THE EXTRAORDINARY INTERVENTION of the FBI in the US Presidential Election is unnerving. There is now considerable doubt whether the American republic can survive the events of 2016.
Earlier today, the Director of the FBI, James Comey, announced that his unprecedented intervention of 28 October had actually been a false alarm. For the past few hours he has been doing his best to persuade Americans that: “There’s nothing to see here, folks. So, please, move along.” But this “as you were” strategy raises many more questions than it answers.
Why, for example, didn’t Comey simply obtain a warrant to search the lap-top of Anthony Weiner, and determine confidentially whether there was anything in his former wife’s (and top Clinton aide) Huma Abedin’s e-mails that bore upon the Bureau’s earlier investigation of Secretary-of-State Clinton’s use of a private server? Had Comey done so, he would have (as we now know) found nothing incriminating in Abedin’s e-mail cache, and the enormously destabilising effects of his leaked letter to Republican Party congressmen would have been avoided.
In terms of an answer, America’s leading political journalists are offering the following.
Comey was aware that the New York field office of the FBI was – as one informant put it – “Trumpland”. He was further reasonably sure that one or more agents in New York were briefing Trump’s campaign team about the discovery of Abedin’s e-mails. (How else was Trump surrogate, and former New York Mayor, Rudi Giuliani, able to alert Fox News to the existence of a big story that was about to break?)
This intelligence placed Comey in an impossible position. If he attempted to conduct a confidential investigation, Clinton’s enemies in the New York office would simply leak that fact to the right-wing news media, and Trump’s people would then accuse the FBI Director of corruptly attempting to protect Clinton from the voters’ wrath. Of course, by writing to the Republican congressmen Comey was also inviting wrath – this time from Clinton’s campaign team. But, he must have reasoned, wrath was heading his way whatever course of action he chose. He was damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t.
By tasking his agents to work night-and-day to ascertain whether there was anything pertinent in Abedin’s e-mails, Comey was at least able to clear Clinton before 8 November. In around 48 hours we’ll know whether or not their efforts have afforded Clinton enough time to halt her slide in the polls.
Another, more important, question remains: What does it mean when the FBI is so riven by partisanship that its probity and independence are squandered in the interests of advancing the cause of a political candidate?
One possible answer is that key representatives of America’s “Deep State” have become so alarmed at the drift of events that they are prepared to intervene directly in the electoral process. It is, for example, the contention of WikiLeaks’s founder, Julian Assange, that in the upper levels of both the US armed forces, and the huge National Security apparatus, there is a determination to prevent Trump becoming President.
If Assange is correct, then what we have been witnessing over the past week is an attempt by middle-ranking agents of the FBI’s New York field office to even up the scales on behalf of Donald Trump. Just how far these rogue elements are prepared to go to keep Clinton out of the White House remains to be seen.
One can only imagine the extreme nervousness of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Hillary. The next time somebody in a campaign crowd cries “Gun!”, the “perp” may turn out to be an FBI agent from New York.
I’m sure the usual suspects on this site will disagree with this analysis and claim the FBI is actually in the pocket of ‘crooked’ Hillary.
Of course the “Deep State” influences the Presidential elections. They choose their candidate and ensure they get in. This time Hillary is their “man”. Just like they ‘helicoptered’ Key into NZ politics.
I doubt the FBI is riven with partisanship as you suggest it is.
My view is that the vast majority of the FBI staff just want to see justice done and were unhappy with attempts by Obama appointees (who are senior to Comey in the DC pecking order) from supressing the investigation. This left Comey in the impossible position of watching his people threatening to leave or leak to the press if he didn’t pursue the case with due diligence.
Let’s not ignore the key facts in this whole mess:
1. The Clintons are dirty. That much is obvious. They have been involved in scandal many times in the past but have always avoided prosecution through their political influence.
2. There are other investigations on-going into their affairs, not all of which are led by the FBI. Democrat appointees cannot so easily supress investigations by local law enforcement agencies and judges.
It seems fairly clear she’ll win the election (by fair means or foul!) but I think there is a significant chance she’ll be impeached before she’s voted out.
Most importantly the eyes of America have been opened. Thanks to the internet, mainstream media no longer have the control of opinion they once had. This election has changed everything.
Jack Bauer…. Oooo? I thought you meant Joe Bauers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
All I can say is Good Luck America !
And God help the rest of us.
The voters of America do not choose who becomes president: they are offered the choice between puppets who represent the interests of banks and corporations that fund and orchestrate the whole puppet show. Such is the power of banks and corporations they form the shadow government that decides almost everything, including what the FBI says or does, and it really makes no difference who is ‘elected’ because all major policies remain the same and geared to increasing control of the populace by banks and corporations, with enforcement of dysfunctional policies via ‘security agencies’. Clinton or Trump: more of the same, with the corporate media cheerleading all the way along path to collapse.
“Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state…. The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government…. This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech.’
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_path_to_total_dictatorship_americas_shadow_government_and_its_sile
The crisis that began to emerge in the 1930s will continue to deepen because all policy is geared to making everything worse. And that worsening will continue until breaking point is reached, maybe next year, maybe the year after -who knows?- and the USA ceases to exist in its present form.
VIDEO: Voter Fraud Caught on Camera in Pennsylvania (Election 2016)
PENNSYLVANIA – Voters in Clinton Township are reporting seeing voting machines switch their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton before their very eyes. CBS Pittsburgh spoke to Bobbie Lee Hawranko who said:
“I went back, pressed Trump again. Three times I did this, so then I called one of the women that were working the polls over. And she said you must be doing it wrong. She did it three times and it defaulted to Hillary every time”
The fact that so many of our right wing NZ Trolls are supporting Hillary, says something about her.
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