- "The Clinton Presidency Is Going To Be A Miserable Slog"
Submitted by Michael Krieger via Liberty Bliztkrieg
For a long time now, I’ve felt that no matter who wins this election, the U.S. is in for extremely difficult times over at least the next 4 years. The reason is twofold. First, when you combine Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters (the latter didn’t just disappear), a majority of the population is in full on revolt against the status quo. This mood isn’t going anywhere. Combine this backdrop with the very high likelihood of an economic downturn, and you have a recipe for mayhem. This isn’t even taking into account the possible end to a multi-decade secular bull market in sovereign bonds, the ramifications of which represent a financial extinction-level event for much of the Western world.
When I look at the financial markets and note that they appear totally unwilling to even flirt with the very real possibility of a Trump victory, I conclude that the current status quo assumption is not only that Hillary will win, but that after she wins, the social mood will get better. I, on the other hand, think it will get far, far worse, as disgusted Trump and Sanders supporters push back relentlessly from day one. As I noted earlier today on Twitter:
Sorry but if Clinton wins country becomes completely ungovernable. I don’t mean gridlock. I mean total madness.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) November 1, 2016
Of course, I’m not the only one. Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote an excellent piece earlier today published at The Week titled, The Clinton Presidency is Going to be a Miserable Slog, which is my must read of the day.
Here it is:
Being on the cusp of electing the first woman president, and defeating a snarling, newly crass, and nationalist Republican Party should feel energizing for the American left. But it’s been tiring. The Democrats aren’t just electing a woman. They’re stuck electing this woman, Hillary Clinton. It’s been a slog.
Clinton could not easily put away her socialist challenger Bernie Sanders. She would not release the transcripts of the paid speeches she gave to Wall Street banks. She could not name her accomplishments as secretary of state. She could not quite escape her own role in managing the political fallout from her husband’s affairs, or the appearance of corruption in the Clinton Foundation’s pioneering work in the field of do-gooder graft.
When FBI Director James Comey gave us a healthy reminder of Clinton’s email scandal last week, liberals must have realized: It’s not just the campaign. The Clinton presidency is going to be a slog, too.
The Clinton standard of political behavior has always had a lawyerly slipperiness to it. When the scandals come, it depends on your definition of “is.” When the headlines erupt, suddenly we discover that all of Clinton’s friends signed an affidavit contradicting the latest accuser or whistleblower. And, really, what difference, at this point, does it make? Partisans will note that Clinton’s ethical lapses and faults are minor compared to Donald Trump’s. Those comparisons are not going to matter in a few days.
Some may object. They’ll reply that the only problem is the aggressive prosecutorial zeal of the Republicans. And it is true that Republicans have an ongoing grudge against Clinton. But let’s posit the existence of a vast right wing conspiracy that hates President Obama just as much as it hates the Clintons. Why is it only able to turn up news-driving scandals on the latter? Could it be that Obama, however detested by conservatives, conducts himself with higher ethical standards than Bill and Hillary?
Clinton’s scandals and misdeeds often have little to do with the Democrats’ battle with Republicans. Clinton played fast and loose even with the Obama administration’s own rules. Obama had forbidden Clinton from giving a government job to the Clinton’s on-demand schemer Sidney Blumenthal — yet Clinton kept him on the payroll of her “charity” and kept up correspondence with him about Libya, even as he had business interests in a post-Gadhafi state. Despite explicit rules set by the Obama administration, the Clinton Foundation continued to operate as a bank in which foreign leaders and governments could deposit their quids, while Clinton was at the head of the State Department, able to distribute pro quos in return.
Beyond the propensity to generate scandal, there is a larger reason that Clinton’s administration will be a slog. The 2016 election has been characterized by a demand for great change. And Hillary Clinton has run as the defender of the way things are, the way they’re going, and who they’re going for.
Hillary Clinton received a vigorous challenge from a left wing that isn’t afraid to label themselves socialists. America’s center-right party ditched its commitments to establishment doctrine on free trade and liberalized immigration, and challenged the wisdom and justice of America’s post-Cold War political order. But Hillary Clinton will enter the White House as the caretaker for the status quo in American political life.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were not the men to carry forward this message of discontent to real political triumph. Both candidates represented their cause poorly. Trump was at once too crude and unethical himself. And Sanders had none of the political instincts and savvy to really go after Clinton in the primaries.
