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Saturday, October 29, 2016

Clinton Campaign’s First Instinct Was to Lie About Comey

(John Hinderaker)

FBI Director James Comey wrote Congress to say that his prior testimony, to the effect that the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was concluded, was no longer accurate due to the discovery of a new batch of relevant emails. The Clinton campaign predictably reacted with outrage. Was that a good faith response, or just political posturing?

I find it revealing that when the Clinton campaign launched its attack on Comey, it led off with a lie. In her press conference last night, Hillary Clinton accused Comey of partisanship, falsely claiming that he had sent his letter only to Congressional Republicans. In fact, Comey followed the standard protocol, addressing his letter to the chairmen of the relevant committees and sending copies to the ranking minority members of each committee:

Letter-3 by John Hinderaker on Scribd

Hillary corrected her false claim that Comey had only sent the letter to Republicans: 

At her press conference, Clinton wrongly said that the FBI director had only sent his letter to Republicans on the Hill. A Clinton campaign official later said she misspoke. That impression, the official said, was based on the first page of the letter, which listed the names of Republican chairs of committees, while the Democratic ranking members’ names weren’t listed until the second page.

Right: Hillary is too dumb to turn the page. And after 30 years as a federal office-holder or hanger-on, she is unaware of the standard manner of addressing correspondence to Congressional committees.

But that’s not all: Hillary’s campaign manager, John Podesta, echoed Hillary’s smear:

“FBI Director Comey should immediately provide the American public more information than is contained in the letter he sent to eight Republican committee chairmen,” Podesta said in a statement.

Note that this was a written statement, not an off the cuff characterization at a press conference. So the campaign’s lie–Comey is a partisan, he only communicated with Republicans!–was deliberate. That being the case, it is hard to take the Democrats’ indignation seriously.

  

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