Silver makes a strong point

HSG — Thu, 04 May 2017 12:23:52 +0000

In reply to Nate Silver: Comey letter cost the election, media in denial

Silver makes a strong point about the media's complicity in Clinton's loss. He notes that the NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc. have been reluctant to point a finger directly at Comey because they gave his letter a tremendous amount of attention day after day and therefore amplified its effect. Silver also remarks on the way the media framed "the story" as one which probably wouldn't hurt Clinton but might rather than by leading with the fact that Comey had not adduced any new evidence showing that Clinton committed any indictable offense. Ironically, albeit predictably, Andrew Rosenthal's NYT op-ed yesterday, attacking Comey for insufficient contrition about helping elect Trump, is utterly silent on the Grey Lady's role in November's debacle.

Where's Weiner's indictment?

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 04 May 2017 09:51:00 +0000

In reply to Nate Silver: Comey letter cost the election, media in denial

Where's Weiner's indictment? 7 monts already. From Wikipedia: " It's not known how the Daily Mail learned of this incident as in the Daily Mail article the girl's father says he did not contact the police and this article was used as reason for the FBI and NYPD to begin investigating Weiner. " Umm, okay... over 3 months ago, officials were mulling bring charges.. Still silence. [ the supposed "child pornography" charge seemed designed to give right-wing outlets a hard-on, since the girl - if there really was one - showed nothing and there was no commerce]

Comey's latest talk with Congress says there will be no charges against Huma, but it still doesn't add up - the original story was there were 650,000 of her emails found on Weiner's laptop - that's about 2000 a day for 10 years - that she was supposedly sending him to print out for Hillary?

"Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information by her assistant, Huma Abedin," he said.

In separate exchange with Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, Comey said Abedin appeared to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to Weiner for him "to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state."

...

KENNEDY: Did former congressman Weiner read the classified material?

COMEY: I don't think so. I don't think we have been able to interview him because he has pending criminal problems of other sorts. But my understanding is that his role would be to print them out as a matter of convenience.

Separate the first paragraph and the idea that someone planted the emails on his laptop becomes more of an option (somehow if 650,000 Hillary Clinton emails were forwarded to Weiner's account, he wouldn't have time or space to do anything). Remember that Hillary hadn't been SoS for 3 1/2 years by last September and Huma had obviously quit in Jan 2013 as well, plus as the Comey announcement of July 2016 stated, there were only 81 chains of (possibly backwards or only at-the-time or overly-classifed) confidential emails out of thousands, so it's not like every day Huma would be sending Anthony tons of confidential stuff to print out.

But the Catfishing theory notes that only a tie-in to confidential emails would give the FBI justification to grab Huma's computer and open the whole thing up to the tabloids.

To compare timeframes, the Scooter Libby investigation took a total of 22 months starting from knowing near nothing to grand jury indictment, jailing Judith Miller for 3 months, having Dick Cheney lie to F. Patrick Fitzgerald, etc., etc. Martha Stewart's indictment came 18 months after her sale, but that was only because they focused on & indicted the CEO the first 6 months, and indicted Stewart a year later when he was being sentenced. The iPhone "Fappening" leak took 18 months to investigate & get a plea bargain.

The only rational reason I can think of for the slow pace of Weiner's seemingly straightforward case is that he actually was catfished (as he claimed in August 2016) and it's heavily linked into Russian hacking. Comey talks about Weiiner's other "pending criminal problems", but what are they, and what's with Comey's high-profile visit to Charlotte coming up (near the supposed catfishing & other Russian activity).

The other less rational (or less palatable) reason was that Comey had to announce an email investigation within 2 days to influence a national election, even though he would have to postpone that investigation for a year due to conflicting investigations & jurisdictions.

dagblog - Comments for "Nate Silver: Comey letter cost the election, media in denial"

Silver makes a strong point

Where's Weiner's indictment?