TOWSON, Maryland, Thursday, August 31, 2017 - Yesterday, the USA ran a practice bombing run of Stealth Fighters and other war planes directly on the North Korean border. The dumb little fat boy - alleged to be in charge of North Korea, but for how long?
Meanwhile, reports in Townhall by their outstanding writer and editor, Katie Pavlich, indicates that fired FBI chief Jim Comey completely mislead Congress and the American People when he announced, at the end of a long investigation, that while Hillary Clinton clearly broke Federal Espionage Laws, she would not be indicted because there was no evidence she meant to do it. It still sounds preposterous. It is preposterous. She knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it. Because former President Obama was also breaking the law by communicating with Clinton on her illegal email set-up, Comey knew that indicting Clinton probably would lead either to an indictment of Obama, or his forced resignation a la Richard Nixon. But before you begin to think of Comey as some brave soul ready to fall on the sword for his President, consider this: with President Trump, this character was taking illegal notes on a man who had just come into office "in case" he broke the law. And he did all manner of other underhanded things to make himself look good and people he came into contact with look bad. But everybody at the FBI just loved him.
Pavlich reports that the new FBI Director received a letter from Congressional Leaders
CHARLES E.GRASSLEY, IOWA, CHAIRMAN
ORRN G.HATCH, UTAH
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, CALIFORNIA
LINDSEY 0. GRAHAM, SOUTH CAROLINA
PATRICK J. LEAHY, VERMONT
TED CRUZ, TEXAS
JOHN CORNYN, TEXAS
AMY KLOBUCHAR, MINNESOTA
BEN SASSE, NEBRASKA
AL FRANKEN, MINNESOTA
JEFF FLAKE, ARIZONA
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, DELAWARE
MIKE CRAPO, IDAHO
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, CONNECTICUT
OMTILU S.
NORTH CAROLINA
MAZIE K. HIRONO, HAWAII
JOHN KENNEDY, LOUISIANA
KOLAN L. DAVIS, Chief Counsel
and
JENNIFER DUCK, Staff Director
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
WASHINGTON, DC 20510-6275
August 30, 2017
The Honorable Christopher Wray Director · Federal Bureau
of Investigation
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20535
Dear Director Wray: The Senate Judiciary Committee has been investigating the circumstances surrounding Director Comey's removal, including his conduct in handling the Clinton and Russia investigations. On June 30, 2017, the Committee wrote to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC)
1. requesting transcripts of OSC's interviews with then-Director Comey s Chief of Staff, Jim Rybicki, and the Principal Deputy General Counsel of National Security and Cyberlaw, Trisha Anderson. OSC investigators had interviewed them as part of the OSC's investigation into whether then-Director Comey s actions in the Clinton investigation violated the Hatch Act.
2. OSC closed its inquiry after Mr. Corney's removal pursuant to its standard policy of not investigating former government employees. On August 8, 2017, the OSC provided transcripts of those interviews at the Committee's request.
3. Since then, Committee staff has been asking the Department informally to explain the reasons for the extensive redactions to the transcripts. According to the unredacted portions of the transcripts, it appears that in April or early May, 2016, Mr. Comey had already decided he would
issue a statement exonerating Secretary Clinton. That was long before FBI agents finished their work. Mr. Corney even circulated an early draft statement to select members of
senior FBI leadership. The outcome of an investigation should not be prejudged while FBI agents are still hard at work trying to gather the facts. OSC attorneys questioned two witnesses, presumably Mr. Rybicki and Ms. Anderson, about Mr. Comey's July 5, 2016, statement exonerating Secretary Clinton. The transcript of what appears to be Mr. Rybicki s interview contains the following exchanges:
1. OSC is the permanent, independent investigative agency for personnel matters, not Robert Mueller s temporary prosecutorial office within the Justice Department.
2. Letter from Senator Harry Reid to James Comey (October 30, 2016). Mica Rosenberg, Uproar over whether
FBI Chief broke law by raising new Clinton emails. Reuters (October 31, 2016).
3. OSC first provided the transcripts to the Justice Department, which redacted significant portions of the transcripts without explanation. [They] redacted the names of the witnesses, even though those names were in the Committee's request.
Q: ... We talked about outcome of the investigation,
...how did the statement - I guess the idea of the statement come about?
A: Sure. We re talking about July 5th, correct?
Q: Yes. I'm sorry. July 5th.
A: The - so in the - sometime in the spring - again, I don't
remember exactly when, I early spring I would say,
the Director emailed a couple folks - I can't remember exactly; I know I was on there, probably the Deputy Director,
not the full, what I'll call the briefing group, but a subset of
that - to say, you know, again knowing sort of where - knowing the direction the investigation is headed, right, what would be the most forward-leaning thing we could do, right, information that we could put out about it .. And --and, you know, by that -- you know, so that -- and he sent a draft around of, you know what - what it might look like....
