Another bur under his saddle

This one from the Wall Street Journal.  I'll let you just read it yourself...



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Video clip here from CNN's Jake Tapper.

The Magnitsky Act & Donald Trump Jr

Let us pause for a moment and consider the Magnitsky Act. Sergei Magnitsky was an auditor from a Russian law firm who uncovered the biggest case of tax fraud in the history of Russian kleptocratic corruption, which is something. In response, Magnitsky was arrested and put on trial for tax evasion in front of a bunch of crooks in lovely kangaroo suits. He died in prison of untreated medical problems and (probably) from being beaten to death by the good people from the Interior Ministry. In 2012, the Congress passed a law that froze the assets and effectively rendered non-persons 18 Russian officials who were tied in some way to the persecution and murder of Sergei Magnitsky. This got up the nose of Vladimir Putin, who responded by suspending the adoption of Russian children by American families. He also launched a PR blitz headed by a well-connected hack lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Which is where Junior comes in.

[...]

Let's let Junior's most recent explanation [of his meeting with Veselnitskaya] speak for itself, because it's just the funniest thing ever.

[...]

This [...] is Junior's official explanation: I thought we were colluding to ratfck the Democratic candidate, and the presidential election in general, but then she started talking about getting the mobsters' money back. Bitch set me up.

This is not an argument I would bring to court.

Right now, there are more Russians involved in this story than there are in War and Peace. Many of them have the power to cloud men's minds; how else to explain the fact that both Kushner and Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III both forgot to mention to the responsible vetting agencies meetings with various Russians. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the statue in the Lincoln Memorial was wearing a fur hat some morning very soon. At this point, I wouldn't be shocked if the R in Rhode Island suddenly turned backwards.

[...]

The breadth and depth of the corruption is almost impossible to believe. There's identity theft … of corporations. (I guess they really are people, too.) There's the entire world as their laundromat, including "Manhattan real estate." Russian security forces raided corporate offices and then used what they took to set up front companies to clean the cash. Essentially, they looted this hedge fund of about $230 million. Magnitsky looked into it. He got busted by the same people he was investigating, and it got him killed. Of course, Bharara got fired, and the case was quietly settled for $6 million and no admission of guilt by anybody.

What I believe I see here is an incredibly corrupt American family doing business with criminal gangs that are way, way out of their league, and that are in league with the institutions of government, and the formidable security apparatus, of an authoritarian state. Talk about punching out of your weight class.

[...]

For months now, people have been asking what the Russians "have" on Donald Trump. Maybe it's just fear. If it's not, it ought to be.

  Charles P Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A Bit of Information on Fusion GPS

The story began in September 2015, when a wealthy Republican donor who strongly opposed Mr. Trump put up the money to hire a Washington research firm run by former journalists, Fusion GPS, to compile a dossier about the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses, according to a person familiar with the effort. The person described the opposition research work on condition of anonymity, citing the volatile nature of the story and the likelihood of future legal disputes. The identity of the donor is unclear.

Fusion GPS, headed by a former Wall Street Journal journalist known for his dogged reporting, Glenn Simpson, most often works for business clients. But in presidential elections, the firm is sometimes hired by candidates, party organizations or donors to do political “oppo” work — shorthand for opposition research — on the side.

[...]

After Mr. Trump emerged as the presumptive nominee in the spring, the Republican interest in financing the effort ended. But Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton were very interested, and Fusion GPS kept doing the same deep dives, but on behalf of new clients.

  NYT

Continue reading.

I have to wonder if some day we might yet see the disputed "peepee tapes."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Almost Pictures!

Mother Jones is trying to help me out:

There's a lot to take in here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

That Was the Week That Was

The Business/Finance Angle

And let's be honest; with Trump there is no other angle.

A week ago, it appeared that the probe would center around the activities of a handful of figures who are now marginal within Trumpworld: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, foreign policy adviser Carter Page, and deposed National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. That has changed. The Washington Post reported Friday that investigators have identified a current White House official as a person of interest in its financial probe. (The story hinted, and New York Magazine contributor Yashar Ali confirmed, that the person is Jared Kushner.)

[...]

Inheriting an empire from his father, [Kushner] has operated in gray areas of the world economy and positioned himself to gain handsomely from Trump’s election. Kushner has met with the head of a Russian bank functionally controlled by Vladimir Putin. He appears to be eager to use his proximity to Trump to make a buck; his family business is exploiting the familial connection to sell visas in China.

[...]

All this implies that the probe is scrutinizing the financial aspects of Trump’s business, which is a family operation.

[...]

