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FBI Probe Caused Lynch-Comey Rift


Proud Tiger

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Interesting reading. More details of the FBI activities during the past election. For sure a tangled web of politics was going on in Washington. The NYT article is long but well worth reading to anyone interested in what was going on.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/23/clinton-email-probe-reportedly-caused-rift-between-comey-lynch.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html?_r=0

 

 

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The Fox piece was cursory, the NYT piece much better.  This part of the latter sums up the bottom line:

 

"Back in July, he told Congress that the Clinton investigation was closed. What was his obligation, he asked, to acknowledge that this was no longer true?

It was a perilous idea. It would push the F.B.I. back into the political arena, weeks after refusing to confirm the active investigation of the Trump campaign and declining to accuse Russia of hacking.

The question consumed hours of conference calls and meetings. Agents felt they had two options: Tell Congress about the search, which everyone acknowledged would create a political furor, or keep it quiet, which followed policy and tradition but carried its own risk, especially if the F.B.I. found new evidence in the emails.

“In my mind at the time, Clinton is likely to win,” Mr. Steinbach said. “It’s pretty apparent. So what happens after the election, in November or December? How do we say to the American public: ‘Hey, we found some things that might be problematic. But we didn’t tell you about it before you voted’? The damage to our organization would have been irreparable.”

Conservative news outlets had already branded Mr. Comey a Clinton toady. That same week, the cover of National Review featured a story on “James Comey’s Dereliction,” and a cartoon of a hapless Mr. Comey shrugging as Mrs. Clinton smashed her laptop with a sledgehammer.

Congressional Republicans were preparing for years of hearings during a Clinton presidency. If Mr. Comey became the subject of those hearings, F.B.I. officials feared, it would hobble the agency and harm its reputation. “I don’t think the organization would have survived that,” Mr. Steinbach said......

(edit)

......."Either Ms. Lynch or Ms. Yates could have ordered Mr. Comey not to send the letter, but their aides argued against it. If Ms. Lynch issued the order and Mr. Comey obeyed, she risked the same fate that Mr. Comey feared: accusations of political interference and favoritism by a Democratic attorney general.

If Mr. Comey disregarded her order and sent the letter — a real possibility, her aides thought — it would be an act of insubordination that would force her to consider firing him, aggravating the situation.

So the debate ended at the staff level, with the Justice Department imploring the F.B.I. to follow protocol and stay out of the campaign’s final days. Ms. Lynch never called Mr. Comey herself.

The next morning, Friday, Oct. 28, Mr. Comey wrote to Congress, “In connection with an unrelated case, the F.B.I. has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”.........

 

So if everyone has just stuck to their existing protocols and policies of not discussing investigations in progress, it would have eventually sorted itself out - even if that meant months or years of Republican investigations followed by indictment (of Clinton).

Instead, everyone - particularly Comey, but apparently including Lynch when she failed to ask Comey not to send the letter  - seemed more afraid of their personal political fallout based on what might happen even though that was unknown. So the result was Comey likely put Trump in the white house with his decision to send the "Clinton letter".

I wonder if that bothers Comey or if he is just too partisan to care?

 

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