I just spoke on the BBC where the anchor was pursuing the question of “whether the FBI broke the law” by informing Congress of the reopening of the investigation into the emails. The allegation came from Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid on Sunday. However, with all due respect to our esteemed GW graduate (and I really do respect Sen. Reid), his allegation is in my view wildly misplaced. Reid is arguing that the actions of FBI Director James B. Comey violates the Hatch Act. I cannot see a plausible, let alone compelling, basis for such a charge against Comey.
In his letter to Comey, Reid raised the the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan politicking by government employees.
5 U.S.C. § 7323(a)(1) prohibits a government employee from “us[ing] his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”
Reid argued:
“Your actions in recent months have demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another. I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election. Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law.”
The reference to “months” is curious. Comey has kept Congress informed in compliance with oversight functions of the congressional committees but has been circumspect in the extent of such disclosures. It is troubling to see Democrats (who historically favor both transparency and checks on executive powers) argue against such disclosure and cooperation with oversight committees. More importantly, the Hatch Act is simply a dog that will not hunt.
Richard W. Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House from 2005 to 2007, has filed a Hatch Act complaint against Comey with the federal Office of Special Counsel and Office of Government Ethics. He argues that “We cannot allow F.B.I. or Justice Department officials to unnecessarily publicize pending investigations concerning candidates of either party while an election is underway.”
However, Comey was between the horns of a dilemma. He could be accused of acts of commission in making the disclosure or omission in withholding the disclosure in an election year. Quite frankly, I found Painter’s justification for his filing remarkably speculative. He admits that he has no evidence to suggest that Comey wants to influence the election or favors either candidate. Intent is key under the Hatch investigations. You can disagree with the timing of Comey’s disclosure, but that is not a matter for the Hatch Act or even an ethical charge in my view.
Congress passed the Hatch Act in response to scandals during the 1938 congressional elections and intended the Act to bar federal employees from using “[their] official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” Comey is not doing that in communicating with Congress on a matter of oversight.
Such violations under the Hatch Act, even if proven, are not criminal matters. The Office of Special Counsel -can investigate such matters and seek discipline — a matter than can ultimately go before the Merit Systems Protection Board.
That does not mean that there is not a policy against statements or actions influencing elections. Comey issued a memo in March 2016 reminding that employees “should be particularly mindful of these rules in an election year,” and defining prohibited political activity to include all “activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.”
The senator’s accusations are meritless and entirely political, with the aim of once again protecting Hillary Clinton.
This is just another deflection as was with the Clintons and their followers accusing the Russians of providing WikiLeaks the email. Forget about the email, the Ruskies are coming.
As far as Reid goes, agree completely. But what about Comey? Other than hoisted on his own petard, I still can’t quite grasp his motives.
“EMERGENCY..EMERGENCY..EVERYONE TO GET FROM STREET!”
The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming.
@Jerry, October 31, 2016 at 12:13 pm
“FBI investigation of Anthony Weiner’s laptop is going to [take] a long time.”
It would probably behoove Anthony Weiner to find himself a high-end titanium codpiece before one of Hillary’s operatives finds him. 🙂
Ken Roger – he better find that codpiece before Huma finds him. If I were him, I would file for a restraining order of at least 1000 feet.
Reid certainly didn’t object that Comey was influencing an election by granting immunity to high level witnesses/participants, not even reviewing all the evidence, and when, totally beyond his responsibilities, he exonerated Clinton by saying, “No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”.
This post is a fascinating review of the case as it stands. I suspected that “intent” would be important in determining Comey’s involvement with the Hatch Act, and was also most interested to get the context of the law.
Regardless of the Hatch law, it still seems that Comey has made a significant blunder trying to have it both ways; agreed he is between a rock and a hard place, only I see the blunder being initially when he let Clinton off the hook in such an inappropriate and thus (at the least) seemingly partisan way. That was the blunder, but having brazened his way through it, he is now hoisted on his own petard.
THE GEORGE W. BUSH WHITE HOUSE ‘LOST’ 22 MILLION EMAILS
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-house-lost-22-million-emails-497373.html
For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished.
Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.
Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. “It’s about as amazing a double standard as you can get,” says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. “If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers’ emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails set up on a private DNC server?”
Let’s investigate them, too. There is more than missing emails to answer for..the answer is very like kely in those missing documents.
There has been something rotten in Denmark for some time.
If you accept the criminality of the one, how can you escape the same conclusion for the other? … no evidence of a crime has been found doesn’t cut it. Says who, Comey? I thought Comey was a partisan hack now that he doesn’t parrot your views – how can you point to his conclusion regarding Clinton in the first instance as evidence of no crime while utterly rejecting it in the second?
There have been plenty of experts from every part of the left-right spectrum that argue (convincingly) that there was -almost certainly all the way up to most definitely- criminality involved and that it is simply being white washed by inappropriate grants of immunity and an utterly laxidasical examination (or lack of it) of the evidence because the powers that be want it to be ignored..
