The FBI and the 2016 Election
Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2016 9:52 pm
This needs to be a new thread because in the next few days there is going to be a whole lot more on the FBI and this election and I don't want it hidden away in the other threads ...
The FBI Wants to Make America Great Again
600NOV 3, 2016 6:00 AM EDT
By
Eli Lake
Maybe it’s just me, but I think the FBI is trying to send a message about next week’s election.
FBI examining fake documents targeting Clinton campaign: sources
By Mark Hosenball | WASHINGTON
The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said.
U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic, some of the sources who had knowledge of that discussion said.
In the letter identified as fake, Carper is quoted as writing to Clinton, “We will not let you lose this election,” a person who saw the document told Reuters.
The fake Carper letter, which was described to Reuters, is one of several documents presented to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice for review in recent weeks, the sources said.
A spokeswoman for Carper declined to comment.
As part of an investigation into suspected Russian hacking, FBI investigators have also asked Democratic Party officials to provide copies of other suspected faked documents that have been circulating along with emails and other legitimate documents taken in the hack, people involved in those conversations said.
A spokesman for the FBI confirmed the agency was “in receipt of a complaint about an alleged fake letter” related to the election but declined further comment. Others with knowledge of the matter said the FBI was also examining other fake documents that recently surfaced.
U.S. intelligence officials have warned privately that a campaign they believe is backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election could move beyond the hacking of Democratic Party email systems. That could include posting fictional evidence of voter fraud or other disinformation in the run-up to voting on Nov. 8, U.S. officials have said.
Russian officials deny any such effort.
In addition to the Carper letter, the FBI has also reviewed a seven-page electronic document that carries the logos of Democratic pollster Joel Benenson’s firm, the Benenson Strategy Group, and the Clinton Foundation, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The document, identified as a fake by the Clinton campaign, claims poll ratings had plunged for Clinton and called for “severe strategy changes for November” that could include “staged civil unrest” and “radiological attack” with dirty bombs to disrupt the vote.
Like the Carper letter, it was not immediately clear where the fraudulent document had originated or how it had begun to circulate.
On Oct. 20, Roger Stone, a former Trump aide and Republican operative, linked to a copy of the document on Twitter with the tag, “If this is real: OMG!!”
Benenson’s firm had no immediate comment. Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, said the document was “fake.” He said he did not know if the FBI had examined it.
Stone did not respond to emails requesting comment.
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign, Glen Caplin, said the document was a fake and part of a “desperate stunt” to capitalize on the leak of Democratic emails by Wikileaks.
The developments highlight the unusually prominent role U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have played in a contentious election and an ongoing debate about how public they can or should be about their inquiries.
FBI Director James Comey, a Republican appointed by President Obama, touched off an outcry from Democrats last week when he alerted Congress that agents had found other emails that could be linked to an inquiry into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State, effectively re-opening an investigation he had closed in July.
(Editing by Kevin Krolicki, John Walcott, Toni Reinhold)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-e ... SKBN12Y2WY
Agent: FBI is ‘Trumplandia’
By Tim Devaney - 11/03/16 03:40 PM EDT
The FBI is “Trumplandia,” according to an agent who spoke anonymously to The Guardian newspaper.
In a report published Thursday, multiple sources within the FBI say that deep antipathy toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and anger that FBI Director James Comey did not bring charges against her this summer have motivated leaks that could damage her presidential campaign.
One agent told The Guardian that many at the bureau view Clinton as the “antichrist” and are supportive of Trump.
“That’s the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump,” the FBI agent told The Guardian.
But another FBI source disputed the level of support Trump has within the bureau, according to The Guardian.
“There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt,” the source said. “What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician.”
According to the report, the tensions boiled over in July when Comey declined to recommend charges against the Democratic presidential nominee for possibly mishandling classified information through her use of a private email server to conduct government business, according to the FBI agent.
Comey last week sent a letter to congressional committees notifying them that the FBI was looking at new emails uncovered in a separate investigation that could be related to the Clinton case. The FBI has come under tremendous criticism from Democrats and some Republicans for interfering with the election by releasing that information to Congress just under two weeks from Election Day.
