James Comey fails to follow Justice Department rules yet again

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeanine-pirro-clinton-fbi-emails_us_58161383e4b064e1b4b30d55

Trump Supporter Jeanine Pirro Defends Hillary Clinton Over FBI Announcement

The former prosecutor said the FBI decision violates “the most fundamental rules of fairness and impartiality.”
10/30/2016 01:10 pm ET



Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro came to Hillary Clinton’s defense on Sunday, criticizing FBI Director James Comey over his recently announced investigation into new emails relating to the former secretary of state.

“Comey’s actions violate, not only long-standing Justice Department policy, the directive of the person that he works under, the attorney general,” the former prosecutor said, referring to Loretta Lynch’s reported disagreement with Comey, “but even more important, the most fundamental rules of fairness and impartiality.”

A vocal supporter of GOP nominee Donald Trump, Pirro said Comey’s decision to announce the investigation so near Election Day reminded her of her own experience while running for New York attorney general in 2006. She called a DOJ investigation into her practices at the time “mean-spirited, and of course, nothing came of it except the adverse publicity cost me at the polls.”

“What was done to me in 2006 was wrong, and what happened to Hillary Clinton was equally wrong,” Pirro said. “Now this nation has already gone through an exhausting and traumatic campaign season. The FBI director should not now be front and center.”

Clinton’s campaign and Senate Democrats are calling on Comey to clarify the nature of the investigation out of concern that it is being misused for political purposes. “This is the biggest political scandal since Watergate, and I’m sure it will be properly handled from this point,” Trump said at a rally on Friday.

Comey’s decision to announce the investigation so close to the election also alarmed Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House under George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. Painter announced Sunday in a New York Times op-ed that he had filed a Hatch Act violation complaint against Comey. The act prohibits employees of the executive branch from engaging in political activity.

“I have spent much of my career working on government ethics and lawyers’ ethics, including two and a half years as the chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, and I never thought that the F.B.I. could be dragged into a political circus surrounding one of its investigations,” Painter wrote. “Until this week.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...tment-nailed-with_us_5815fb93e4b09b190529c634

FBI Director Losing Control Of Department, Nailed With Two Major Complaints For Partisan Memo
10/30/2016 11:49 am ET

FBI Director James Comey ‘Crossed the Rubicon’ this week when he cast his dice with the Republican party by releasing a partisan memo with election implications.

He’s facing an internal revolt over the affair at the FBI, for undoing decades of non-partisan law enforcement practices.

Two serious criminal complaints have already been levied against the FBI Director by the Democratic Coalition Against Trump for using the FBI to engage in partisan activity and now by former White House Ethics Counsel Richard Painter too.

https://twitter.com/x/status/792744601605906432


Sources inside the FBI told Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald that they were furious with Director Comey’s rare public revelations from the Clinton investigation from the start this summer.

They’re not the only ones upset.

High ranking Department of Justice officials strongly discouraged Comey from going public just 11 days before a general election, without holding a smoking gun or really any strong evidence of anyone’s wrongdoing in hand.

The FBI Director broke policy to inform Congress about details of an investigation without any actual details, which is already being used for partisan purposes.

Director Comey followed up his first memo to Congress with a “cover your ass” memo to his fellow FBI officers which appeared in The Washington Post.

The impact within the FBI has been swift after the first memo.

Newsweek is reporting that the Republican FBI Director’s inappropriate letter to Congress put him in a very danger of a “mutiny at the FBI,” whose proper role is protecting America from domestic terror threats and investigating serious crimes.

Not influencing elections.

In the FBI Director’s second letter, he admitted that his agency doesn’t “ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations,” and that he doesn’t know anything about, “the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails.”

He also claimed that, “I don’t want to create a misleading impression,” and Comey then made a final admission that, “in the middle of an election season, there is a signficant risk of being misunderstood.”

Well, it’s too late now.

Here’s a copy of the letter:


Newsweek’s report about this latest non-scandal points out firmly that the FBI Director’s letter literally points out emails that have nothing to do with the Democratic nominee:

The disclosure by the Federal Bureau of Investigation late on Friday, October 28 that it had discovered potential new evidence in its inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s handling of her personal email when she was Secretary of State has virtually nothing to do with any actions taken by the Democratic nominee, according to government records and an official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke to Newsweek on condition of anonymity. The revelation that the FBI has discovered additional emails convulsed the political world, and led to widespread (and erroneous) claims and speculation. Moreover, despite the widespread claims in the media that this development had prompted the FBI to “reopen” of the case, it did not;

Comey’s decision to leak news about a politically driven investigation is threatening his professional standing and ability to function inside the Bureau.

Newsweek’s top investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald told the story in a tweetstorm:







The FBI has a difficult job to perform in the best of times, and when it comes to political investigations agents must walk a tightrope between performing their duties properly, and unduly influencing public opinion with the results of their investigations.

For an entire year, they managed to quietly, but diligently investigate the sensitive matters surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails which they ultimately concluded, “were not a cliff-hanger” because there was literally no there, there.

These events show precisely why the FBI does not ordinarily publicly release the results or targets of their investigations until charges are filed.

