Headline!!!
White House Won’t Second-Guess FBI Director’s Judgment
From NPR!!! The DNC News Channel!!!
The White House is carefully trying to steer clear of the political fight over FBI director James Comey’s controversial decision to publicize a new round of scrutiny related to Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
“I’ll neither defend nor criticize what Director Comey has decided to communicate to the public about this investigation,” White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
—snip—
“The president doesn’t believe that Director Comey is intentionally trying to influence the outcome of an election,” Earnest said. “The president believes that Director Comey is a man of integrity. He’s a man of principle. And he’s a man of good character.”
Obama appointed Comey to lead the FBI. He earlier held high-ranking positions in the George W. Bush administration.
—snip—
The White House has also been careful about that, going to what Earnest called “great lengths” to insulate the FBI’s probe “from even the appearance of political interference.”
As NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports, the FBI is currently sifting through the newly discovered emails to figure out if they are duplicates of what agents already read during the investigation of Hillary Clinton that ended in no criminal charges in July. Longtime friends tell Johnson that Comey felt boxed in by the situation — he had testified twice that the server investigation was over. But then he was faced with the new email findings, which he worried could leak.
Clinton has urged the FBI to put out more information, saying over the weekend that “it’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election.”
All’s I’ve got to say is:
HMMMMMmmmmmm!!!
Watch.
This one ain’t nearly done yet.
I mean…over the past several months “The White House”…both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama…have been quite actively and quite successfully attacking Trump and supporting HRC.
And now… suddenly…they are “carefully trying to steer clear” of this latest thing!!!???
Sump’ns up.
Sump’n big.
Watch.
Tarheel’s twitching “Jim Qwilleran moustache” may have been right on the money.
Isikoff FWIW
Exclusive: FBI still does not have warrant to review new Abedin emails linked to Clinton probeThis has my Jim Qwilleran moustache twitching. We have all of this certain knowledge (through the New York Post) of what these emails say, and you have Jim Comey issuing this statement to Congress.
Not had that sort of twitching since the reports of the burglary at the Watergate of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972.
—snip—
Watch.
AG
We shall see. Soon enough.
AG
Wouldn’t be surprised the FBI found a back-up of the 33,000 deleted emails … Obama getting nervous.
Not Huma Abedin, HRC herself was the biggest risk for the Democratic Party … getting the leader it deserves … it’s about US .. Not The People.
NSA, FBI forensics should be able to do a thorough job. USA is the global hacker-in-chief and already has a track record in cyber warfare – proven! HRC getting shaven by The Department?
○ The FBI’s Clinton Investigation Is Wider Than Assumed | MoA |
Never ever trust the supposed “expertise” of these various three-letter agencies, Oui…including the biggest one of them all, USA.
First of all, they are vast bureaucracies filled with clone workers and secondly even if they do get something right it has to be filtered up through the various bureaucratic seines and colanders to see if it isn’t “dangerous” to the powers-that-be-at-that-moment.
The whole system is just a series of a fuck-ups waiting to happen. It’s been that way for quite a while now. the last time that this culture worked efficiently? I would say during FDR’s tenure. As Samuel Johnson once said ” “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
That goes for countries, too.
The U.S. has gotten fat, lazy and crooked.
So it goes.
AG
not necessarily a back up. could be emails moved to husband’s computer so they could be unavailable yet not deleted.
Wouldn’t that fall within the definition of backup?
no, my idea is that in order to say honestly that they were not deleted, they were moved. they were moved to a place inaccessible (hopefully, not as as it turned out). just a theory. I also respect Tarheel dem’s theory, but I assume most gov agencies want Clinton to win since T is crazy and a wild card. I also thought, however, that the private server was hacked and some of that would show up on wikileaks as an Oct surprise.
heh. I never thought that HRC’s server was hacked for two reasons. It’s existence was a well-kept secret and limited to trusted people with a need to know. It was unlikely that anyone would have considered that she would do something so dumb and in violation of USG SOP. I was told those weren’t good reasons because hackers can metatrack anything and her server would have been found and then hacked.