Another thing that has changed over the last week is the centrality of Michael Flynn, the fired national security adviser. While his tenure was extremely brief, Flynn turns out to have been both far more corrupt and far closer to Trump than previously understood.

[...]

During his brief tenure, Flynn engaged in breathtaking corruption of his official duties. As national security adviser, Flynn ordered a delay in a key assault on ISIS in Raqqa, Syria. The delay comported with the desires of the Turkish government, which had paid Flynn more than half a million dollars. While largely blotted out by the shock of daily revelations about Trump, in a normal news environment this revelation would have mushroomed into a first-tier scandal of its own. It is hard to think of a historical case in which a major American military action has been influenced so corruptly by a foreign power.

[...]

Flynn’s legal risk, and Trump’s personal investment in him, are both much higher than we understood. And we are seeing that financial corruption is playing a more central role in the scandal.

[...]

Trump has almost certainly engaged in obstruction of justice for the simple reason that there is a lot of justice to obstruct.

  New York Magazine

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Leaky, Leaky

President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved “great pressure” on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Mr. Trump added, “I’m not under investigation.”

[...]

The White House document that contained Mr. Trump’s comments was based on notes taken from inside the Oval Office and has been circulated as the official account of the meeting. One official read quotations to The Times, and a second official confirmed the broad outlines of the discussion.

  NYT

The Times is out to be Trump's Number One Enemy, and proud of it.

What a dufus Trump is.  Still high off the power that allowed him to summarily dismiss James Comey, he's bragging about it the next day.  To the Russians.  I guess the case could be made by the faction that says he's colluding with the Russians to get and keep him in the White House that he was simply informing them that he pulled off the hit.  If the idiot isn't guilty of the collusion charges, he sure is making it appear that way.

The "Russian officials" included the Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, and Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

Who's leaking? If Trump can get his hands on that person, Jeff Sessions will prosecute. And if Trump can get Joe Lieberman (of all people) in as director of FBI, the search for that person will be a priority.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, did not dispute the account.

[...]

“By grandstanding and politicizing the investigation into Russia’s actions, James Comey created unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia,” Mr. Spicer said. “The investigation would have always continued, and obviously, the termination of Comey would not have ended it. Once again, the real story is that our national security has been undermined by the leaking of private and highly classified conversations.”

Yes, that's the REAL story.

Actually, it IS a story. A good one, too.

Behind closed doors, according to the document read by the official, Mr. Trump said that news stories about possible Russian collusion were fake, a comment he has repeatedly made in public. He told the Russians that his poll numbers remained strong and that Americans wanted the government to have a healthy relationship with Russia.

At one point, Mr. Trump jokingly asked whether there were reporters in the room.

“No,” Mr. Lavrov said. “No fake media.”

Trump didn't even realize the Russian news agency TASS was in attendance?!  Who was in charge of who got in?

Like the public meeting at a Mar-a-Lago restaurant where Trump discussed the North Korean missile launch with Japan's PM, the major threat to American national security is the entire Trump administration itself.

In fact, it was paramount that SOMEone leak something from that meeting since the American press was not allowed in.  Another action for the collusion folks to point to.  Christ, what an idiot.

While American reporters were prohibited from attending, the Russian news agency Tass distributed photographs of the meeting.

[...]

The Oval Office comment about Mr. Comey’s sanity echoed what Mr. Trump has said privately at other times. The Times reported the day after Mr. Comey was fired that the president had told aides there was “something wrong with” Mr. Comey.

Ha! Something wrong. He wouldn't bow to Trump and kiss the ring. He didn't fall for the old Trump charm offensive. Or the cajoling. And possibly threats.  "Something wrong" indeed.

A third government official briefed on the meeting defended the president, saying that Mr. Trump, whose discursive speaking style has hindered him in office, was using a negotiating tactic when he told Mr. Lavrov about the “pressure” he was under. The idea, the official suggested, was to create a sense of obligation with Russian officials and to coax concessions out of Mr. Lavrov — on Syria, Ukraine and other issues — by saying that Russian meddling in last year’s election had created enormous political problems for Mr. Trump.

I apologize if you were taking a drink when you read that. I know what it's like to have chocolate milk spray out of your nose. Very painful.

There are several investigations concurrently going. Who gets the documents first? And if it's the FBI, or the special prosecutor, do they have to share?

Speaking of that Oval Office meeting, watch this video clip. Foreign Minister Lavrov is an arrogant asshole.

Lavrov is a highly experienced diplomat who has served as Russian foreign minister since 2004. Before that, he was Russia's ambassador to the United Nations in New York from 1994 to 2004.

