President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey, who recently led multiple investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State and Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US presidential election. Trump acted on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who argued Comey caused “substantial damage” to the FBI’s reputation and credibility over the past year.
This brings us back to Clinton’s emails.
“I cannot defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken,” Rosenstein writes.
He’s talking specifically about Comey’s press conference on July 5th, 2016, when he announced the FBI would not bring charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State, even though he said her actions were “extremely careless.” Rosenstein argues — and Trump and Sessions clearly agree — that Comey should not have closed the case without consulting members of the Justice Department.
“Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation,” Rosenstein continues. “Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously. The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial.”
Developing…
source: engadget.com by Jessica Conditt
The Fat Cat Collective 