Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Legal points of view on the latest email investigation. Caveat from Volokh Conspiracy


American Thinker today is a treasure trove of legal commentary.

James G. Wiles: Don't Be Fooled: Hillarygate Probe Is Now a Formal Federal Criminal Investigation   "In other words: the Beast is now fully awake."
It’s called grand jury secrecy. Now that Hillarygate is, for the first time, a grand jury investigation, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) prohibits the FBI and prosecutors from saying anything about "matters occurring before the grand jury." Their lips are sealed.
 "Not for the first time, Mrs. Clinton is being totally disingenuous with the voters (and the media). She is also making FBI director Comey into her personal punching bag. And she's doing it because she knows that the director can't fight back.
"In this, Mrs. Clinton is simply repeating a tactic which she and her catspaw Sidney Blumenthal used to good effect during the Whitewater, Travelgate, and Monica Lewinsky investigations in the 1990s. And that tactic worked." . . . 

Daniel John Sobieski: "Liar Reid Slams Comey"  "The hypocritical Democrats doth protest too much. They are the ones who have sanctioned abuse by government agencies to influence elections. All Comey has done is his job -- to keep Congress updated on his testimony and investigations. He also may have done a great patriotic service for his country by keeping a possible felon out of the Oval Office. He may well have prevented a constitutional crisis that would make Watergate look like, well, a third-rate burglary."


Political Cartoons by Gary Varvel

J. Marsolo: Did Comey know Obama could be Hillary's star witness?
 . . . "Hillary would argue, How can I have the intent to violate the law when the president knows I use the private email system he uses to contact me?  Leaving aside that it is Hillary making the argument, it is a reasonable and powerful defense against the charges." . . .



From The Volokh Conspiracy, a blog written mostly by law professors and anchored by Eugene Volokh.   Was it legal for the FBI to expand the Weiner email search to target Hillary Clinton’s emails?
"If the FBI was searching Weiner’s computer, it presumably had a warrant authorizing the search of the computer only for Weiner’s communications with underage girls. If that is correct, going from that narrow search to a broader search of Clinton’s emails raises two potential problems for the FBI."
Political Cartoons by Gary McCoy

No comments: