An updated Newsweek piece by Kurt Eichenwald provides what in my opinion is the most objective and balanced coverage of what many are calling “an explosive” situation that could sink Hillary Clinton’s aspirations for the White House, barely 11 days before the elections.
Eichenwald points out:
“The revelation that the FBI has discovered additional emails convulsed the political world, and led to widespread (and erroneous) claims and speculation. Many Republicans proclaimed that the discovery suggests Clinton may have broken the law…”
All this while Donald Trump is saying that “the development showed his opponent had engaged in corruption ‘on a scale we have never seen before’’’ and while Democrats are condemning FBI Director James Comey “for disclosing this information less than two weeks before the election, claiming he did it for political purposes” and are calling “for the FBI to release all of the information it has, saying the American people have a right to know everything.”
Eichenwald points out that “the truth is much less explosive”:
“There is no indication the emails in question were withheld by Clinton during the investigation, the law enforcement official told Newsweek, nor does the discovery suggest she did anything illegal. Also, none of the emails were to or from Clinton, the official said. Moreover, despite the widespread claims in the media that this development had prompted the FBI to ‘reopen’ the case, it did not; such investigations are never actually closed, and it is common for law enforcement to discover new information that needs to be examined.”
In an Update Eichenwald says:
“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.”
Eichenwald explains how “the new evidence” was found some time ago during an unrelated inquiry into Anthony Weiner’s sexting to an underage girl in North Carolina and how Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, managed her e-mails using four e-mail accounts — one of them linked to Weiner’s account.
In the course of juggling these accounts and because Clinton “preferred to read documents on paper rather than on a screen, emails and other files were often printed out and provided to [Clinton] either at her office or home, where they were delivered in a diplomatic pouch by a security agent.”
Finding “the government network technology to be cumbersome” and having trouble printing documents, Abedin “sometimes transferred emails from her unclassified State Department account to either her Yahoo account or her account on Clinton’s server, and printed the emails from there. “It is not clear” Eichenwald notes, “whether [Abedin] ever transferred official emails to the account she used for her husband’s campaign,” often without reading them.
Eichenwald points out that it is this procedure for printing documents that may have resulted in the newly discovered emails ending up on the laptop Abedin shared with Weiner and he continues:
“It is unclear whether any of those documents were downloaded onto the laptop off of her personal email accounts or were saved on an external storage device, such as a flash drive, and then transferred to the shared computer. There is also evidence that the laptop was used to send emails from Abedin to Clinton; however, none of those emails are the ones being examined by the FBI. Moreover, unless she was told by Abedin in every instance, Clinton could not have known what device her aide was using to transmit electronic information to her.
If the FBI determines that any of the documents that ended up on the shared device were classified, Abedin could be deemed to have mishandled them. In order to prove that was a criminal offense, however, investigators would have to establish that Abedin had intended to disclose the contents of those classified documents, or that she knew she was mishandling that information.
If the documents were not classified, no crime was committed. But either way, this discovery has embarrassed Clinton, even though there is no evidence at this point suggesting she has been implicated in any potential wrongdoing.”
On Comey’s decision to notify Congress last Thursday, Eichenwald both defends and criticizes Comey:
“…not a partisan act… although…a horribly mishandled one. Arguably, he had to issue his letter because of previous statements he had made to Congress… there was new evidence that needed to be examined. As a result, Comey felt he was obligated to inform the committees as quickly as possible that his previous statement was now incorrect.”
In a communication to bureau employees, Comey explains why his communication to his employees is much more detailed than what he issued to Congress — and, as a result, to the Americans who are about to vote:
“There is a significant risk of being misunderstood…It would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record. At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression.”
Eichenwald concludes:
“Unfortunately, by trying to have things both ways – revealing the change in circumstances while remaining vague about what the agents know – Comey has created that misleading impression that could change the outcome of a presidential election, an act that, if uncorrected, will undoubtedly go down as one of the darkest moments in the bureau’s history.”
Amen.
