By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--September 30, 2016
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The FBI has deliberately chosen to accept this lie. The notes of its interview with Ms. Mills credulously states: “Mills did not learn Clinton was using a private email server until after Clinton’s tenure” at State. It added: “Mills stated she was not even sure she knew what a server was at the time.” Which brings us to the hearing’s second revealing moment. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) pointed out that the FBI’s notes from its interview with Clinton IT staffer Bryan Pagliano expose this lie. In late 2009 or early 2010, Mr. Pagliano told investigators, he approached Ms. Mills to relay State Department concerns that the private server might pose a “federal records retention issue.” According to Mr. Pagliano, Ms. Mills told him not to worry about it, because other secretaries of state had used similar setups. More damning, Mr. Chaffetz held up an email that Ms. Mills sent in 2010 to Justin Cooper,whom the Clintons personally employed to help maintain the server. The email reads: “hrc email coming back—is server okay?” Mr. Cooper responds: “Ur funny. We are on the same server.” To be clear: When Mrs. Clinton had an email problem, Ms. Mills didn’t call the State Department’s help desk. She didn’t call Yahoo customer service. She called a privately employed Clinton aide and asked specifically about Mrs. Clinton’s “server.” She did this as chief of staff at the State Department. Mr. Chaffetz asked Mr. Comey why the FBI wrote that Ms. Mills was ignorant about the server until later.
Mr. Comey suddenly sounded like a man with something to hide. “I don’t remember exactly, sitting here,” he said, in what can only be called the FBI version of “I don’t recall.” He then mumbled that “Having done many investigations myself, there’s always conflicting recollections of facts, some of which are central, some of which are peripheral. I don’t remember, sitting here, about that one.”Maybe we can help Director Comey with this one: When one of the subject's top aides claims not to even know about the thing being investigated, and it turns out that's a big fat lie, that would be central rather than peripheral. And that's not exactly what you'd call a conflicting recollection of facts. It's what you'd call utter dishonesty. Why go through this entire exercise at all if there was never any intention of prosecuting? Comey again yesterday repeated his assertion that it wouldn't have been fair to prosecute Hillary because no one else has ever been prosecuted under the statute that criminalizes gross negligence in the handling of classified material. When pressed by Trey Gowdy over what it would have taken for Hillary to be prosecuted, Comey said it would have taken some indication that she knew what she was doing.
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