Bad intel from Russia influenced Comey's Clinton announcement: report

[babylonsister]

Bad intel from Russia influenced Comey's Clinton announcement: report
By Katie Bo Williams - 05/24/17 04:03 PM EDT


Former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to detail the FBI’s findings in the Hillary Clinton email case without Justice Department input was influenced by a dubious Russian document that the FBI now considers to be bad intelligence, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The secret document, which purported to be a piece of Russian intelligence, claimed that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information would go nowhere.

But according to people familiar with the matter, by August the FBI had come to believe the document was unreliable — and in fact may have been planted as a fake to confuse the FBI.

Comey made his announcement in July.

more...

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/334990-bad-intel-influenced-comeys-clinton-announcement-report

[geek tragedy]

1. .

[yallerdawg]

4. Kick...

and highly recommend.

[Hekate]

14. What you said

[Achilleaze]

2. Bastard russians & republican turncoats piss all over America

and American democracy.

Deplorable.

[maxrandb]

15. Worse than that

Bastard Russians piss all over America and Retrumplicans cheer them on

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

28. Yep...

... especially the second part you mentioned.

[JTFrog]

3. Fucking incompetent asshole.

Too late to make up for it no matter what he does now. I will hate him for eternity.

[flamingdem]

24. Yes, he can't get off the hook with this

He didn't have to do what he did

[Initech]

33. Fucking incompetent assholes!

The whole damn party is up to their necks in all of this. This is why they won't hire a prosecutor - they're all guilty!

[marylandblue]

5. Explains a lot and is another nail in Trump's coffin

[seaglass]

6. Can you link to the Washington Post article? It has much more detail and the original authors

should get credit for the reporting. I am out of free articles so can't link.

In any case, as the Post article reports - they did not even contact any of the people named in the email.

This is really horrendous.

[emulatorloo]

9. WAPO: How a dubious Russian document influenced the FBIs handling of the Clinton probe

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-a-dubious-russian-document-influenced-the-fbis-handling-of-the-clinton-probe/2017/05/24/f375c07c-3a95-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html

Agreed, much more detail and WAPO deserves the credit for breaking this story.

On Edit: DU thread on WAPO article:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029110468

[seaglass]

10. Thank you emulatorloo, I guess I should just break open the wallet and buy a subscription. :-) n/t

[emulatorloo]

12. Yep, I bought when they were having a sale. It's been worth it to keep up with

all the great reporting.

[emulatorloo]

7. Russian fake Intel planted at the FBI. MAGA.

Thanks for posting. This is hard to take in.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

8. Hope Comey never forgets they set him up to be the patsy from the very beginning.

And keeps all of that in mind as he testifies against Donald Trump and company.

[dalton99a]

11. Classic KGB trick

[emulatorloo]

13. DU thread with the original WAPO story:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029110468

[newblewtoo]

16. Another WTF

moment for Comey. If the man said it was night half of America would go outside to check. Add the Brennan bomb shell that the Russians may have held back potential black mail information against Hillary and you got some real good chaff for the nay sayers in the GrOPe to run with. It is all over the usual Reich wing Nets for those so inclined.

[4139]

17. Big-ass smokescreen.... now the House and Senate hearing will have to address this....

Lynch, DWS and the DNC...
BIG smokescreen to obscure Trump

[world wide wally]

18. What about his announcement in October?

Was that a Russian trick too?

[murielm99]

19. I don't have any intention of

forgiving Comey.

I don't care what he thought he knew. It was too close to the election to say the crap he said.

It was not the first time he spoke out of turn. When he announced that HRC was not under criminal investigation, he let the world know that he did not like that. It was not his place to open his fat mouth.

Too bad he isn't going to jail along with the rest of them. That is where they all belong.

[deurbano]

36. Exactly. Even if it HAD been true, that would have been an indictment of Lynch, not Clinton.

So, how was smearing Clinton (as he "cleared" her in July) a remedy? I think he just wanted to seriously weaken her, thinking ahead to when he assumed she would be president and he'd still be head of the FBI. (And he also was hoping to score some points with his fellow Republicans, though that was a miscalculation since they would only be satisfied with her incarceration or execution.)