Don’t understand your first sentence. The subject was always the emails on HRC’s server. She and others claimed that all here work related emails were turned over to the State Department in December 2014 and months after being asked to do so. Seems obvious to me that she had no intention of giving them to the State department.
She also claimed that all her personal emails had been deleted after they had been sorted out from her work emails. Beginning shortly after she left office, her emails were moved to another server to upgrade her system and move the equipment out from her basement. A reason to question if that is true or the full story is because of who was hired to do the work. Is there a national politico that has more buddies in the computer tech industry than the Clintons? Yet, who did they choose for the job?
Abedin only said that she gave all her devices and a file to the attorneys and they forwarded all her work products and used a liberal definition of work.
well, I just thought that it’s a way to not turn over some emails without deleting them. the fact that AW evidently sexted from the device containing them one can see why Tarheel dem is credulous. but I think compulsive behavior is compulsive and ppl in such walks of life probably aren’t set up for extensive therapy and therapy support groups, likely fall off the wagon
Entirely possible that these emails were archived to preserve them and avoid turning them over. There are several problems with that scenario. (I have to make an assumption that this was done after the heat was turned on HRC’s emails.) The major problem being the machine source for the download. If it were another Abedin laptop, how were they not on the one Abedin turned in? If the emails were pulled from one of HRC servers before that was purged, could that have been done without leaving some record of such access on this laptop?
A simplest explanation would be that this was Abedin’s primary laptop. The one(s) she turned in were dummies on which selected emails and other files were downloaded. Then it became AW’s laptop and both claimed it had always been his but Abedin may have used it a few times.
The FBI investigation appears to be proceeding along the same lines of its original investigation of HRC’s emails. 1) Are there any classified documents on it? 2) Are there any work related emails that weren’t turned over to the State Dept. 3) Any evidence that the device was hacked.
Don’t know where the investigation will go if the answer to #3 is yes. May depend on the answers to the other two lines of inquiry.
As the FBI didn’t make much noise about the work related emails on HRC’s devices that weren’t forwarded to the State Dept, if only a handful of emails that weren’t forwarded are found on this laptop, would guess that they go easy on Abedin
If the answer to #1 is yes — as it was in HRC’s case – another question follows from that. Are these emails with classified material different from those found in HRC’s files. If no and no as to being hacked, Abedin will get a pass and nothing other than public opinion would preclude her from a WH job that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. If yes, an indictment would be expected. Worse for her if the machine was hacked. This would also send chills through a Hillary administration because it would echo the first Clinton admin.
Absent an indictment, and no sure thing if indicted, the question of how and why those emails ended up on AW’s laptop may never be known.
my theory was that it was a letter of the law way of not deleting the work related emails; not to preserve them, to not-delete them. I assume it was AW’s computer as well. so that A turned over all of hers. since digital clones are identical, it’s possible to delete the “originals” without technically deleting the emails if one has made the clones. I know I’m putting all this on HRC and A, contra Tarheeldem, but does seem to be Bill’s mo.
As I suspected – Politico – FBI never asked Clinton aides for all their devices
Note: the attorneys that handed over their laptops to the FBI were given immunity for the content on their laptops.
re: hacking, a charming angle on it, but that’s not the way it works. SOS is an obvious target, that’s the starting point,
Booman Tribune ~ Comments ~ BREAKING-White House Won’t Second-Guess FBI Director’s Judgment
It depends on who the hackers are. If they for example has the resources of the academics quoted in this article on Trump’s network possible connections to Russia, they will probably find it anyway. If they are kids in the basement, they might focus on something else.
Was a server registered to the Trump Organization communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank?
Note that accoridng to the article, the two servers were setup to only communicate with each other. Unlike a regular mailserver that is setup to commuicate with the world.
