Hillary Didn’t Intend Or Know A Darn Thing
August 20, 2016 at 4:23 a.m.
By Gary [email protected]
So, depending on how much you look at the Internet and pore over various news sites, you may have missed this little item this past week.
House Republicans have detailed perjury allegations against Hillary Clinton.
Now, this actually happened back in July, but as far as I can tell, it was first reported Monday by FoxNews.com’s Catherine Herridge.
So FoxNews.com had a story and ABCnews.com had a story under the headline “What Has to Be Proved for Perjury Charges Against Hillary Clinton.”
The ABC?story didn’t really detail the allegations against Hillary, they just wrote about what it would take to convict her and basically asserted that she couldn’t be convicted.
Beyond that, only sites like Politico.com or RealClearPolitics.com or BreitbartNews.com had the story.
Certainly it didn’t even garner a mention on CNN. (We have CNN on the TV in the newsroom everyday.)
So, apparently, the fact that a candidate for president has been accused of perjury by the U.S. House of Representatives just really isn’t all that newsworthy.
At least not as newsworthy as the latest dopey thing Donald Trump may have uttered.
Pretty much everybody knows she lied about her email server on multiple occasions – and apparently, even during sworn testimony during a Congressional hearing.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, laid out the case in a letter to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
"The four pieces of sworn testimony by Secretary Clinton are incompatible with the FBI's findings. We hope this information is helpful to your office's consideration of our referral."
According to Herridge, Justice Department Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter Kadzik confirmed in an Aug. 2 letter that they had the perjury investigation request and the department would "take appropriate action as necessary."
"Secretary Clinton stated 'there was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received,’" the letter states.
But FBI Director James Comey said some of the emails did, in fact, carry markings indicating they contained classified material.
"Contrary to her sworn testimony, Secretary Clinton's lawyers did not read each email in her personal account to identify all the work-related messages."
Hillary testified that her team "went through every single email."
But Comey said his team found that all the emails weren’t read. Instead, Hillary’s lawyers used a narrow set of search terms to identify which emails were related to state department activities.
Hillary also told Congress there was only one server.
Comey said investigators found that she used several different servers and administrators.
The letter also noted that Clinton told Congress – and repeatedly, the public – she turned over all her work-related emails.
"I provided you, with all my work related emails, all that I had. Approximately 55,000 pages. And they are being publicly released," Clinton testified.
But no.
FBI investigators found "several thousand work related emails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014."
This should be pretty cut-and-dried. Pretty easy to determine if perjury happened. Investigators at the Justice Department have the truth and they have her statements. Seems it should be pretty easy to match ’em up.
I would guess this would take weeks, not months, to sort out, but I have a prediction.
I predict Hillary won’t be indicted for perjury.
There’s this thing about lying under oath. You can only be indicted for perjury if you knew you were lying under oath.
I think it will be pretty easy for the Justice Department to ascertain that Hillary simply didn’t know there were classified emails on her server.
She didn’t know her attorneys didn’t read every email. She didn’t know that all the emails weren’t turned over and she didn’t know there was more than one server being used.
Now this should be troubling to even the most ardent Hillary supporter.
Basically, there are two ways this could go.
If she didn’t know all this stuff, she’s incompetent.
If she did know this stuff, she committed perjury.
So just like she didn’t “intend” to mishandle classified material, I’m willing to bet she didn’t “know” she was lying under oath.
See, nothing to it.
And it probably doesn’t hurt Hillary’s case that the Kadzik guy from the Justice Department – according to Herridge’s reporting – "led the successful effort to confirm Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates."
Herridge also reports that “both women were central players handling the Clinton email matter.”
Not that the system is “rigged” in Hillary’s favor or anything.
Following last week’s revelations about emails and interactions between Hillary’s staff and the Clinton Foundation – about which Hillary also lied – it all started to make sense to me.
The one burning question I always had was why Hillary would risk setting up her own email server. She’s smart. She had to know she risked mishandling classified material.
I think the relationship between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation goes a long way to explaining why she’d take the risk. The foundation had a lot to gain from Hillary as she ran the State Department.
And Bill?
Why did he risk that meeting on the tarmac in Phoenix with Attorney General Loretta Lynch? Lots of people assumed Bill wanted to browbeat Lynch about averting a potential Hillary indictment.
I don’t think so. The fix was already in on that one.
I think Bill wanted to head off a potential Justice Department probe of the ties between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
Or maybe – as Clinton and Lynch said – they were just talking about their grandkids for a half hour. Wink, wink.
I wonder what emails WikiLeaks will release next?
Of course, all of this might just be one great big coincidence, given how honest and forthright the Clintons have been over the years.
