FBI agent dismissed from Mueller probe changed Comey's description of Clinton to 'extremely careless

[alp227]

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN)A former top counterintelligence expert at the FBI, now at the center of a political uproar for exchanging private messages that appeared to mock President Donald Trump, changed a key phrase in former FBI Director James Comey's description of how former secretary of state Hillary Clinton handled classified information, according to US officials familiar with the matter.

Electronic records show Peter Strzok, who led the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server as the No. 2 official in the counterintelligence division, changed Comey's earlier draft language describing Clinton's actions as "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless," the source said.

The drafting process was a team effort, CNN is told, with a handful of people reviewing the language as edits were made, according to another US official familiar with the matter.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/peter-strzok-james-comey/index.html

[mainer]

1. was her private server ever hacked? No.

So despite this label "grossly negligent" or "extremely careless," no hostile foreign entity ever got hold of her emails. Instead of "extremely careless" it sounds like she was actually sensible.

[wishstar]

3. and she did not lie to FBI, even though they tried to entrap her by falsifying an email

FBI actually tried to trip her up unsuccessfully by altering a notation on an email to see her reaction, but her reaction was consistent and caused them to believe her about the markings on the emails and how she handled them

[Wwcd]

5. They'll be forever pissed for NOT being able to hack into her private server.

That She was far to savy on the world stage of friends & foe to allow any global mob member an opportunity to enter her private business.
As Sec of State she did exactly what she should have done.
Slam shut & bolt the door to prying eyes with the intent to sabatoge.

Imagine what the Kremlin would have done to her had they gained entry to her private server.

That is why they are so pissed at her.
They got nothing from her.

Kudos to Clinton for having the brains & forethought to protect herself from sabateurs & assasins.

Bet it seriously pissed them off
Go girl!
👍

[mainer]

7. Can you provide the evidence that she was hacked?

No one, not one single news organization, has ever been able to say that.

And if they had hacked her private server, they would have vomited those emails all over the internet.

[Baconator]

15. Yeah... That's now how that works...

You're the drunk driver who swerved home but thinks he shouldn't get in trouble because no one got hurt.

[Calista241]

17. I doubt they'd have leaked it during the election.

Like everyone else, I think the Russians thought Trump had no chance.

Can you imagine the chaos of a Clinton administration that is having a couple thousand of her emails released every 2 weeks. Podesta's leak was just the first leak, and I'm sure they had a plan to release crap about her throughout her first 4 years in office. Her Administration would be even more handicapped than Trump's has been.

[leftofcool]

9. Show proof it was hacked or stop talking.

[Baconator]

16. This kind of attitude is why 2016 was such a disaster...

People can't point out the obvious without getting snapped at and told to shut up.

[emulatorloo]

22. 2016 was a disaster because people pushed speculative bullshit re Clinton as fact and then played

the poor little angry 'righteous' victim when they got called out on it.

[JHan]

32. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

not enough recs.

And I'm tired of the bullshit as well. 2016 had a lot of "well this could have happened" w.r.t Clinton , all based on zero evidence. It was the sort of speculation-treated-as-fact one would see on RW radio shows but a typical feature when the Clintons are discussed. Dislike of Hillary frames anything Hillary does sans evidence. It's how the Uranium One story became a thing, it's how Schweizer's discredited book was entertained by some media houses , whose editorial teams should have known better.

[UpInArms]

33. I think that

We have all been affected by the words that we have heard from the media ... 25 years of smearing anything and everything Clinton ...

It (the MSM) has had a dreadful attitude and I see the results of its poisoned fruit.

[JHan]

34. I agree, it didn't take much for russian provacateurs and shit stirrers

to fan up the flames.

Even more disturbing is this:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/08/21/how-steve-bannon-played-the-mainstream-media/

Prior to April 2015

The Government Accountability Institute (GAI), which is run by Steve Bannon and funded by Robert Mercer, commissioned Peter Schweitzer (who works for both Breitbart and GAI) to write a book that will purport to demonstrate that the Clinton’s manipulated their foundation and Hillary’s role as Secretary of State to enrich themselves. When the book is published, its title is, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.”]

And now we know the book was funded with offshore cash: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/07/steve-bannon-bermuda-robert-mercer?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=251286&subid=3774322&CMP=GT_US_collection

"Bannon founded GAI in Florida in 2012 with Peter Schweizer, the conservative author of Clinton Cash. Since then, the GAI has paid Bannon $379,000 and Schweizer $781,000. Rebekah Mercer was a director of the group until 2014. It has continued assailing liberals since Trump’s victory and says exposing the “misuse of taxpayer monies” is central to its mission.

Mercer’s foundation also gave millions more to other groups that funded Bannon. It paid $3.8m to the nonprofit arm of Citizens United, best known for the deregulation of political spending it won in a 2010 supreme court ruling. Bannon has made films for Citizens United and between 2012 and 2013 was paid $450,000 in consulting fees by its nonprofit arm.

The Mercer foundation gave $1.2m to the Young America’s Foundation, another conservative nonprofit, which paid Bannon more than $577,000 between 2010 and 2012 for filmmaking services, according to filings.

Mercer was also a major investor in Breitbart News, the influential rightwing website that Bannon led before joining Trump’s campaign. Bannon returned to the site after being fired from the White House in August. In an extraordinary email to Renaissance staff last week, Mercer moved to distance himself from Bannon and announced he was selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughters

."

[xor]

23. The fact we didn't see any hacked email dumps from her servers suggests she wasn't

I suppose it's possible that people with more long-term plans in mind could have gained access, but I would think by this point any gain they would have from keeping it quiet is no longer relevant. Also, you say the security was average. What do you base this on? Is there information on specifically what sort of security was setup?

That being said, I would have rather not hear of high level officials running their own servers for official email business.

[videohead5]

11. It does not really matter

Those e-mails was sent over state.gov.the State Departments e-mail server which is not secured and has proven to have been hacked.the problem was with the State Department not with Hillary.

[djg21]

36. It was a good edit.

“Gross negligence” is a legal term meaning “carelessness which is in reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, and is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people's rights to safety. It is more than simple inadvertence, but it is just shy of being intentionally evil.” http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=838

“Extreme carelessness” is not a legal term of art and would more appropriate, even if true.

[riversedge]

2. That is the purpose of drafts--the think things over, make changes as needed. Grassley is

doing this. see the rest of the article.

[CatMor]

4. Both descriptions were wrong and too harsh...

she is about the only one who wasn't hacked. I'm so sick of hearing about her EMAILS, they are nothing. Let's talk about collusion and lies from trump.

[StevieM]

12. Absolutely agreed. (eom)

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. SCANDAL! SCANDAL OF SCANDALS!

LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP! ALL HAIL EMPEROR TRUMP!


, in case that wasn't evident.

[LisaM]

10. Instead of concluding that the person who made the change was "pro" Clinton, did it occur to them

that the original language was actually anti-Clinton and implied a crime, or actions leading to a crime, that didn't exist? I think they're coming at this form the exact wrong point of view, but if Mueller wants to have an excess of caution, that's fine with me.

[StevieM]

13. Both descriptions were unacceptable terminology. Comey's actions were reprehensible. (eom)

[videohead5]

14. The Term "Gross Negligent"

Comes under the espionage act.they would have to prove Hillary was spying against America before charging her with anything like that.which she was not.

[Hortensis]

18. Yes. Gross negligence is a legal term that could

result in civil or criminal charges.

I'm not an attorney, but I never heard anything that would constitute gross negligence in that context. Not unless the legal bar was dropped precipitously to create that special "Hillary standard" between her appointment and those of the 2 Republican secretaries who came before. And, for that matter, other cabinet and high government appointees.

Notably, to this day secretaries can legally work through private email addresses and home servers, Obama's administration just defined standards of care to be met, which she and her ex-president husband did anyway.

[videohead5]

19. But Comey made it a point

When he was testifying before congress he said Gross negligence came under the espionage act and expressed it was not applicable in Hillary's case.

[Hortensis]

21. Yes. You know, if he HAD tried to press espionage charges,

that would have resulted in the kind of spotlight on his activities that I believe would be disastrous. His string of highly questionable and unsupportable behaviors all throughout the simultaneous "servergate"/campaign period suggest to me that he would have if he could.

[yallerdawg]

20. Still hounding that woman.

This is just more BS. The words weren't changed, the sentence was changed.

But now - couple years now - not even a jackass Republican unreasonable prosecutor has brought any kind of charges!

Spin away you slimy disgusting pieces of shit.

[xor]

24. I don't see much change in the tone between the two phrases.

They both convey the same message/intent/whatever.

[Solomon]

25. Nope. There are definitely legal consequences

between the two phrases. Grossly negligent is a legal term leading to culpability. Extremely careless is not. I am a lawyer and as soon as I heard Comey state the phrase extremely careless I was pissed because I knew what he was doing. In using the term extremely careless he knew that people would seize on that phrase politically as though it means the same thing legally as grossly negligent. It does not.

[xor]

26. So you're saying that "extremely careless" really means nothing

but if they said "grossly negligent" then that would have left Clinton open to actual legal consequences? Do you think it should have been left at grossly negligent?


*I probably should have read the entire article before commenting. I hate it when people do that... *bows head in shame*

[pnwmom]

30. It shouldn't have been "grossly negligent " because that is a legal standard the evidence didn't

support.

Colin Powell had advised her to use her own account, as he did, and there was no law prohibiting her from doing so (a law went into office after she left State.) She was supposed to be using the SCIF system for her classified materials, and she did -- both at work and at home, where she had a second SCIF system.

The few classified materials found on her system had been sent TO her, not FROM her. If she had been using the .gov system for her non-classified emails, and those few "classified" emails had been sent to her there, they wouldn't have properly belonged there, either. And that .gov system WAS hacked, unlike her server.

Also, those emails were classified RETROACTIVELY. Some of them were stories that had appeared in European media, that were forwarded to her. It is ludicrous to blame anyone for receiving European news articles that were classified retroactively, but that's what they were blaming Hillary for.

[rlegro]

37. More than that...

There is no evidence whatsoever, at least revealed by Comey testimony or in his report, that suggests she was either grossly negligent or "extremely careless." She more or less followed State Department standard op. And you can bet she let her IT people handle this, rather than make extremely careless decisions all by herself. Anyway, was seeking Colin Powell's advice, which she pretty much adopted. Extremely careless? I think that applies to the RWNJ's bloviating, mostly.

[pnwmom]

40. I agree. nt

[xor]

38. Okay, that's pretty much been my understanding of this whole thing

Although, I wasn't aware the .gov servers were hacked.

[pnwmom]

41. Hundreds of thousands of .gov emails were hacked during the same period of time

that she was using the server at home. And the FBI found no evidence that her system had been hacked. (It is still possible that it was -- but we KNOW .gov was.)

[politicaljunkie41910]

29. Gee Whiz, "It's six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Even though it appears that the two "legal terms" have different meanings within the scope of a Justice Dept. investigation, they essentially mean the same thing from a literal and literary standpoint which is the reason for the confusion. While the term "grossly negligent" would imply a "higher standard of culpability than "extremely careless", it doesn't appear to be a 'rat's hair' width between the meaning of the two from a literary viewpoint. I'd hate to be the one whose future rests on the 'judge and jury' (metaphorically speaking) deciding how much weight to give to that 'rat's hair', and no one's future should be.

When I was working for the federal government in Contracting and we were rating various contractor's proposals we had to determine our rating criteria in advance and include it when submitting our Requests for Proposals and include in our submission for each factor and succinctly define our rating parameters so there was enough daylight in between each rating factor so that there was no room for confusion which could result in someone later filing a protest based on rating criteria. It's been a while since I worked in this area but if I had to recall I.e. One way could be ranking factors like Superior, Very Good, Acceptable, or Unacceptable and you would have a full blown separate description of what constituted each factor for added clarity, with enough daylight in between to be easily discernable so as to be able to easily differentiate one factor from the other.

[lapucelle]

27. "Extremely careless" is not a legal standard.

Gross negligence has a specific, legal definition. In order for someone to be judged "grossly negligent" it must be shown that:

The defendant owed a legal duty to the plaintiff under the circumstances;
The defendant breached that legal duty by acting or failing to act in a certain way;
It was the defendant's actions (or inaction) that actually caused the plaintiff's injury;
The plaintiff was harmed or injured as a result of the defendant's actions;

AND

That the defendant demonstrated a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care.

[pnwmom]

31. And obviously it didn't apply.

Hillary didn't have a legal duty to ignore Colin Powell's advice and only use the .gov system for non-classified email. A law was passed about this AFTER she left the State Department.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

28. So fuckin' what?!

[harun]

35. I still care 0% about Hillary's email server.

[MosheFeingold]

39. It would be a jury question

Jurors decide what is negligence, gross negligence etc. There are some exceptions but this is the general rule.

All that said, the forwarding of emails to child molesting pervert Anthony Weiner to print on yet another private computer was extreme dumb, and would at least get a soldier charged under this statute.

Whether it would be a conviction or not, who knows.

[EL34x4]

42. People are missing the point here. It has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton

What we are seeing is a picture being painted of a Mueller investigation made up entirely of partisan Democrats and vengeful Clinton supporters who aren’t looking for evidence of collusion but rather fishing for process crimes.

They’re painting this picture to shut it down. And when someone does shut it down (it won’t be Trump) the argument sold to America will be that the investigation went of the rails and turned into a witch hunt seeking not justice, but only to punish Trump for the crime of beating Hillary Clinton.

That’s what’s going on here and we’re going to see more of this.