A: ... So that was the early spring.
Q: Yeah. And I think we've seen maybe that email where he sent it out, it was early May of 2016; does that sound about right?
A: That sounds right. That quite honestly, that strikes me as a little late, but may --
Q: Okay.
A: --but again, I definitely remember spring. I had in my head like the April timeframe, but May doesn t seem out of the out
of the realm.
Q: And so at that point in time, whether it was April or early May, the team hadn't yet interviewed Secretary Clinton -
A: Correct.
Q: - but was there - guess, based on what you're saying, it sounds like there was an idea of where the outcome of the investigation was going to go?
A: Sure. There was a -right, there was - based on - [redacted section]. Similarly, the transcript of what appears to be Ms. Anderson s interview states:
Q: So moving along to the first public statement on the case or Director Corney s first statement the July 5, 2016 statement. When did you first learn that Director Corney was planning to make some kind of public statement about the
outcome of the Clinton email investigation?
A: The idea, I'm not entirely sure exactly when the idea of
the public statement um first emerged. Um it was, I just, I
can't put a precise time-frame on it um but [redaction]. And then I believe it was in early May of 2016 that the Director
himself wrote a draft of that statement...
Q: So when you found out in early May that there was, that the Director had written a draft of what the statement might look like, how did you learn about that?
A: [Redacted] gave me a hard copy of it ...
Q: So what happened next with respect to the draft?
A: I don't know for sure um, I don't know. There were many iterations, at some point there were many iterations of the draft that circulated .. As of early May 2016, the FBI had not yet interviewed Secretary Clinton. Moreover, it had yet to finish interviewing sixteen other key witnesses, including Cheryl Mills, Bryan Pagliano, Heather Samuelson, Justin Cooper, and John Bentel.
4. These individuals had intimate and personal knowledge relating to Secretary Clinton's non-government server, including helping her build and administer the device. Yet, it appears that the following key FBI interviews had not yet occurred when Mr. Corney began drafting his exoneration statement:
1. May 3, 2016 - Paul Combetta
2. May 12, 2016 - Sean Misko
3. May 17, 2016 - Unnamed CIA employee 5
4. May 19, 2016 - Unnamed CIA employee 6
5. May 24, 2016 - Heather Samuelson
6. May 26, 2016 - Marcel Lehel (aka Guccifer)
7. May 28, 2016 - Cheryl Mills
8. June 3, 2016 - Charlie Wisecarver
9. Ju ne 10, 2016 - John Bentel
10. June 15, 2016 - Lewis Lukens
11. June 21, 2016 - Justin Cooper
12. June 21, 2016 - Unnamed State Dept. Employ.
13. June 21, 2016 - Bryan Pagliano
14. June 21, 2016 - Purcell Lee
15. June 23,2016 - Monica Hanley
16. June 29, 2016 - Hannah Richert
17. July 2, 2016 - Hillary Clinton
Conclusion first, fact-gathering second - that's no way to run an investigation. The FBI should be held to a higher standard than that, especially in a matter of such great public interest and controversy. Mr. Comey's final statement acknowledged there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information but nonetheless cleared Secretary Clinton because he claimed there was no intent or obstruction of justice. Yet, evidence of
destruction of emails known to be under subpoena by the House of Representatives, and subject
4. Notably, some witnesses had been interviewed. However, their follow-up interviews had not taken place yet.
5. The name of the interviewee was redacted from the publicly released version of the 302.
6. The name of the interviewee was redacted from the publicly released version of the 302.
7. The name of the interviewee was redacted from the
publicly released version of the 302.
In case you have not picked up what was going on, the good FBI Director decided sometime during the spring that he was not going to indict Hillary Clinton. This is beyond significant because the FBI probe was still going full guns. Many extremely important witnesses had not yet been interviewed, including the primary subject of the investigation, Hillary Clinton. You will also recall the sweetheart set up that the FBI granted to Ms. Mills and other witnesses. Mills was permitted to bring a computer into the interview, and then, after the interviews, the computers were destroyed with the permission of the FBI. I will bet arrangements like that have never been made with any other FBI suspect. Then there is the terrible precedent of having veteran FBI agents involved in a very important and time-consuming investigation, when, not matter what they discovered, the suspect, Hillary Clinton, was going to get off without being indicted.
