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Comey Denies Clinton Email 'Reddit' Cover-Up (politico.com) 459

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The FBI concluded that a computer technician working on Clinton's email was not engaged in an illicit cover-up when he asked on the Reddit website for a tool that could delete a "VIP" email address throughout a large file, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday. Republican lawmakers have suggested that the July 2014 Reddit post from a user believed to be Platte River Networks specialist Paul Combetta showed an effort to hide Clinton's emails from investigators. However, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, Comey said FBI agents concluded that all the computer aide was trying to do was replace Clinton's email address so it wouldn't be revealed to the public. "Our team concluded that what he was trying to do was when they produced emails not have the actual address but have some name or placeholder instead of the actual dot-com address in the 'From:' line," Comey said. Comey said he wasn't sure whether the FBI knew about the Reddit posting when prosecutors granted Combetta immunity to get statements from him about what transpired. However, he added that such a deletion wouldn't automatically be considered an effort to destroy evidence. "Not necessarily ... It would depend what his intention was and why he wanted to do it," the FBI director said.
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Comey Denies Clinton Email 'Reddit' Cover-Up

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29, 2016 @08:02AM (#52982969)

    just get used to it. they have mastered the coverup and own everyone who could charge them.

    • by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @08:26AM (#52983077)

      In truth, anyone who has enough money and/or power gets to circumvent the law easier than poor people or average Joes.

      A poor man and a rich man get charged with the same crime with the same amount of evidence; the rich man is more likely to walk away a free man. Various reasons: better access to better lawyers; society are more likely to take for granted the word of a well-dressed well groomed person than some scruffy guy in a hoody.

      • Asked on Reddit???

        Jeez, they need a better "computer technician". Doesn't the NSA have somebody?

      • by tripleevenfall ( 1990004 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @08:42AM (#52983161)

        The good old "you too" fallacy - why no one ever holds politicians accountable for their misdeeds and illegal activitites today.

        "Sure, my client robbed this bank, but come on. Is he the first person ever to rob a bank? Haven't plenty of bank robbers gotten off scot free? Is it really fair for us to single this one person out?"

        • The good old "you too" fallacy - why no one ever holds politicians accountable for their misdeeds and illegal activitites today.

          If your politician does something and you say "That's perfectly moral and legal, I have no problem with that." and then someone else's preferred politician does the exact same thing you and you scream "EXECUTE THEM FOR TREASON THEN HANG THEM!" then it shows that either you're more than happy to play fast and loose with morality when it favors you which means your moral condemnation now is hypocritical and selective, or it shows that nothing bad actually took place in either instance and it's just a trumped

      • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @09:31AM (#52983407)
        The whole system and a large part of the government is corrupt to the point where nothing will be done. As much as the Republicans want to sling mud at Clinton so they can gain more power, they don't want to actually prosecute her, merely just destroy her reputation. They're not really any better than she is, and I would imagine that if she goes on trial, a lot of inconvenient information starts to come out and she nor her party are the only ones who wind up in serious trouble. At this point it's mutually assured destruction so nothing will ultimately come of it.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jellomizer ( 103300 )

        Oh just quit all the conspiracy nonsense.

        1. Back in the early and mid 00's having your own email was the "Cool" thing to do. As for people in such short term government positions will want an email that will follow them.
        2. Shouldn't the government have a track of all the email sent on its servers. And we just pull all of them that went to Clinton's server and we will know what sensitive information that went across.
        3. Is there any evidence that she scolded or discouraged people from sending emails to her w

        • by hsthompson69 ( 1674722 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @10:32AM (#52983767)

          Let's run with your conclusion - average guy does this, loses their job.

          Let's also add that average guy does this, is then blacklisted from ever having any job with a security clearance again.

          Hell, I'd be more than happy to see Hillary Clinton avoid jail if she was disqualified from working in any position in the government that required a security clearance :)

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          then why would he delete the evidence, and what about the whole Bleachbit thing https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/26/1954241/hillary-clinton-used-bleachbit-to-wipe-emails

        • by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @11:20AM (#52984015)

          I can answer #4. Because she fucking hid everything until a lawsuit from Judicial Watch forced the State Department to release some of the public documents generated by her term as SOS. Once the people had access to her public records, they started to notice that her email wasn't entirely on the government servers, but on her own. Then her lawyers and IT people started to panic (the infamous reddit post) because they knew that Congress would get involved soon, and it did.

