Reopening Email Investigation Stain on Clinton AND Comey

Reopening Email Investigation Stain on Clinton AND Comey

American Spectator - Friday October 28, 2016

by Wlady Pleszczynski

Anthony Weiner, a man ill-equipped to keep even his most private equipment from public exposure, possessed emails from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on his home computer.

The revelation prompted the FBI to announce Friday a reopening of its investigation into the former secretary of state sending and receiving public business on a private server. The FBI remained unaware of these electronic missives when its director recommended not to indict Clinton this summer.

“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” FBI Director James Comey wrote Congressional leaders. “I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

Comey continued that “the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant” or contain classified documents. But amateur sleuths without training at Quantico can deduce that if Andrew Breitbart could obtain a picture of the former member of Congress’s member originating from one of his digital devices, then surely the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, or just bored kids in California could easily obtain documents on the computer shared by Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin originating from the secretary of state. Like the publication of private emails from Clinton’s closest aides through WikiLeaks, the discovery of the former secretary’s emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer suggests that shielding public business on a private server left State Department less protected than its secretary.

Joe diGenova, a former U.S. attorney and independent counsel, believes the reopening of the case hurts not just Clinton but Comey.

“The stunning revelation in Comey’s letter to various Congressional committees today reveals that the Bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private, unsecured, unencrypted server in her home to conduct government business was not thorough,” diGenova told The American Spectator on Friday. “Any rudimentary probe would have required that the devices of a target/subject’s husband be seized and examined. The fact that Weiner’s devices were not seized shows a level of incompetence by Comey that should lead to his resignation.”

Comey characterizing a unilateral decision to recommend not indicting Clinton as unanimous within the bureau hurt his standing with the rank-and-file. The decision to come clean with the findings regarding the separate Anthony Weiner investigation on Friday preempts any danger of investigators fed up with their boss’s handling of the matter from leaking the findings to the press.

“Comey’s letter to the Hill was the most embarrassing moment for the Bureau since former director L. Patrick Gray burned Watergate documents in his fireplace,” diGenova judges. “Former and current agents remain bereft and view Comey as a ‘dirty cop.’ They believe that he threw the original case for political reasons and no longer has the moral authority to lead the world’s premier investigative agency.”

The director, in a damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don’t position this summer in opening up the bureau to charges of politicizing the apolitical FBI whether he recommended an indictment of not, now, less than two weeks before an election, puts himself and the bureau in a far more precarious spot.

“Now, because of his cynical use of his power originally to be a ‘hero’ he must either end the new probe quickly and be criticized for that or let it [continue] beyond the election and be criticized for that,” diGenova notes. “It is all a disaster of his own making.”

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