You have an incredibly steep slope to climb with this bald claim that Hillary is above reproach on the email fiasco, and it gives the hue of a burlesque to your otherwise clearly stated (not that I agree) general Clinton apology.
edm – my understanding is that several million of those emails have been recovered by the Library of Congress.
Harry Reid is going to prison if Trump wins. He knows his crimes will be exposed so he is afraid.
Isn’t the dictator imprisoning all those that oppose him?
Prof. Turley is wrong. The Democrats only care about transparency when it benefits them politically. As a party, and as a group, the Democrats have no principles. It is all about power, and what they do is only for the purpose of getting power. They will lie, cheat, and steal to get power. It is not unusual for a political party to do this. This video is well worth the time to watch, for an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvov6pfwP-g
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Trump and Clinton are terribly flawed candidates. We should be aware of the faults and serious issues related to both of them. One will soon be elected president. It’s best to know everything we can before we vote.
Yep, looks like we will be left in the dark about both Trump and Clinton.
Clinton will be elected. A known fact.
Nothing like killing the messenger!
FBI investigation of Anthony Weiner’s laptop is going to a long time.
FBI finds Mutiny on the Bounty dance scene….Screw the 650,000 emails. These girls are asking for it.
As must needs be, Mr. Comey does not appreciate being lied to by hilary. No rule of a civilized society exist to protect a liar.
I find it very interesting the lengths Democrats will go to in order to keep voters in the dark about the state of the election.
Combined with sending operatives to cause violence at Trump rallies, intimidating pro Trump students, shouting down conservative speakers at universities, Obama’s uber Presidency in which he had a phone and a pen, Creamer admitting to massive voter fraud, the weapon using of the IRS, the partisanship of the DOJ…and the real question becomes why do people believe that Democrats stand for transparency and checks on executive powers? That is only true, historically, when an opposing party is in office.
Rather, we are seeing the rise of the new fascism. Firemen burning conservative books and the censorship of conservative media are moving from tinfoil hat territory to real possibilities, with censorship of conservatives already proposed.
Should Comey release the details of the Trump investigations before the election or should those be kept secret?
They HAVE released the simple fact that his charity is under investigation for not having filed the right forms, as well as the Jane Doe who’s working with a former Jerry Springer producer on assault allegations. None of that is being kept secret and no one among the Dems is arguing that such information should be kept secret.
As Hillary Clinton well knew when she called upon the FBI to release the emails they cannot do so until their investigation is complete and anything classified is taken out.
I am talking about the ongoing investigation into Trump’s Russian ties that Harry Reid was referring to. Do you think those should be prematurely disclosed?
Dave – I think Trump’s ties along with the Clinton Foundation and Podesta and families’ ties to the Russians need to be exposed. Now, which do you think will be exposed first?
DONALD TRUMP’S COMPANIES DESTROYED EMAILS IN DEFIANCE OF COURT ORDERS
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/11/donald-trump-companies-destroyed-emails-documents-515120.html
Over the course of decades, Donald Trump’s companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics—exposed by a Newsweek review of thousands of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an array of court cases—have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump. In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled—sometimes in vain—to obtain records.
This behavior is of particular import given Trump’s frequent condemnations of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, for having deleted more than 30,000 emails from a server she used during her time as secretary of state. While Clinton and her lawyers have said all of those emails were personal, Trump has suggested repeatedly on the campaign trail that they were government documents Clinton was trying to hide and that destroying them constituted a crime. The allegation—which the FBI concluded was not supported by any evidence—is a crowd-pleaser at Trump rallies, often greeted by supporters chanting, “Lock her up!”
TRUMP’S USE OF DECEPTION and untruthful affidavits, as well as the hiding or improper destruction of documents, dates back to at least 1973, when the Republican nominee, his father and their real estate company battled the federal government over civil charges that they refused to rent apartments to African-Americans. The Trump strategy was simple: deny, impede and delay, while destroying documents the court had ordered them to hand over.
LOL! The house of cards is collapsing, Clintonistas!
Trump’s child rape case is coming up in December, also.
“Trump’s rape case” scheduled for December is a status conference involving a civil suit.
It is the 3rd or 4th time the plaintiff has initiated/ reinstated this case.
If the past pattern continues, this civil suit may again be withdrawn or dismissed.
It will be interesting to say how in many courts, and in how many jurisdictions, this case can continue to be refiled.
I had no idea Trump was a public servant all those years.
So, given how corrupt, disgusting, and incompetent Trump is; do you want him as the public servant? Say yes, reveal yourself.
issac – I vote yes for Trump. He is half as corrupt as Hillary.
Do you really fancy that the residuum of Newsweek has the staff to undertake a comprehensive investigative project on an enterprise which employs 22,000 people and has been in business for four decades? Or that they have the budget to hire the skilled personnel needed to undertake such a review? Are you in the market for a bridge?
