Year: 2016

Yesterday I pressed the point of the wildly dissimilar campaign coverage of Trump and Clinton, particularly the continuing saturation coverage of Clinton 'scandals' in which she's actually being exonerated and virtually no coverage of a pretty cut and dry pay-for-play story with Trump, his foundation and his efforts to protect himself legally from the fallout of the exposure of his real estate seminar scam business, 'Trump University'. But the case with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is more serious than that. We usually use the phrase 'pay-to-play' when talking about money for access, money for government contracts or friendly interventions in the legislative process. The Trump-Bondi case looks like money in exchange for killing an investigation and possible lawsuit against Trump. It would be like Hillary Clinton making a cash payment to Loretta Lynch or James Comey during the email probe. First, a small point: In the context of chatting about this on Twitter and with colleagues, I took the step of searching The New York Times website to see how much they'd written on the Trump-Bondi story. It first got attention in March and then again in June. So I figured at least a couple short mentions. It turns out the Times, at least according to a full search of "Trump University" and "Pam Bondi", has literally never published anything on the topic at all. [...] The AG's office was investigating Trump University and considering joining a lawsuit with other Attorneys General. Bondi asked Trump for money. Trump sent money. The investigation ended. The arrival of Trump's check just four days after her office publicly announced their inquiry tells quite a tale. [...] That seems like a real problem.

Have you read the entire FBI report on their investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices? No? Well, I have, because that's the kind of professional I am. And I'm going to provide you with all the most interesting excerpts. [...] If you read the entire report, you'll find bits and pieces that might show poor judgment on Hillary's part. The initial decision to use one email device is the obvious one, something that Hillary has acknowledged repeatedly. Another—maybe—is her staff's view of what was safe to send over unclassified email. But this is very fuzzy. It could be that her staff knew exactly what it was doing, and it's the subsequent classification authorities who are wrong. This is something that it's impossible to judge since none of us will ever see the emails in question. That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn't prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She's told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn't take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN's end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there's no evidence that her server was ever hacked. There's remarkably little here. If you nonetheless believe that it's enough to disqualify Hillary from the presidency, that's fine. I have no quarrel with you. But if the FBI is to be believed, it's all pretty small beer.