Revisiting the Weiner Laptop Surprise

 

So, inquiring minds have asked, if Comey and the FBI were so vested in the candidacy of HRC, how do you square that with the Weiner laptop surprise?

Remember, on October 28, 2016, Comey announced the reopening of the Midterm Exam (“MTE” was the FBI’s clever name for the Clinton email/unauthorized server scandal.) Weiner was once again accused of sexting with underage females. Police authorities in NYC had seized Anthony Weiner’s laptop and his wife, Huma Abedin, HRC’s trusted associate, had used that computer many times to print out HRC’s emails. HRC, it seems, liked only paper correspondence. So this laptop was a possible source for the “missing” emails that had otherwise been permanently removed from the Clinton unauthorized server. Comey was officially appraised of the existence this laptop on October 27 and quickly sought a warrant to search it. The MTE investigation band (the usual FBI suspects McCabe, Strzok, Page, et al.) was reluctantly put back together.

But there is more to the story. Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe had known of this laptop’s existence at the NYPD and its potential evidentiary value for at least a month and he did nothing. FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and his colleague and mistress Lisa Page mention the Laptop in their emails. It is very possible that a decision had to be made: either seize the laptop and contain the story (“nothing to see here”) or roll the dice and hope that Trump supporters wouldn’t catch on and demand a last-minute reckoning. McCabe’s attempt to let the clock run past election day had likely become too risky a strategy. Comey may well have once again taken the initiative. So he seized the evidence, iced the story and then announced that it was a nothing-burger.

If the purported sordid details about Trump in the Steele dossier are salacious, the Clinton details leaked presumably by NYPD sources (who searched the laptop for evidence of Weiner’s crimes) are just as scandalous. Quite frankly, I would have expected a much more heated and lively reaction by Bill and Hillary upon the reopening of the MTE investigation, but they were strangely reticent. Perhaps they were relieved that they had diffused the bomb, a true November bombshell surprise, but one not initiated by the opposition but an inadvertent suicide vest of their own making? The press, as I remember, was pushing a story depicting Hillary consoling a distraught Huma Abedin, more concerned with a friend than her own campaign. HRC was either supremely confident (she was still in the lead in all the polls) or she knew that the FBI and Justice Department would provide an appropriate backstop.

So, dear reader, I can see how someone might assume that Comey’s re-enlistment of the MTE band with the discovery of the Weiner laptop was a sign of impartiality. But what if it was really a vain attempt at containment, containment of potentially damaging evidence challenging the original email/server scandal exoneration and containment of other sordid and scandalous details pertaining to Clinton foundation fundraising and the Clinton social circle? If it was damage control, it was too little, too late. I doubt it played very much of a role in HRC’s eventual defeat. National news agencies, even Fox, steered clear of the sordid details being leaked in NYC, though they were played hard and often in the tabloids. Nonetheless, Hillary took NY with ease.

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  1. DonG Coolidge
    DonG
    @DonG

    Definitely containment.  Comey is scum and has been hiding criminal activities since his HSBC days.  The man lies without batting an eye.  He is probably a sociopath.

    • #1
  2. Steve C. Member
    Steve C.
    @user_531302

    They heard CNN was looking for a “news hook” and so…

    Sorry wrong iteration of the story.

    • #2
  3. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    I agree with you that the laptop revelation likely had little to do with Hillary’s defeat. It is hard to imagine it to be someone’s “last straw.” If you were inclined to vote for her before it came out, you were already ignoring so many ethical blunders that one more would have no effect.

    But …

    If the laptop contents had become known after the election, that would energize the opposition. Okay, maybe not McConnell. You probably couldn’t energize McConnell with 400V triple-phase, though that in itself is no reason not to wire him up. It does seem likely that word would leak; too many NYPD investigators already knew what they had found. If Hillary lacked the coattails to retake the House and the Senate, investigations would be sure to follow.