Clinton is the face of a prosperous, grasping establishment that won’t bear challenge from the left or right. Her ability to survive scandal after scandal will not be received as some testament to her political canniness or some deep integrity. It will be received as just the system defending its own from attack. Her survival and her ability to win is a a tribute to the power and self-regard of our political class. And this class has no plausible solution for the nation’s foreign policy, for its immigration system, or for an economic system that abets the elite’s secession from their own nation.
Clinton’s presidency will be a slog because she is exactly like the system she defends. She can point to the great wealth this system produces for its top clients. But neither she nor her cheerleaders can really claim that it looks like wisdom or justice to anyone else.
Well done, Mr. Dougherty.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger - 4 Times As Many Americans Think Biased U.S. Media – Not Foreigners Such As Russian Hackers – Real Threat To Fair Election
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released Friday found that 75.9% of Americans believe the mainstream media “would like to see [Hillary Clinton] elected president.”
The poll also found that only 10% of Americans believe that “foreign interests such as Russian hackers” are “the primary threat that might try to change the election results”. In contrast, 45.53% believe “the news media” is the primary threat to the election:
Indeed, the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, CNN and other mainstream media admitted to us they were going to try to throw the election for Hillary. (And leaked emails show widespread collusion between the media and the Clinton campaign.)
Americans widely distrust the mainstream media. With good reason …
- Can The American People Defeat The Oligarchy That Rules Them?
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
Aren’t you surprised that Hillary and the presstitutes haven’t blamed Putin for FBI director Comey’s reopening of the Hillary email case? But the presstitutes have done the next best thing for Hillary. They have made Comey the issue, not Hillary.
According to US Senator Harry Reid and the presstitutes, we don’t need to worry about Hillary’s crimes. After all, she is only a political woman feathering her nest, just as political men have done for ages. Why all this misogynist talk about Hillary? The presstitutes’ cry is that Comey’s alleged crime is far more important. This woman-hating Republican violated the Hatch Act by telling Congress that the investigation he said was closed is now reopened. A very strange interpretation of the Hatch Act. During an election it is OK to announce that a candidate for president is cleared but it is not OK to say that a candidate is under investigation.
In July 2016 Comey violated the Hatch Act when he, on orders from the corrupt Obama Attorney General, announced Hillary clean. In so doing, Comey used the prestige of federal clearance of Hillary’s violation of national security protocols to boost her standing in the election polls.
Actually, Hillary’s standing in the polls is based on the pollsters over-weighting Hillary supporters in the polls. It is easy to produce a favorite if you overweight their supporters in the poll questions. If you look at the crowds attending the two candidate’s public appearances, it is clear that the American people prefer Donald Trump, who is opposed to war with Russia and China. War with nuclear powers is the big issue of the election.
Hillary’s problem has the ruling American Oligarcy, for which Hillary is the total servant, concerned. What are they going to do about Trump if he wins? Will his fate be the same as John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace? Time will tell. Or will a hotel maid appear at the last minute in the way that the Oligarchy got rid of Dominique Strauss-Kahn?
All of the American and Western feminists, progressives, and left-wing remnant fell for the obvious frame-up of Strauss-Kahn. After Strauss-Kahn was blocked from the presidency of France and resigned as Director of the IMF, the New York authorities had to drop all charges against Strauss-Kahn. But Washington succeeded in removing Strauss-Kahn as a challenge to its French vassal, Sarkozy.
This is how the American Oligarchy destroys those it suspects might not serve its interests. The corrupt self-serving Oligarchy makes sure that it owns the government and the media, the think tanks and increasingly all of the major universities, and, of course, through the presstitutes, Americans’ minds.
The Oligarchs are now hard-pressed to rescue Hillary as US president, so let’s see if the Oligarchs can once again deceive the American people.