          The answer to #2 is that every agency seems to be in on the coverup to some extent. They have all been dragging their feet producing records, and several have "lost" drives, tapes, records, etc. IRS Commissioner Koskinen is facing impeachment for this same crap, but for a different scandal (not for Hillary's emails). Obama is probably going to need to pardon every single member of his cabinet and most of the senior management, or President Trump is going to need to build a brand new prison to house the "Most Transparent Administration in history (TM)".

          #1 is crap. See Powell's email leaks. #3 is no, or at least not that I've heard of.

          Here are at least three of the laws that she apparently broke:
          18 US Code 793 [cornell.edu]
          18 US Code 798 [cornell.edu]
          18 US Code 1924 [cornell.edu]

          Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

          As to your conclusion, there are guys in prison today for violations of the exact same laws, and several are now attempting to appeal their sentences. At the time they were convicted, those laws were seen as strict liability, so their trial records do not include proof of intent. If those same laws, which haven't changed, require mens rea now, at the very least they need a retrial to establish intent.

          • by bl968 ( 190792 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @01:20PM (#52984659) Journal

            You missed the most important one...

            18 U.S. Code  2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally

            (a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
            (b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term âoeofficeâ does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
            (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 795; Pub. L. 101â"510, div. A, title V, Ââ552(a), Nov. 5, 1990, 104 Stat. 1566; Pub. L. 103â"322, title XXXIII, Ââ330016(1)(I), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

        • by cfalcon ( 779563 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @11:47AM (#52984179)

          1- This isn't about some mx redirect thing (or a domain name), this is about storing the emails on a private server.
          2- No, they don't necessarily. If you wanted to email a private email server, why would the government have that on record? At least one of the two parties would need to have their emails on a government controlled system. Which one seems like the better plan to you: you, me, and everyone else in the world, needs to somehow have accounts on a government server -OR- the secretary of state keeps emails on a state department server as per policy?
          3- I don't know what you mean here. She used the clintonemail.com server for her work in the state department. There were tens of thousands of emails that were in question.
          4- You are wrong. She announced her candidacy in April 2015. Here's a wired article from March 2015:
          http://www.wired.com/2015/03/c... [wired.com]
          (and archive: http://archive.is/2015.03.05-0... [archive.is] )

          "The person who may had broke the law is the person who sent classified information to her email address."

          That's not really how this works. But pretend it did. Here's Comey on it:
          "For example, 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 from others about the same matters."

          "However she is a politician not a IT expert."

          She employed numerous IT experts, however, and certainly could be expected to know the implications.

          "If it was an average guy who did this... Chances are they may had lost their job, but not had criminal activity put on him."

          Clinton doesn't have any criminal charges being placed on her. She's never been indicted. Comey pretty much stated that anyone else would be in hot steaming shit.
          https://www.fbi.gov/news/press... [fbi.gov]

          "To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now."

          Quite honestly man, you can google this. You've been able to google this for awhile. To me, the most interesting part isn't the emails, it's the consistent stream of bad information out of Clinton herself. On March 10th, 2015 (before she announced for president), she said "I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material."

          That was either an omission or a lie. But if you follow it forward, it just gets sillier- at almost every chance to discuss this, she dissembled, provided false information, or maybe even straight fucking lied. The fact that you or I would never work again if we made this kind of mistake, the bizarre deletions, the possible foreign intel implications- that's all whatever compared to the fact that this was just deny, deny, deny until the evidence caught up.

  • Two types of laws (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rlp ( 11898 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @08:04AM (#52982975)

    Laws for people who are named 'Clinton' and laws for the rest of us.

