The FBI released a tweet from an account that had not been active for a year. The tweet contained a file about a controversial pardon that Bill Clinton granted on his last day in office to Marc Rich, a financier who was living abroad to avoid arrest.
Why now? The FBI claimed it was an automatic response to Freedom of Information requests. But coming on the heels of Director James Comey’s announcement last Friday that he planned to review emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer that may or may not be significant, the latest data dump was strange to say the least. Once again, the agency ignored well-known Department protocols against meddling in elections. Does Comey have a vendetta against Clinton?
The story says:
“The Twitter account used to publicize the Rich files, an official FBI account called@FBIRecordsVault, had been dormant for more than a year until Sunday, when it began to tweet links to archived documents. They included records related to Fred Trump, the father of the GOP nominee, which were posted to the website in early October. Those records included eight pages of largely biographical details about the elder Trump, much of which appeared to be compiled by the FBI in 1988. The agency advertised the Trump records by tweeting: “Fred C. Trump (1905-1999) was a real estate developer and philanthropist….” presumably it contained no reference to the Justice Department lawsuit against Fred and his son Donald for racial discrimination in renting apartments in the 1970s.
It continues:
“This week’s release of the Rich files demonstrates how many of the players in the current Hillary Clinton drama played roles in Clinton-related battles of the past. Comey, for instance, as a young prosecutor in New York, helped lead the case against Rich. Later, as U.S. attorney, he led the office that handled the investigation into the Clinton pardon from early 2002 to the end of 2003. Former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., a Clinton backer who this week wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that Comey made a “serious error” in announcing the resumption of the email probe, was deputy attorney general at the time of the pardon and acknowledged that he had been contacted directly by Rich’s attorney. The pardon was criticized in part for bypassing an established process in which Justice lawyers review applications for merit. Holder’s name was one of only a few not blacked out in the redacted files released this week. Comey eventually supported Holder’s nomination for attorney general but told senators in 2008 that he had been “stunned” by the Rich pardon and that Holder’s actions in the case reflected a “huge misjudgment.”
Comey is rapidly undermining the FBI’s reputation for nonpartisanship. What else will the FBI release in the next week?

This is so sad and disturbing. I can remember teaching high school government in the 80s and about how the USSR and other countries behind the Iron Curtain deliberately distorted history (see first page of Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting for the best summation of this). Now I see the tactics of the Stasi, Ceausescu’s Romania, and the Soviet press infiltrating our public life. The FBI is becoming what they were and may have delegitimized itself for generations. What will this mean for our future as a civil society?
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Greg…I too was taken back to those days of secret interrogations and distortions of facts. The FBI has not proven to be an agency, considering this hornet’s nest of purposeful malfunction, that has the best interest of the public as a goal. It seems an arm of the worst of the Republican Party and Comey should at very least be fired for his rampant part in influencing the election on Nov. 8.
When I first listed this today, I took some heavy hits from uninformed and/or naive, but combative, people on this site. Thanks Diane for this info which confirms my previous comments.
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I hope Obama fires Comey for interfering in the election.
I will share my story at another time about my FBI background check when I was named as Assistant Secretary of Education. It was a joke, conducted by Abbott and Costello.
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Unbelievable..just came up on AOL news that a young Black man from Arkansas is claiming to be Bill Clinton’s illegitimate son. He says his mother was a prostitute who had relations with Bill many times…and he is asking Monica for some DNA off the blue dress.
It is beyond the pale what Trump and his flacks are doing to disrupt the Dems and the Hillary vote. This must have been set up today to counter Lisa Bloom’s news that she will be on air today with the woman whom said she was raped by Trump when she was 13. The whole world must be snickering at this American soap opera…and how we choose our President.
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This has been a Breitbart/Drudge item for months.
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Headline: This summer, the F.B.I. kept cases involving Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s campaign chairman quiet because the election was near
Tuesday, November 1, 2016 9:15 PM EDT
The F.B.I. and Justice Department faced a hard decision in two investigations this past summer that had the potential to rock the presidential election. The first case involved Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and secretive business dealings in Ukraine. The second focused on Hillary Clinton’s relationships with donors to her family foundation.
