12/16/2017 / By JD Heyes
One thing has become quite clear in the aftermath of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald J. Trump last year: The D.C. Swamp creatures running the Deep State were so confident she would win they did everything they could to not only ensure her victory and ingratiate themselves to the new queen, but to undermine the Trump campaign at every turn.
One of the main actors in this disgustingly corrupt play was James Comey, the FBI director fired by Trump early in his administration.
Recall that Trump fired Comey over his [mis]handling of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. At the time establishment Democrats and Republicans chastised the president over his decision; Comey’s firing also formed the basis of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which has transformed from “Trump-Russia collusion” to obstruction of justice (as if the president, as head of the Executive Branch, doesn’t have the authority to fire anyone under him he pleases).
The more we learn about Comey’s Clinton-related actions as director, the better understanding we have of why he was fired, and justifiably so, and why she was never charged, which was a miscarriage of justice.
We already knew that Comey prepared his statement exonerating Clinton months in advance, meaning he had made his mind up (before she was even interviewed by agents) that he was going to let her off the hook.
We also knew that language in the statement was changed to remove a legally actionable phrase, and we just found out that disgraced FBI counterterrorism agent Peter Strzok was the one who made the change for Comey.
Now we learn that there were additional changes made to the statement to further water it down so that there would be nothing left to chance when it came to the decision not to charge Clinton with criminal mishandling of classified information.
As reported by Fox News, newly released documents reveal that Comey’s statement was edited numerous times before he made his July 5, 2016, exoneration statement, including a change that implicates Clinton as a major national security risk.
The multiple edits were contained in a letter to the FBI Thursday, sent by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
In an early draft, Comey noted that it was “reasonably likely” that “hostile actors” had gotten access to Clinton’s unsecured private email server, but that passage was later changed to read like the scenario was only “possible.”
The final version of the statement also removed a reference to the “sheer volume” of classified information that Clinton discussed via email. (Related: CORRUPT: Wife of demoted Justice Dept. official worked for DEM-aligned firm Fusion GPS, which created bogus “Trump dossier.”)
And of course, as we already knew, the final version edited out references to specific violations of classified data handling as “gross negligence” — the exact wording in the statute — to “extremely careless,” which was the change that Strzok made.
In his letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Johnson said all of the editing “could be read as a finding of criminality in Secretary Clinton’s handling of classified material.”
“The edited statement deleted the reference to gross negligence – a legal threshold for mishandling classified material – and instead replaced it with an exculpatory sentence,” he added.
In addition, Johnson pointed out that references to specific violations of statues on “gross negligence” regarding the mishandling of classified information and “misdemeanor handling” were removed.
“While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey’s statement in at least three respects,” wrote Johnson.
“In summary, the edits to Director Comey’s public statement, made months prior to the conclusion of the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s conduct, had a significant impact on the FBI’s public evaluation of the implications of her actions,” he continued.
Even more damning are comments Comey scrawled on his first draft.
“I’ve been trying to imagine what it would look like if I decided to do an FBI only press event to close out our work and hand the matter to the DOJ,” Comey wrote at the top.
“To help shape out discussions of whether that, or something different, makes sense, I have spent some time crafting what I would say, which follows. In my imagination, I don’t see me taking any questions. Here is what it might look like,” he said.
James Comey and the Deep State apparatus he led never had any intention of charging a woman who blatantly, willfully, and purposefully put the national security of her country at risk.
I ask again, Where is Jeff Sessions?
Read more of J.D. Heyes at The National Sentinel.
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Tagged Under: classified information, corruption, deep state, edited memo, Email Investigation, exoneration, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, mishandling, national security