  CNN

Not very diplomatic for a diplomat. Maybe he was just having a bad day. He was having to meet with tRump, after all.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

But Without the Outrage

Not just officials, but one presidential candidate after another.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why Reporters Should Be Wary of the Russia-Trump Theories

Reporters should always be nervous when intelligence sources sell them stories. Spooks don't normally need the press. Their usual audiences are other agency heads, and the executive. They can bring about action just by convincing other people within the government to take it.

In the extant case, whether the investigation involved a potential Logan Act violation, or election fraud, or whatever, the CIA, FBI, and NSA had the ability to act both before and after Donald Trump was elected. But they didn't [...] .

Thus we are now witnessing the extremely unusual development of intelligence sources that normally wouldn't tell a reporter the time of day litigating a matter of supreme importance in the media. What does this mean?

Hypothesize for a moment that the "scandal" here is real, but in a limited sense: Trump's surrogates have not colluded with Russians, but have had “contacts,” and recognize their political liability, and lie about them. Investigators then leak the true details of these contacts, leaving the wild speculations to the media and the Internet. Trump is enough of a pig and a menace that it's easy to imagine doing this and not feeling terribly sorry that your leaks have been over-interpreted.

If that's the case, there are big dangers for the press. If we engage in Times-style gilding of every lily the leakers throw our way, and in doing so build up a fever of expectations for a bombshell reveal, but there turns out to be no conspiracy – Trump will be pre-inoculated against all criticism for the foreseeable future.

The press has to cover this subject. But it can't do it with glibness and excitement, laughing along to SNL routines, before it knows for sure what it's dealing with. Reporters should be scared to their marrow by this story. This is a high-wire act and it is a very long way down. We might want to leave the jokes and the nicknames be, until we get to the other side – wherever that is.

  Matt Taibbi

And perhaps the bigger problem (especially in light of the latest news that the biggest jobs gains in years has happened since Trump took office).

We have to remember that the unpopularity of the press was a key to Trump's election. Journalists helped solve the billionaire's accessibility problem by being a more hated group than the arrogant rich. Trump has people believing he shares a common enemy with them: the news media. When we do badly, he does well.

Trump calls us "enemies of the people" who purvey "fake news." Together with what vile ex-CNN turncoat Lou Dobbs calls the "global corporatists" who own the major media companies, we are said to comprise the "opposition party."

We can't afford to bolster these accusations of establishment bias and overreach by using the techniques of conspiracy theorists to push this Russia story. Unfortunately, that is happening.

.....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Uh-Oh

What has he said that he shouldn't have? Or what pictures did he post that he shouldn't have?

State Rep. Ron Sandack, a Downers Grove Republican and vocal legislative ally of Gov. Bruce Rauner, is resigning from the Illinois House after saying he's had "cyber security issues" in recent days.

Sandack had been facing a re-election race in November and is well known in Illinois politics for his heavy use of Twitter and Facebook, as well as his role as a floor leader for Republicans in the Illinois House.

[...]

"It has been a tremendous honor and privilege to serve the people of the 81st district for the past four years in Springfield," he said in the statement. "But after some cyber security issues arose, I began to re-evaluate my continued public service."

[...]

"I have always recognized there is no greater privilege than being a father and husband," he said in the statement. "My duties in Springfield has meant missing a lot of events in the lives of my children. I am no longer willing to miss important family events."

  Daily Herald

He's done something really naughty, hasn't he?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO — The anticorruption minister of Brazil’s interim president, Michel Temer, resigned Monday night after a secret recording seemed to show that he tried to stymie the sweeping corruption investigation revolving around Petrobras, the national oil company.

  NYT

That's a page right out of American national governance: appoint the person most disqualifiable for the position. Appoint the guy involved in the corruption to oversee the anti-corruption department. Priceless. 's actual title was: minister of transparency.

In an increasingly paranoid atmosphere in the capital, Brasília, members of the country’s political and business elite are secretly recording one another with the aim of reaching plea deals. Sergio Machado, a politician who was the chief executive of a Petrobras transportation unit for more than a decade, has turned over a trove of recordings to investigators.

In doing so, Mr. Machado, who has been accused of helping to orchestrate the Petrobras bribery scheme, is betraying various senior political figures whom he recorded.

