Loretta Lynch non-committal on Clinton email prosecution

Loretta Lynch non-committal on Clinton email prosecution

02/24/16 12:32 PM EST

Attorney General Loretta Lynch declined Wednesday to discuss how she would make a decision about whether to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over classified information found on her private email server.

However, Lynch did say the investigation and the Justice Department's review of the matter would follow the usual process and procedure for such matters.

"This will be conducted as every other case and we will review all the facts and all the evidence and come to an independent conclusion as to how to best handle it," Lynch said during a House Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday morning.

Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) told Lynch that some of his constituents wanted him to raise the issue with her because they were concerned that the probe might be tainted by politics.

"If the FBI makes the case that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information and put America's security at risk, will you prosecute the case? Do you know of any efforts underway to undermine the FBI investigation," Carter asked.

Lynch didn't say anything new about the inquiry, except to confirm that she has yet to receive any request from her staff to act one way or another on the case.

"With respect to our investigation into how information was handled by the State Department, how they handled classified information, as I'm sure you know that matter is being handled by career, independent law enforcement agents, FBI agents as well as the career, independent attorneys in the Department of Justice. They follow the evidence. They look at the law. And they'll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate," Lynch said.

Lynch said concerns about improper pressure on prosecutors or agents were unfounded, at least to her knowledge

"I'm also aware of no efforts to undermine our review or investigation into this matter at all," she said.

It's unclear what pressure Carter may have been alluding to, but after President Barack Obama commented last fall that he saw no evidence that the email situation endangered national security, some FBI agents said the president's comments were inappropriate because they appeared to predict the outcome of an ongoing investigation.

The FBI has been looking into Clinton's email set-up since last summer. The State Department has determined that more than 1,750 emails in Clinton's account are classified, including dozens at the "Secret" level and 22 at the "Top Secret" level. Clinton has disputed those classifications and insisted that none of the messages were marked as classified when they were sent.

It's unclear whether the FBI inquiry, which began as a look at a potential counterintelligence breach, is now focused on Clinton personally, her staff or others. The press has been trying to spin this as purely a political attempt to derail the Clinton campaign. The FBI director has already brought charges against 10 others who have done far less than Clinton, but they did not have the benefit of a national political campaign to use as cover for their crimes. They also did not have the benefit of a private server on which they could hide their crimes for up to two years after they left office. By the way, this tactic prevented dozens of FOIA attempts to get at these documents, because the State department would simply Say they did not have the requested documents. The State department to this very day is still withholding top secret emails that have been subpoenaed by the FBI.

Hillary Clinton has committed more than 1,750 separate violations of 15 different federal statutes, bringing her crimes to level only surpassed by Edward Snowden in quantity.

So, what will be the strategy of the Clinton campaign, if miss step-and-fetch laundry lady, Loretta Lynch, decides to delay until after the election any move toward an indictment?

There was a scenario, which looks more like a fantasy, in which Clinton was a woman’s movement, all by herself. Women in their twenties, thirties, and forties would rally to her the way black Americans rallied to Obama; she would run on her own mantle of change.

In reality, nobody is that excited about Hillary Clinton, and young voters, women and men — the foot soldiers of any Democratic Party movement — aren’t coming around. She lost a resounding 82% of voters under 30 in Nevada. She did swamp Bernie in South Carolina, but amidst the lowest, most disinterested voter turnout in decades. Her campaign now rests on the hope that voters of color dislike her less that Bernie Sanders, if nowhere near as much as they like Obama. And that means that when she faces a Republican, she will have to hope that being a woman, all by itself, will be enough to win.

“The slogan is ‘Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid,’” said Paul Begala, who is an adviser to the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA. They are threatening the end of food stamps, the end of SSI payments, and the end of abortion on demand. They forget to tell the blacks that 82% of abortions are people of color. To date, enough black people have been killed before birth to fully populate a city the size of Los Angeles three times over.

