RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
August 19 to August 25
Featured Investigation
It was never clear how the FBI, which initially spent a year investigating just 30,000 emails on Clinton’s private server, was able, in a single week, to assess nearly 700,000 potentially relevant emails discovered late in the presidential campaign on a laptop used by Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin and disgraced ex-Congressman being investigated for sex crimes.
In fact, as Paul Sperry reports for RealClearInvestigations, officials barely reviewed the material, nor did they take required measures to protect national security. Sperry’s groundbreaking, 7,000-word investigation challenges then-FBI Director James Comey’s assurance to Congress that his bureau had “reviewed all of the communications” before exonerating Clinton.
He reveals that:
- FBI officials, after arguing they could not possibly review all the hundreds of thousands of emails in the two weeks before the Nov. 8 election, suddenly claimed they had made a technological breakthrough that allowed them to eliminate the vast majority as duplicates. But that technology didn’t work as advertised.
- The highly restrictive warrant issued to search the Weiner laptop‘s contents prevented investigators from capturing any "smoking-gun" emails outside the time frame of Clinton’s official tenure as Secretary of State.
- Ultimately, the FBI manually reviewed only about one percent of the emails – a total of 6,827. FBI lawyers deemed more than half of these personal or outside the scope of the investigation, with the upshot that only 3,077 emails were reviewed for potential classified material. This review was performed by three agents in one 12-hour session.
- As he was leading the review of these emails, FBI agent Peter Strzok, whose anti-Trump bias contributed to his recent firing, exchanged a series of text messages about the Weiner laptop with his paramour and another Trump opponent, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. He assured her, “We’re going to make sure the right thing is done,” and, “It’s gonna be ok.”
- The FBI was drafting a statement about the emails before it had reviewed them.
- The FBI did not interview Abedin or Weiner before reclosing the case.
- The FBI did not refer the Weiner laptop matter to the intelligence agencies to determine if national security was compromised, as required under a federally mandated “damage assessment” directive.
- The emails that were searched revealed new material, classified and unclassified, not seen by the FBI in its prior investigation of Clinton. At least five new classified emails were on the laptop, including highly sensitive information dealing with close U.S. ally Israel and the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas.
The Trump Investigations
Two of Donald Trump’s closest former advisers met separate legal comeuppances this week. Michael Cohen, Trump's onetime personal lawyer, struck a plea bargain and admitted he had paid women hush money “in co-ordination and at the direction of” Trump as presidential candidate. Paul Manafort, briefly Trump’s campaign manager, was found guilty of tax fraud, and faces trial on charges relating to his work for pro-Russian Ukrainians. In these and other developments, such as new immunity agreements for Trumpworld figures (see here and here), many see encroaching legal or at least political jeopardy for the President as ex-associates spill beans under intense prosecutorial pressure.
But others see much worse damage to the ideal of equal application of the rule of law. Exhibit A: the intelligence community and Hillary Clinton campaign's involvement with a Russian-tied American opposition research firm using a British spy using Russians to produce the so-called Trump dossier -- thereby touching off the Trump-Russia investigation in the first place.
The Trump Investigations: Other Top Articles
Ex-Trump Doorman's 'Catch and Kill' Contract Released, CNN
Papadopoulos Told Feds of Cash Paid by Suspected Israeli Spy, Daily Caller
In Mueller Memo, Papadopoulos Emerges as Bit Player, Washington Examiner
Righty Think Tanks in Russian Hacker Crosshairs, New York Times
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
#MeToo's Asia Argento, Bourdain Ex, Paid Off Male Accuser
New York Times
The Italian actress and director Asia Argento became a leader of the #MeToo movement last year when she – with the support of her boyfriend Anthony Bourdain - became one of the first women to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. But at this article reports, she quietly paid a male actor $380,000 to settle his claim that she had sexually assaulted him five years ago, when he was 17 and she was 37.
Electricity-Scarfing Amazon Adept at Sticking Others With Tab
Bloomberg
One reason Amazon has become one the biggest, richest companies in the world is that it is one of the biggest recipients of corporate welfare. In addition to the estimated $1.2 billion in state and local incentives it has received during the last decade, Amazon has negotiated with power companies to receive sweetheart deals that are ultimately paid for by the utility’s other customers, meaning people like you.
The Shadowy Money Behind the Vitamin D Craze
New York Times
No one has done more than Dr. Michael Holick to convince Americans of the importance of Vitamin D. Thanks in part to his advocacy, supplement sales have increased ninefold in the last decade - to $936 million in 2017. Vitamin D lab tests have also risen – “doctors ordered more than 10 million for Medicare patients in 2016, up 547 percent since 2007, at a cost of $365 million.” This article reports that Dr. Holick has promoted “practices that financially benefit corporations that have given him hundreds of thousands of dollars — including drug makers, the indoor tanning industry and one of the country’s largest commercial labs.”
Mysterious New DC Dossier vs. Huge Pentagon Cloud Contract
DefOne
Sound familiar? Last week we linked to a Vanity Fair article alleging that Amazon may have an unfair advantage in bidding for a $10 billion cloud computing contract from the Department of Defense. This article suggests that some of the information for that story and others published on the issue may have used information from a questionable dossier produced by an opposition research firm. It states that “in the past several months, a private investigative firm has been shopping around to Washington reporters a 100-plus-page dossier raising the specter of corruption on the part of senior Defense Department and private company officials … but some of the dossier’s conclusions do not stand up to close scrutiny.”
Security Clearances Key to Swamp Bucks
New York Post/Government Accountability Institute
Former CIA Director John Brennan has many reasons for being upset that president Trump removed his security clearance – and one of them is money. This article reports that “a security clearance reportedly yields a salary of up to 15 percent higher compared to the salaries of individuals without clearances for the same position. For the more than 4 million private-sector individuals holding clearances, the secretive private intelligence industry is a massive ecosystem, ripe for concealed cronyism.”
What Chicago Trauma Surgeons Know
Chicago Magazine
The violence that has long ravaged parts of Chicago is experienced differently by a range of people – criminals, victims, residents, police officers and politicians. This article gives voice to some of the trauma surgeons who treat those swept up in the mayhem, recording their thoughts and feelings about “what it’s like to operate on a 2-year-old shooting victim, what happens when violence spills into the trauma bay, why you should really wear a motorcycle helmet, and how best to handle a severed limb.”
How Heroin Came for Middle-Class Moms
Marie Claire
A new sort of women is using heroin, this artcile reports: “Affluent women. Middle aged, middle-class women with carpools. Gen X moms recovering from knee surgeries. College girls with double majors. Women with incomes above $50,000 and private health insurance. Women who had been taking Oxycodone and Vicodin because they’re excellent pain-relievers. Superior to a vodka tonic. Better than smoking a joint.”
Cheap Online Shopping Turning Americans Into Pack Rats
Atlantic
We’ll end with a cultural Rorschach test. This article notes that “thanks to a perfect storm of factors” – especially low prices and shopping made easy by the Internet – “Americans are amassing a lot of stuff." To wit:
... In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion—twice as much as they’d spent in 2002—on goods like jewelry, watches, books, luggage, and telephones and related communication equipment. … Over that time, the population grew just 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled over that time period. Americans spent, on average, $971.87 on clothes last year, buying nearly 66 garments, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. That’s 20 percent more money than they spent in 2000. The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs in 2000.
Test question: Is this development a blessing or a curse?
