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[MHWilliams]

Brian McCauley, the FBI agent involved in the alleged "quid pro quo" discussion, has spoken with the Washington Post.

Then Kennedy, a longtime State Department official, explained what he wanted in return: “There’s an email. I don’t believe it has to be classified.”

The email was from Hillary Clinton’s private server, and Kennedy wanted the FBI to change its determination that it contained classified information. McCauley and others ultimately rejected the request, but the interaction — which McCauley said lasted just minutes over maybe two conversations — has become the latest focal point of the bitter 2016 presidential campaign.

Discussions on whether information in classified or not are rather normal. In this case, all the emails were previously unclassified and in its review the FBI decided one was classified now.

According to a summary of his interview, the international operations division had been trying to reach Kennedy on an unrelated matter for some months, and Kennedy called back wanting to talk about Clinton’s emails. Kennedy, the international operations official told investigators, said he wanted to change the classification of a Clinton email that was causing problems. The State Department was reviewing the emails for release under the Freedom of Information Act. It had submitted some emails — all of which were marked unclassified — for the FBI to review, and the FBI determined that at least one appeared to contain classified information.

FBI agent asks Kennedy for a favor.

In an hour-long interview with The Washington Post, his first public comments on the matter, McCauley acknowledged that he offered to do a favor in exchange for another favor, but before he had any inkling of what Kennedy wanted. The FBI and the State Department have denied that McCauley and Kennedy ever engaged in a “quid pro quo.”

FBI agent takes a look at the email and asks a colleague about it. After more detail is given, FBI agent says there's nothing to be done. Email becomes classified.

McCauley, who has since retired from the FBI, said he asked Kennedy to send him the email in question and then inquired with another bureau official about it because he had only a partial understanding of the request. McCauley said that when he learned the missive concerned the attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, he told Kennedy he could not help him.

“I said, ‘Absolutely not, I can’t help you,’ and he took that, and it was fine,” said McCauley, who was the FBI’s deputy assistant director for international operations from 2012 to 2015.

In a statement released by the State Department, Kennedy said he reached out because he wanted “to better understand a proposal the FBI had made to upgrade one of former Secretary Clinton’s emails prior to its public release,” and that McCauley raised the topic of FBI slots in Iraq “as an entirely separate matter.” He said he could not speak to McCauley’s recollection but insisted: “There was no quid pro quo, nor was there any bargaining. At no point in our conversation was I under the impression we were bargaining.”

Also, the email in question: Agencies Clashed on Classification of Clinton Email, Inquiry Shows

The email they were struggling over was sent on Nov. 18, 2012, by William V. Roebuck, who oversaw the department’s office for North Africa and is now the American ambassador to Bahrain.

In it, he notified five other officials of the arrest of “several people” in Libya on suspicion they were connected with the Benghazi attack two months earlier. It was subsequently forwarded to senior officials at the department and then to Mrs. Clinton on her private email account by her deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, with a short “f.y.i.” note.

The question is: do you feel Kennedy was within his rights to call and ask multiple FBI officials about the email in question? This is "the pressure" mentioned. Is that a problem or do you feel that's untoward?

 

[Blader]

What are you even talking about? That's exactly what happened. Not only that, but it's the title of the article. The State Department pressured the FBI to declassify Hillary's email and after some back and forth, the FBI ultimately said no.

See, maybe I am confused, because you lead with State pressuring the FBI to declassify this single email (the declassification of which clearly would've absolved Hillary of any wrongdoing, of course), then flip to say it was actually the FBI that was initiating this, but now you're back to State doing the pressuring again. Maybe this is a personal language tick of mine, but when I read X pressured Y, that indicates to me X is doing the initiating. But from what I've seen, you've gone and back forth in State pressuring the FBI or FBI pressuring State (I don't pressure can be mutual?), which is tripping me up in who you're actually casting blame on here.

Now I don't know whether you're intentionally misinterpreting things just to be difficult, or whether you're actually confused. Either way, several articles are worded in an almost identical fashion.