While we wait, let’s concern ourselves with another important issue. The Clinton crime syndicate in the closing years of the 20th century allowed a small handful of mega-corporations to consolidate the US media in a few hands. This vast increase in the power of the Oligarchy was accomplished despite US anti-trust law. The media mergers destroyed the American tradition of a dispersed and independent media.
But really, what does federal law mean to the One Percent. Nothing whatsoever. The One Percent’s power makes them immune to law. Hillary’s crimes might cost her the election, but she won’t go to jail.
Not content with 90% control of the US media, the Oligarchy wants more concentration and more control. Looks like they will be getting it, thanks to the corrupt US government. The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to enforce US anti-trust law. Instead, the federal agency routinely violates US anti-trust law by permitting monopoly concentrations of business interests.
Because of the failure of the federal government to enforce federal law, we now have “banks too big to fail,” unregulated Internet monopoly, and the evisceration of a dispersed and independent media.
Not so long ago there was a field of economics known as anti-trust. Ph.D. candidates specialized in and wrote dissertations about public control of monopoly power. I assume that this field of economics, like the America of my youth, no longer exists.
As Rahul Manchanda explains, “yet again another huge media conglomerate is being swallowed and acquired by another huge media conglomerate, to create another gargantuan media outlet, in another consolidation of the enormous power, money, wealth, intimidation, conspiracy and control” that eviscerates the US Constitution and the First Amendment.
- "The Frightening Thing Is People Don't Know They're Selling Insurance" – An Interview With An Ex-Canyon CDS Trader
With his valuation expertise rooted in derivatives, Ice Farm’s Michael Green, whose work has frequently graced this website in the past, has always been one step ahead of the market and built his career at Canyon Capital profiting from mispricing and arbitrage in CDS, which he believes are currently underpricing risk in today’s markets.
Just as the hedge fund community vastly overpaid for its CDS protection following the 2008 downturn, today in an interview with Real Vision TV, Green says it’s the other way around and suggests that the market is selling insurance over and over again without recognizing what they are actually selling, effectively paying more premium for doing the same thing.
Green, who founded ICE Farm Advisors in 2014, has had a unique approach for years. Starting out at Bain Capital, he fine-tuned his approach to modelling and valuation in small cap value stocks at the sharp end of the dot com cycle, initially turning down the opportunity to join Canyon in ’99. Seven years later he opened Canyon’s New York office, which he built from scratch to a $2 billion plus operation, focusing on macro expressed through derivatives.
Everything Flows Through Derivatives First
Outlining his perspective, Green said there’s a ton of academic research that’s come out in the past couple of years which validates this, but the one place you’d go to if you have knowledge to express your point of view, is the market that rewarded you for the accuracy and timeliness of your information. “Into the derivatives world you would go,” he said. “You’d buy calls instead of buying stock. And there’s a ton of empirical research that supports this idea, that information flows first into the derivatives market.”
Green said his initial approach focused on the idea that, instead of trying to value the derivatives based on an assumption of log normality in terms of the distribution of probabilistic outcomes, he would take the prices as a given and then compare that distribution to the historical empirical in order to try and understand where the market is expressing preferences. This method delivered some fascinating insights.
The Black Swan was Overcooked
If you rewind to 2008, Green believes all the signals from the derivatives market suggested that selling insurance was a sensible strategy. Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan is often cited as the catalyst for the shift towards ‘owning the tails’ but Green said in his view, people over-interpreted some of that and paid way too much for that insurance.
“If you look at 2007 when Taleb published The Black Swan, if you’d gone into the market and you tried to purchase a put option that paid out in the event that the S&P fell by 50% over the next two years, the market would have priced that somewhere around 5%, a 5% probability, which relative to the empirical, the historical distribution of about 4%, it was like 25% markup. And that’s pure profit for an investment bank that is underwriting those puts,” Green said.
“By the point that that market peaked in June of 2012, the probability that the market was placing on that 50% decline over the next two years had risen to 47%. And this is three years after the market had been rallying, 3 and 1/4 years after the March, 2009 lows that you were seeing this sort of pricing that exists in the market.”