So we can probably expect more revelations.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Free Campaign Ad

This should save both Sanders and Trump a bucket of money on campaign ads:

Hillary's eMail Situation in a Nutshell

The report clearly establishes a number of damaging facts. First, the State Department made clear that a personal server was not allowed and would present serious security risks for the country. Second, Clinton never asked or received permission for such a server. Third, the State Department would never have approved such a server. Fourth, Clinton’s objections to using the secure State Department system was not convenience (as she previously stated) but access to her personal emails. Fifth, her actions failed to comply with the Federal Records Act. Sixth, Clinton suspected that she was being hacked but continued to use her personal server exclusively. Finally, the report indicates that Clinton did not fully cooperate with the subsequent inquiries and investigation.

The contradictions with past statements are glaring and will not help Clinton already historic lows for trustworthiness or honesty with voters.

  Jonathan Turley

And yet, to date, she's still poised to get the Democratic nomination to run for president.

What is fascinating is that the spin from Clinton supporters is now the final line of defense: there is no evidence that she was actually hacked. Many of us have expressed our view that such hacking or compromise of the system seems highly likely since the Secretary of State is one of the priority targets for foreign intelligence. Moreover, a hacker who says that he routinely hacked the account has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the government. This spin seems an effort to kick the can down the road to get beyond the convention and secure the nomination before this new line of defense could be contradicted. That is a continuation of the approach from the outset of not getting out in front of the scandal but evading the allegations and adding layers of denial. The Clinton team seems absolutely confident that the Administration will not move on any criminal charges but that is a considerable risk, particularly for top aides implicated in these findings.

Not if you consider that the current administration is an integral part of the machinery pushing Clinton on us.

I can't help but wonder if some deal was made with her when she dropped out of the 20098 race. "You get the next round." Only, they didn't plan on Trump. Or Bernie.

On the other hand, why have they pressed the matter this hard?  That report seems like a pretty clear warning, and even if she manages to kick the can down the road, would she not be in a worse position personally if, after becoming president, a criminal case were to be filed?  Or even, if not a criminal case, the fodder for impeachment seems obvious.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mr. Comey Begs to Differ

The Clinton campaign, and the candidate herself, have repeatedly scoffed at any danger of an indictment and insisted that [the FBI's investigation into her email server practice when Sec of State] is merely a “security review” or “security inquiry.” Indeed, close Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal was on CNN this morning stressing that this was nothing more than a security review. Now [FBI chief James] Comey is being quoted by Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge as directly refuting this core claim by Clinton and saying that this is a criminal investigation. He would also likely disagree with Bill Clinton’s recent claim that the investigation was just a “game” and nothing more.

[...]

[Asked] if the bureau is conducting a “security inquiry” into the server [...] Comey responded “I don’t even know what that means, a security inquiry. We do investigations here at the FBI.”]

[...]

[Another of Clinton's claimed defenses] is that this material was not technically classified at the time that it was sent. Thus it was not “classified” information. The problem is that it was not reviewed and classified because it was kept out of the State Department system. Moreover, most high-level communications are treated as classified and only individually marked as classified when there is a request for disclosure. You do not generate material as the Secretary of State and assume that it is unclassified. You are supposed to assume and treat it as presumptively classified. Indeed that understanding was formally agreed to by Clinton when she signed the “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,” or SF-312, which states that “classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications.” [...] Classified oral communications are not “marked” nor would classified information removed from secure systems and sent via a personal server. Likewise, classified oral communications that are followed up with emails would not be “marked.” This is the whole reason that Clinton and others were told to use the protected email system run by the State Department. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure such systems.

  Jonathan Turley

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Imagine That

Scratches head. Looks under desk.

The Department has located a pst from Mr. Pagliano’s recent work at the Department as a contractor, but the files are from after Secretary Clinton left the Department.

[...]

Pagliano was responsible for setting up the now-infamous private server in the basement of the Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York. He has since become a key witness in the FBI inquiry into the handling of sensitive material on that server and has been granted immunity by the Justice Department in exchange for his cooperation.

[...]

When Clinton's emails were published on the State Department's public reading room, only one email of his surfaced. It was a happy birthday message from his private email account to hers. She forwarded it to another staffer instructing him to "pls respond."

  ABC

Say what??  She couldn't just respond with a thank you?  She told someone else to do it??

Hmmmm

The US State Department has suspended plans for an internal review of whether classified information was properly handled in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails at the request of the FBI, a spokeswoman said on Friday.

[...]

“The FBI communicated to us that we should follow our standard practice, which is to put our internal review on hold while there is an ongoing law enforcement investigation ,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters.

  Guardian

Were they afraid State would get creative and destroy some? Or were they giving State an out because they were finding too many that needed to be classified top secret?