At the urging of the Justice Department, the F.B.I. agreed not to actively pursue either case so close to the election, according to federal law enforcement officials.
Against this backdrop, the decision of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to send a letter to Congress last week about a renewed inquiry concerning Mrs. Clinton’s emails is not just a departure from longstanding policy; it has plunged the F.B.I. and the Justice Department directly into the election, precisely what Justice officials were trying to avoid.
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And this just in from The HIll quoting prominent Iowa legislator Senator Chuck Grassley addressing Comey.
“Your letter failed to give Congress and the American people enough context to evaluate the significance or full meaning of this development,” Sen. Chuck Grassley
(Iowa), the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in a letter to the FBI.
“Without additional context, your disclosure is not fair to Congress, the American people, or Secretary Clinton.”
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This poll just came out on the Washington Post. I’m shocked that a majority of voters now believe Trump is more honest than Hillary. Unbelievable!!
……………..
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are tied in the new Washington Post-ABC News Tracking Poll which finds Trump now holds an edge on which candidate is honest and trustworthy.
Post-ABC Tracking poll finds race tied, as Trump opens up an 8-point edge on honesty
A 59 percent majority of likely voters disapprove of Clinton’s handling of questions about her use of personal email while secretary of state. This number, however, is no higher than the 60 percent who disapproved just over one week ago, before the FBI’s announcement Friday that it may examine additional emails after previously closing its investigation in June.
However, Trump has opened up an eight-point advantage over Clinton on which candidate is more honest and trustworthy, leading 46 to 38 percent among likely voters. The two candidates were tied on this measure the last time a Post-ABC poll asked the question in September; when asked individually, past polls found majorities seeing each candidate as dishonest.
Full story: http://wapo.st/2fdk5QU
Full trend and methodology: http://wapo.st/2e1waLv
Emily Guskin
Polling Analyst, The Washington Post
(P) 202-334-5856
emily.guskin@washpost.com
@emgusk
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Politics are the non violent expression of warfare, and the first victim in any war is the truth. In this war, the truth has been completely obliterated to the point that a lot of digging is required on the part of ordinary, usually uninvolved folks to unearth any scraps of the truth that remain, and then even more effort to verify what is found. Few can sustain the effort.
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I guess those who are appalled by the above are also appalled by Bill Clinton’s “random” meeting with Loretta Lynch, US Attorney General, just before the FBI was expected to make recommendations on whether to seek indictments against Hillary Clinton, and the recent leaks about pressure from the Justice Dept., led by – Loretta Lynch! – on the FBI to keep away from anything that would be unpleasant for the Clintons, their foundation, etc.
And y’all were no doubt appalled by the daily flood of stories filled with innuendo and speculation about Mr. Trump, his businesses, his family, his ex-butler, ad nauseam. Even yesterday, I lost track of the number of stories with headlines that appeared to be the mirror of Faux Snooze’s ploy of turning a question into a less-than-subtle accusation. Not unlike the last line of THIS very blog entry, in fact.
Neither the Clinton nor the Trump campaigns or backers have much, if anything, to be proud of. Which is to say that they have nothing to complain about without being guilty of enormous hypocrisy. Maybe we can post a few photos of Bernie Sanders in a bathing suit to get our minds back on the deep issues facing us when we go to the polls on Tuesday. Team Clinton has shown us the way.
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MPG,
I understand your cynicism but don’t agree with the false equivalence. Hillary is probably the best qualified candidate in modern history, Trump the least qualified.
She is a policy wonk, he is a con man.
Sorry you will write in Bernie. He is voting for Hillary. And you live in a swing state.
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Scalia gifted, George Bush, to the oligarchs, Comey’s gift, Trump.
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Time after time, it seems to be reported that Bush won the Florida after-the-election count. But, as I recall, Gore would have won had the Supreme Court
not intervened in the Florida recount.
