Pierce: The Great Hillary Email Nothingburger is Still on the Grill, and It's Certainly Overcooked

[mcar]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a43713/hillary-email-nothingburger/

It is getting a little bit unseemly to hear Democratic analysts and liberal voices in the punditariat latching on one of the more desperate hopes of Republicans who would rather not run against Hillary Rodham Clinton—namely, that she's going to be questioned by the FBI and subsequently indicted for something in connection with the great email nothingburger. Today's entrant is the increasingly hilarious H.A. Goodman, whose devotion to the notion that The Great Bernie Wave Is Just Around The Corner has become positively Millerite in its fervor. (Scott at Lawyers, Guns, and Money is H.A.'s most diligent chronicler.) Anyway, on Wednesday, after Sanders won a substantial victory at the polls in Wisconsin, and a considerably less substantial one as far as the delegate count goes, H.A. pronounced his heart lightened by the prospect of HRC getting tangled up with the Feds.


Nonetheless, there are people questioning the logic of voting for a person linked to an FBI investigation. An article by Ronald J. Sievert in USA Today titled "Hillary's 'classified' smokescreen hides real crime" highlights the case for DOJ indictment.

If Mr. Sievert and our buddy H.A. think that the current Department of Justice is going to indict the frontrunner for the Democratic—see, Ronald? it's easy when you try—presidential nomination based on a semantic quibble in the applicable statute, they've both been sampling their own product much too often. (Sievert pretty much admits this is the case by the end of his column, although he finds the whole thing deplorable.) Honestly, HRC raised $29 million in March and she's coming into a couple of wheelhouse primaries, and she's still ahead anyway. My world should collapse so handsomely.

[highprincipleswork]

1. I am so tired of biased opinions that there is nothing there, absolutely nothing, no risk at all.

Whether or not there are charges, nobody would wish their candidate to run while under FBI investigation. Unless you're just so obsessed you don't see any possible danger or liability.

That's the kind of fanaticism I don't appreciate in Hillary or her supporters.

I'm still seeing Bernie gathering momentum and taking this thing. BUT, if Hillary manages to prevail, and then e-mail scandal does anything at all to jeopardize the Democratic nominee, I'm going to be royally pissed. And anyone who supported her and said it was nothing is going to hear an undending string of "I told you so's".

[Press Virginia]

3. I don't see how she won't be indicted based on what we know

[mcar]

4. Pierce is not a big fan of HRC

His opinion is his, of course, buts it's certainly not biased in HRC's favor.

[840high]

5. I imagine he knows about as

much as we do. I'll wait for the FBI decision.

[KoKo]

7. State Dept. wants questions to Clinton aides 'limited' in email case involving "Judicial Watch" FOIA

State Dept. wants questions to Clinton aides 'limited' in email case (involving Judicial Watch/FOIA Request)

By Julian Hattem - 04/06/16 11:20 AM EDT

State Department lawyers want a federal judge to require that any questions asked to current or former State Department officials as part of an ongoing court case involving Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s private email server be “limited” and fine-tuned ahead of time.

In a court filing late Tuesday evening, government attorneys asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to limit questions to the creation of Clinton’s personal email system.

Other topics — such as the handling of classified information, the FBI’s ongoing investigation connected to the server or the unusual employment arrangement of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin — should be off-limits, the government insisted.

“State submits that the scope of discovery must be limited and specified at the outset to prevent questioning that exceeds the limited inquiry that the court has authorized,” lawyers said in their motion. The evidence-gathering process, which can include sworn depositions, is formally known as discovery.

The filing comes as the Obama administration and conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch try to hammer out terms of depositions for multiple current and former top aides of Clinton. Last month, Judicial Watch asked the court to allow it to question eight people, including Abedin, Clinton's ex-chief of staff Cheryl Mills and current State Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy.

The process is likely to stretch into the summer, extending the debate over Clinton’s private server even deeper into the presidential election calendar. Clinton exclusively used email accounts housed on the server during her tenure as secretary of State, which critics say amounted to the thwarting of public record keeping laws and jeopardized national security.

Following Tuesday evening’s filing, Judicial Watch has 10 days to respond. Sullivan will rule on how to proceed on April 15.

Late last month, a second judge in a separate case connected to Clinton's email system opened the door to additional depositions, potentially above and beyond those in the Sullivan case.

Continued at....

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/275343-feds-ask-for-limited-questions-to-clinton-

aides-in-email-case

[Native]

9. The fact that Hillary has been investigated probably more than anyone alive and REMAINS UNINDICTED

isn't what I'd consider to be "opinion."

[mcar]

10. Exactly

She's been vetted up one side and down the other.

[Gothmog]

2. There will be no indictment of Hillary Clinton

[reformist2]

6. It's not a nothingburger - it was extremely negligent on her part, at the very least.

[Native]

8. Thanks for this. Pierce is the best. Love the comments, as always!

What Sievert is arguing is that HRC could still be indicted even if the information found in her emails was never classified at all, or classified ex post facto.

And my favorite comment courtesy of Terry Moran, Loyola University of Chicago School of Law - And, Professor Pervert, I mean Sievert, "the proper place of custody" for a State Department document is wherever the Secretary of State decides that document should be, for whatever reason, including her own convenience. How would the Government refute that argument, Professor? Because if it couldn't, the indictment would have to be dismissed by the District Court Judge.

[Joob]

11. Ask yourself, why is it taking so long? Are they waiting for the general election? nt

[Fumesucker]

12. That's what both the Republicans and the pragmatic moderate centrist Democrats want

The Republicans of course are salivating at the chance to go after Clinton, their eternal enemy, in the general. The Democrats on the other hand want to dispatch Sanders so if if the USS Inevitable does get holed below the waterline they can send in Biden or some other pragmatic moderate centrist as a pinch hitter.