Would there be major chaos and embarrassment if FBI Director James Comey resigned over the Hillary Server-gate scandal? Is Comey at odds with his boss Loretta Lynch? He threatened to resign during the Bush administration….he is his own principled man.
TheHill: The aggressive posture of the FBI under Director James Comey is becoming a political problem for the White House.
The FBI’s demand that Apple help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers has outraged Silicon Valley, a significant source of political support for President Obama and Democrats.
Comey, meanwhile, has stirred tensions by linking rising violent crime rates to the Black Lives Matter movement’s focus on police violence and by warning about “gaps” in the screening process for Syrian refugees.
Then there’s the biggest issue of all: the FBI’s investigation into the private email server used by Hillary Clinton Obama’s former secretary of State and the leading contender to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
A decision by the FBI to charge Clinton or her top aides for mishandling classified information would be a shock to the political system.
In these cases and more, Comey — a Republican who donated in 2012 to Mitt Romney — has proved he is “not attached to the strings of the White House,” said Ron Hosko, the former head of the FBI’s criminal investigative division and a critic of Obama’s law enforcement strategies.
Publicly, administration officials have not betrayed any worry about the Clinton probe. They have also downplayed any differences of opinion on Apple.
But former officials say the FBI’s moves are clearly ruffling feathers within the administration.
With regards to the Apple standoff, “It’s just not clear [Comey] is speaking for the administration,” said Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism and cybersecurity chief. “We know there have been administration meetings on this for months. The proposal that Comey had made on encryption was rejected by the administration.”
Comey has a reputation for speaking truth to power, dating back to a dramatic confrontation in 2004 when he rushed to a hospital to stop the Bush White House from renewing a warrantless wiretapping program while Attorney General John Ashcroft was gravely ill. Comey was Ashcroft’s deputy at the time.
That showdown won Comey plaudits from both sides of the aisle and made him an attractive pick to lead the FBI. But now that he’s in charge of the agency, the president might be getting more than he bargained for.
“Part of his role is to not necessarily be in lock step with the White House,” said Mitch Silber, a former intelligence official with the New York City Police Department and current senior managing director at FTI Consulting.
“He takes very seriously the fact that he works for the executive branch,” added Leo Taddeo, a former agent in the FBI’s cyber division. “But he also understands the importance of maintaining his independence as a law enforcement agency that needs to give not just the appearance of independence but the reality of it.”
The split over Clinton’s email server is the most politically charged issue facing the FBI, with nothing less than the race for the White House potentially at stake.
Obama has publicly defended Clinton, saying that while she “made a mistake” with her email setup, it was “not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”
But the FBI director has bristled at that statement, saying the president would not have any knowledge of the investigation. Comey, meanwhile, told lawmakers last week that he is “very close, personally,” to the probe.
Obama’s comments reflected a pattern, several former agents said, of the president making improper comments about FBI investigations. In 2012, he made similarly dismissive comments about a pending inquiry into then-CIA Director David Petraeus, who later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for giving classified information to his biographer, with whom he had a personal relationship.
“It serves no one in the United States for the president to comment on ongoing investigations,” Taddeo said. “I just don’t see a purpose.”
Hosko suggested that a showdown over potential criminal charges for Clinton could lead to a reprise of the famous 2004 hospital scene, when Comey threatened to resign.
“He has that mantle,” Hosko said. “I think now there’s this expectation — I hope it’s a fair one — that he’ll do it again if he has to.”
Comey’s independent streak has also been on display in the Apple fight, when his bureau decided to seek a court order demanding that the tech giant create new software to bypass security tools on an iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two terrorist attackers in San Bernardino, Calif.
Many observers questioned whether the FBI was making an end-run around the White House, which had previously dismissed a series of proposals that would force companies to decrypt data upon government request.
“I think there’s actually some people that don’t think with one mindset on this issue within the administration,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s top Democrat, at a Tuesday hearing. “It’s a tough issue.”
While the White House has repeatedly backed the FBI’s decision, it has not fully endorsed the potential policy ramifications, leaving some to think a gap might develop as similar cases pop up. The White House is poised to soon issue its own policy paper on the subject of data encryption.
