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Comey, Who Investigated Hillary Clinton For Using Personal Email For Official Business, Used His Personal Email For Official Business (buzzfeed.com) 464

An anonymous reader shares a report: Former FBI Director James Comey, who led the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of personal email while secretary of state, also used his personal email to conduct official business, according to a report from the Justice Department on Thursday. The report also found that while Comey was "insubordinate" in his handling of the email investigation, political bias did not play a role in the FBI's decision to clear Clinton of any criminal wrongdoing.

The report from the office of the inspector general "identified numerous instances in which Comey used a personal email account (a Gmail account) to conduct FBI business." In three of the five examples, investigators said Comey sent drafts he had written from his FBI email to his personal account. In one instance, he sent a "proposed post-election message for all FBI employees that was entitled 'Midyear thoughts,'" the report states. In another instance, Comey again "sent multiple drafts of a proposed year-end message to FBI employees" from his FBI account to his personal email account.

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Comey, Who Investigated Hillary Clinton For Using Personal Email For Official Business, Used His Personal Email For Official Bus

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  • Well... I'll never! Color me shocked ... shocked, I TELL YOU!

    What I don't understand about Comey is that he all but threw the election to Trump while panning Trump left and right.

    • by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:53PM (#56786092)

      What I don't understand about Comey is that he all but threw the election to Trump while panning Trump left and right.

      It's easy to understand. Comey and the rest of the beltway didn't even suspect Trump might get elected. The purpose of that farcical reopen/close stunt was to clean the slate; Clinton would win the election and enter office with no outstanding investigative hangups.

      • Comey was covering his ass after "clearing" Clinton only to find out months later that Anthony Weiner had more of her classified emails on his laptop.

  • by MrNJ ( 955045 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:13PM (#56785710)
    That was the issue with Clinton. Handling classified material improperly. Bid difference.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Train0987 ( 1059246 )

      No it's still illegal because it circumvents the FOIA laws. That was the reason Clinton set that server up in the first place - so she could decide which emails would be preserved.

      • And using an external email service is legal for conducting official (and probably confidential) business?

      • by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:38PM (#56785944)

        That wasn't illegal in 2010. That was made illegal following Clinton leaving secertary of state position.

        It is currently illegal and yet Trump has not just one but multiple private data channels sitting on top of classified data daily. My favorite was a photo with the media that showed classified docents sitting underneath an unsecured phone in the room with reporters.

        That makes Clinton look sane. And that takes quite a bit

        • I'm not familiar with this photo, but I am genuinely curious: how do you know, just from looking at a picture, whether a phone is secured or not? I would have expected that secured and unsecured phones would appear the same. After all, a notable difference in outward appearance would seem to beg for phones that mimic the "safe" appearance in order to gain exposure to sensitive material, and it that difference would advertise that authentic secured phones have likely been exposed to sensitive (hence valuable

      • by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:57PM (#56786128)

        No it's still illegal because it circumvents the FOIA laws. That was the reason Clinton set that server up in the first place - so she could decide which emails would be preserved.

        How so? The email sent from his FBI account, to his Gmail account circumvented the FOIA laws because magically the sent email was not retained and preserved?

        Really?

        • No it's still illegal because it circumvents the FOIA laws. That was the reason Clinton set that server up in the first place - so she could decide which emails would be preserved.

          How so? The email sent from his FBI account, to his Gmail account circumvented the FOIA laws because magically the sent email was not retained and preserved?

          Really?

          > fwds official email from gov't account to personal

          > now has original sender's address in personal email address book

          > send all future communications from personal address, using personal email address book.

          Pretty simple.

      • No it's still illegal because it circumvents the FOIA laws. That was the reason Clinton set that server up in the first place - so she could decide which emails would be preserved.

        Read the story below, and then fuck right off. Let's stop pretending that anyone really cares if someone in a presidential administration uses personal email.

        https://nyti.ms/2yoxME [nyti.ms]

        In case you can't figure out how to bypass the paywall:

        "WASHINGTON — At least six of President Trump’s closest advisers occasionally used p

      • by Boronx ( 228853 )

        She set it up because state unsecured emails had long been compromised.

    • Three fucking classified emails are the "big difference"? Note: Classified, not Secret, Top Secret or SAP.

  • by ASCIIxTended ( 4777373 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:17PM (#56785754)

    Strzok and Page also used personal email to conduct FBI business. And yes, it was probably illegal - their work-related communications must be subject to FOIA’s disclosure provisions.

  • by Train0987 ( 1059246 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:19PM (#56785770)

    The OIG report also says Comey claims he didn't know Anthony Weiner was married to Clinton's chief of staff Huma Abedin...

