{"id":268094,"date":"2016-09-17T20:52:28","date_gmt":"2016-09-17T20:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=268094"},"modified":"2016-09-19T02:32:35","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T02:32:35","slug":"fbis-fake-investigation-hillarys-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/fbis-fake-investigation-hillarys-emails\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI’s Fake ‘Investigation’ of Hillary’s Emails"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

On September 17th, U.S. President Barack Obama, the boss of the U.S. Government\u2019s Executive Branch \u2014 including of federal investigations and prosecutions (including of FBI decisons not to investigate, and not to prosecute) \u2014 said that, in this Presidential election, \u201cMy name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot,\u201d and that a voter\u2019s failure to vote for Hillary Clinton would be \u201can insult to my legacy.\u201d<\/span><\/a> This statement by him provides useful background context behind the following news-report (and readers are urged to click onto the link at any point here wherever a given allegation\u2019s veracity is at all in doubt, to see the extensive documentation for it): <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s \u2018investigation\u2019 into Hillary Clinton\u2019s State Department email operation was fake in three major ways:<\/span><\/p>\n

1: The FBI chose to \u2018investigate’ the most difficult-to-prove charges, not the easiest-to-prove ones<\/b> (which are the six laws that she clearly violated<\/span><\/a>, simply by her privatization and destruction of State Department records, and\u00a0which collectively would entail a maximum prison sentence of 73 years<\/span><\/a>). The famous judge Jed Rakoff<\/span><\/a> has accurately and succinctly said that, in the American criminal \u2018justice\u2019 system, since 1980 and especially after 2000, and most especially after 2010<\/span><\/a>, “the prosecutor has all the power. The\u00a0Supreme Court\u2019s suggestion that a plea\u00a0bargain is a fair and voluntary contractual arrangement between two\u00a0relatively equal parties is a total myth. \u2026 What really puts the prosecutor in the\u00a0driver\u2019s seat is the fact that he \u2014\u00a0because of mandatory minimums, sentencing guidelines (which, though\u00a0no longer mandatory in the federal system, are still widely followed by\u00a0most judges), and simply his ability to\u00a0shape whatever charges are brought\u00a0\u2014 can effectively dictate the sentence\u00a0by how he publicly describes the\u00a0offense.\u201d<\/i> Columnist Debra J. Saunders put it this way<\/span><\/a>: \u201cThe mandatory minimum sentencing\u00a0system effectively has allowed federal prosecutors to choose defendants’ sentences by deciding\u00a0how to charge them.\u201d<\/i> If an Administration wants to be merely pretending an \u2018investigation\u2019, it\u2019s easy: identify, as the topic for the alleged \u2018investigation\u2019, not the criminal laws that indisputably describe what the suspect can clearly be proven to have done, but instead criminal laws that don\u2019t<\/i>. Prosecutorial discretion is now practically unlimited in the United States. This discretion is an essential feature of any\u00a0dictatorship<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s the essence of any system that separates people into aristocrats, who are above the law, versus the public, upon whom their \u2018law\u2019 is enforced. It\u2019s the essence of\u00a0\u201ca nation of men, not of laws.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0But, different people focus on different aspects of it.\u00a0Conservatives notice it in Clinton\u2019s case<\/span><\/a>\u00a0because she was not<\/i> prosecuted. Progressives notice it in Clinton\u2019s case<\/span><\/a>\u00a0because other people (ones without the clout) who did what she did (but only less of it), have been<\/i> prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for it. The result, either way, is\u00a0dictatorship<\/span><\/a>, regardless of anyone\u2019s particular perspective on the matter. Calling a nation like that a \u2018democracy\u2019 is to strip \u201cdemocracy\u201d of its basic meaning \u2014 it is foolishness. Such a nation is an aristocracy, otherwise called an \u201coligarchy.\u201d<\/span><\/a> That\u2019s the opposite of a democracy (even if it\u2019s set up so as to pretend to be a democracy).<\/span><\/p>\n