Begala’s group works on the negative side of the political ledger, and he argued that Clinton will have supporters — Sanders among them — helping to rally Democrats. But he and other top Democratic operatives agreed that 2016 will be, as the technical term for negative politics goes, “a contrast election.”

“This is headed to a more contrastive kind of election,” said David Axelrod, the architect of Obama’s 2008 campaign. “People want to know you’re going to lead with a positive vision, but within the context of that, you can set up a contrast. Every campaign has to do that, she may have to do it more intensely.”

Remember, when Obama ran for office, we had zero record to draw from. The only thing working for Obama was the perfect execution of perfectly crafted propaganda speeches that sounded awesome, but turned out to be completely opposite from what actually happened. Obama decried the use of executive action and the consolidation of power in the executive office, but that is exactly what he has done since his first day in office.

“No matter who the nominee is this election will feel more like ‘04 and ‘12 than ‘08,” said Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s former communications director, with the exception of incredibly high Republican turnouts with paltry and unexcited Democrat turnouts.

A Clinton spokesman, Brian Fallon, didn’t directly comment on general election plans, but noted that “it is the exception, rather than the rule, for general elections not to be close affairs.” This one is setting up to look like a complete, 50-state wipeout.

“It will be her versus a horse’s rear in almost any scenario,” mused one prominent Obama loyalist. “It’s going to be a lot of fear, but she’s going to have a lot of room to run, and she’s not going to have to destroy the other person, because the other person is going to be so eminently destroyable.”

Begala, who will be manning the wrecking ball in the summer and fall, said that if Rubio, seen as the hardest of the Republican targets, is the nominee, one issue presents itself clearly: “He will be the first major party in American history who believes that a woman should be forced by law to bring a rapist’s baby to term,” he said.

In any event, he said, the broad theme of those attacks will be that “the Republican Party has gone insane.

Now, in the wake of Twitter’s recent decision to ban conservative blogger Robert Stacy McCain, is it time for full-fledged panic?

There’s no telling what Twitter’s endgame is, but it’s unlikely to be good for users who don’t want the company to enforce overly broad harassment and hate-speech policies at the expense of open dialogue.

McCain, the latest high-profile pundit to run afoul of Twitter’s vague prohibitions on abusive behavior, is a controversial figure. Many would find his passionate denunciations of liberals — feminists, in particular — offensive, even vile (I know I do). But there’s a considerable difference between using Twitter to harshly criticize opponents and using it to harass them or incite others to violence. I’ve yet to see a compelling case that McCain crossed that line.

Why did he get the boot, then? Twitter recently formed the Orwellian-named “Trust and Safety Council” to propose changes to the company’s use policies. The goal, according to a press release, was to find a middle ground between permitting broad free speech and restricting actual abuse.

But practically none of the 40 people chosen to be part of the council are all that concerned about free speech. In fact, most of them work for anti-harassment groups and seem likely to recommend further limitations on online expression.

One such council member is Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist blogger and opponent of the GamerGate movement.

People associated with GamerGate believe feminists are trying to take the sex and violence out of video games in the name of liberal political correctness; Sarkeesian contends (not incorrectly) that women who speak up about sexism are subjected to misogynistic harassment on forums and social media sites.

Sarkeesian is exactly the kind of person McCain has spent his life bashing: The fact that he was banned from Twitter mere days after the company chose her for the council doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that such decisions are being made fairly.

To be clear, even if Twitter’s administrators are engaging in ideologically motivated suppression of speech they dislike, that’s legal. The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring citizens — it doesn’t prevent private companies from censoring would-be customers.

Indeed, Twitter has the ironclad right to enforce its rules as vindictively as it wants. Conservatives and libertarians ought to support that right on principle, even if they are its losers in this specific case.

What should conservatives do? What they’re already doing: speak up, and loudly. Shortly after McCain was shown the door, people who want the platform to be more open to free expression organized a #FreeStacy hashtag.

Twitter, to its shame, soon suppressed the hashtag.