These memos have set off a chain off events sure to end with the termination of Comey’s tenure as head of the agency.
 
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article111463427.html

FBI Director James Comey screwed up big time

james-comey


By BRUCE UDOLF

Republicans immediately consumed with gusto Friday’s news that FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congressional leaders informing them that his agency was reviewing new information relating to the Hillary Clinton email case. They gleefully declared that the FBI had “reopened” the email investigation. While this is a misleading exaggeration of Comey’s admittedly vague letter, the political use that GOP partisans have made of it illustrates why public releases of information relating to pending investigations of public figures up for election have traditionally been withheld.

When I served as chief of the Public Corruption/Integrity Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, there was an unwritten policy at the Justice Department that no public actions be taken with respect to any investigation involving a public figure within six months prior to an election in which that figure stood as a candidate.




Udolf
This meant it was verboten for a prosecutor to seek an indictment, authorize a search warrant, issue a press release or take action that would likely be made public in the months prior to an election. The reason for this protocol was clear and simple. Investigations of public corruption, like all other investigations, are designed to determine the truth about allegations of criminal conduct and, if justified, to serve as a basis for criminal charges — and not to influence elections.

To the extent that such disclosure might have such an unintended effect, the policy required us to stand down from such action until after the election. If the public figure were elected in the meantime, and if charges were subsequently brought and resulted in a conviction, there would be sufficient mechanisms in place to remove him or her from office. The concept reflected in this policy is that the Department of Justice is not in the business of doing opposition research for political opponents of public figures.

James Comey’s letter to Congressional leaders was contrary to that long-standing, well-founded policy. To release the sort of vague information contained in his letter so close to an election for even a city councilman, much less a president of the United States, is profoundly disturbing. Given his long and distinguished career, Comey should have been sensitive to the concerns behind this policy. That he was concerned about correcting any of his prior statements to the Congress does not excuse what he did. He could have waited a mere 11 days to make any correction, if the information even required correction, and relied upon this long-standing DOJ policy as justification. That he wasn’t sure as to the significance of the new information is not a factor that supports his decision to send this letter.

Having access to 11,000 agents, if there was such a compelling exigency to disclose new information to Congress, he should have called in a bucket brigade of agents over the weekend before he released this brief letter. Comey had to know his letter would provide ample fodder to Clinton’s opposition, which would interpret his letter as a reopening of the investigation.

Hopefully he has called in the troops to determine whether there is anything of consequence in this new information. And since he has already acted precipitously, one would hope he would promptly release his findings by Monday morning, or at least clarify his vague one-page letter to undo the harm he has done, and which the policy he violated seeks to prevent.

I have long admired Comey for his independence, beginning when he commendably stood up to then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales when he tried to exploit former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospitalization to obtain authorization that no sane Attorney General would have authorized, save Gonzales himself. I also agreed with both his assessment that Ms. Clinton’s conduct would not be deemed prosecutable by any fair-minded prosecutor, but that her conduct was extremely careless. However, the letter he sent Friday was ill-advised, unjustifiable and threatens to have a profound impact on this election. A prosecutor, or investigator, should never conduct himself in a manner likely to lead to such a result.

As so succinctly stated generations ago by Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland, the job of a prosecutor and, I would suggest by extension, an investigator, is not to obtain convictions, but to see that justice is done. One might certainly add as a corollary that a prosecutor’s job is certainly not to affect elections in which a potential subject of an investigation is a candidate. Indeed, he should conduct himself in every way possible to ensure that his actions are not likely to affect election results.

Sad to say, in this regard, whether by design or inadvertence, Comey failed, and he should take immediate steps to correct his blunder. If that means calling all hands on deck to comb through these new documents, he should do so with all dispatch. He has demonstrated in the past that he is a person big enough to admit his error, and I hope he will do what he can to clean up this mess immediately.

To do otherwise, I fear, could result in history calling into question this most critical election of our lifetime.

Bruce Udolf is the former chief of the Public Corruption/Integrity Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami. He served as associate independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation.


Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article111463427.html#storylink=cpy
 
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/opinions/fbi-director-comey-should-resign-opinion-callan/index.html

Callan: Time for FBI director Comey to go

By Paul Callan

Updated 8:01 AM ET, Sun October 30, 2016


Paul Callan is a CNN legal analyst, a former NYC homicide prosecutor and currently is "of counsel" to the New York law firm of Edelman and Edelman, PC, focusing on wrongful conviction and civil rights cases. Follow him @paulcallan

(CNN)
Donald Trump's oft-repeated claim that the FBI's investigation of "Crooked Hillary" and the presidential election itself were and are "rigged," seems to have thrown FBI Director James Comey into a state of panic. In foolishly making a public announcement that the bureau is reviewing newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton's personal server, he has inserted himself yet again into the presidential campaign.