On 29 January, the State Department said 22 emails sent or received by Clinton had been upgraded to top secret at the request US intelligence agencies and would not be made public as part of the release of thousands of Clinton’s emails. It said none of the emails was marked classified when sent.

[...]

The government forbids handling of classified information, which may or may not be marked that way, outside secure government-controlled channels, and sometimes prosecutes people who remove it from such channels. [emphasis added]

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hillary's E-Mails

I tend to watch these debates for the legal issues and I was most struck by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s discussion of the email scandal. First, she declared that she will never be indicted — a statement that may irritate federal investigations looking into possible crimes. She certainly has defenses and the odds may indeed favor her. However, defense attorneys usually discourage such statements from potential targets which can enrage prosecutors as presumptuous or suggesting some level of immunity.

  Jonathan Turley

Seriously? Isn't it obvious she's above all that? American royalty does not need to fear American law.

Second, she insisted that her “predecessors did the same thing” that she did on emails — a statement that is demonstrably untrue but again was left unchallenged by the journalists.

She has said that before, and in none of the articles where I read that did a journalist take issue. I, therefore, assumed she was correct. I should know better by now.

We previously discussed the controversy of the White House stating that the investigation was not moving toward any criminal charges — a statement would indicate either a sweeping assumption or an improper degree of consultation between the White House and the Justice Department on an ongoing investigation. [...] While the odds may be in her favor, it would be obviously absurd to say that no indictment is possible. It depends on the evidence, which remains largely unknown.

Yeah, I don't know. I'd like to see more evidence that our laws really do apply to the people at the top of the heap before going that far.

There is of course no way for Clinton to know about what will happen with the indictment.

Yeah, I don't know about that, either.

As I have previously noted, the best case for Clinton is the conviction of retired four-star general and CIA director David H. Petraeus for mishandling classified information. The deal given to Petraeus by the Justice Department was absurd [$100,000 and two years of probation] and rightfully led to objections that powerful figures like Petraeus and Clinton are treated differently from average people.

Exactly. And she is far above Petraeus in the powerful person category.

Then there was the late Samuel “Sandy” Berger, a former White House national security adviser to Bill Clinton, who faced that same charge after he intentionally removed and destroyed copies of a classified document (putting some material in his socks to sneak them out). Berger was trying to protect Clinton in the reviewing of potentially negative classified information. Not only that but Berger then lied to investigators — a separate crime regularly prosecuted by the Justice Department. Yet, no one called for his long incarceration. Instead, he was allowed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor with no jail time.

And again, Berger was way down the list of powerful people. And both his and Petraeus' punishments were negligible. Seems very likely to me that Hillary can be very comfortable in asserting she won't be indicted.

There is clearly a huge investigation at the FBI, including the recent granting of immunity to a prior aide of Clinton. To dismiss any notion that those investigators or prosecutors could indict her, Clinton risks fueling any internal debates over political pressures on the investigation or the need to show that no one is above the law. It can be taken as taunting or, even worse, threatening that no one would dare bring such a charge. In fairness to Clinton, I do not believe that is how she meant it. I think she was making a legal point that there are no grounds for an indictment but there is a reason why attorneys prevent clients from making such dismissive statements.

[...]

At the March 9th debate, Clinton said “It wasn’t the best choice. I made a mistake. It was not prohibited. It was not in any way disallowed, and as I’ve said and now has come out, my predecessors did the same thing, and many other people in the government.”

That is clearly not true. Only a few of Clinton’s predecessors even had email. Of those four secretaries, none had a private server in their home.

Clearly, the truth is not a concern for Ms. Clinton. It doesn't need to be.

What Clinton did was incredibly reckless in the use of a private server that was more vulnerable to foreign interception.

Much more reckless than hubby Bill's "non-sex" with Ms. Lewinsky, but for that, he was impeached. If Hillary becomes president, will her impeachment proceedings be immediate? Will that interfere with her abilities to perform her duties? If the Republicans think they'd have a better chance against Bernie (and I don't think they would), they should be spreading the word that they'd do just that.

If Clinton means that a couple of predecessors sent personal emails, that is clearly true but that is obviously not at issue.

That may be what she can say she meant, but that's not what she meant us to believe.

Moreover the repeated reference to former secretary Colin Powell is obviously misleading. Powell was found to have sent a few emails now deemed classified. Clinton sent over 100. [...] Moreover, the investigators have reportedly concluded that a good number of these classified emails were clearly classified at the time that they were sent.

[...]