There have been further leaks about internal fights within the FBI and other possible investigations since the Comey news broke, all of which has suggested an agency in a public war with itself.
FBI launches internal investigation into its own Twitter account
An FBI tweet may have crossed the line.
The FBI has launched an internal investigation into one of its own Twitter accounts.
The account at issue, @FBIRecordsVault, had been dormant for more than a year. Then on October 30 at 4 a.m., the account released a flood of documents, including one describing Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump as a “philanthropist.”
But it wasn’t until two days later, when the account tweeted documents regarding President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon of Marc Rich, that the account began to attract significant attention.
The account has not been active since that tweet.
ThinkProgress has learned that the FBI’s Inspection Division will undertake an investigation of the account.
Candice Will, Assistant Director for the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, said she was referring the matter to the FBI’s Inspection Division for an “investigation.” Upon completion of the investigation, the findings will be referred back to the the Office of Professional Responsibility for “adjudication.”
Federal law and FBI policy prohibit employees from using the power of the department to attempt to influence elections.
Will was responding to a complaint from Jonathan Hutson, a former investigative reporter who now works in communication in Washington, DC. She did not respond to requests, via phone and email, for further comment.
Nancy McNamara, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Inspection Division, also confirmed to Hutson that she had received the complaint. She copied Voviette Morgan, a 19-year veteran now serving as Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles office.
News of the internal investigation is at odds with the FBI’s official position, which is that the Twitter account followed all FBI procedures.
“Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI’s public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures,” the FBI said in a statement.
The strange tweets come days after James Comey released a letter revealing that the department was reviewing some emails that could be relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The Justice Department opposed release of the letter, arguing that it violated department protocols.
Since that time, there has been a series of leaks about FBI activity that appear to be designed to damage Hillary Clinton and benefit Donald Trump. An anonymous source for example, leaked to the Wall Street Journal that there was an investigation — including “secret recordings” — into the Clinton Foundation. The New York Times, also citing anonymous sources, reported that the FBI believed that Russia was just trying to disrupt the U.S. election, not help Donald Trump.
https://thinkprogress.org/fbi-launches- ... .vosttcd7n
The Theory That the FBI Is Out to Get Clinton Is Becoming More Plausible
By Ben Mathis-Lilley
The Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters in Washington, USA on August 26, 2016.
When Democrats reacted to FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress about the sort-of-reopened investigation into Hillary Clinton's private server by accusing Comey of trying to meddle in the election on behalf of the Republican Party, the accusation seemed far-fetched. Comey was, until last Friday, generally despised by Republicans for his earlier decision to recommend against prosecuting Clinton. But while there's been of yet no evidence revealed that Comey himself has an ax to grind, a number of data points have emerged indicating the presence of a politically motivated anti-Clinton faction within the agency.
For one, leaks keep coming out of the FBI that are unflattering to Clinton. First there was the revelation that the Clinton emails the FBI is currently checking for classified info came from Anthony Weiner's computer. (A good rule of thumb is that no political candidate wants his/her name anywhere near a headline that also involves the notorious A-Weens.) Then there was a story on Fox News (and a much more measured one in the Wall Street Journal) about the existence of an investigation into potential corruption at the Clinton Foundation. And the FBI also tweeted about a document release related to Bill Clinton's controversial pardon of Marc Rich.
On a parallel track, there was a report Thursday in the Guardian about FBI agents actively supporting Trump:
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent ... The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
Longtime Trump expert Wayne Barrett wrote Thursday in the Daily Beast, meanwhile, about the connections between Trump and the FBI. The FBI Agents Association—a unionlike 13,000-member group—has close ties to Rudy Giuliani, a top Trump surrogate, and Giuliani has said on Fox News that he's in touch with current agents who are upset about Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton. A former agent named Jim Kallstrom has appeared on Fox several times saying the same thing; Kallstrom's Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation has received funding from Trump and the Trump Foundation, and one of its directors is Rush Limbaugh.