    • Like gwb43.com? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Oh such Republican mock outrage.... where was it when George Bush was sending his emails using gwb43.com? His private email account used for official Whitehouse emails!?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy

  • Double Standard (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29, 2016 @08:14AM (#52983027)

    I appreciate the lengths Comey has gone through to show the double standard justice system. He says Clinton had no intent to hide anything, he never asked her if she did. He says the administrator had no intention of doing anything wrong, and again probably didn't ask him. Comey also rewrote the law claiming Congress wanted intention to be part of the law, which they didn't include in the wording, without having asked them. He also outright ignored her lying under oath to Congress, along with all the people who lied to the FBI during the investigation. He also failed to investigate any of the bribes Clinton took while SOS, didn't even look into it to see if there might be something.

    Meanwhile...
    The IRS targets individuals because they don't follow the correct political views.
    Peter Thiel is investigated by department of Labor because he supports Trump.

    Were the tea party members asked if their intention was to break laws? Was Peter Thiel asked if he intended to be discriminatory in hiring? It doesn't matter in those cases because they are not "important" like Clinton.

    My big question, what can they now do to restore confidence in the system? I actually don't have an answer to that question at this time.

    • My big question, what can they now do to restore confidence in the system? I actually don't have an answer to that question at this time.

      The next administration could prosecute those responsible for that government abuse and claw back their pay and pensions.

  • Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @08:23AM (#52983067)

    Either way he obviously tried to alter records that we under subpoena. This is so fucking corrupt it is unbelievable.

    Will I get the same leniency and benefit of doubt if the FBI or Justice Department ever investigates me for the same or less serious crimes? (not that I'm planning any)

  • VIP is not Clinton (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LoverOfJoy ( 820058 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @08:33AM (#52983113) Homepage

    In light of recent events, the VIP email address spoken about was probably Obama's, not Clinton's.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Or the Saudis. Who knows what Clinton got on that e-mail server. Who knows what Clinton Foundation / Secretary of State stuff mixed next to each other in a private e-mail account "off the books".

  • by linuxrunner ( 225041 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @09:03AM (#52983283)

    Yet, absolutely fucking nothing anyone can seem to do about it.

    Anyone else would be in jail.

    Give immunity to people you could prosecute for leverage, but they won't talk anyways. Pure evidence of intent and corruption, but oh well.

    I mean, we might as well have the North Korean dictator feeding us propaganda. We the people know it's all lies, but we can't do anything about it and our state media is just bobbing their heads saying what they're supposed to say with their talking points that get sent out every morning.

    Talk about totally fucked as a country.

  • by ScooterComputer ( 10306 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @09:13AM (#52983319)

    I've been doing this IT thing for a long time. A very long time.

    I don't think there is an IT expert/admin on Slashdot who would attest that--if given the job to engineer/configure an email server for Secretary of State (much less, merely private citizen) Clinton--this server was in any way designed or implemented properly. Not for security, not for compliance, nothing.

    So... am I to believe that Hillary Clinton is so woefully incapable of finding a competent IT engineer/admin? Here is ALL OF SLASHDOT. Am I to believe that? Because, if so, she's woefully incompetent for ANY governmental position; I don't believe she should be in any position of power that directly impacts me, my freedom. And anyone who supports her, at this point, in this community, given what is so obvious to see about her character and her intentions, either has to be insane or be seen as complicit in her and her "party's" power grab. It is that simple.

    • So... am I to believe that Hillary Clinton is so woefully incapable of finding a competent IT engineer/admin?

      When a recruiter called me to do IT work in the Palo Alto campaign office of Meg Whitman for California Governor campaign in 2010, I rejected the job out of hand. Never mind that I've been out of work for a year-and-a-half at that time. That job wasn't worth the trouble. The recruiter was astonished that I would reject it out hand. Although I previously worked at eBay, Meg Whitman wasn't well loved by most employees — and I voted for her opponent, Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican, in the primary.

  • Considering that the FBI has *already* directly said that they won't prosecute for something more obvious and worse, is ANYONE shocked by this?

    Yes, a sysadmin asking generally how he can purge someone's name from emails - how could anyone /possibly/ think that had anything to do with a coverup? Clearly, you'd have to be a paranoid Republican to believe that.