The biggest problem however remains the failure of media to challenge the Clinton statement that she did nothing wrong if the information was not marked classified. That is clearly wrong and does not reflect the legal standard. [...] As I discussed earlier, virtually anything coming out of the office of the Secretary of State would be considered classified as a matter of course. [...] This is the whole reason that Clinton and others were told to use the protected email system run by the State Department. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure such systems.

[...]

It is bizarre that the media does not address the glaring disconnect between what Clinton is saying and what the law actually demands.

Only if you don't think the media are part of the system of which Hillary is the presumptive queen.

Yet she has been asked this question dozens of times and has given the same answer with virtually no reporter raising the actual language of the federal law or the practical implications of what she is suggesting about the scope of classification laws.

A royal subject never would.

I have rarely seen a major legal issue in a presidential campaign that is being discussed with so little connection to the actual laws or legal standards. I understand that politics can be a fluid and rather superficial field. However, law is based on actual statutes and standards.

This is true. But, as we all know, it is not applied to every citizen equally.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hillary's E-Mail Investigation

UPDATE from Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley below.

The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009.

  WaPo

In my mind, the granting of immunity implies that there is criminal (or actionable) activity and the person being granted immunity is culpable, but will rat on somebody else.

Is that just in my mind, or is that in fact what happened here?

Clinton has since apologized for what happened: “Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.”

No, you don't. Otherwise your staffer wouldn't be in the position he's in.

The State Department has said that, at the request of intelligence agencies, it has classified 22 Clinton emails as “top secret” and will not release those emails, even in redacted form. “Top secret” is the highest level of classification, reserved for material whose release could cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”

I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general of the intelligence community, has indicated that some of the material intelligence officials have reviewed contained information that was classified at the time it was sent; the State Department has indicated that it has not analyzed whether the material should have been marked classified when it was sent, only whether it requires classification before being released now.

Of course. Any hacker in any country could get to it through Clinton's unsecured personal server (while she was Secretary of State, mind you, sending and receiving emails regarding national defense and security), but YOU can't see it.

Current and former officials said the conviction of retired four-star general and CIA director David H. Petraeus for mishandling classified information is casting a shadow over the email investigation.

[...]

He was fined $100,000 and sentenced to two years of probation. FBI officials were angered by the deal and predicted it would affect the outcome of other cases involving classified information.

Petraeus “was handled so lightly for his offense there isn’t a whole lot you can do,” said a former U.S. law enforcement official who oversaw counterintelligence investigations and described the email controversy as “a lesser set of circumstances.”

It was never a question. They'll make a big show, and then let it go.

I have another question: if Hillary Clinton somehow did not get the Democratic nomination, would her politically powerful backers/supporters choose Trump over Sanders?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

In a move that can only be viewed as ominous by the Clinton legal team, the Justice Department has granted immunity to former State Department staffer, Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Pagliano had refused to cooperate after invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He was an obvious target of potential criminal charges if he knew that the server was meant to circumvent federal laws, including the mishandling of classified information.

[...]

The move to use a private server is widely viewed as an effort by Clinton to retain total control over her communications – a move that obviously increased the likelihood of foreign interception considerably.

[...]

It was a highly reckless act.

[...]

Clinton has insisted that “I never sent classified material on my email, and I never received any that was marked classified.” The key of this spin is again the word “marked.” [...] As I discussed earlier, virtually anything coming out of the office of the Secretary of State would be considered classified as a matter of course. I have had a TS/SCI clearance since Reagan due to my national security work and have lived under the restrictions imposed on email and other systems. The defense is that this material was not technically classified at the time that it was sent. Thus it was not “classified” information. The problem is that it was not reviewed and classified because it was kept out of the State Department system.[Emphasis added]

[...]

Indeed that understanding was formally agreed to by Clinton when she signed the “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,” or SF-312, which states that “classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications.” [...] Classified oral communications are not “marked” nor would classified information removed from secure systems and sent via a personal server. Likewise, classified oral communications that are followed up with emails would not be “marked.” This is the whole reason that Clinton and others were told to use the protected email system run by the State Department. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure such systems.

[...]

As someone who has worked with classified information for decades, I remain flabbergasted by both the decision to use the private server and the spin following the controversy. As president, Clinton could never maintain this position in allowing subordinates to use unsecure private servers. Indeed, one of the emails has her expressing surprise at the use of an unsecure system by a subordinate. By last count, some 2050 emails are considered classified and some 22 contain top secret information. By any objective measure, that is a serious concern.

[...]

Pagliano is in a position to do considerable damage if he can discuss the intent and knowledge behind the move to circumvent the State Department email system.

  Jonathan Turley

Flint: The Smoking Gun

A high-ranking DWSD official told us today that Detroit offered a 50% reduction over what Flint had been paying Detroit.