    • #3
  4. SirZog Member
    SirZog
    @

    Didn’t Comey claim that McCabe told him “something” about Weiner’s laptop in early October but I didn’t see how that possibly could have applied to HRC’s shenanigans in any manner until much later in the month?

     

     

    • #4
  5. JimGoneWild Coolidge
    JimGoneWild
    @JimGoneWild

    As you said, they tried to lay low until after the election, but somebody outside of the FBI caught wind of the Weiner laptop emails. Comey had to act. With the FBI reputation was on the line, perhaps they thought it wouldn’t matter — who knows. It should have been a bomb blast revelation, and was with the voter, but not the MSM. 

    • #5
  6. Richard Easton Coolidge
    Richard Easton
    @RichardEaston

    People at the NYPD were about to go public with the information.  Comey had to supersede them.

    • #6
  7. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Richard”People at the NYPD were about to go public with the information. Comey had to supersede them.”

    I believe at least one story is that the NYPD was ready to expose all the emails and indict many in the Democrat party who were implicated including one person named Hillary, but AG Loretta Lynch stepped in to save the day,  appointed new more partisan and compliantly loyal  US Attorneys for New York and threatened to reopen a settled case against NYPD officers unless the Weiner email cases were shoved down a rat hole and forgotten.  Such is how rule of law  and the “take care clause” was enforced by the Obama Administration.  Take care to protect Hillary, Obama and all connected Dems, that is.

    • #7
  8. Larry Koler Inactive
    Larry Koler
    @LarryKoler

    Comey was still hurting with his “taking one for the team”  — by being forced to recommend whether or not to indict Hillary (by Lynch and Obama and Holder) and having to lie so obviously that his reputation would simply never recover. If things had gone a little better for him he could have put that decision to Lynch but she had a firmer grasp on the loyalties of the higher-ups and so, it was decided, the fix was in and he was the fix, the dupe.

    He expected to stay on at the FBI after the election with Hillary as his boss (that was the quid pro quo) and he assumed that Hillary would win going away. He did not want to fight any other battles for her and figured that she could handle the bad press from his actions. It’s so obvious by his wrapping it up so quickly that he was just putting down a marker and for his face-saving.

    Also, what will come out in later years will be the amount of pressure Comey was feeling from every part of the FBI’s agents. His reputation and even his ability to lead was shaky and teetering.

    • #8
  9. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Percival (View Comment):
    You probably couldn’t energize McConnell with 400V triple-phase, though that in itself is no reason not to wire him up.

    What a lovely image.

    • #9
  10. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    This isn’t specifically germane to the perv’s laptop, but it is still talking about the swamp. George Neumayr has an interesting (at this point I’m thinking overblown but I’ve been wrong about that so many times regarding this conspiracy that I’m not by any means sure) piece at the American Spectator.

    Even before the first Republican primary, a London-to-Langley spy ring had begun to form against Donald Trump. British spies sent to CIA director John Brennan in late 2015 alleged intelligence on contacts between Trumpworld and the Russians, according to the Guardian.

    Here’s the crucial paragraph in the story:

    GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

    Notice it doesn’t say the “Trump campaign” but “figures connected to Trump.” One of those figures was Michael Flynn, who didn’t join the campaign until February 2016. But Brennan and British intelligence had already started spying on him, drawing upon sham intelligence from Stefan Halper, a long-in-the-tooth CIA asset teaching at Cambridge University whom Brennan and Jim Comey would later send to infiltrate the Trump campaign’s ranks.

    It appears that Halper had won Brennan’s confidence with a false report about Flynn in 2014 — a reported sighting of Flynn at Cambridge University talking too cozily with a Russian historian. Halper had passed this absurdly simpleminded tattle to a British spy who in turn gave it to Brennan, as one can deduce from this euphemistic account in the New York Times about Halper as the “informant”:

    The informant also had contacts with Mr. Flynn, the retired Army general who was Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser. The two met in February 2014, when Mr. Flynn was running the Defense Intelligence Agency and attended the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, an academic forum for former spies and researchers that meets a few times a year.