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Yes…it was the Rehnquist court that made the gift of Bush to US voters. Gore won the popular vote. If Gore had been elected we would not have invaded Iraq and sent the Middle East into perpetual turmoil…and mainly for OIL.
SCOTUS then gave us Citizen’s United (with a different Chief Justice) which was a pure ‘activist’ Court action, to seal the deal and allow endless cash, dark money, to flood the coffers of Trump and similar clods who vote the way they are told by the barons of Wall Street. This started as only a case about showing a political film about Hillary, and the Roberts Court, the Right Wing Five, morphed it into a free fall of donations without identification of donors.
Isn’t our system just terrific? These SCOTUS geniuses 5, claim to be absolutists, as Trump also claims he is, but in two fell swoops, they ignored the US Constitution and created out of gossamer, their own new laws of the land…and see what chaos the caused.
Maybe 8 on the Court is not so bad.
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At this point we need to ask ourselves about the possibility of Comey being blackmailed. Blatant interference in politics like this hasn’t been seen, as far as I know at least, since the days of Hoover.
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But isn’t that the problem. Our collective memories seem to end at the last news cycle. Hoover was not ancient history he was in our very recent past. Why should we assume that the culture that Hoover fostered at the FBI has changed.
When the Kerner Commission issued its report (recent history ) it spoke of a particular police culture . Part of which was a profile of who became a police officer and why.
I suppose if you asked the Black Lives Matter movement, the report is still quite relevant.
So who chooses to enter the FBI, who chooses to work for the ACLU or a non profit.
People do not leave their ethos at the door when they go to work.
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As an aside to all this, Joel, I cannot understand Obama pardoning criminals who committed dangerous acts of violence, and yet he again did not choose to pardon Don Siegelman. See his daugher’s petition below.
Petition · President Obama: Please restore justice and pardon my dad …
https://www.change.org/p/president-obama-please-restore-justice-and-pardon-my-dad
Dear Friends, Seven years ago, my dad, former Democratic Governor of Alabama Don Siegelman, was taken away in handcuffs and shackles. Most who learned …
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I find that I have to put the blackmail idea on the back burner since the release was due to a FOIA request, although right now I do not know who made the multiple requests that lead to the release. That being said, and FBI procedures notwithstanding, this appears to be a failure of discernment on the part of the FBI since there was no urgent legal need to comply with the FOIA before the election. The Hatch Act should have guided their decision here, not their procedures.
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Occam’s razor
Add up the incidents and or lack of incidents
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As an NJ resident, this move has the fingerprints of our criminal governor all over it. Typical Christie maneuver from his US Atty days. Why do people think that he won his last election (against a woman BTW), by threatening democrats with these same shenanigans?
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If there were nothing damning in any if this, Diane, the Clintons wouldn’t be so flummoxed. I love your site and I care deeply about the work you do, but your defense of Hillary Clinton really makes me scratch my head. She and Trump are two sides of the same coin, she, and the cohort she brings with her, too, will be very, very bad for the people of this nation.
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James,
You are entitled to your opinion, as I am entitled to mine.
I think Trump is a vulgar billionaire who cares for no one but himself and his own family. He has unleashed the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic forces in this country. He is ignorant of foreign and domestic issues. He is rude, crude, and mean. We have never had an election like this in my lifetime (and my first memory of an election is 1948, when I was 10). He has turned our country into an international laughing stock. This man belongs in a locker room. And he should stay there.
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I totally agree with you, Diane. I’ve already voted for Hillary!!
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The one thing that I fear most about Trump is his inability to take criticism. He lashes out at anyone who doesn’t agree with him. He has shown that he supports suppression of a free press if it shows criticism. How can our President show such bias and work with foreign leaders?
How unfortunate we are to have citizens with amazingly short memories. Trump has slashed too many groups of people and encouraged the basest level of mankind…fear and hatred.