The offer by DWSD shows that Gov. Rick Snyder was lying when he insisted the water switch was motivated by saving money for Flint, which was under the control of a state emergency manager.

“When compared over the 30 year horizon the DWSD proposal saves $800 million dollars or said differently – saves 20% over the KWA proposal,” then-DWSD Director Sue McCormick said in the e-mail dated April 15, 2013.

[...]Documents show that DWSD made at least six proposals to Flint, saying “the KWA pipeline can only be attributed to a ‘political’ objective that has nothing to do with the delivery – or the price – of water.”

[...]

Saying he was sorry for the mistake, Snyder pledged full transparency during his State of the State address last week and released e-mails related to the water crisis from 2014 and 2o15. Curiously, he refused to release e-mails from 2013, which would have showed why state officials decided to make the switch from DWSD to the KWA.

Now it seems clear why Snyder wouldn’t release the e-mails: They would have revealed that the switch was not about saving money.

[...]

So what was it about? Some have suggested that Snyder was motivated by a desire to break up DWSD and ultimately privatize it. In the summer of 2015, DWSD was split into two entities: the DWSD and the Great Lakes Water Authority.

Others have suggested that Snyder wanted to start fracking operations along a new pipeline. Snyder’s office didn’t return calls for comment.

  Motor City Muckraker

Hang 'em.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Polishing Off Flint

The decision to switch the city of Flint’s drinking water source to the Flint River was pegged as a cost-cutting maneuver aimed at saving $5m over a two-year period. But almost two years and a massive lead contamination crisis later, that move and subsequent decisions not to treat the water supply already carry a financial price tag of $45m and climbing.

[...]

[E]stimates [suggest] the price tag to overhaul Flint’s water infrastructure is between $750m and $1.5bn.

  Guardian

A price that will not be paid by the people responsible, but taxpayers of every state in the union and whatever donors can be rustled up.

Even before the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, was found to be tainted with lead—before water from some areas tested at more than twice the level considered to be toxic waste, and public-health officials said that every last child in the city should be treated as if the child had been poisoned—the governor’s office knew that the water was discolored, tasted bad, smelled strange, and was rife with “organic matter.” They knew, as one memo sent to Governor Rick Snyder in February, 2015, noted, that “residents have attended meetings with jugs of brownish water.” Officials figured that a reason it looked that way was the presence of rust. And they thought that was just fine.

  New Yorker

They "figured"? They didn't find out?  And even if it were that, would they drink water from their faucets if it were rusty?  Rhetorical question.

Various safe-water laws, the February memo said, “ensure that water is safe to drink. The act does not regulate aesthetic values of water.” [...] “[T]he system is old”; “Flint is old”—the water, in a word, fit their picture of the city, in which about forty per cent of its hundred thousand people lived below the poverty line (and more than half are black). [...] [Flint] was scheduled to be connected to a new pipeline in 2016 or 2017, which would save money; Flint is in such desperate financial straits that it was under the oversight of an Emergency Manager. [...] When that manager felt he couldn’t negotiate a low enough price for Detroit water in the interim, the city was left with the option of drinking from the river that ran by it, and past its active and derelict factories, and had been last regularly used decades before.[...] In August, 2014, and again that September, the water was found to have unacceptably high levels of fecal coliform bacteria, and specifically E. coli. Certain neighborhoods were instructed to boil their water, while the city added chlorine to the supply to disinfect it.

So much chlorine, it turns out, that it corroded pipes.

By October, 2014, General Motors had announced that it would no longer use the water, because it was corroding its equipment. It was also—and this should have been entirely predictable—eating into the lead pipes that delivered the water to people’s homes, causing them to crumble into the water.

[...]

Still, the memos from the governor’s office continued to dismiss “the rusty factor” as aesthetic. It might not be good enough for G.M.’s machines, but it was fine for people.The water, as the governor’s office told the public, was still, passing the tests—except in the case of one known carcinogen, TTHM, which was produced by the interaction of chlorine and that “organic matter.” The water wasn’t passing those tests, but it was close enough, and, anyway, since TTHM caused cancer after long exposure, but not within the few years people in Flint were being asked to drink it. The TTHM regulations, a memo to the governor noted, were only estimated to prevent two hundred and eighty bladder-cancer cases each year, “out of more than 330 million people,” and so “it’s not like an imminent threat to public health.”

[...]

Lead is an imminent and persistent threat to public health. [...] Lead stays in your bones even once it leaves your blood. And there were soon signs that the people in Flint were drinking lead. They weren’t told to stop using the water; indeed, for months, the opposite was the case.

