Mothers Day at Clinton.com

Happy Mothers day to all, even Hillary. But let's get back to work here. Clinton’s Mother’s Day present? FBI close to end of investigation

At one point in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private bathroom email server, reporters were able to coax an unnamed “FBI official” into saying that Hillary Clinton was “not the target” of the investigation. It’s a line which all of her defenders, including the White House, have stuck to like glue. But now the end days of this long process appear to be upon us and that line of defense is crumbling quickly. As The Hill reports, this process is developing pretty much in keeping with the standard FBI playbook, with Clinton’s closest allies having been interviewed shortly before the former Secretary of State herself will answer questions. And the last person you talk to is pretty much always “the target.”

“This certainly sends the signal that they are nearing an end to their investigation,” said Steven Levin, a former federal prosecutor and current partner at the law firm Levin & Curlett…
“Typically, the way we structure investigations when I was a federal prosecutor is that we would seek to interview the target last,” he said.
“As you begin to interview people who are extremely close to the target of an investigation — people who are considered confidantes … you typically interview those people towards the final stages of the investigation,” he added. “So that way if they tell you something that is contrary to something you’ve already learned, you can immediately challenge them on that information.”

Another former U.S. Attorney who has handled similar cases, Matthew Whitaker, was quoted as saying that investigators will be looking to see if there are any contradictions between Clinton’s answers and those of her aides and others involved with the installation and maintenance of the server. This won’t be an effort to gather new information because, “they’re only going to ask her questions that they know the answers to already.”

Romanian hacker who claims he breached Clinton server says he spoke with FBI at length

The Romanian hacker who says he easily breached Hillary Clinton’s personal email server also claimed, in a series of interviews with Fox News, that he spoke with the FBI at length on the plane when extradited from Romania to Virginia last month.

"They came after me, a guy from the FBI, from the State Department," 44-year-old Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News during a jailhouse phone interview. He said the conversation was "80 minutes ... recorded," and he took his own notes.

A government source confirmed that the hacker had a lot to say on the plane but provided no other details. Lazar was flown to the U.S. to face separate cyber-crime charges.

Signs that Hillary is taking this seriously? Clinton's Lawyer Is In Constant Contact with Justice Department

"David Kendall is her top counsel and he has been in touch with the Justice Department throughout this review. We've always been very upfront about that," Fallon said in an interview on CNN.

The FBI has already interviewed Clinton's closest aide, Huma Abedin, as well as some other Clinton confidantes, CNN reported Thursday. However, in an interview with MSNBC Tuesday, Clinton said that the FBI had still not contacted her "representatives."

Fallon did not address Clinton's apparent mistruth. Instead, the spokesman confirmed Clinton's claim that the FBI still had not contacted her.

"She said no, because the honest answer is it hasn't happened yet," Fallon said. "But whenever they do, we'll be happy to accommodate that and make it happen."

She lies because that's who she is; it's reflexive. Jazz Shaw at Hotair also sees the Washington Post (and similar pro-Hillary media sites) shifting the goal posts from "she didn't break the law", to  "Well, at she didn't break the Law maliciously":

Unfortunately for Ms. Clinton and her apologists, her allegedly harmless intentions have nothing to so with it. We previously discussed the actual charges which Clinton could face, and intent doesn’t factor into the law. Here’s a brief reminder.

The applicable statute, 18 USC 793, however, does not even once mention the word “classified.” The focus is on “information respecting the national defense” that potentially “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” 793 (f) specifically makes it a crime for anyone “entrusted with … any document … or information relating to the national defense … through gross negligence (to permit) the same to be removed from its proper place of custody.” A jury (not a Democrat or Republican political administration) is, of course, the best body to determine gross negligence on the facts of this case.
The courts have held repeatedly that “national defense information” includes closely held military, foreign policy and intelligence information and that evidence that the information is classified is not necessary for a prosecution. Evidence that the information was upon later review found to be classified, however, as is the case with approximately 2,000 Clinton messages, is of course one kind of proof that the information met the test of “national defense information” in the first place.