Yet, people support him because he will ‘shake up Washington’. We will get what we vote for.
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There is no way that DT and HRC are 2 sides of the same coin, not even close. Trump wants to repeal and eliminate the ACA while, at the least with Hillary, we have the chance that she will strengthen it and add the public option. Trump will appoint far right wingers to the supreme court who could be there for 20 to 30 years, that is a huge thing and not to mention his lower court choices as well. Hillary will not be appointing far right wingers to the SCOTUS, she will be in the mold of Obama and Bill who appointed collectively Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. Trump’s economic policies are killer, more
trickle down glop and tax cuts for the rich. On social and environmental issues Hillary is a progressive by comparison. Please stop with the equivalency nonsense.
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Joe, and don’t forget climate change. Trump has called for more fracking, more drilling, more coal, and getting rid of any environmental regulations.
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An anonymous Trump supporter submitted FOIA requests to the FBI. The recent twitter releases are an automatic response required by law. It has nothing to do with Comey.
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RaisetheBarHigher,
I have a bridge I would like to sell you. It connects Brooklyn and Manhattan.
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I’m not supporting James Comey. His recent letter to Congress was appealing. This twitter release is something separate.
Apparently there is a thread in Reddit organizing the FOIA requests.
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RaisetheBar, I find it difficult to believe that FBI records are “routinely” released by a robot in the archives, which decided to release the file on Bill Clinton and Marc Rich just days before the election. Are they that dumb?
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Could J. Edgar Hoover be alive and well at the FBI?
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Astonishingly, the FBI’s headquarters is still called the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
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…and you chided me yesterday, Flerp, after giving an inaccurate read of my comment on the history of the FBI, saying I was comparing Comey to Hoover.
Today we see Comey might be as bad as Hoover in that Comey might have changed the fate of the US and of the world by his breaking the law (Hatch Act and possibly even more) and influencing the results of election in an unprecedented political action. The FBI buck stops with him…but he made it clear to all that he sides with Trump, with his choice to publish two (unauthorized by his boss, the AG) innuendos against Hillary.
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It seemed to me that you were comparing them. If not, then we have no dispute on that point.
If Comey sided with Trump, it would have been a lot more effective to recommend that Hillary Clinton be indicted.
The decision to publicize the newly found emails appears to have been a bad one. I still believe Comey was in a very difficult spot, and, although it doesn’t necessarily make his decision any better, I think there’s a good chance that the news would have leaked by now, especially given that there appear to be deep divisions within the bureau. It’s also not clear to me what, if any, role Jim Comey played in the timing of the release of the Rich documents. The Twitter account and its timeline is very, very odd. I’ve also read (but have not seen confirmation) that these materials actually went up on the records department’s web archive on October 7. At a minimum, something disturbing is playing out inside the FBI right now.
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Diane
I used to enjoy reading and learning about Common Core, high stakes testing and charter schools. Our state came out against common core and testing (Republicans and Democrats) and charters are still an issue regardless of ones political ideology.
I manage the Republican HQ in my town. I am sure we greatly out number our Democrat friends but we deplorable citizens keep a low profile. We have replaced nearly 100 yard signs and 4’x8′ signs, and the enthusiasm stays high, in spite of the cat calls, fingers, name calling and F words and graffiti covering our signs. Some folks have had many hundreds of dollars in yard damage inflicted. We invite folks in to just talk yet they spew ugliness and then run out of the room. I refer folks to the Dem HQ when they are looking for certain signs and info–nice ladies up there. The Trump supporters are grossly under counted because we don’t want to have hateful words levied at us. We are fiercely loyal to whoever heads up the ticket (several Rep candidates have lost votes because they “disowned” Trump). For many of us, Trump wasn’t the 1st or even 4th choice—but it is what the state Republicans wanted. I can take Trumps womanizing and I believe that most women could care less about what he said years ago. He is not a seasoned political creature and he says what he thinks—he will learn. I trust the respected people who have supported him publically. They have said that he privately is not this bombastic person he portrays.