[Glimmer of Hope]

20. This makes me a bit more than mildly nauseous.

[FailureToCommunicate]

21. K & R

[Tatiana]

22. I expect better from the head of an agency like the FBI.

Why didn't someone in the department try to authenticate the message?

Lynch would never agree to something like that, but I guess Comey had to ride in on his high horse anyway and save us from nothing.

His bias towards all things Clinton got the best of him and now we have to suffer because of it.

[MousePlayingDaffodil]

29. What, do you think that this purportedly bogus . . .

. . . "information" was provided by the Russians directly to Comey?

The implication, it seems to me, is that the sequence may well have been something along these lines:

1. Bogus "information" was planted by the Russians, mixed in with other legitimate, if essentially innocuous, hacked DNC emails.

2. The "right" people within the FBI -- "right," that is, from the Russians' point of view -- find it.

3. Those same people bring this "information" to Comey's attention. Comey then asks something to the effect of: "So, do we think this is legit? Have you checked it out?, etc. etc."

4. Comey is given the response: "Oh, sure, we've looked into it. We think it's credible."

5. Comey: "Hmm . . . okay, thanks . . . I'll have to think about what I should do with all this."

* * * *

Recall that when, late in the campaign, Comey made his bombshell announcement about the emails found on Anthony Weiner's computer, the suggestion was made that Comey decided to speak out because he feared that elements within the FBI were prepared to go behind his back and leak that information if he remained silent.

This is all speculative, admittedly, but find out who those "right" people are in the FBI (per #2, above), and see if they are part of the same internal FBI cabal that Comey was later concerned about. If so, that would go a long way towards explaining a lot.

[creeksneakers2]

35. From the Post:

"After the bureau first received the document, it attempted to use the source to obtain the referenced email but could not do so, these people said. The source that provided the document, they said, had previously supplied other information that the FBI was also unable to corroborate."

[MousePlayingDaffodil]

39. This seems consistent with the (admittedly speculative) premise . . .

. . . that Comey was duped by certain of his own people, who -- under this theory -- vouched for the authenticity of the information even though they knew it to be "dis"-information or, at best, had no good reason to think it legitimate.

Under this theory, Comey was neither overtly anti-Clinton or supportive of Trump. Rather, he was a gullible fool who was more concerned about his own reputation for "rectitude."

[PatSeg]

23. Holy Crap!!!

[gademocrat7]

25. Horrible!

[mvd]

26. I'm not a Comey fan. How he handled everything during..

the election was terrible and without precedent. But Trump obviously had saving himself in mind when he fired Comey. Perhaps Comey felt guilty and was really looking into Trump's collusion. K&R

[StevieM]

27. Wow, the Russians were heavily involved in cultivating the GOP narrative surrounding

the fake email scandal. They were trying to affect the work processes of the FBI.

They must have been in touch with high ranking Republicans strategists long before Trump became the GOP nominee.

[radical noodle]

30. K&R

This is even getting top billing even on Greta tonight. Everyone is all over this story.

[kentuck]

31. Did this come from Wikileaks?

It sounds like the type of trick that Roger Stone would be associated with?

[orangecrush]

32. Kick

However, if Trump takes the entire GOP down with him, it will be a happy ending.

[Goodheart]

34. So, Comey did this to be vindictive?

To show Loretta a thing or two about how an HONEST person works?

Shouldn't it have been enough for him that Lynch recused herself from the case and deferred to his judgment?

Comey still has a lot of explaining to do.

[erinlough]

37. I never watch Greta but stumbled on the program while she was discussing this.

Her take, Comey showed how inept and unqualified he is because he couldn't spot a fake and why should we trust him now. She was speaking with Dershowitz who heartily agreed. She is still on Fox News never doubt it.

[Honeycombe8]

38. I don't see how that email would have influenced Comey.

He made a public announcement about the email investigation, clearing Clinton from a crime. That is the opposite of what he would do, if he had been influenced by the Russian-planted email.

Second, the report I heard said that the planted email MAY have influenced the FBI. Not that it did.