Check out the principal of that Russian bank. Appears to be on good terms with Putin (otherwise he and his operations would be under scrutiny and conflicts like that don’t remain hidden) AND US movers and shakers. The latter doesn’t include Trump.
Now I’m getting a spidey sense. The anti-Russia/Putin rhetoric from HRC and her campaign has been extreme and unrelenting and seemingly came out of nowhere. Almost as if they knew something could be found and reported on before the election for her benefit. And/or a ready-made scapegoat/culprit for hack/leaks from HRC/DNC/high level Democrats computers. The latter is succeeding with partisan Democrats and only failing with those not willing to take assertions with no evidence as fact. She needs those skeptics to vote for her. So, now we get pings, etc. between a Russian bank server and an apparently dormant Trump server.
NBC — FBI Obtains Warrant for Newly Discovered Emails in Clinton Probe — as Reid Accuses Comey of Hatch Act Violation
I believe you’ve misread Taheel’s moustache twitch — he’s concluding that this is the reverse of Watergate. That all the crumbs have been planted and there is no there there. Unlike Watergate where the crumbs led to more and larger crumbs.
Could be, Marie. Why don’t we let Tarheel tell me what he meant, eh?
AG
Okay — but I’ve been sparring with him over the past few days on this point and he has been coming back with the same thing which is that there’s a conspiracy using falsified information to get Hillary. i.e. the 15 year old recipient of sext messages from Weiner doesn’t exist.
That is something to consider, not a claim.
I’m just remembering the Yellow Cake document and Curveball and how the GOP handled Valerie Plame to get what they wanted.
They do not work within legal restrictions but everyone is assuming that this time they do.
And there are some huge Constitutional issues here that are being swept under the carpet because Clinton is a public figure.
We are seeing trial in the media in the last weeks before and election of issues for which there is no explicit evidence of wrongdoing.
And Clinton has confessed to one instance of poor judgement.
Comey wrote the letter to get the words “Weiner”, “sexting”, and “15-year-old girl” into the media narrative. That is the bottom line here. And he did it under pressure from his GOP buddies on the investigating committees. That is what is evident to me.
Constitutional Law Expert: Comey Did NOT Violate Law By Announcing Email Investigation
You wouldn’t by any chance have some expertise in PC/laptop programs? My very limited knowledge in this area is a handicap in trying to understand some of the ins and outs of email-gate. And I liked to find someone that can answer what may be a few simple question.
Sorry, I have some expertise with Unix/Linux, but not with Windows. So I have set up what amounted to email servers that were on the Internet (for which I actually got into trouble once, because I didn’t know what I was doing, and my mail transfer daemon (SMTP) ended up being used for spam, much annoying the resident sysadmin), but from what I read, Hillary wanted to continue using her Blackberry for email, and for that, only Windows software is available.
Sounds as if you have more knowledge than I do and I’m not sure my question is specific to Windows. Let me try to articulate where I’m stuck, but first how I got there.
iirc when Comey issued his report in July it came out that to disable an old HRC Blackbery, someone on her team smashed it with a hammer. I thought that was strange. Only later, and I think I have this right, I learned that Blackberries retain a copy of emails sent and received and that PCs/laptops can be configured to have the same feature. It’s my understanding that the host server copy is impossible for an ordinary user to delete or destroy. Don’t know if the same applies to email copies on user devices, but that’s not important to my question.
Say a person has a PC/laptop that retains a copy of all read/sent emails and at some point decides to back up all those stored emails on another PC/laptop would those emails on the second PC/laptop be exact copies of those on the original PC/laptop? Or would there be some evidence that it was a clone copy from another PC/laptop and hadn’t been retained from the server address?
Yes, you are right, your question is not specific to Windows. The email protocols define how the so-called metadata for an email message are specified, and that is not operating system-specific
So the answer to your question is, yes, if someone makes a copy of a bunch of emails from one machine to another, they would be exact copies, and I do not know what you mean by “evidence that it was a clone copy”. In the digital world, a copy is precisely identical to what it was copied from. Micro$oft, with its incredibly poor imagination and quality control, can’t change this basic reality of computing.