[...]

The state and city seem to have ignored that basic lesson of epidemiology—they didn’t seem to register until recently, for example, that there had also been a spike in cases of Legionnaire’s Disease in Flint, which might also have had something to do with the water. Ten people died in that outbreak.

Let me translate all that to you: "These are poor black people, and frankly, the state would be better off if they didn't exist."

The various Michigan authorities continued to report that they couldn’t find anything unusual—certainly not lead, except maybe some “seasonal” spikes, or statistical flukes. At most, people should let their water run for a while before using it.[...] E.P.A. water expert named Miguel Del Toral [reported], “My point on that was that people are exposed to the particulate lead on a daily basis, but the particulate lead is being flushed away before collecting compliance samples which provides false assurance to residents about the true lead levels in the water.”

[...]

In June, 2015, the Detroit Free Press examined documents on the testing obtained by the A.C.L.U.; the paper reported that after Flint had collected only thirty-nine of an expected hundred samples, a D.E.Q. official wrote to let city officials know that those samples were looking high. Somewhat ambiguously, he expressed “hope” that the rest of the samples would be “below the AL,” or action level, for lead. Going above that level would put the department in the position of having to do something. [...] [A] quarter of the remaining samples “came from a single stretch of Flushing Road in Flint,” which had a water-main section only a few years old. “Not surprisingly, all of those samples measured very low for lead.” [...] And the testers still got the numbers under the acceptable level only by throwing out one sample that was extraordinarily high—over a hundred parts per billion.

And that household used a filter!

That sample had come from the house of Lee Anne Walters. The water from her taps was orange. Her twin four-year-old boys were sick—one of them weighed only twenty-seven pounds. Her daughter’s hair was falling out, and so were her own eyelashes. [...] When [her water] was retested, it measured almost four hundred p.p.b.

Well, surely, the city took action then?

The city suggested that she hook up a hose and use her next-door neighbor’s water instead.

The people of Flint should have been reporting their problems to their hometown boy, Michael Moore.

A group of researchers from Virginia Tech, led by professor Marc Edwards, began to do what the city and state had so avoided: asking whether the water was truly safe. One of the samples they took recorded a level of 13,200 p.p.b.: lead soup. [...] On September 24th, Doctor Mona Hanna-Attisha, a local pediatrician, announced that there had been a significant spike in the levels of lead in the children her hospital had tested. The state continued to say that its studies were better—more comprehensive.

[...]

President Obama has declared a federal state of emergency in Flint, with the National Guard bringing in bottled water. The city has switched back to Detroit water, but that doesn’t solve the problem of the pipes leaching lead.

If there aren't several Michigan officials in jail after this, there truly is no accountability. Life sentences for mass murder would not be out of order.

And why do Flint city officials - and even the governor of Michigan - still have their jobs?

Reminder: after the Paris attacks in November, this is what Governor Snyder had to say as a reason not to accept Syrian refugees:

"Michigan is a welcoming state and we are proud of our rich history of immigration. But our first priority is protecting the safety of our residents." 

UPDATE: The smoking gun.

A high-ranking DWSD official told us today that Detroit offered a 50% reduction over what Flint had been paying Detroit.

The offer by DWSD shows that Gov. Rick Snyder was lying when he insisted the water switch was motivated by saving money for Flint, which was under the control of a state emergency manager.

“When compared over the 30 year horizon the DWSD proposal saves $800 million dollars or said differently – saves 20% over the KWA proposal,” then-DWSD Director Sue McCormick said in the e-mail dated April 15, 2013.

[...]Documents show that DWSD made at least six proposals to Flint, saying “the KWA pipeline can only be attributed to a ‘political’ objective that has nothing to do with the delivery – or the price – of water.”

[...]

Saying he was sorry for the mistake, Snyder pledged full transparency during his State of the State address last week and released e-mails related to the water crisis from 2014 and 2o15. Curiously, he refused to release e-mails from 2013, which would have showed why state officials decided to make the switch from DWSD to the KWA.

Now it seems clear why Snyder wouldn’t release the e-mails: They would have revealed that the switch was not about saving money.

[...]

So what was it about? Some have suggested that Snyder was motivated by a desire to break up DWSD and ultimately privatize it. In the summer of 2015, DWSD was split into two entities: the DWSD and the Great Lakes Water Authority.

Others have suggested that Snyder wanted to start fracking operations along a new pipeline. Snyder’s office didn’t return calls for comment.

  Motor City Muckraker