Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
But the FBI was not just investigating as to whether statements made by Clinton to the FBI under oath were true. They were investigating as to whether or not any of her actions involving the use of a private email server violated the law and should be prosecuted by the DoJ. You would think that this would also include statements made under oath to Congress, and her degree of cooperation or obstruction with regard to their original requests for information, given that this was the starting point of the very investigation they were conducting.
No, Comey was very clear about what the limits of the investigation were.
In his final report, sure. It's pretty clear from the grilling he got from Congress that most of the people who asked for the investigation in the first place thought it was going to investigate the entire process from start to finish, including the numerous hearings and testimony she gave to Congress. They were pretty shocked, in fact, when they asked if she lied about the email on her server and he responded only with "well, she didn't like to the FBI". Um... Again, most people would assume they were investigating all of her actions with regard to her handling of the server and the information contained within, not just her interactions with the investigative body itself.
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The fact that they aren't what you wish they were is 100% irrelevant. What Clinton said at a Congressional hearing ... wasn't what the FBI was investigating.
Why not? Don't you think that their investigation should have included that? Given that the only reason they had any evidence to work with in the first place was because congress ordered the state department to hand it over as part of the Benghazi investigation, then discovered it wasn't there but was on Clinton's private email server, and she then proceeded to lie and obstruct them when they demanded those documents as well making it take a year or so to get documents that should have been readily available if they'd been properly stored on State Dept servers, it seems silly to leave that whole process out when investigating whether Clinton committed a crime.
The old saying is that the coverup is often worse than the crime. Except in this case, Comey chose to not bother to look at the very overt attempt to cover up what she did. Which is bizarre at the very least.
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As you just stated, the people who are saying it makes them "less likely" weren't voting for her anyway.
That's not what I said. I said that the large percentage of people who thought she should face charges but also said it wouldn't affect their vote was because they were already not going to vote for Clinton. In the same way, those who were already not going to vote for Clinton are presumably most present in the 60% who said it made no difference. If they weren't voting for her before, and are not voting for her now, then the action did not make a difference in their vote.
On the other hand, one kinda has to assume that the 30% who said they were "less likely" to vote for Clinton as a result of this, were at least somewhat on the fence. They can only be less likely to vote for her if there was some likelihood that they would have absent this event. So yeah, the whole "30% less likely vs 8% more likely" is not remotely "a wash". It's a whole bunch of people who were at least somewhat undecided tilting away from Clinton as a result. You kinda have to really double think the poll results to see it otherwise.
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If the number of people saying that was near or exceeding her polling numbers, THAT would be a problem. A bunch of Trump supporters saying "we're less likely to vote for Clinton" is meaningless. When you're polling at 46% and 70% of the country shrugs their shoulders about something, it's a wash.
Yeah, right... If the polling numbers were reversed you'd be declaring victory though, right? If the poll said that 30% were "more likely" to vote for Clinton and only 8% "less likely", you'd never accept a counter argument that those who were "more likely" were just people who were already going to vote for her anyway so they really didn't count. You'd toss that out immediately, yet eagerly grab on to the opposite conclusion. You are nothing if not consistent in your inconsistency though!
Edited, Jul 11th 2016 6:44pm by gbaji