"Hillary Clinton’s email problems might be even worse than we thought"

[TeddyR]

This is Chris Cillizza's (from the Washington Post) take on the announcement today. I think they probably get the tone right - although no indictment is a win some of the statement's from the FBI aren't helpful. I'm not sure any of this really changes the race - no indictment but could have been better. It is important to keep in mind that the WaPo has been a Hillary cheerleader almost from the beginning, so this isn't like Fox News saying the outcome wasn't good for Hillary.

It's hard to read Comey's statement as anything other than a wholesale rebuke of the story Clinton and her campaign team have been telling ever since the existence of her private email server came to light in spring 2015. She did send and receive classified emails. The setup did leave her — and the classified information on the server — subject to a possible foreign hack. She and her team did delete emails as personal that contained professional information.

Those are facts, facts delivered by the Justice Department of a Democratic administration. And those facts run absolutely counter to the narrative put forth by the Clinton operation: that this whole thing was a Republican witch-hunt pushed by a bored and adversarial media.
***
For a candidate already badly struggling on questions of whether she is honest and trustworthy enough to hold the office to which she aspires, Comey's comments are devastating. Watching them, I could close my eyes and imagine them spliced into a bevy of 30-second ads — all of which end with the FBI director rebuking Clinton as "extremely careless."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/05/hillary-clintons-email-problems-might-be-even-worse-than-we-thought/

Disclaimer - this is not an attack on Hillary.

[lapucelle]

1. Comey had no business editorializing.

He needs to step down.

[sharp_stick]

2. It's the FBI not the Justice Department

as a whole that said this. You'd think Clizza would know the difference.

As for how bad it is, I call bullshit on the worse than we thought. Anything short of an indictment leaves this whole thing as over plain and simple. Nobody gives two shits anymore and no matter how hard the RW assholes continue to try and smear it around people are done with it.

[TeddyR]

5. FBI operates under the jurisdiction of the DOJ

And this is going to be a talking point until the campaign ends.

[sharp_stick]

9. They do

but they don't speak for the Justice Department.

It's going to be a talking point but without an indictment it's nothing more than an "Oops, sorry I screwed up" answer. For all intents and purposes I think this is over.

[Orrex]

13. It will be a talking point throughout her first term

And it will be resurrected during her 2020 reelection campaign and all through her second term.

The GOP's top priority is to make Clinton seem untrustworthy, and a great many people on the Right and the Left seem willing to believe.

[tonyt53]

3. Don't need this guy to tell anybody this. We all know it - some people can sort out bullshit better.

[emulatorloo]

4. Good luck with that.

[dmosh42]

6. State Dept has a whole flock of 'security' advisors on how to handle communications, and if there...

was negligence, it was their job to correct it. Same was true with Powell, some years before Clinton. Waste of taxpayer money, once again!

[Gman]

7. So people have to ask if this is worth a President Trump

And vote accordingly. I question how grounded a person is that answers yes.

[LynneSin]

11. For the win ^^^^^

nuff sid!

[JoePhilly]

8. Keep outrage alive at all cost!!!

[ehrnst]

21. I know - they keep clapping hoping the indictment fairy will come back to life.... (nt)

[loyalsister]

10. The thing I worry about is a civil lawsuit

I'm not an attorney, but it is my understanding that FOIA is sometimes enforced via lawsuits. On the up side I do know that they can grag out for a long time. Is it possible for them to be settled with little admission of blame.

[tallahasseedem]

12. Cillizza...really?

LOL!

[underpants]

14. Exactly. He's a joke.

[mcar]

15. Even Cillizza's usually fawning commenters

Are slamming him for this one. What a tool!

[mulsh]

16. Comey's snarky aside and Cillizza's petulant article tell me they're upset that the facts of

the case don't justify the results they were aiming for.

The article is a good illustration of why I ignore Cillizza when he talking heads on the TV and try to avoid reading his articles. Comey should have skipped his snarky comments and released a standard "No crime found" type of statement without the access moment so valued by the cable news guys. Perhaps we'll be seeing him run for some office on the Republican ticket soon.

[seabeyond]

17. No indictment, end of investigation, we are done.

[Bradical79]

18. These things aren't mutually exclusive

Yes, it was stupid, careless, embarassing, and did nothing to help her image. Doesn't mean it wasn't a Republican led witchhunt or that the media hadn't played it up more than the facts warranted. The Republucans and media both spent massive amounts of time and money on this subject to ultimately offer 0 new insights on the case. Media coverage was mostly poorly informed speculation and lots if filler.

[Gabi Hayes]

22. this is EXACTLY the VRWC's MO since the massively bogus

Whitewater "scandal," in which the prosecutor of the actual legal proceedings, in his final summation to the jury, told them that the Clinton's were VICTIMS of Jim McDougal's scamming, and lost between $37,000 and $69,000 as a result of their partnership with him.

let "Fools for Scandal" and "The Hunting of the President" be your guide.

[Gabi Hayes]

19. ''It is important to keep in mind that the WaPo has been a....

Hillary cheerleader''

seriously, RUN, don't walk, to the nearest mental health professional.

[Gabi Hayes]

20. I know, I know, this is from media matters, which at one time

here was considered a paradigm of media analysis, but it sources an independent organization for this:



A newly released media analysis found that the “biggest news outlets have published more negative stories about Hillary Clinton than any other presidential candidate — including Donald Trump — since January 2015.” The study, conducted by social media software analytics company Crimson Hexagon, also found that “the media also wrote the smallest proportion of positive stories about her.”

As Media Matters has noted throughout the primary campaign, the coverage of Hillary Clinton has tended to focus on fake scandals such as her use of a private email server while her Republican counterparts have enjoyed more positive characterizations. This criticism has been backed up by a former New York Times editor who agreed that the publication has given the Clinton’s “an unfair ‘level of scrutiny.’”

Crimson Hexagon’s analysis, reported by Vox’s Jeff Stein, “shows that the media has battered Clinton more than any other candidate, perhaps because of the ongoing controversy over her emails.” Accusations of “the media being in the tank for Clinton,” Stein notes, simply “may not square with reality.” Crimson Hexagon’s analysis -- which examined reporting from The Washington Post, Politico, Fox News, the Huffington Post, and CNN -- ultimately found that more “negative stories” were published about Clinton than any other presidential candidate, and that Clinton herself received “the smallest proportion of positive stories.”

[sufrommich]

23. "WaPo has been a Hillary cheerleader almost from the beginning,"

Did you type that with a straight face?