William Katz:  Urgent Agenda

HOME      ABOUT      OUR ARCHIVE      CONTACT 

 

 

 

 

BUT WILL ANYTHING HAPPEN? – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  We keep hearing that there'll be a revolt of FBI agents in connection with the Clinton e-mail coverup, but will anything actually happen?  From the New York Post:   

Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his “cowardly” whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.

Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, “So if I blew it, they blew it, too.”

But agents say Comey tied investigators’ hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.

“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.

Instead of going to prosecutors and insisting on using grand jury leverage to compel testimony and seize evidence, Comey allowed immunity for several key witnesses, including potential targets.

The immunity agreements came with outrageous side deals, including preventing agents from searching for any documents on a Dell laptop owned by former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills generated after Jan. 31, 2015, when she communicated with the server administrator who destroyed subpoenaed emails.

Comey also agreed to have Mills’ laptop destroyed after the restricted search, denying Congress the chance to look at it and making the FBI an accomplice to the destruction of evidence.

And...

Comey has turned a once-proud institution known for its independence into one that bows to election pressure, hands out political immunity to candidates and effectively pardons their co-conspirators. He’s turned the FBI into the Federal Bureau of Immunity and lost the trust and respect of not only his agents but the country at large. He ought to step down.

COMMENT:  It's sad, but true.  The FBI has never been a pristine institution.  There have been problems along the way, including the excesses of its first director, J. Edgar Hoover, who also did brilliant things.  But the Bureau had made great progress...until now.  Now, in the minds of many, it lives in a shadow.

October 7, 2016