The FBI virtually never announces the commencement or termination of ongoing criminal investigations or the discovery of new evidence. Such inquiries are often conducted in relative secrecy, enabling a more efficient investigation.
It is not unusual for investigations in so-called "white collar" cases to go on for years, luring the target into an unfounded belief that he or she is in the clear. Then the hammer falls. A grand jury indictment is announced by the Department of Justice and the handcuffs are swiftly employed.
The old, sensible FBI rule book apparently has been thrown on the trash heap this year. While undoubtedly attempting to be open and "transparent," to protect the reputation of the FBI, the FBI director has tossed a Molotov cocktail into the presidential race.

Election 2016: The tawdry issue Clinton -- and Trump -- want to dodge
The FBI was now taking "appropriate investigative steps. ... to assess their importance to our investigation." What in the world does this mean? One thing it means is that this issue will move to front and center during the final days of the presidential campaign.
Voters must now be subjected to endless speculation in the press and explicit accusations from the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates that Hillary Clinton is a "criminal" aided and abetted by a rigged FBI and Justice Department. Comey's "openness and transparency" will blow up in his face and further tarnish the FBI's reputation. He has reinserted the Bureau into the political process.
The director probably feared that leaks would lead to speculation that a renewed Hillary investigation was underway. In trying to get ahead of criticism of the FBI for jumping to a conclusion too quickly and closing the original Hillary Clinton email investigation, he has only made matters worse and dropped a huge new issue into the presidential campaign, 11 days before the election.

Blame The Supreme Court for a Rigged Election
In truth, investigations open and close routinely and secretly when new evidence comes to light. Each new scrap in a pile of useful or useless evidence is not announced in real time, like a scandal in a scripted reality TV Show. Perhaps it's time for the embattled FBI director who seems to have forgotten how to conduct a proper investigation to resign.
Comey's public announcement in July that the FBI had concluded its investigation regarding Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server in the conduct of official State Department business and would not recommend the lodging of criminal charges was historically unprecedented in a high-profile political case.
The decision to commence or terminate a criminal investigation by the FBI is rarely disclosed. In the case of high-profile political figures such as presidential candidates, the process normally requires that an FBI "recommendation" based on the evidence it has gathered must be forwarded to the Justice Department, where a career, nonpolitical unit reviews the matter, making a recommendation to the attorney general, who makes the final decision.
This sensible process was thrown into disarray when former President Bill Clinton made a surprise airport tarmac visit to none other than the sitting attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Both parties claimed that they engaged in harmless small talk involving their families and, of course, nothing about the FBI's investigation of Hillary's classified document and email server practices.
The meeting was utterly improper and the attorney general recognized this, promptly asserting that she would not personally make the decision about the Hillary Clinton email investigation, though strangely she would review the work of her subordinates before any public announcement of prosecution or non-prosecution was made.
This was then followed by the highly unusual announcement of "no criminal charges" and the end of the investigation by the FBI director. In the very rare case where an announcement of "no criminal charges" occurs, the prosecutors in the Justice Department would make such an announcement because Justice, not the FBI, makes prosecutorial decisions. The FBI makes a recommendation; Justice makes the decision.
Comey, while presumably attempting to insulate the Justice Department and the attorney general from claims that the Bill Clinton tarmac meeting had corrupted the investigative process, took the Justice Department and Loretta Lynch off the hook and made the announcement himself.
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In defending the statement he made today, Comey might assert that he was attempting to clarify his prior Congressional testimony. But that elaboration on his testimony could legitimately have waited until the FBI completed its analysis of the new emails. He has been around long enough to understand that any new FBI statements regarding the email scandal during the final 11 days of the campaign had a high probability of improperly placing the Bureau into the political process.
Trashing the Justice and FBI rule books in the interest of "openness" is likely to put the FBI front and center in one of the most contentious presidential races in recent US history. J. Edgar Hoover loved to influence elections, but he had the good sense to keep quiet about it.
 
Like I said, he will get the full Ken Starr treatment now.

I find it instructive that there are is all this handwringing over a simple letter to congress, but not a peep about Comey's deputy being massively compromised through the appearance of a bribe.

Comey brought this on himself, as did Hillary. if Obama and Loretta Lynch were interfering in the investigation, as they surely were, he should have resigned and told the world why. Instead, he tried to keep his job and his integrity, which is impossible when dealing with people like Obama, Lynch and of course the Clintons.

The rot goes deep in this scandal. The Clinton hate machne will attempt to make Comey the focus of it and keep people's minds off the real subject, Hillary's breathtaking corruption and Obama's enabling of it.
 
I thought it was the Russians who were trying to influence an election. Now it's Comey. My advice, If you find any classified material or deleted emails or any Clinton emails just shut up. If the American people knew the truth it could influence an election.
 
No one knows Comey's intention yet, but he obviously thrives at inserting himself into the big events such at the presidential election.

As a header of a secrete intelligence service, he should have avoided spotlights and kept a low profile.

Disclaim. I am not a liberal.
 
curiousGeorge8 said:
No one knows Comey's intention yet, but he obviously thrives at inserting himself into the big events such at the presidential election.

As a header of a secrete intelligence service, he should have avoided spotlights and kept a low profile.

Disclaim. I am not a liberal.
More...
He sent a private letter to the Department heads in congress. The letter was not classified, so it's ok to keep it on a private server.
 
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