This was simply a function of there being non-economic buyers of insurance, he said, while the ability to sell those derivatives had collapsed.
“One of the things I spent a lot of time writing about and communicating with investors, clients, is the idea that the world has now shifted completely in the opposite direction, that people are selling that insurance over and over and over again, not recognizing what they’re actually selling, and not necessarily conducting an evaluation of, are there cheaper ways to sell that– or more expensive ways to sell that same insurance, effectively capturing more premium for doing the same thing.
“And it’s become a market where in 2012 I would talk to people about the strategies. And I was, again, very fortunate that Canyon would allow me to do, selling this insurance and selling these puts. And we were generating fantastic returns. And probably the biggest benefit I provided to Canyon Partners was saying, don’t overpay for the insurance that everybody wants you to have in your portfolio.”
Hedge Funds Getting It Wrong
Back in 2009, Green said, every hedge fund on the planet had to show investors their book of hedges which were designed to prevent a repeat of the impact of the 2008 crash. “And this was happening in the context of a market that had already fallen by 50%, actually 60%. And they were just fantastically overvalued. People would be buying 9% yielding investment grade paper and think they were getting a fantastic deal, and then buying CDS protection or buying puts on the underlying equity that had an effective yield of, in some cases, as high as 50%,” he said.
“And it was just, it was an amazing, amazing time. And what I kept articulating was we should be selling the insurance and shorting the underlying securities. And by and large it was a great strategy. Today it’s the opposite. People are selling insurance on both sides. And honestly, the more frightening thing is they don’t know that they’re selling insurance.”
- Flint Woman Whose Debate Question Donna Brazile Leaked Says Hillary "Should Be Disqualified"
Submitted by Joseph Jankwoski via PlanetFreeWill.com,
On Monday, it was revealed by WikiLeaks that the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee Donna Brazile provided a debate question to John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri of the Clinton campaign ahead of a CNN-hosted debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
This marks the second time that Brazile has been caught tipping off the Clinton campaign to a coming question.
In a March 5 email with the subject line “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” Brazile tips the Clinton campaign off to a question that will be asked at the next night’s debate regarding the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
“Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile’s email reads.
Lee-Anne Walters, the Flint women whose question was mentioned in advance to Hillary Clinton, appeared on Fox News on Tuesday where she said that the democratic nominee should be disqualified from the presidential race.
“I was disgusted by Hillary’s answer when she first answered it, I’m even more so now,” Walters said. “And I feel she should be disqualified because it gave her an advantage that she shouldn’t have had.”
During the March 6 debate, Walters asked the democratic candidates if they would promise to make it a requirement for public water systems to remove all lead service lines throughout the United States.
Hillary responded by promising a commitment to changing the water systems inside the country and remove lead “from everywhere” within five years.
Lee-Anne Walters’ described Clinton’s response as a “cop out”.
“The answer she gave is the cop out answer to take it away from water and put funds where there are already funds,” Walters said. “If she is elected she is only going to be in office for four years, not five years, so how does that work?”
Although she shared the question with mentors, Walters told Fox News that she does not believe that her question was able to get to Donna Brazile beyond CNN.
CNN took three questions from Walters prior to the debate and it is unclear whose decision it was to ask the specific question the Flint women addressed to the candidates on March 6.
CNN has since cut ties with Brazile, a veteran political analyst for the network, saying in a statement that it is “completely uncomfortable” with hacked emails showing that Hillary was provided debate questions in advance.
Brazile’s CNN contract was suspended when she became interim DNC chair over the summer.
CNN president Jeff Zucker described Brazile’s actions as “unethical” and “disgusting”.
- No One Will Be Happy
From the Slope of Hope: Near the end of the book The Big Short, there is a scene in which two of the principal characters are sitting outside in downtown Manhattan during the throes of the financial crisis. The entire financial world is in absolute pandemonium, but as they look around them…………nothing. Birds are singing. Children are playing. People are walking around, getting their errands done. A guy passes by on a bicycle. Nothing is different than it ever was.
That’s always been one of my favorite parts of the book, because the contrast between what those guys were experiencing (being completely and utterly enveloped in global chaos) and what was going on in the normal world is applicable in so many facets of life.