So even if Hillary Clinton never “intended” for sensitive information to be exposed, keeping it outside of the normal storage and safeguards of the government is more than sufficient for a case to be prosecuted. But the fundamental premise of saying there was no malicious intent is still dishonest in and of itself. Whether she cared for it or not, Secretary Clinton was aware that there was a State Department email system in place and available for her use. When your employer provides such a communication system for the employees it requires an active decision on the part of the employee to go out and hire people to set up a completely independent server in their home and keep it’s contents away from the prying eyes of the public. If she had restricted her use of that server to nothing but personal correspondence with friends and family it would still have raised some eyebrows but I believe she’d get a pass on the entire malicious intent question, but that’s not even remotely what happened. She was intentionally doing public business on her private server and it doesn’t require a psychic to figure out why. She didn’t want the public or the press to know about it or have any traceable records.

I was talking to someone yesterday, who works for the US military, and handles national security matters. He said that if he had done what Hillary has done, he would certainly be fired and likely be in jail.

At the Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continenti compares Hillary’s nomination slog to a two-Front War:

Until this week I hadn’t noticed the similarities between Hillary Clinton and Colonel-General Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke of the German Empire. The comparison is apt. Both leaders spent years planning a rapid and decisive assault against their opponents. And both leaders unexpectedly found themselves bogged down in a two-front war.

Moltke the Younger is held responsible for the failure of the Schlieffen Plan, the German general staff’s blueprint for the invasion of Belgium and northern France at the outset of the First World War. Its objective: Capture Paris before France and its ally Russia counterattack.

What the strategy failed to anticipate was logistical difficulty. Rail networks and thoroughfares were insufficient to transport and supply the force levels required for victory. The German advance slowed. France rallied. Marshal Joffre held the Germans at the Marne River. By this time Russia had struck East Prussia. The very outcome the Germans wanted to avoid—a two-front war of attrition—was reality.

Brilliant in theory but vulnerable in practice: a fair description of the Clinton plan. Hillary spent years intimidating potential rivals. Deval Patrick, Cory Booker, John Kerry said no. Elizabeth Warren said no. Joe Biden played Hamlet for a few months, said no. The remaining opposition—Chafee, O’Malley, Webb—were jokes. Clinton dispatched them with ease.

One exception. Bernie Sanders, Independent and professed democratic socialist, amassed a fortune of small-dollar donations, held enormous rallies, defined Clinton as an instrument of Wall Street and of multinational corporations. Defeated her in New Hampshire, in the Midwest, the West. The inevitable candidate’s march to Philadelphia—the Paris of 2016—turned into a long and taxing campaign.

Meet the Bernie Sanders supporters who say they won’t switch allegiances, no matter what happens in the general election. I've already met a few.

Protester confronts Hillary on rope line: ‘You’re a murderer!’ Video at link. Why wasn't this on MSNPRABCBS? Is it only Donald Trump who stirs violent protest? Must protect the agenda.

Althouse notes Trump on Hillary: "She's been the total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives."  "She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler, and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful." From the comments:

This strategy and line of attack is how Trump wins over the female vote. It goes like this: Hillary not only allowed Bill to cheat on him, but she was his defense lawyer in his rape trials. And it is worse than that! By letting him get away with one, she consented to letting him do more. Hillary is no better than a rapist herself. Hillary is an enemy of REAL women. And then play the audio where Hillary cackles and laughs on how she got that rapist off in that Arkansas criminal case. The victim was very young. Her life was ruined. Her hillbilly credibility was attacked by that Yankee Yale lawyer.

Devasting.

Jonah Goldberg, no fan of Donald Trump, on What Trump Has That Hillary Doesn’t

Clinton is rich, and morally and ethically corrupt. So is Trump. But at least he’s entertaining. Everyone suspects they know what President Hillary Clinton: The Movie would look like. Trump: The Movie? That could be a wild ride.

Clinton’s best bet is to tell voters it would be a horror movie so terrifying, no one will want to see it. I’m not buying tickets to either show come the fall. But I’ll be following the promotions closely.

Pretty much my opinion of Hillary vs. The Donald, but it sounds so much better coming from a pretty woman:



Late Night With Rule 5 Monday done come on Tuesday (our time) at The Other McCain, thanks to Wombat-sochos participation as a delegate to the Nevada State GOP convention in Reno.