I'm pretty sure the actual statute specifically states that intent does not matter.
This was political interference, pure and simple.
All the doors were the direct result of Crooked Hillary operating a personal unsecure server in violation of the Federal Records Act, then passing Top Secret information to Anthony Weiner-Danger and others in violation of the Espionage Act.
She should be behind steel doors in a federal prison.
Comey as patriot, as honorable man?
No sale.
True, his actions helped Trump by hurting Clinton.
True, people like Trey Gowdy claim to respect and admire him.
But then I hear him speak to Congress and I don’t like what I hear. I don’t hear patriotism or honor. I hear double talk. Evasion.
My gut tells me things about Comey I’d rather not think.
The only 2 questions he should have asked himself were 1. Did she break the law and 2. Can he prove she broke the law.
The answer to both is yes. All the rest is superficial.
The MSM continues to refuse to include in the “reporting” that Comey said “The last straw was the meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch at the airport.”
This added to the urgency of his statement on Hillary prior to the election. This is a MAJOR factor in his decision that has been buried by the MSM.
I would also direct the FBI to look at communications between the Clinton campaign and its attorneys, and Verizon. Somewhere there was a conversation seeking the retention periods for information like the 3 months of Verizon Blackberry data at the first 3 months of Clinton's tenure at Foggy Bottom. Let's say in March of 2015, Hillary's lawyers inquired of Verizon, and learned that there was a 7 year retention for the data generated in January-March 2009. In that scenario all they had to do was run out the clock until April 2016 and the data would routinely have been lost for investigation purposes. I think it is that light that you have to interpret things like the Loretta Lynch - Bill Clinton tarmac meeting. He was making sure she knew exactly how slow the process had to be slow-walked so that Hillary was in the clear with respect to those early months.
I realize that Trump has a lot on his platter, but I hope that Sessions has not concluded that there is no point to prosecuting Hillary. Put it on the record, get a conviction, and then recommend a fine and probation as punishment. No incarceration, but get it on the record that she recklessly broke the law and compromised the security of the United States.
Comey is “at will”. Trump can dump him! Why doesn’t he get rid of him?
Your “third option” requires making choices based on what helps Hillary the most, which was not Comey’s obligation. You also seem to accept the notion that a credible examination of the 650,000 files on the Weiner-Abedin laptop could or did occur in a matter of days. After using stonewalling for months and years on the basis of how long it took to examine thousands of files in this case, it is absolutely preposterous to pretend they thoroughly reviewed 650,000 over a few days. We have no idea what the laptop files actually contained and neither did Comey when he pronounced that nothing had been found “that changed his judgment about the case”. Note how his wording skirts the issue of what was found. The mere fact massive quantities of Hillary’s state department files were found in the possession of her top aide’s sex offending spouse, and that said top aide had failed to disclose the existence of this laptop during multiple FBI interrogations is evidence of itself that Hillary and her staff were massively mishandling classified information and obstructing justice.
In July 2016 Comey had made it clear that he knew Hillary, and others in her group, were guilty and SHOULD be indicted, but he was not recommending indictment because in is judgement, “no prosecutor would take the case”. He left unsaid “because politics made it too difficult a case to pursue” and no one pinned him down on whether, despite that, the evidence indicated that HRC was guilty of violating the LAW. As he said, Comey dismissed the laptop evidence on the same basis: politics outweighs the rule of law because its Hillary. He obviously wanted to expose the laptop situation to remove any doubt of Hillary’s guilt and unfitness for office.
Here are some real options a better man would have taken:
1) Publicly expose and condemn Lynch and the DoJ for obstructing the investigation, granting immunity, allowing games about Atty-Client privilege to protect Hillary, etc.
2) Fire Deputy FBI Director McCabe for failing to recuse himself from the investigations of Hillary Clinton while his own wife received $600,000 raised mostly via a political event headlined by Hillary Clinton.
3) Recommend appointment of an independent prosecutor to take over the case from DoJ, because of its through corruption, and investigate not only Hillary, et al, but the corrupt AG and DoJ.
4) Recommend indictments for various lesser players in Hillary’s scheme, as a stepping stone to the kingpin.
We never found any emails from her first three months.We looked in the shower the garage washing machine........