But I gotta say, I’m struggling to control the firing of my conspiracy theory synapses.
So, depending on how much you look at the Internet and pore over various news sites, you may have missed this little item this past week.
House Republicans have detailed perjury allegations against Hillary Clinton.
Now, this actually happened back in July, but as far as I can tell, it was first reported Monday by FoxNews.com’s Catherine Herridge.
So FoxNews.com had a story and ABCnews.com had a story under the headline “What Has to Be Proved for Perjury Charges Against Hillary Clinton.”
The ABC?story didn’t really detail the allegations against Hillary, they just wrote about what it would take to convict her and basically asserted that she couldn’t be convicted.
Beyond that, only sites like Politico.com or RealClearPolitics.com or BreitbartNews.com had the story.
Certainly it didn’t even garner a mention on CNN. (We have CNN on the TV in the newsroom everyday.)
So, apparently, the fact that a candidate for president has been accused of perjury by the U.S. House of Representatives just really isn’t all that newsworthy.
At least not as newsworthy as the latest dopey thing Donald Trump may have uttered.
Pretty much everybody knows she lied about her email server on multiple occasions – and apparently, even during sworn testimony during a Congressional hearing.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, laid out the case in a letter to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
"The four pieces of sworn testimony by Secretary Clinton are incompatible with the FBI's findings. We hope this information is helpful to your office's consideration of our referral."
According to Herridge, Justice Department Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter Kadzik confirmed in an Aug. 2 letter that they had the perjury investigation request and the department would "take appropriate action as necessary."
"Secretary Clinton stated 'there was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received,’" the letter states.
But FBI Director James Comey said some of the emails did, in fact, carry markings indicating they contained classified material.
"Contrary to her sworn testimony, Secretary Clinton's lawyers did not read each email in her personal account to identify all the work-related messages."
Hillary testified that her team "went through every single email."
But Comey said his team found that all the emails weren’t read. Instead, Hillary’s lawyers used a narrow set of search terms to identify which emails were related to state department activities.
Hillary also told Congress there was only one server.
Comey said investigators found that she used several different servers and administrators.
The letter also noted that Clinton told Congress – and repeatedly, the public – she turned over all her work-related emails.
"I provided you, with all my work related emails, all that I had. Approximately 55,000 pages. And they are being publicly released," Clinton testified.
But no.
FBI investigators found "several thousand work related emails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014."
This should be pretty cut-and-dried. Pretty easy to determine if perjury happened. Investigators at the Justice Department have the truth and they have her statements. Seems it should be pretty easy to match ’em up.
I would guess this would take weeks, not months, to sort out, but I have a prediction.
I predict Hillary won’t be indicted for perjury.
There’s this thing about lying under oath. You can only be indicted for perjury if you knew you were lying under oath.
I think it will be pretty easy for the Justice Department to ascertain that Hillary simply didn’t know there were classified emails on her server.
She didn’t know her attorneys didn’t read every email. She didn’t know that all the emails weren’t turned over and she didn’t know there was more than one server being used.
Now this should be troubling to even the most ardent Hillary supporter.
Basically, there are two ways this could go.
If she didn’t know all this stuff, she’s incompetent.
If she did know this stuff, she committed perjury.
So just like she didn’t “intend” to mishandle classified material, I’m willing to bet she didn’t “know” she was lying under oath.
See, nothing to it.
And it probably doesn’t hurt Hillary’s case that the Kadzik guy from the Justice Department – according to Herridge’s reporting – "led the successful effort to confirm Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates."
Herridge also reports that “both women were central players handling the Clinton email matter.”
Not that the system is “rigged” in Hillary’s favor or anything.
Following last week’s revelations about emails and interactions between Hillary’s staff and the Clinton Foundation – about which Hillary also lied – it all started to make sense to me.
The one burning question I always had was why Hillary would risk setting up her own email server. She’s smart. She had to know she risked mishandling classified material.
I think the relationship between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation goes a long way to explaining why she’d take the risk. The foundation had a lot to gain from Hillary as she ran the State Department.
And Bill?
Why did he risk that meeting on the tarmac in Phoenix with Attorney General Loretta Lynch? Lots of people assumed Bill wanted to browbeat Lynch about averting a potential Hillary indictment.
I don’t think so. The fix was already in on that one.
I think Bill wanted to head off a potential Justice Department probe of the ties between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
Or maybe – as Clinton and Lynch said – they were just talking about their grandkids for a half hour. Wink, wink.
I wonder what emails WikiLeaks will release next?
Of course, all of this might just be one great big coincidence, given how honest and forthright the Clintons have been over the years.
But I gotta say, I’m struggling to control the firing of my conspiracy theory synapses.
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092