“The position taken by the FBI is at odds with the concerns expressed by individuals [in the White House] who were looking into the encryption issue,” said Neema Singh Guliani, a legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
This week, White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco tried to downplay the differences between the two sides. The White House and FBI are both grappling with the same problems, she said in a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“There is a recognition across the administration that the virtues of strong encryption are without a doubt,” Monaco said on Monday. “There is also uniformity about the recognition that strong encryption poses real challenges.”
But former officials see Comey as wanting to blaze his own trail on the topic.
“I have been very surprised at how public and inflammatory, frankly, the FBI and the Justice Department’s approach has been on this,” said Chris Finan, a former National Security Council cybersecurity adviser.
“That doesn’t tend to be the administration’s preferred approach to handling things.”
The Republican National Committee is suing Hillary and they are on the right track in one case for certain, those communications in her mobile devices.
FreeBeacon: he RNC is requesting communications between Clinton and her key aides, including Bryan Pagliano, her former IT staffer. Pagliano has reportedly received a limited immunity deal from the Department of Justice as part of its investigation into the transmission of classified information over Clinton’s private email server.
The committee is also seeking correspondence between State Department officials and the Clinton campaign that took place after Clinton stepped down from the department.
According to the RNC, it originally submitted public records requests for these documents last October and December, but the State Department has yet to turn over the records. The RNC filed the lawsuits on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“The Obama Administration has failed to comply with records requests in a timely manner as required by law,” RNC chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement on Wednesday. “For too long the State Department has undermined the public and the media’s legitimate right to records under the Freedom of Information Act, and it’s time it complies with the law. If this administration claims to be the ‘most transparent in history,’ and Clinton the ‘most transparent person in public life,’ then they should prove it, release these records, and allow the American people to hold her accountable.”
The State Department is currently facing a number of legal proceedings seeking documents from Clinton’s tenure. The watchdog group Citizens United filed another lawsuit against the department on Monday requesting emails between Dennis Cheng, Clinton’s deputy chief of protocol, and Teneo Holdings, a consulting company run by Clinton confidante Doug Band.
Two lawsuits have been delayed due to the State Department’s discovery of thousands of previously unsearched documents from the executive secretary’s office, the Washington Free Beacon reported last week. The State Department said it could take until next fall to process the newly discovered records and turn them over to the plaintiffs.
AG Loretta Lynch Dodges Questions About Hillary Clinton Email Investigation
PJM: Attorney General Loretta Lynch suggested Wednesday that the Justice Department would not be obligated to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton for her email infractions even if the FBI recommends criminal charges.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) brought up the topic during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday:
“If the FBI were to make a referral to the Department of Justice to pursue a case by way of indictment and to convene a grand jury for that purpose, the Department of Justice is not required by law to do so, are they — are you?” Cornyn asked.Lynch didn’t answer directly, but seemed to indicate the department has some wiggle room, and can consult with officials before deciding what to do.
“It would not be an operation of law, it would be an operation of procedures,” Lynch said in reply. She added that the decision to pursue a criminal case would be “done in conjunction with the agents” involved in the investigation. “It’s not something that we would want to cut them out of the process.”
Lynch declined to answer Cornyn’s questions about the decision to grant immunity to Bryan Pagliano, the former Clinton aide who set up the private “homebrew” server at her home in Chappaqua, NY. Asked Cornyn:
If in fact this was immunity granted by a court, that had to be done under the auspices and with the approval of the Department of Justice, which you head.
Lynch answered:
We don’t discuss the specifics of any ongoing investigation. With respect to the procedure relating to any specific witness, I would not be able to comment. … With respect to Mr. Pagliano or anyone who has been identified as a potential witness in any case, I’m not able to comment on the specifics.
Later, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Lynch about comments made by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest in January that downplayed the FBI investigation. Earnest had told reporters that “some officials” had said she was “not the target of the investigation,” and that an indictment did not seem to be the direction in which the case was trending:
“So when Josh Earnest speaks about the investigation and talks about, basically, to reassure the American people that this is no big deal, do you know where he gets that information from?” Graham asked.“Senator, I do not,” Lynch said.
“Would you tell him that he should just stay silent?” Graham pressed.
“Certainly it’s my hope when it comes to ongoing investigations that we would all stay silent,” Lynch responded.
In January, Fox News’ chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reported that her sources in the DOJ and FBI were “super pissed off” about Earnest’s comments.