Many Americans were highly suspicious of the FBI probe, believing that no matter what the FBI turned up, there would be no Clinton indictment. They were right, and shame on everyone who played a part in this grotesque miscarriage of justice. And once again, even with this sordid information in the public eye, there will still be no indictment. Hillary Clinton could murder 55 people in cold blood and not be indicted.
Another "body" has come to the surface in the Potomac River. Kurt Smolek, a Diplomatic Security Agent, had gone missing on Monday. His body was pulled from the Potomac on Wednesday. Smolek worked for the State Department. A very good piece pulled together with a very scant amount of information can be found at the web page, "SperoNews." See www.speroforum.com. At this page, the topics across the top of the page that you can choose from include, "Hillary Clinton," "Crime," "Politics," "US," and "Get Mail Alerts." I had no luck signing up for the mail alerts. The commentaries of readers at this page is, shall we say, not unexpected but very informative. There is information that Smolek provided up close security for Hillary Clinton. Then he dies under mysterious circumstances. It may well mean nothing. It may well. Things happen. We just don't know how a top security agent for the state department, who was last seen alive and well at 10 pm on Monday in southwest Washington, D.C. On Wednesday, his body is pulled from the Potomac. The man was married and had children. A member of Mr. Smolek's family posted the following on Facebook: "He was a husband, dad, son, brother and grandson to them and they are dealing with a lot of shock, grief and pain. This photo was taken in happier times. Kurt is the one in the red during a trip to Vietnam when he was on assignment there. His mom and dad are in the front. Kurt's dad Don is my first cousin. Words cannot convey my sadness and grief.”
Like I say, the SperoNews page is worth a read, as are the comments.
Sports: Orioles Win Streak Ends in 11-8 Defeat by Toronto Blue Jays
Even as the seven game winning streak of the Baltimore Orioles came to a crashing halt at Camden Yards on Thursday night, and even as the Baltimore Ravens ended their preseason schedule with a 14-13 victory over the Saints in New Orleans, the Maryland Terrapins made final preparations for their soccer match tonight on Ludwig Field against powerful UCLA. Depending on the weather, a virtual sell-out crowd is expected. Tomorrow, the football Terrapins open up with a game at No. 21 Texas. A couple of the analysts on the Big Ten Network like Maryland in this game, saying that the Longhorns cannot stop Maryland's running game. I didn't know that we had a running game, but then again, what do I know? I do like D.J. Durkin, Maryland's second-year coach. He is an alumni of the staff of Jim Harbaugh. Last season he got Maryland to within a game of .500, and they played in some bowl game, the name or quality of I will not comment on.
The Orioles lost to Toronto, 11-8, because the starting pitching and the bullpen blew up. Kendrys Morales hit 3 home runs and drove in 7 runs. Jeremy Hellickson, Richard Bleier and Mychal Givens had little to offer the home team last night. Adam Jones and Chris Davis hit Oriole Home Runs. The Orioles did announce that Veteran Pedro Alvarez, Top Prospect and Catcher Chance Sisco, Outfielder Joey Rickard, and Pitchers Jimmy Yacabonis and Richard Rodriguez have been recalled from Norfolk of the International League now that MLB Rosters have expanded from 25 to 40 as of September 1. Alvarez was with the Orioles all last season and hit 22 homers, and hit 26 Home Runs for Norfolk this season. Sisco batted .267 and was selected to the International League All-Star Team. Rodriguez had a 2.42 ERA for Norfolk. Yacabonis has been up and down all season with the Orioles. Rickard was almost a regular - he appeared in 94 games with the Orioles this season - when he was sent down two weeks ago because the Orioles were forced to activate Anthony Santander, a Rule 5 Draft Pick. Look for Rickard to get lots of playing time because of his defense and speed.
The Ravens preseason win was almost an afterthought, as all the attention at team headquarters was on the roster cut downs. This afternoon, 24 moves were announced. A complete list is at the Ravens Web Page. But the biggest names on the cut list is fan favorite and former Navy Quarterback Star Keenan Reynolds and former starting center Jeremy Zuttah. There is some thought that Reynolds might be brought back if he gets through waivers. He had switched to wide receiver and return specialist for the NFL and was on the practice squad much of last season, finally dressing for a few games at seasons' end. Zuttah was a starter for several years, but was traded after last season to the 49'ers. They cut him and the Ravens resigned him, but he hasn't played all that well, sources on the team said. The Ravens still must make 14 more moves to get the squad down to 53, with the deadline at 4 pm on Saturday, 9-2-2017.
Maryland Soccer is 2-0, with wins at Santa Clara and home against Hofstra. Tonight's showdown with UCLA will be a barn burner. Maryland is ranked no. 6 this week and UCLA is up to no. 15 from no. 21 in the first poll.
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