So a bit of news today with Comey and his handling of the Clinton email investigation and why he had chosen to re-open the investigation. Apparently he chose to act when he received a Russian doctored intelligence linking then AG Loretta Lynch to the Clinton campaign, which he knew to be fake, but he had no way of refuting that without burning intelligence methods and assets publicly.
List of actions taken:
- Comey receives intellegence that shows the Clinton campaign colluding with then Attorney General Loretta Lynch to end the investigation into Hillary's emails.
- Comey determines this intellegence was fake, but was unable to prove it without burning intellegence assets
- Comey is afraid if he ignores the intelligence the Russians who fabricated it will release it publicly and will discredit both him and Lynch
- Comey decides the best course of action is to hold a public press conference where he says he's seen all the evidence and there's not enough to charge her so the investigation is over. Simultaneously he bashes her for being reckless. This pisses off both sides, which makes him seem impartial and since he went around Lynch to do it, even leaking the fake intellegence against her doesn't matter since it was Comey who declared the investigation over
The FBI was banking, incorrectly, that Clinton would be able to weather the bad press so they could further prosecute the Russian operation down the road but they sadly miscalculated how the election would turn out. Comey made the gamble to lose face in the short term and maintain the integrity of the investigation. So really he had the choice of acting on false Russian planted information or having the entire Republican party would have turned it into a crap show once the Russians "leaked" the fake info. Do not envy his available choices at the time. Bill Clinton did not help the case either when he "bumped" into the AG. Knowing how concerned and calculated the Russian effort was to get Trump elected is crazily disturbing.
Quote:
The Russian intelligence at issue purported to show that then-Attorney General Lynch had been compromised in the Clinton investigation. The intelligence described emails between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a Clinton campaign operative suggesting that Lynch would make the FBI investigation of Clinton go away.
In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official. Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.
Sources close to Comey tell CNN he felt that it didn't matter if the information was accurate, because his big fear was that if the Russians released the information publicly, there would be no way for law enforcement and intelligence officials to discredit it without burning intelligence sources and methods.
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politi...nce/index.html