2: The FBI chose to believe her allegations, instead of to investigate or challenge them.<\/b> For example: On page 4 of\u00a0the FBI\u2019s record of their interview with Hillary dated 2 July 2016<\/span><\/a>, they noted:\u00a0\u201cClinton did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system.\u201d<\/i> But they already had seen\u00a0this email<\/span><\/a>. So, they asked her about that specific one: “Clinton stated she did not remember the email specifically. Clinton stated a \u2018nonpaper\u2019 was a document with no official heading, or\u00a0identifying marks of any kind, that can not be attributed to the US Government. Clinton thought a \u2018nonpaper\u2019 was a way to convey the\u00a0unofficial stance of the US Government to a foreign government and believed this practice went back \u2018200 years.\u2019 When viewing the displayed email, Clinton believed she was asking Sullivan to remove the State letterhead and provide unclassified talking points. Clinton\u00a0stated she had no intention to remove classification markings.\u201d<\/i> Look at the email<\/span><\/a>: is her statement about it \u2014 that “issues sending secure fax\u201d<\/i> had nothing to do with the illegality of sending classified U.S. Government information over a non-secured, even privatized, system \u2014 even credible? Is the implication by Clinton\u2019s remark, that changing the letterhead and removing the document\u2019s classified stamp, would solve the problem that Jake Sullivan \u2014 a highly skilled attorney himself \u2014 had brought to her attention, even credible? Well, if so, then wouldn\u2019t the FBI have asked Sullivan what he was referring to when his email to Clinton said “They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it.\u201d<\/i> The FBI provided no indication that there was any such follow-up, at all. They could have plea-bargained with Sullivan, to get him to testify first, so that his testimony could be used in questioning of her, but they seem not to have been interested in doing any such thing. They believed what she said (even though it made no sense as a response to the problem that Sullivan had just brought to her attention: the problem that emailing to her this information would violate several federal criminal statutes. Clinton, in other words, didn\u2019t really care about the legality. And, apparently, neither did the FBI. Her email in response to Sullivan\u2019s said simply: “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send\u00a0nonsecure.\u201d<\/i> So: she knew that it was classified information but wanted to receive it so that she would be able to say, \u201cI didn\u2019t know that it was classified information.\u201d In other words: she was instructing her advisor: hide the fact that it\u2019s classified information, so that when I receive it, there will be no indication on it that what was sent to me is classified information.<\/span><\/p>\n

3: The FBI avoided using the standard means to investigate a suspect higher-up: obtaining plea-deals with subordinates, requiring them to cooperate<\/b>, answer questions and not to plead the Fifth Amendment (not to refuse to answer)<\/span><\/a>. (In Hillary\u2019s case, the Obama Administration actually did plea-deals in which they allowed the person who was supposed to answer all questions, to plea the Fifth Amendment to all questions instead. This is allowed only when the government doesn\u2019t want to prosecute the higher-up \u2014 which in this case was Clinton. That alone proves the Obama Administration\u2019s \u2018investigation\u2019 of Clinton\u2019s email system to have been a farce.) A plea-deal isn\u2019t a Constitutional process: Jed Rakoff\u2019s article<\/span><\/a> explained why it\u2019s not. The process is informal, but nowadays it\u2019s used in more than 97% of cases in which charges are brought, and in more than 99% of all cases (including the 92% of cases that are simply dropped without any charges being brought). That\u2019s the main reason why nowadays \u201cthe prosecutor has all the power.\u201d Well, the prosecutor in Hillary\u2019s case (the Obama Administration) clearly didn\u2019t want her in the big house; they wanted her in the White House. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org On September 17th, U.S. President Barack Obama, the boss of the U.S. Government\u2019s Executive Branch \u2014 including of federal investigations and prosecutions (including of FBI decisons not to investigate, and not to prosecute) \u2014 said that, in this Presidential election, \u201cMy name may not be on the ballot, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":266839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[96,698,804,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-268094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-cover-up","9":"tag-hillary-clinton","10":"tag-politics-2","11":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}