I personally believe that the main guilty party here is the DNC. With so many eligible candidates why, the extreme conspiracy to make HRC THE CANDIDATE? The DNC cannot deny that they rigged the primaries by not allowing any other candidate to participate in the debates. When you walk on mud you cannot avoid to get your shoes dirty.
Graciela,
The DNC with the help of the MSM swiftly got rid of the contenders Jim Webb and later Martin O’Malley. Both were against the TPP. I have a great deal of respect for Webb and he was portrayed as an angry man. And we know that Bernie firmly opposes the TPP.
Hey Autumn, here is an interesting viewpoint that explores the timeliness of all this stuff. I had been thinking it’s all been a little too manufactured. It just may be the deep state of civil servants see the threat of continuing with the Clinton and neocon tradition.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct16/Hillary-blast-points10-16.html
The most guilty party is the RNC … for NOT rigging the process against Trump. Any semi-decent Republican could have beaten HRC.
dougkinan,
Did I imply that by posting comments made by Bill Weld?
edm:
No, you did not.
Your comments were thoughtful, provocative and most appropriate.
I was making a point and asking a general question.
As for Bill Weld’s candidacy, he had as much chance at being president as I did.
Finally, anyone with knowledge, especially Harry Reid, would know there is no Hatch Act violation here.
dougkinan@yahoo.com
Libertarian VP nominee: James Comey’s letter to Congress was ‘disgraceful’
Bill Weld thinks Comet should have kept his mouth shut.
https://thinkprogress.org/bill-weld-james-comey-letter-disgraceful-clinton-trump-1339560ae6ac#.2p2yxwdgg
Libertarian vice presidential nominee and former Justice Department official Bill Weld thinks FBI Director James Comey made a “disgraceful” decision when he announced he intended to look at a Hillary Clinton aide’s emails in a letter to Republican congressional committee chairs…
Weld, who was head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department under President Reagan and later served as a Republican governor of Massachusetts, said, “If you don’t know [what’s in the emails], keep your mouth shut. Don’t speculate.”
“Now [Comey] announces, or someone announced, ‘We got permission to look at the emails.’ They’re not even announcing, ‘We’ve looked at the emails,’” he added. “What’s it going to be tomorrow? ‘We looked at an email. There was nothing there, but tomorrow we’re going to look at another email.”
edm:
The media reports there are 650,000 emails to look at.
Do you think they reviewed them all overnight?
dougkinan@yahoo.com
Weld is a pompous, stooge. The FBI know there’s some classified info and worse[for Hillary and Clinton Foundation] in these emails. I will bet 1K some of the bleachbit emails from Hillary’s server are in this computer. Hell, there are 650K emails, maybe all the 33K deleted emails are on there. You know, those 33K emails about Chelsea’s vegan wedding!! Lots of vegan recipes for sure.
Nick – you are forgetting the yoga schedule. And don’t forget that Huma has admitted throwing the weekly schedule in the burn bag.
Bill Weld is part of the Establishment running as a fake Libertarian just like Johnson. Weld is all about the TPP and globalism.
Comey is dead to the FBI agents appalled @ the way the email server “investigation” was handled. Facing a mutiny, and given an opportunity to conduct a REAL investigation w/ these new emails, Comey chose to become dead to the Clinton’s. Maybe he didn’t want to spend any more time next to a woman, who according to John Podesta “smells like boiled cabbage, urine and farts”[Wikileaks].
I think Comey was rattled by the mutiny in his agency, so he jumped on the opportunity for a “do over.”
Tin, He didn’t jump @ the opportunity. He sees the house of cards falling. He knew this would leak. He had 2 bad choices and he chose the least bad. The Clinton’s corrupt everyone they touch. The silence is deafening from both Hillary and Trump. More bad stuff coming out about BOTH. Elitists are in full panic mode. This is a 21st Century revolution.
Is there something by or about Trump perhaps in those 650,000 emails? Otherwise, why the silence?
Maybe you mean his own bad press.
Trump’s connections to the Clinton’s was my first cynical thought. What a frustrating political ride we’re on!
The letter was a political disaster, for Comey worst of all. His only obligation was to make public that the investigation of Clinton’s emails was being reopened. That’s it. Such a public announcement should have been brief and, most importantly, not infer that he knows anything that shows, as yet, any violation of law by Clinton. He would have been justified doing that before the election because the fact that the investigation was being reopened is significant, and to not disclose that until after the election would have been worse.
But the letter to Congress was unnecessary, and made it look like something was actually discovered in the emails that implicated HRT. Bad, bad judgment.
igpres – the letter was made public to ‘favored’ members of the press as soon as possible. This is why Podesta’s attack that only the Republican’s got the letter was a lie. Too many liberal papers reported it. And 3 hours later Hillary lied when she repeated that only the Republicans got the letter.
So now, the question or criticism is the length of the announcement?
Not infer that he knows anything yet?
Don’t you think he knew enough to reopen the investigation?
Why you are just spinning and spiraling down the squirrel hole.