In response, some have vowed to boycott Twitter entirely. Actor Adam Baldwin, a popular conservative voice on social media, said the site is “dead to me,” and deleted his entire history save for a single link to an article demanding McCain be returned to good standing.

Twitter’s ill treatment of right-leaning figures deserves pushback, and these kinds of stunts are as good a tactic as any.

As Popehat blogger and lawyer Ken White argued, “I classify Twitter’s action as bad customer service and as private speech I don’t like because of my conservative views.” When a company has bad customer service, the best solution is often to defect.

Personally, I like Twitter, and would hate to start over recruiting followers on whatever platform the young folks are into these days — Facebook? Instagram? Snapchat? Is that a thing? So I’ll be sticking with the little blue bird for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, I hope the company does a better job expelling users for the expression of actual abuse rather than incorrect beliefs and attitudes. It could allay some concerns by adding a dedicated free-speech enthusiast — White would be a great choice — to the roster of its Trust and Safety Council.

Nobody, right or left, wants to get banned for saying the wrong thing.

Reid Threatens to Apply Pressure Against McConnell for Refusing to Consider SCOTUS Nominees
WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid pledged Tuesday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  would feel political pressure from voters for refusing to hold hearings and a confirmation vote for a Barack Obama Supreme Court nominee.

“He hasn’t seen the pressure that’s going to build. It’s going to build in all the facets of the political constituencies in the country,” Reid told reporters when asked about his promise that McConnell would cave on his current stance.

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Monday the committee would not hold hearings for any Obama Supreme Court nominee for the remainder of his term. Although most Republicans are standing with McConnell and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a handful of Republicans want to at least see a hearing happen for a nominee.

“We know what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot. We know what would happen. A nominee of a Republican president would not be confirmed by a Democratic Senate when the vacancy was created in a presidential election year,” McConnell told The Daily Caller Tuesday.

  Democrats lashed out at Republicans, demanding that GOP leadership “do their job.”

Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, a member whose seat is being aggressively targeted by Democrats this year, wants to see confirmation hearings and a vote.

Other races being targeted by Democrats this cycle where the Supreme Court vacancy will likely be pressed are in Pennsylvania and Ohio, where Sens. Pat Toomey and Rob Portman  respectively, are running in tough re-elections. However, Toomey and Portman currently stand by McConnell.

“I would like us to do our jobs — [Obama] to do his job. It’s his constitutional prerogative to put forward a nominee and we should provide advice and consent. We can’t provide advice and consent unless he comes forward with a nominee,” Kirk told reporters Tuesday. “We look forward to the best nominee possible. I want to make sure we do our job … we follow the Constitution exactly.”

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins however, was just re-elected to her seat in 2014, but she also insists that Obama’s court nominees receive a hearing.

“Judicial temperament, qualifications, experience, respect for the constitution and the rule of law — the best way to do that in my judgment is public hearings. A review of all of the writings, any previous decisions,” Collins said to reporters on Monday.

She added, “So if it’s a court appointment, if it’s a judge, the kind of thorough process a hearing allows is the best way to evaluate a nominee. Having said that I am not the chairman of the judiciary committee nor am I the leader of the caucus so its not really my call but for my part I think regular order is the best way to proceed.”

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis hinted last week to a local radio show his concern that the GOP conference could be viewed as “obstructionist” if it attempts to block a Supreme Court nominee.

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“All we’re trying to say is that based on this president’s action, it is highly unlikely,” Tillis explained. “And if [Obama] puts forth someone that we think is in the mold of President Obama’s vision for America, then we’ll use every device available to block that nomination, wait for the American people to voice their vote in November and then move forward with a nomination after the election and most likely with the next president.”

New York Republican Rep. Peter King argued that if the upper chamber blocks Obama nominees to the court, it would seem like Republicans are scared of something.

“It’s common sense to have hearings and then an up-or-down vote and say why you’re opposing a person,” said King to The Hill. “To just say no [and have] no hearings, no vote, I think that puts us on the defensive. It looks like we’re afraid of something.”