I begin this post with that anecdote because, with but a single week left until we have elected a new President, it seems everyone is convinced that Things Will Be So Different once the deed is done.
To my way of thinking, a single word will capture the state of the nation depending on the outcome. If Clinton is elected (which, in spite of all the problems pressing against her, still seems more likely than not to happen), the word will be ‘anger“. If Trump is elected, the word will be “shock“. Those are very different outcomes.
Clinton supporters, I’m sure, would counter that the word should instead be “relief’, since they will declare the world has collectively dodged a bullet in the form of Donald Trump, and now we can all get back to the way things should be. Well, yes, I’m sure relief (and to those who think gender is such a BFD when it comes to elected positions, “jubilation”) would be the word expressed by her supporters, but within days, I suspect a portion of them, and the entirety of everyone else, will be angry. And that anger, in the days, weeks, and months that follow, will likely swell. You know how the most virulent anti-smokers are those who quit smoking? It’ll be the same for those who voted for her and then realize how pissed-off they are at her.
The reason for this, I’d like to suggest, is that people will believe she “got away with it.” The $200 million in speaking “fees.” All the dirty political tricks. Screwing Bernie out of his nomination. All the dirty laundry from her husband’s term, such as pardoning Marc Rich (to say nothing of blue dresses). All the lies about the email server. Hell, all the lies in general. I’m sure we’re all losing track of the lies by this point. So the gestalt will be this woman (yay! A woman president! Clinically speaking, at least) has cheated her way to the top.
What will the response be to that anger? Oh, lots of things, I imagine. Popularity rankings that range from low to vanishingly low. Impeachment proceedings. Special prosecutors. Stonewalling. Gridlock. All in all, a goddamned miserable time in the oval office. We may well even see her chucked out of the office and have goofy-looking Tim Kaine suddenly be the leader of the free world.
Then, on the other hand, Trump might win. As of last Thursday, this seemed like a laughable impossibility. Judging from the behavior of the financial markets lately, the likelihood has increased from No F_cking Way to Well Maybe.Since I live in the Bay Area, this entire geographic zone is at risk of seismic activity from all the jaws that would hit the ground if Trump were elected POTUS. Believe me, the bone-deep smug assurance that Clinton will absolutely win, no matter what, exists end to end in the SF Bay Area.
What would happen following a Trump victory is much harder for me to conjure. If he wins and both houses of Congress are Republican, well, gridlock may well be over. As of this writing, the betting odds seem to give him only a 26% chance of winning, so it would be – – as I said – – a shock if he won (particularly here in the Hillary-worshiping Bay Area).
As for the markets, even though the pattern is quite complex, the chart below, posted at the SocialTrade web site, may provide some insight. First, here’s the chart (whose pattern was posted a few weeks ago), and the price action has been following it to the letter:
So let’s assume for a minute that we don’t know the outcome of the election, but we know that the above pattern is how prices are going to play out. One scenario that would fit this neatly would be:
(1) Increasingly strong odds of a Trump victory, pushing the S&P down to around 2000, near the Brexit low
(2) Then, on Election Night, a Clinton victory, which would be followed by a relief (there’s that word again) rally as everyone cheers on “normalcy”, pushing the S&P to a recovery of about 2100, similar to where we are right now.
(3) And then, once the fireworks in NYC (which she’s already arranged) are done being shot off, and the cheers about how great it is to have a Woman President have died down, then all holy hell starts breaking lose, and the “anger” I mentioned begins to express itself in the form of a vengeful Congress (to say nothing of the nearly 50% of the country that had voted for Trump), and the S&P 500 would go into a free-fall, approaching levels similar to what we saw at the start of 2016, with the cash index around 1850 (in other words, a drop of more than 10% in a relatively short amount of time).
If none of this pans out, you are welcome to have the money back you paid to read this post. With so much uncertainty ahead, however, I thought these possibilities were worth sharing. In the end, though, it’s going to be a lot like that scene from The Big Short. Next Tuesday night is going to seem like such a big, huge, world-changing deal. But when you walk outside on Wednesday morning and look around…………nothing will have changed, with one notable exception: about half the country is going to be really pissed off.
