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Monday, November 28, 2016

Another Frequent, Outrageous Campaign Lie By Donald Trump

Trump declared passionately at many of his campaign rallies that Hillary's offenses with regard to her emails were criminal, and that David Petraeus had been forced to resign his position as CIA director in disgrace for offenses that were "one-tenth" of what Hillary had done.

Not true, of course. FBI Director Comey explicitly stated that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a criminal case against Clinton; he explicitly stated that she had not lied to the FBI. On the other hand, the FBI and Justice Department recommended felony charges be brought against Petraeus for providing classified information. They intended to charge him with two criminal offenses: lying to the FBI and violating a section of the Espionage Act. A conviction on either charge could result in a lengthy prison sentence. Ultimately, Petraeus pleaded to lesser offenses, misdemeanors; he was sentenced to two years of probation and a $100,000 fine.

The following is a videotape clip (57 seconds) of Comey giving evidence at a congressional inquiry, answering a question from ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD):



Here's my transcription of Comey's evidence:
The Petraeus case, to my mind, illustrates perfectly the kind of cases the Department of Justice is willing to prosecute. Even there, they prosecuted him for a misdemeanor. In that case, you had [sound recording cuts out for about a second] of higly classified information, including special sensitive compartmented information -- that's the reference to "code words" -- vast quantity of it, not only shared with someone who had no authority to have it, but we found it in a search warrant hidden under the insulation in his attic*, and then he lied to us about it during the investigation. So you have obstruction, you have intentional misconduct and a vast quantity of information. He admitted he knew that was the wrong thing to do. That is a perfect illustration of the kind of cases that get prosecuted. In my mind, it illustrates importantly the distinction to this case.
* Sidebar: I'd heard that "attic" story before, but Comey got it wrong: The FBI searched Petraeus’s house in April 2013 and found the books in an unlocked drawer in his study. The books contained top-secret information that the Justice Department said could cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security if disclosed.

So Trump had it exactly backwards: The Clinton FBI investigation found no reason to proceed with criminal charges; the Petraeus investigation determined that Petraeus had indeed committed serious crimes (though he pled down).

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