    Director of the FBI.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      My jaw dropped when I read that in the OIG executive summary.

      But in a way this seems consistent with Comey's various misjudgments. He made some really naive errors.

      Comey may be a case of the Peter Principle, a man who has "risen to the level of his incompetence". For him that level was where he had to handle matters with political implications. Comey made a complete hash of those when all he had to do was do things the usual way.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The OIG report also says Comey claims he didn't know Anthony Weiner was married to Clinton's chief of staff Huma Abedin...

      Director of the FBI.

      Given that Anthony Weiner himself apparently didn't know he was married to Abedin, I'll give Comey a pass on just this one.

  • Unsurprising. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:20PM (#56785776)

    I've long suspected that use of personal email accounts is so rampant in government that if the FBI did prosecute, half of congress would be torn between destroying their own emails and trying to dig up anything the other party sent them from a person address. It's only a big deal with it can be turned into a political weapon.

  • Powell did too (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:20PM (#56785784)
    Go back to the Bush administration and Colin Powell had a personal server too... and he too used it for business...
    1,2,3 the righties scream .. but, but, but, but, but ..... HILLARY!!!!
    Meanwhile the IG report drops and results in no new indictments, no firings... a big nothing burger... yawn.
    • to her credit she didn't throw him under the bus for it.
    • Re:Powell did too (Score:5, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @04:30PM (#56786340)
      Powell didn't have a private server. He had a private email account (accessed via dialup on a laptop no less), and used both it and his official state.gov email account.

      Hillary set up a private server and used it for all her official email. She never used her state.gov email account.

      Comparing the two is like comparing someone who occasionally drives over the speed limit, with someone who always drives 100+ MPH.
    • Go back to the Bush administration and Colin Powell had a personal server too... and he too used it for business...

      Aren't people getting tired of whataboutism like this? It's a logical fallacy and it doesn't help the conversation.

  • right (Score:3, Interesting)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @03:26PM (#56785832)

    so nothing confidential at all, just employee memo drafts?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    (U) Comey was investigated former Secretary of State Clinton for her handling of classified materials.
    (U) Unclassified materials were found on an insecure personal server that she had set up to work from home
    (U) She claimed that she had no knowledge that any of the documents on that server were classified -- meaning some variety of confidential (C), secret (S), or (most likely at her level) top secret (TS). She believed it was all unclassified (U)
    (U) Her claim is fucking ridiculous, because in classified do

    • (U) Her claim is fucking ridiculous, because in classified documents every page, heading, sentence, and bullet point, and source reference is preceded by note just like this: (U) (FOUO) (C) (S) (TS)
      (U) Is this painful to read? This is the sort of thing that she claims was missing from her documents.

      It's also the thing the FBI claims was missing from her documents: [wikipedia.org]
      Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey.

      (U) You can't get such documents off of the secure network. To get such documents on her private server, she or a lackey uploaded them.

      Or someone wrote up some information in an email, either not realizing it was classified or not realizing it shouldn't be sent over email, and clicked send.

      (U) Most people who get caught for lesser fuck-ups end up going to jail.

      No one doing what Clinton did would be sent to jail, all of the examples of people go

  • Smear. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @05:17PM (#56786624)

    This is what a smear campaign looks like.

    Sigh. Political games are not headlines, but I guess the morning show folks need something to cluck about.

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @07:26PM (#56787284)

    On page XII in the report, the IG says the department “identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters.”

    The IG expressed “profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered our review.”

    The contact between FBI agents and the media extended to receiving “improperly receiving benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”

    “The harm caused by leaks, fear of potential leaks, and a culture of unauthorized media contacts is illustrated in Chapters Ten and Eleven of our report, where we detail the fact that these issues influenced FBI officials who were advising Comey on consequential investigative decisions in October 2016,” the report states.

    The IG is forceful in its opinion that the problem with leaking is not “with the FBI’s policy, which we found to be clear and unambiguous.” Instead, the leaking phenomenon “appears to be a cultural attitude among many in the organization.”

    According to charts provided in the IG report, one reporter had contact with 12 FBI officials, including an FBI executive and unit chief.

    Another reporter contacted an assistant director 21 times and a special agent 23 times, according to the IG. Some FBI employees were in contact with multiple reporters, with one special agent contacting various journalists 32 times.

  • by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Thursday June 14, 2018 @09:38PM (#56787748)

    I swear, on Slashdot, Trump & Hillary have become Godwin's Law 2.0

    It is nearly impossible NOT to find a reference to one or both of these idiots in every single topic. Every Damned One. O.o

  • by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Friday June 15, 2018 @09:23AM (#56789484) Homepage Journal

    He must be the most honest man in government.

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