- BofA Institutional Clients Sell Stocks For A Record 21 Straight Weeks Due To Soaring Redemptions
Over the weekend, we presented an excerpt from the latest weekly note by One River Management’s Eric Peters, in which he shared an look into hedge fund psychology, explaining why despite the market being at all time highs, nobody has any faith in said “market any more:
“My company is in structural decline,” he said gazing across Gotham, high in the corner office. “Made it through denial, anger, bargaining, and given that we’re having this conversation, I suppose I’m mostly through depression.” Which leaves the final stage of grief and loss; acceptance.
The transition from active management to passive has been devastating for those who’ve devoted their lives to the former.
“I wonder whether the deep pessimism that we confront every day in our own businesses helps explain why we’re so skeptical of all time S&P highs.”
Perhaps, but it helps explain why as Bank of America reports in its latest weekly client flow update, the bank’s largest, institutional clients have now sold stocks for a record 21 consecutive weeks. According to BofA, last week, during which the S&P 500 fell 0.7%, BofAML clients were net sellers of US equities for the third consecutive week (-$0.9bn vs. -$0.4bn the prior week). Of these, institutional clients continued to lead the selling; this group has now sold US stocks for the last 21 weeks.
The reason for the relentless selling? They have no choice, as they continue to be bombarded with redemption requests by clients who can’t wait to shift from active to passive – and much cheaper – funds:
Record outflows this year from active funds—a large sub-set of the institutional client grouping—have likely been a big contributor here. (Meanwhile, passive funds have seen slowing but continued inflows this year, and we’ve seen a similar trend in BofAML clients’ purchases of ETFs—see Table 1). Hedge funds also sold stocks (for the second consecutive week), while private clients were small net sellers after three weeks of buying. Clients continued to sell both large and small caps but buy mid-caps, which are the most expensive size segment. Buybacks by corporate clients slowed slightly vs. the prior week, and month-to-date are tracking the lowest of any Oct. since 2010.
What were they selling? Pretty much everything, but especially consumer discretionary.
Clients sold stocks in six of the eleven sectors last week, led by Consumer Discretionary and Industrials—both of which have seen generally weak results and guidance so far this earnings season. ETFs and Financials stocks saw the largest inflows. Sales of Discretionary stocks last week were their largest since last December and the seventh-largest in our data history (since ‘08), led by both institutional and hedge funds clients’ sales. This sector continues to have the longest selling streak at 18 consecutive weeks; but as we noted earlier in Sept, the selling streak could have legs given how crowded the sector is by active funds. Industrials has the next-longest selling streak at nine weeks; meanwhile, Telecom continues to have the longest buying streak (in 15 of the last 16 weeks).
Finally, putting the “smart money” selling in context, both YTD and since the start of the Second Great Depression, it almost seems like “greater fool” retail investors are still deserpately needed for the final paper-to-cash handoff.
But aside from the relentless “smart money” selling, remember: There Is No Alternative to stocks…
- If Hillary Clinton Is Charged With Obstruction Of Justice She Could Go To Prison For 20 Years
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
In the world of politics, the cover-up is often worse than the original crime. It was his role in the Watergate cover-up that took down Richard Nixon, and now Hillary Clinton’s cover-up of her email scandal could send her to prison for a very, very long time. When news broke that the FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, it sent shockwaves throughout the political world. But this time around, we aren’t just talking about an investigation into the mishandling of classified documents. I haven’t heard anyone talking about this, but if the FBI discovers that Hillary Clinton altered, destroyed or concealed any emails that should have been turned over to the FBI during the original investigation, she could be charged with obstruction of justice. That would immediately end her political career, and if she was found guilty it could send her to prison for the rest of her life.
I have not seen a single news report mention the phrase “obstruction of justice” yet, but I am convinced that there is a very good chance that this is where this scandal is heading. The following is the relevant part of the federal statute that deals with obstruction of justice…
Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
If Hillary Clinton is sent to prison for 20 years, that would essentially be for the rest of her life.