    According to people familiar with Mr. Flynn’s visit to the intelligence seminar, the source was alarmed by the general’s apparent closeness with a Russian woman who was also in attendance. The concern was strong enough that it prompted another person to pass on a warning to the American authorities that Mr. Flynn could be compromised by Russian intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter[[bold] added].

    Again, that’s early 2014 and a file on Flynn is already sitting on Brennan’s desk. In 2015, as word of Flynn’s interest in the Trump campaign spreads, the London-to-Langley spy ring fattens the file with more alarmist dreck — that Flynn had gone to a Russian Television gala and so forth. By February 2016, when it is reported that he has joined the Trump campaign as an adviser, the spy ring moves into more concerted action.

     

    • #10
  11. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    It is also true that there were very diligent FBI agents working inside the state of New York. They were attempting to uncover all the info they could on shady dealings of the Clinton Foundation.

    The Clinton Foundation was offered a charity foundation charter inside New York state. This was per the request of the Clintons. That state has extremely tight regulations about money reporting. The FBI agents were discovering that the money that was reported was actually always at least several hundred thousands of dollars shy of the truth – several quarters out of the year.

    Comey found out about the work being done. He let the FBI agents in NY know, “Hey you don’t have the resources to finesse your investigation. Send us the evidence and our Washington DC bureau will handle all this. We have the resources.”

    So the agents sent the DC bureau  the evidence. Late fall 2016, and that is the last the public has heard about any FBI investigation of the Foundation.

    • #11
  12. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Multiple stinking fish heads. You can smell the integrity from here.

    • #12
  13. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    You left out a key ingredient:  Comey’s ego.  Clearly, the salient question that possessed him when he learned of the Weiner trove was “How does this affect me”?  If he participated in an overt coverup/delay strategy like McCabe apparently sought to do, he would look very bad (a) because people outside the FBI inner circle knew about content  and (b) it was going to be a high-profile affair because Mrs. Carlos Danger was HRC’s right hand.

    Besides, the Clintonistas should have done a better job of cleaning up after Hillary. Why should James the Just take a PR fall or career blot for their bad management of incriminating evidence, especially since Noble Jim helped orchestrate the fix in the first place? 

    So, Honest Jimbo had to strike a pose, then deliver an second preposterous exoneration.  Thus salvaging his own image in his own mind.  Comey the True was much like a crooked but image-conscious judge who insists on pretending there is some legit procedure involved before letting a guilty mobster walk out of his courtroom.  The mobster may be annoyed at the delays caused by the kabuki but he still knows the judge delivered.  That is precisely the Clintons’ reaction.

    • #13
  14. Unsk Member
    Unsk
    @Unsk

    Techno: “Is that why he (Epstein) escaped serious charges for molesting over twenty girls?

    Ya know according to the leaks of those  Weiner-man emails Hillary and Huma were said to have gone to Jeffrey’s Sex Slave Branson island six times; Big Ol’ Billy Jeff 22 times.  I’m sure it was a mere coincidence that Jeffrey wasn’t indicted for some just minor enslaving of women for sex against their will.  Ya know that’s no  big deal in these times of #MeToo, particularly when it involves the Clintons.  BTW,  Harvey Weinstein was also  a close neighbor and very good friend of the Clintons in NY, as well.  Mebbe, birds of a feather flock together or something. 

    • #14
  15. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    You left out a key ingredient: Comey’s ego. Clearly, the salient question that possessed him when he learned of the Weiner trove was “How does this affect me”? If he participated in an overt coverup/delay strategy like McCabe apparently sought to do, he would look very bad (a) because people outside the FBI inner circle knew about content and (b) it was going to be a high-profile affair because Mrs. Carlos Danger was HRC’s right hand.

    Besides, the Clintonistas should have done a better job of cleaning up after Hillary. Why should James the Just take a PR fall or career blot for their bad management of incriminating evidence, especially since Noble Jim helped orchestrate the fix in the first place?

    So, Honest Jimbo had to strike a pose, then deliver an second preposterous exoneration. Thus salvaging his own image in his own mind. Comey the True was much like a crooked but image-conscious judge who insists on pretending there is some legit procedure involved before letting a guilty mobster walk out of his courtroom. The mobster may be annoyed at the delays caused by the kabuki but he still knows the judge delivered. That is precisely the Clintons’ reaction.

    I think you have it just about right.

    • #15
  16. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    So there is a trove of newly recovered HRC emails.

    FROM THIS url:

    http://media.aclj.org/pdf/Full-Clinton-Email-production-Mar-Apr.pdf

    Below is a sample of what is contained. Various people looking into this will know who “cp” is, and all others referred to in the emails.

    (CO5 9 6 4 9 95=1ED)U.S. Department of StateCase No. F-2016-10421Doc No. C05964995Date:02/28/2018   OriginalMessage—–

    From:Huma Abedin

    To:Doug Band

    Sent: Tue Jun 23 200916:12:46 Subject:Re:[:~LEASE IN PART I

    _____________________________________________

    He asked  to see hrc thurs and fri thru normal channels. I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel.Also, she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny.-:·–OriginalMessage—-~

    • #16
  17. Dorrk Inactive
    Dorrk
    @Dorrk

    CarolJoy (View Comment):

    So there is a trove of newly recovered HRC emails.

    FROM THIS url:

    http://media.aclj.org/pdf/Full-Clinton-Email-production-Mar-Apr.pdf

    Below is a sample of what is contained. Various people looking into this will know who “cp” is, and all others referred to in the emails.

    (CO5 9 6 4 9 95=1ED)U.S. Department of StateCase No. F-2016-10421Doc No. C05964995Date:02/28/2018 OriginalMessage—–

    From:Huma Abedin

    To:Doug Band

    Sent: Tue Jun 23 200916:12:46 Subject:Re:[:~LEASE IN PART I

    _____________________________________________

    He asked to see hrc thurs and fri thru normal channels. I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel.Also, she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny.-:·–OriginalMessage—-~

     

    Is there anything interesting in here? It looks like a lot of travel plans and people asking for favors and diplomat jobs.

    • #17
  18. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Dorrk (View Comment):

    CarolJoy (View Comment):

    So there is a trove of newly recovered HRC emails.

    FROM THIS url:

    http://media.aclj.org/pdf/Full-Clinton-Email-production-Mar-Apr.pdf

    Below is a sample of what is contained. Various people looking into this will know who “cp” is, and all others referred to in the emails.

    (CO5 9 6 4 9 95=1ED)U.S. Department of StateCase No. F-2016-10421Doc No. C05964995Date:02/28/2018 OriginalMessage—–

    From:Huma Abedin

    To:Doug Band

    Sent: Tue Jun 23 200916:12:46 Subject:Re:[:~LEASE IN PART I

    _____________________________________________

    He asked to see hrc thurs and fri thru normal channels. I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel.Also, she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny.-:·–OriginalMessage—-~

     

    Is there anything interesting in here? It looks like a lot of travel plans and people asking for favors and diplomat jobs.

    The 2009 emails are setting the table for what comes later on. Some of those asking for favors will be reminding Hillary of the “pay to play” conditions surrounding their donations to the Clinton Foundation, a few years down the road. Receiving a donation some 32 millions of dollars from Qatar and Saudi officials  to help get a war on over in Syria was no small matter. (If Trump did that, it would be headline news for years.)

    But Hillary and Bill got away with so much. Last  time I looked, using one’s official capacity as Secretary of State to fund both sides of a conflict, due to foreign officials asking the Secretary to do that, is considered accepting a bribe at the least, and treasonous behavior  as the worst of the implications.

    • #18
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