Comey is doing just what a responsible law enforcement officer would do if he wants to keep his job after telling Congress that he would reopen the case if new info appeared. Regardless of who wins, I hope the investigation goes on. No one should be above the law.
Please get back to education issues. This election will not end soon enough for me!
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Here is what The New Yorker has to say about Trump as they say he is unfit for the office.
“… If she is elected, she will have weathered a prolonged battle against a trash-talking, burn-it-to-the-ground demagogue. Unfortunately, the drama is not likely to end soon. The aftereffects of this campaign may befoul our civic life for some time to come.
If the prospect of a female President represents a departure in the history of American politics, the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, the real-estate mogul and Republican nominee, does, too—a chilling one. He is manifestly unqualified and unfit for office. Trained in the arts of real-estate promotion and reality television, he exhibits scant interest in or familiarity with policy. He favors conspiracy theory and fantasy, deriving his knowledge from the darker recesses of the Internet and “the shows.” He has never held office or otherwise served his country, never acceded to the authority of competing visions and democratic resolutions…. But Trump really does represent something singular. The prospect of such a President—erratic, empty, cruel, intolerant, and corrupt—represents a form of national emergency…At last count, more than a hundred and sixty Republican leaders had declared their refusal to support Trump. Fifty national-security officials who served in Republican Administrations have done the same. …
the Republican Vice-Presidential choice, Mike Pence, has tried to position himself for the future on the national stage but has distinguished himself as one of the country’s most fiercely anti-gay politicians, declaring that marriage freedom would lead to “societal collapse.”…
A [Supreme] Court of Trump appointees could fail to check him or any future demagogue.”
…
You are assuming a lot to believe that he would learn on the job. He doesn’t read, has a short attention span, doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, shows a disregard for women, Latinos, disabled people and Muslims. He never admits that he is wrong. He doesn’t believe in climate change which is the biggest problem the earth faces. He wants tax cuts for the wealthy. That has already proven to not improve society. HIs life is one of stomping on those he doesn’t respect and he does it to make more $$$ for himself.
How can you possibly think he is a good leader when he too often shows his true self.
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April…although you seem to not give credence to the fact that elections such as we now face in the US, are the core of what education is all about, many others here do, especially professional educators. This election is an historic event, and the outcome will absolutely affect every student, every parent, every American citizen and resident and taxpayer, for many years into the future.
To discuss only VAM, ESSA, and other purely ed politics, would be wearing blinders and avoiding the most important issue…how and who will run our nation and be the main leader on the world stage.
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More here on why these elections are vital to school funding….April.
From Campaign for America’s Future just now…
JEFF BRYANT
This Election Is About School Funding and Democratic Control of Education
Frustrated by lack of media coverage of serious policy issues in this year’s presidential election? Look down-ballot for contests about education. There are plenty of contests determining who controls schools and how we fund them.
Do not mean to pummel you, April, but I hope that as a Repub you will look beyond your choice to see why and how who we choose for Prez and all the ‘down ballot’ candidates we choose, will affect the outcomes for our public schools.
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If documents were turned over because of a properly filed document request, just follow the law and turn them over. No need to publicize and characterize. Why tweet at all? Agree with you Diane.
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Read news week’s article on the FBI and how Bribart has aniseed Track..or See Rachel Maddow’s November 3 piece on it. The FBI, according to insiders, is TRUMPLAND.
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Here is part of what the Guardian has to say about Clinton vs. Trump
Headline: “Animosity Towards Clinton Runs Deep at the FBI”
By Spencer Ackerman, Guardian UK
“…Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.
This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.
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.”
The agent called the bureau “Trumplandia”, with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected…”
………….
No wonder there are ‘leaks’ this late in the election cycle.
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Diane, why have two articles that I’ve submitted within the last few days, including this one, gone into “awaiting moderation”? Everything I’ve submitted has always been printed.
Just wondering why.
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Carolmalaysia, nothing you submitted is in moderation, nothing deleted.
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