I have a feeling that the FBI is going to find a great deal of evidence of obstruction of justice in Huma Abedin’s emails. But unfortunately there is not likely to be a resolution to this matter before November 8th, because according to the Wall Street Journal there are approximately 650,000 emails to search through…
As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
Of those 650,000 emails, an inside source told Fox News that “at least 10,000” would be of interest to the investigation.
At this point, FBI officials have not even begun searching through the emails, because a search warrant has not been secured yet. The following comes from CNN…
Government lawyers haven’t yet approached Abedin’s lawyers to seek an agreement to conduct the search. Sources earlier told CNN that those discussions had begun, but the law enforcement officials now say they have not.
Either way, government lawyers plan to seek a search warrant from a judge to conduct the search of the computer, the law enforcement officials said.
But the FBI is reportedly already searching a laptop that was co-owned by Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, and no warrant was necessary for that search because Weiner is cooperating with the FBI.
Many have been wondering why FBI Director James Comey would choose to make such a bold move just over a week until election day. Surely he had to know that this would have a dramatic impact on the election, and it is unlikely that he would have done so unless someone had already found something really big. In addition, Comey was reportedly eager to find an opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of his peers at the FBI. The following is an excerpt from a Daily Mail article that was written by Ed Klein, the author of a recently released New York Times bestseller about the Clintons entitled “Guilty As Sin“…
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.
So what happens next?
In the most likely scenario, the FBI will not have time to complete the investigation and decide whether or not to charge Hillary Clinton before the election. This means that we would go into November 8th with this scandal hanging over the Clinton campaign, and that would seem to be very good news for Donald Trump.
However, it is possible that once the FBI starts searching through these emails that they could come to the conclusion very rapidly that charges against Clinton are warranted, and if that happens we could still see some sort of announcement before election day.
In the unlikely event that does happen, we could actually see Hillary Clinton forced out of the race before November 8th.
Once again, this appears to be very unlikely at this point, but it is still possible.
If Clinton was forced to step aside, the Democrats would need to come up with a new nominee, and that process would take time. In an article later today on The Most Important News I will reveal who I believe that nominee would be.
In such a scenario, the Democrats would desperately need time to get their act together, and so we could actually see Barack Obama attempt to delay or suspend the election. The legality of such a move is highly questionable, but Barack Obama has not allowed a little thing like the U.S. Constitution to stop him in the past.
This week is going to be exceedingly interesting – that is for sure.
The craziest election in modern American history just keeps getting crazier, and I have a feeling that even more twists and turns are ahead.
It sure seems ironic that Anthony Weiner is playing such a central role this late in the story, and I can’t wait to see what is in store for the season finale.
- BleachBit Looks To "Clean Up" By Selling Actual Microfiber "Cloth Or Something" For $3 Each
Once just an obscure open source piece of software known only by the techies of the world, Hillary’s use of BleachBit to delete her 33,000 emails so that, to quote Trey Gowdy, “even God couldn’t read them” has turned the company into a common household name. As such, the company has now launched a new product, the “Cloth or Something,” to capitalize on its new found fame.
As BleachBit points out, the “Cloth or Something” is easy to “stash in burn bags” and is “guaranteed not to prove intent.”
- After you have smashed your BlackBerry, don’t forget to wipe the fingerprints from your email server with this non-abrasive, soft microfiber Cloth or Something.
- Thin, foldable size makes it easy to stash the Cloth or Something in burn bags.
- 6″ x 6″ size quickly wipes even the biggest email servers with thousands of emails.
- Buy an extra cloth for your VIP (VERY VIP) client.
- FREE: Optionally autographed by Andrew, creator of BleachBit.
- Printed in the USA!
- Guaranteed not to prove intent, or you will get a full refund paid when you are released from prison.
- First-class shipping and handling is a flat rate of $2 per order.
- Yes, this cloth is real, and you can really buy it.
So, “don’t wait for your subpoena,” order one today!
And, for those of you with handheld devices, BleachBit also offers this handy 20-ounce BlackBerry smashing device…“the grip is specially designed not to retain fingerprints.”
Finally, just because it feels appropriate…
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