An email that was sent from a Gmail account gets a cryptographic signature attached to it, which proves that the email has not been tampered with. This means that all of the Podesta emails released by Wikileaks can be proven to be not having been tampered with. I’m afraid that it is too late in the night for me give you a URL that explains that.
You probably answered my question and thank you very much. But just to be clear when you say An email that was sent from a Gmail account gets a cryptographic signature attached to it, is a signature attached to emails from an account on any server? Specifically, would Abedin’s clintonmail account emails have a signature?
I don’t know how common it is for DKIM signatures to be added to emails. What it depends on is what SMTP server the sender of the email uses to send his or her message.
Here is where I learned about DKIM:
We Can Prove the Podesta Emails Released by Wikileaks Are Authentic… Here’s How
From that article, you can see that hillaryclinton.com also uses it.
Thanks but I’m not questioning or exploring the authenticity of emails (at least not yet and hope we can rely on the experts to adequately address this for some time to come). Let me try to ask my question in another way.
Say an individual has two laptops, both set to save/store/archive all sent and received emails, and the individual is indifferent to which laptop she/he uses for emails and doesn’t use or may not even be aware of the email storage on the laptop. (Ignore the artificiality of this example.) For emails, the person always connects to his/her email service provider and logs into his/her email account. Can see that a new email has been received and opens it. Can I assume that opening it triggers the automatic “save” on the laptop or does that happen when it’s closed? (Assume it’s read and nothing further is done with this email.)
Later and when using the other laptop the individual logs into his/her account and decides to open the email (that now doesn’t have the “new” label) again. It then gets “saved” to the second laptop. In a forensic analysis of the two laptops would the copy of this email be identical in every way on the two machines? That it wouldn’t be possible to identify when it was opened on laptop one and laptop two? (A side issue, does the server copy created a log as to when an email is opened, and if so, does it log every time it’s opened?)
I think the answer to your question depends on what email client is being used. Given that Clintonites use Windows (there was an email in the Podesta Wikileaks talking about how hard it is to get used to Windows 8), Abedin and Weiner probably used some Windows email client like Outlook that I am not familiar with at all. So I can’t really answer your questions definitively.
Except to say that yes, the email would be identical in every way on the two laptops. There are strict protocols and standards about how an email gets transmitted from one machine to another (which can be between Windows, Mac, and Unix machines, all of those terminating lines with different characters, with only Unix using the right one, naturally.)
I don’t know what Outlook uses to communicate between an email client and server, but in the Unix/Linux world, IMAP is used. Gmail and every email provider I know also uses POP and/or IMAP. With POP, when you get an email with your client, it usually gets deleted from the server. (I can’t remember exactly since it’s been so long since I’ve used POP.) A main reason for the creation of IMAP was to allow your accessing your email account from different machines, with emails you read on one machine being accessible on another. With IMAP, it is the server that keeps track of whether a message has been read or not. I don’t know if it also records when the email was read. That would probably be implementation-specific. I also don’t know whether email clients record when a message was read when they use IMAP, which I think was one of your two main questions.
There are different specifications as to how emails get stored in a file system. Each email can go in its own file, or all emails in a given folder can go in one file. If each email goes into its own file, then the file system (not the email client) keeps track of when the file containing the email was created and last read.
Now that you’ve raised these questions, I’m actually puzzled by how and why so many emails ended up getting copied onto a machine that was the main machine of the user. That doesn’t seem to be something that a typical Windows could do without putting a fair amount of work into it. But then, maybe there are Windows applications that make this easy.
Have you seen Weiner? I think I’ll watch it tonight.
Afaik, Outlook supports IMAP, POP (but does anyone use that anymore?) and MS own Exchange mail server.
No. How about you watch it and give us a review/report on it.
The reported 600+ thousand emails on what we’ve been told was Weiner’s computer may be an inflated number. Possible that more than one copy of some emails was stored from multiple downloads. By “main machine of the user” are you referring to “Weiner’s.” Abedin has denied that she even used that machine and the subject emails under investigation aren’t Weiner’s.
Another plausible possibility for that huge number of emails is that Weiner may have been a compulsive emailer. It will be some time before the FBI can determine the number of Abedin’s emails that they’ve discovered on this machine.
Again thanks for your answers. Always nice to know the range of possibilities. While I don’t much like it, will have to rely on the FBI to sort this all and perhaps tell us what they found.
Oops. I wanted to say “copied onto a machine that was not the main machine of the user”.
Here’s a blog post by someone who has much more knowledge about Windows and email than I do:
Where’s The Media? A BOMBSHELL Is Being Ignored!
I do not vouch for that blog, and haven’t even been able to figure out what kind of politics it comes from, but I do urge you to read that post, since it gives more insight into what you are wondering about than I have been able to.
I also think it is accurate on the technical part.
The authors conclusion that there is something of note on the laptop rests on the assumption that it was setup to receieve Abedins email and that there is something hidden in the deleted emails. Which remains to be seen.
Thanks — but for all the technical stuff the writer presents (disputed by another person in the comments), it merely confirms what you were able to suss out. ie if this laptop were routinely used by Abedin to access her clintonmail and yahoo accounts, those emails could have automatically downloaded from those accounts. Only two conclusions can be drawn from that: 1) AW did it or 2) Abedin lied when she said this wasn’t her computer. (3 Putin operated this laptop by remote control.)
However, he doesn’t admit to other possibilities as to how they could have gotten on this laptop. Then he makes a huge leap and asserts that all of HRC’s deleted/destroyed emails would be on this laptop. For that to be true, the FBI (either officially or through anonymous sources) have been misleading in stating that they’ve only found Abedin emails. To “get it all,” HRC’s account would also need to have been accessed and the copies stored, and then those would be H emails and not Abedin’s.
While still a possibility, there is a flaw in considering that these emails were downloaded from Abedin’s laptop and not from her email accounts. That is, what happened to her original laptop? It could have been destroyed after downloading to AW’s laptop, but why go to such effort of downloading and then destroying?
Hillary’s emails matter: A retired CIA officer explains why
Tsk tsk… The Hill isn’t on the approved list of quotable sites.
Have to keep in mind that the FBI referral was limited to looking into whether or not classified material ended up on HRC’s server. They found a few documents, but Comey concluded that the investigation hadn’t uncovered sufficient intent to circumvent SOP. IOW — they must have accidentally migrated to her server.
What the investigation didn’t include was violations of FOIA and removing USG documents from USG premises/computers. So, what could be easily proven was excluded from the criminal investigation. On someone’s order, overlooked, or of no interest to any referring agency. The doofuses on the House committee were so blinded by their Benghaiz obsession that they couldn’t see the real violation staring at them.
Then:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/21/remarks-president-nomination-james-comey-direc
tor-fbi
Now:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/31/politics/white-house-james-comey-clinton-emails/
Seems like he would have defended that first guy.
Wouldn’t have needed to defend the first guy because he was using definitions of independence and deep integrity only found in a secret USG dictionary. The one that described Holder’s independence and deep integrity that handed out get out of jail free cards to the too big to jail folks in O’s roledex.
My current understanding is that the FBI seized the laptop in a joint law enforcement investigation NY-NC-FBI at least. Apparently NC is the location of the 15-year-old and the warrant came from the Western District of NC. Interesting to find out the political background of that judge.
The FBI then looked at the metadata of the disk drive. Users see file names, file dates, file types, but apparently Windows metadata includes other information including server names of originals of files or something to that effect. It is only from the metadata that the FBI used to issue the request for a subpoena to open the files.
