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Now that the Muller investigation is completed, there is still a great deal of unfinished business with respect to the 2016-2018 timeframe. Much of it centers around the leadership of the FBI, the Department of Justice and the intelligence community.
As much as I hate to say this, we need another Special Prosecutor. Having said that, this country should not have to go through another 22 months of point/counter point speculation every day about what the Special Prosecutor is or is not doing.
Attorney General Barr should appoint a Special Prosecutor immediately and organize the members into a number of lawyer/investigator teams. Each team will have a narrow, specific area to investigate. For example, did FBI Director Comey obstruct justice in the Clinton investigation?
Through weekly in-progress-reviews from each team leader, the Special Prosecutor will be able to “see” the whole picture as it emerges. The Special Prosecutor can then, for example, tell Team 3 that they need to collaborate and merge finding with Team 5, etc. Additionally, the Special Prosecutor will have stood up a Grand Jury.
Here is the key to success. Every team is instructed that in 90 days they need to produce a draft report, draw conclusions and make a recommendation as to whether or not their information should be given to a Grand Jury to consider indictments. Period.
If the Grand Jury votes to indict, so be it. If not, the case is closed.
Is 90 days enough time? Yes, it is and here is an example of why. As Director of the FBI, James Comey investigated the Hillary Clinton email issue for over a year involving (his words) over 100 FBI agents. There is no new news; take that investigation report, as is, go through it and come to some conclusions about what should be done to Clinton and/or Comey. In the Clinton/Comey case, here is what the Special Prosecutor’s team will find.
On July 5, 2016 FBI Director Comey announced, in a public address, that he was NOT going to recommend filing charges over Clinton’s use of a private email server. “There is insufficient evidence to show Clinton had malicious INTENT”. Remember that word, intent.
Comey: “Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on her personal system in violation of a federal statute making it a felony t mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.”
Comment: The mission statement was perfect.
The law, 18 U.S. Code 793(f): “Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document…… relating to the national defense, through GROSS NEGLIGENCE (note, remember those two words) permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, …. and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer…… shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Comment: The law is clear as a bell. I spent years of my service with classified documents in my possession. When one gets any security clearance you must meet with documents experts who clearly define what you can and cannot do. Then they require you to sign a document, in their presence, stating that you understand it all. Hillary would have signed such a document. It is designed to scare the hell out of you and it does just that. Bottom line, screw up and you go to jail, period. People do screw up and they do go to jail.
Comey: “Secretary Clinton used several different servers while Secretary of State and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mails.”
Comment: An indisputable piece of evidence, and none of these pieces of equipment were secure.
Coney: from the group of 30,000 e-mails….110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent.”
Comment: There it is, damaging information that routinely sends mere mortals to jail. Period. But it gets worse. Later in his statement Comey said:
“Seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”
Comment: Special Access
Programs have special requirements. You are “read in” by a member of that
particular program. It is so sensitive there may be only a half dozen
individuals in a program. Discussions are never transmitted by any means that
is subject to interception. There is no greater crime associated with US Code
793(f) than this violation. When Special Access information is carelessly
released, innocent people can and do die.
Comey: “Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.”
Comment: This is as far beyond “gross negligence” as one could possibly get.
Comey: “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
Comment: The following day, July 6th, law professors and prosecutors across the country were being interviewed. Generally, they were astonished and confused because their consensus was that this would be a slam-dunk conviction.
Comey: “Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent.”
Comment: first of all, Comey is not a prosecutor and secondly THE CODE DOES NOT REQUIRE THE PROSECUTORS TO EVEN CONSIDER INTENT. The reason is, if someone clearly “intends” to put highly classified information in the wind, they fall into an entirely different category of offences; they are conducting treasonous actions. US Code 793(f) is about negligence.
My conclusions: Comey was wrong on the law and he chose to ignore blatant, irrefutable evidence no matter how potentially damaging her actions were. Comey set himself up as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. President Obama should have fired Comey the afternoon of July 5th, 2016 for dereliction of duty.
Is 90 days enough for a team to put together an indictment for a Grand Jury? In this case 90 hours would probably be enough.
What might have happened during the 2016-2018 time period involving senior government officials could end up to be the greatest injustice perpetrated by a small group of people inside the government in the history of this nation. There is a lot of smoke, we need to know if there is, in fact, a fire.
Marv Covault