  • What we know so far (Score:5, Informative)

    by anti-pop-frustration ( 814358 ) on Thursday September 29, 2016 @09:33AM (#52983421) Journal
    A very thorough timeline about the whole thing:
    http://www.thompsontimeline.com/the-hidden-smoking-gun-the-combetta-cover-up/ [thompsontimeline.com]

    Get a cup of coffee, it's long but worth it. The timeline is non-partisan and sticks to the facts, basically it is alt-right/trump troll/conspiracy free.

    Bottom line: It doesn't look good at all.

    October 28, 2014: The State Department formally asks Clinton for all of her work-related emails.

    December 5, 2014: She turns over 30,000 emails from her @clintonemail.com account to the State Department. Another 31,000 emails from the same account were deemed personal, and Clinton kept those. Her lawyers did the sorting, no State Department or National Archives personnel had a chance to appraise or examine the remaining 31,000.

    December 2014: Shorty after turning the 30,000 emails, Clinton decides she no longer needs access to any of her emails older than 60 days. Her staff is told to change the retention policy on her server, which will lead to the deletion of all her the emails that weren't turned over to the State Department.
    The FBI later recovered about 17,500 of Clinton’s “personal” emails. FBI Director James Comey has said that “thousands” were indeed work-related.

    March 25, 2015 and March 31, 2015: There were two conference calls between Clinton staffers and PNR, the company managing her emails. Between those two calls, Combetta, the PNR employee managing Clinton server (and Reddit user 'Stonetear'), has an “Oh shit!” moment and remembers that he’d forgotten to make the requested retention policy change back in December 2014. He immediately deletes all of Clinton’s emails and uses BleachBit to permanently wipe them.
    He later told the FBI that at the time he was aware of emails mentioning a Congressional request to preserve all of Clinton’s emails.

    Sometimes in 2016: The Justice Department gives Combetta some form of legal immunity.
    The FBI having Combetta take the fall for the deletions while making an immunity deal with him *could* be a particularly clever move to prevent anyone from being indicted. That part isn't clear yet.

    In any circumstances, the FBI giving Combetta immunity makes no sense at all. It's the equivalent of giving a hired hitman immunity without going after the person who hired him.
    • In any circumstances, the FBI giving Combetta immunity makes no sense at all.

      As someone currently working in government IT, I would plead the fifth until I've gotten immunity from the government. If I'm going to be thrown underneath the bus, I'm going to make it as difficult as possible.

    • A couple of points left out:
      - she publicly, repeatedly, INSISTED that there was no personal email server, then that it was only used for private mails, then 'not for secret stuff' etc. Her personal conduct and remonstrations during this span are very much relevant.

      - hilariously, today (https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/09/23/platte-river-networks-employee-referred-to-hilary-cover-up-operation-in-work-email/):
      "An employee at Platte River Networks, the company that managed Hillary Clinton's emails after she

  • Are we finally entering an era of fully homeopathic politics: where the issues are diluted until the point where there is no trace of substance and it is all 'magic water'? Where are the discussions about real problems, like the wars in the Middle East, or the several migrations crises, or the declining economy? Where are the realistic proposals for American politics over the next decade? Certainly not here; apparently it is much more interesting to groom one's personal navel fluff and gossip about the favo

  • It appears that they didn't have competent people working the IT for this private server project. Otherwise, they would know what they are doing and would have done a much better job of securing the server (both physically and electronically). They wouldn't be asking simple questions on Reddit. It sounds like when they were looking for people to do the job, competence was not the most important factor. It sounds like willingness to cover-up, lie, and stand by Hillary at all costs (including falling on their
    • No kidding. Reddit is not the place to ask a technical question. Reddit is the place to post a JPG if you want it modified to be something ridiculous.

      Seriously? He was asking Reddit how to do a global search and replace? He should have been just using Google.
  • "It's not what it looks like."

    "I would never do something like that."

    "You just don't understand."

    "Trust me, I wasn't doing anything wrong."

  • by PPH ( 736903 )

    Here you go:
    s/Hillary@\Clintonemail\.com/Anonymous Coward/gi

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