Given the chain of custody and past FBI practices, I do not discount the possibility that the FBI did a sneak peak with some type of scanning software. Nor do I discount the possibility of planting of Clinton files on Weiner’s computer that were obtained either from the server or Abedin’s computer or phone.
It’s amazing how many civil libertarians are rubbing their hands with glee that this might take down Hillary Clinton. That is strange.
The WHite House has been very cautious for 8 years with the denizens of the deep state; I do not expect them to change now unless it takes down the deep state game. And that’s a huge gamble.
You write:
To put it street simple, Obama’s mama didn’t raise no fools. If he wasn’t truly cognizant of the depth and power of the Deep State when he got involved in national politics, he is most certainly aware of it after eight years in office. He is a highly intelligent man and I believe that he truly loves his wife and family. What he appears to want to do now is get the hell out of office with his life in one piece and then go enjoy the perks of being a a rich and famous ex-president.
I wish him the best.
AG
While we can’t put anything past the FBI, Occam’s Razor tells us that we don’t need any conspiracies to end up with classified emails on Huma Abedin’s laptop.
Just Hillary’s sense of entitlement and technical incompetence.
But…Abedin is generally recognized as not incompetent…at least in procedural matters and the like. (We’ll ignore the Weiner mistake for the sake of argument. The mind boggles considering his “procedures!!!”)
That leaves three possibilities:
1-She is indeed incompetent…only “competent” compared to HRC and the rest of the entitlement-blindered DNC hustlers.
2-She’s been set up. By whom? Damned if I know. Whoever really profits from an HRC loss. That’s worth a whole ‘nother set of considerations, right there.
or
3-She kept these things as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Just in case something should really go wrong. Which in itself opens up a few other possibilities.
a-She is at least incompetent enough not to realize that the emails could be retrieved by other interested parties if they so desired.
b-She is at least incompetent enough to have forgotten one of her get-out-of-jail-free stashes. Unlikely, though.
c-This is her get-out-of-jail-free moment.
d-She really is a deep plant. Again…in service to whom? More unanswerable questions. We still don’t know the whole truth about the ’60s assassinations, Watergate or 9/11. Add this one to the still-closed bag.
Hmmmmm…
AG
You left out the fact that aside from sneakernet (USB drives), it is possible for the NSA to track movements of files between selected computers. Did they? Did they have a warrant to do it?
That’s an investigation in itself, isn’t it?
You ask:
You mean…even after NSA Director’ Michael Hayden’s bald-faced lies to Congress and subsequent non-punishment, you still believe in warrants!!!???
If so, I’ve got a bridge contract for you to sign.
Please!!!
AG
it is possible for the NSA to track movements of files between selected computers.
Why would a download from one PC/laptop to another PC/laptop carry source (PC/laptop) footprints that a download from a PC/laptop to a USB wouldn’t? From my inquiry up-thread, it appears that it wouldn’t.
It was Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Do you have evidence that they normally shared that laptop? Do they not have several personal and work devices apiece? What kind of impoverished power couple are they?
The FBI went after Abedin’s devices previously when they went after Clinton’s devices.
And just for the record, Abedin is muslim. Isn’t that interesting? Just for the political angle for shaming in the media.
Do you have a source for this: The FBI went after Abedin’s devices previously when they went after Clinton’s devices.
Abedin has stated that she handed her devices to attorneys and they went through them and forwarded to the State Dept any work emails they found on them. Where those devices went after that seems not to have been reported.
We know that the FBI took custody of Cheryl Mill’s laptop and she was given immunity for any content the FBI found on it.
And just for the record, Abedin is muslim. Isn’t that interesting?
Nutso rightwingers have long been making noise about that, and everybody else has ignored it because it’s not relevant. Raising suspicions that she has become a law enforcement target because of her religion is as ludicrous as Clarence Thomas claiming that he was a victim of racism during his confirmation hearings.