The Guardian piece notes that other sources besides its quoted agent "dispute the depth of support for Trump within the bureau." And Barrett is writing only about Trump allies making claims of connections to current agents; we don't know whether those connections are in fact as strong as Giuliani and Kallstrom make them out to be, or whether said agents are upset about the Clinton email situation specifically because they support Trump. But when you combine the Guardian/Barrett reports with the kind of leaks that are coming out, Democrats' dark suggestions about the FBI's motives start to sound less like the reflexively defensive innuendo they at first seemed.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... _says.html
Anti-Clinton Sentiment Reportedly Prompted FBI Leaks: 'The FBI Is Trumpland'
http://www.complex.com/life/2016/11/fbi ... ry-clinton
OpticsPolitics
Joy Reid @JoyAnnReid 22h22 hours ago
To reiterate: if the @WSJ story is correct, the FBI mounted an investigation based on a book that financially benefits the GOP campaign CEO.
Bad, Bad Stuff Out of FBI
ByJOSH MARSHALL
Published
NOVEMBER 3, 2016, 7:00 PM EDT
Mark Hosenball has another look inside what's been happening at the FBI. It's another slice of the story but one that is consistent with Spencer Ackerman's piece in The Guardian and the best reporting I've seen on James Comey's role in this. I continue to think that one key part of Comey's role was simply a mix of naivete and indifference about the effect of his letter. Another driving force, though, as Hosenball reports, was fear of leaks and the Republican criticism they would drive.
From Hosenball ...
FBI Director James Comey was driven in part by a fear of leaks from within his agency when he decided to tell Congress the FBI was investigating newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, law enforcement sources said on Thursday.
And this (emphasis added) ...
Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBI's New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton. A spokeswoman for the FBI's New York office said she had no knowledge about this.
Democratic Party sources said such a faction was likely responsible for a recent surge in media leaks on alleged details of an ongoing FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bad ... out-of-fbi
THURSDAY, NOV 3, 2016 02:16 PM CDT
Donald Trump’s FBI: James Comey’s department is filled with pro-Trump, anti-Hillary Clinton partisans
The bureau seems to be filled with partisan hacks hell-bent on investigating Hillary Clinton
MATTHEW ROZSA
Under the FBI’s director, James Comey, whose ethically challenged letter sent last Friday put wind in Republican Donald Trump’s sails, the bureau appears to be ready to kick off a partisan witch hunt against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — and it’s all because the agents harbor a pro-Trump bias.
As The Guardian reported on Thursday, sources within the FBI told the newspaper that many agents were outraged that Comey decided to not recommend an indictment against Clinton in July in connection with her use of a private email server. Last Friday Comey signaled in his letter that the agency is reviewing newly surfaced emails to see if they are pertinent to the now closed Clinton investigation.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” one agent told The Guardian, with another describing how Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swathe of FBI personnel” and “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
While some of The Guardian’s sources disagreed that the FBI is overwhelmingly pro-Trump, all indicated that the attitude toward Clinton is extremely negative.
“There are lots of people who don’t think Trump is qualified, but also believe Clinton is corrupt,” said a former FBI official. “What you hear a lot is that it’s a bad choice, between an incompetent and a corrupt politician.”
VideoThe FBI Reopens Its Investigation of Hillary Clinton’s Emails
One of these partisan agents is feeding Fox News’ Brett Baier, who claimed on Wednesday that he had sources in the FBI personally assuring him that Clinton is going to be indicted.
“Two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations into the Clinton emails and the Clinton Foundation tell Fox the following,” Baier said on his show. “The investigation looking into possible pay-for-play interaction between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the foundation has been going on for more than a year. Led by the white-collar crime division, public corruption branch of the criminal investigative division of the FBI.”
There have been hints at an anti-Clinton bias in the FBI before now. Two days before Comey released his October surprise, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (who has very close connections to the FBI) told Fox, “I think [Donald Trump’s] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.” When asked what he meant by that, he said, “We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.”
After Comey released his letter last Friday, Giuliani appeared on radio saying that many FBI agents believed that not charging Clinton was “completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity. I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/03/donald- ... partisans/