making it sharply partisan.

ENLARGE

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid in Washington D.C., Sept. 27. PHOTO: CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/NEWSCOM VIA ZUMA PRESS

By 

FRED BARNES

Harry Reid, who has led Senate Democrats since 2005, is shrewd, temperamental and highly partisan. But as the 76-year-old Nevadan nears his retirement after next month’s elections, he has grown sentimental. Mr. Reid wants to leave the Senate in Democratic hands. “To cap his career,” the Washington Post’s Ben Terris wrote in a September retrospective, “Reid wants to leave the Senate better than he found it.”

Democrats have at least an even chance of making Mr. Reid’s first wish come true. Republicans hold a 54-vote majority in the upper chamber, and on Nov. 8 they could lose as many as seven seats. But as for leaving the Senate better than Mr. Reid found it when he arrived in 1987? There’s little chance of that—and he has only himself to blame.

Mr. Reid’s leadership changed the Senate dramatically but often carelessly. The upper chamber had traditionally been collegial, high-minded, cautious. During Mr. Reid’s tenure as majority leader from 2007 to 2015, it became more like the House. There was less time for serious floor debates and amendments. Decorum suffered. So did bipartisanship.

The Nevadan’s contempt for his political foes didn’t help. Mr. Reid pursued personal vendettas from the Senate floor. He relentlessly attacked the conservative Koch brothers as if they were a threat to America’s survival. Though he was demoted to minority leader after Republicans took the Senate in 2015, Mr. Reid hasn’t given up these attacks. In September, he went after Joe Heck, the Nevada congressman running for the seat that Mr. Reid is vacating. The minority leader, speaking on the Senate floor, said that the Kochs had “anointed” Mr. Heck. “He is their puppet. He is their puppet. He is their puppet.”

His nastiest attack came in 2012, when he claimed—as usual from the Senate floor—thatMitt Romney hadn’t paid federal income taxes for a decade. No evidence was offered. When it turned out that Mr. Romney had paid income taxes, Mr. Reid refused to apologize. “It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done,” he told the Washington Post.

To get his way, Mr. Reid was willing to go to extremes. In 2013, wanting to stack the appeals court in Washington, D.C., he pushed through the “nuclear option.” Mr. Reid altered Senate rules to bar filibusters on most judicial nominations, allowing approval with only a simple majority. That change didn’t apply to Supreme Court nominees, but Mr. Reid says he has laid the groundwork to kill the 60-vote requirement for them, too. If Republicans “mess with the Supreme Court, it’ll be changed just like that,” he told Talking Points Memo last week.

Mr. Reid has urged Democrats to end the filibuster on legislation as well, which would significantly alter the way the Senate works. The current majority leader, RepublicanMitch McConnell, defends the filibuster. Killing it, he said in a 2011 speech, would “undermine the Senate’s unique role as a moderating influence and put a permanent end to bipartisanship.”

Not that bipartisanship concerns Mr. Reid. To pass ObamaCare he brushed aside any thought of compromising with Republicans. When the bill was being drafted in committee, he and the White House feared it would not be liberal enough. So Mr. Reid yanked it from the committee and drafted it secretly in his own office. This shortsighted decision is a major reason the health-insurance program remains unpopular to this day. Zero Republicans voted for it.

With sweeping, nationwide legislation, the longstanding practice is to seek bipartisan backing. This was achieved with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, civil-rights legislation and the interstate highway act. Bipartisanship ensured lasting popularity. “One party can’t jam legislation down the other party’s throat,” Democratic Sen. Max Baucus told the New York Times in 2013. “It leaves a bitter taste.”

It can also lead to legal wrangling. In his haste to schedule the ObamaCare vote before Christmas, the law was slapped together, leaving glitches. Ambiguous language about insurance subsidies had to be resolved by the Supreme Court, another contribution to its unpopularity.

At times, the Senate under Mr. Reid appeared dysfunctional. But that was the way he wanted it. He specialized in denying senators the ability to offer amendments to pending bills. During Mr. Reid’s final year as majority leader, he permitted roll-call votes on only 15 amendments, 10 times fewer than usual.

Although this was aimed at Republicans, it also turned Democrats into ciphers. Alaska Sen. Mark Begich had no amendments voted on in his six-year term, an embarrassing fact that the GOP used to defeat him in 2014.

Mr. Reid prevented up-or-down votes on the Keystone XL pipeline and a repeal of ObamaCare’s medical-device tax. As minority leader he backed President Obama’s recess appointments when the Senate wasn’t in recess. The Supreme Court overturned that scheme.

Mr. McConnell has sought to revive the Senate’s traditional role. Committees are important again and the chamber isn’t governed by the whims of one man. But the filibuster for judicial nominees hasn’t come back, nor has the collegiality. So some of his damage may be lasting. Is Mr. Reid leaving the Senate better than he found it? No. But at least he’s leaving.

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