-Bloomberg: Pressure Cited Against Marking Clinton E-Mails Classified
-Guardian: Clinton emails: records suggest state department pressured FBI
-Newsweek (citing Reuters): HILLARY CLINTON'S EMAILS: DID THE STATE DEPARTMENT PRESSURE THE FBI OVER CLASSIFICATION? (First line: A senior State Department official sought to shield Hillary Clinton last year by pressuring the FBI to drop its insistence that an email on the private server she used while secretary of state contained classified information)

So if you're not understanding these stories either, then I really can't help. If you want articles to be written a certain way to suggest something YOU want it to suggest, then that's your problem. Not mine and not the news organizations.

Citing multiple news outlets with similar framing of the story doesn't mean a thing to me when my problem is that the media has broadly mishandled the story in the first place.

This is a straw man. I never said the two agencies were colluding to protect Hillary. Just that the State Department was trying to protect Hillary. Not the FBI.

If information suggests collusion, then I'll make that claim.

Ok. But the rest of what I wrote and you quoted there still stands.

 

[Suikoguy]

Stop helping Trump's bullshit by pushing your own.

Hillary deserve criticism... when it's warranted and there is actual evidence she did something wrong. Not the "appearance" or "possibility" of wrongdoing.

 

[KHarvey16]

"It wasn’t just FBI officials who raised such concerns." And the concerns were that the State Department had an agenda to protect their interest and Clinton's.

So in playing devil's advocate, you're completely ignoring the context of what kind of pressure is being applied. It's not just "any disagreement," as you disingenuously noted.

It says:

"It wasn’t just FBI officials who raised such concerns. Within the State Department, an unidentified employee told a similar story about how employees felt pressured to not mark as classified Mrs. Clinton’s emails related to the Benghazi attacks, according to the newly released documents."

Not qualitative. Was that the proper decision or not? It doesn't say.

Moving to the FBI source, he or she assigns a motivation but doesn't say if that motivation was articulated or simply assumed by them. Again if this person disagreed with the pressure they can assign whatever nefarious motivation to it they'd like.

 

[PsihoPerihelion]

One of these days, MIMIC. One of these days...

He's not the one in this thread being obnoxious.

Yup, you are.

 

[RustyNails]

So the FBI agent asked for the favor before he knew what Kennedy wanted? Well that sounds better. I believe him (for many reasons).

I definitely don't believe Kennedy about his motivations not being political, though (again...for many reason).



From the Wall Street Journal:

Did you stop reading after my first line. All this "pressure" resulted in one guy from State Dept attempting to unclassify a retroactively classified email with an FBI agent, and failing miserably. Where's the fucking scandal I ask.

 

[digdug2k]

Weird. The interviews read like there were actually two people involved in calls like this, but they're redacted so much its hard to understand. Around page 25 of this:
https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/hillary-r.-clinton-part-04-of-04/view

If you hate Hillary and want to more, there's also some DHS agent who also really fucking hates her interviewed on page 43.

 

[MIMIC]

It says:

"It wasn’t just FBI officials who raised such concerns. Within the State Department, an unidentified employee told a similar story about how employees felt pressured to not mark as classified Mrs. Clinton’s emails related to the Benghazi attacks, according to the newly released documents."

Not qualitative. Was that the proper decision or not? It doesn't say.

Moving to the FBI source, he or she assigns a motivation but doesn't say if that motivation was articulated or simply assumed by them. Again if this person disagreed with the pressure they can assign whatever nefarious motivation to it they'd like.

I don't know what you're trying to do, but this claim wasn't litigated before a judge or anything -- if that's the type of "proof" you're looking for. I'm just going by what's on the record and accounts of what happened. And the on record accounts suggest that this was done to protect Hillary. Why are you even questioning them? Do you know something they don't, or are you simply arguing for the sake of arguing?

Did you stop reading after my first line. All this "pressure" resulted in one guy from State Dept attempting to unclassify a retroactively classified email with an FBI agent, and failing miserably. Where's the fucking scandal I ask.

Like I said, the record maintains that the effort was made to protect her....and that this wasn't a substantive dispute regarding whether the information actually deserved to be declassified.

 

[Nafai1123]

If only Hillary was as transparent as MIMIC...

 

[KHarvey16]

I don't know what you're trying to do, but this claim wasn't litigated before a judge or anything -- if that's the type of "proof" you're looking for. I'm just going by what's on the record and accounts of what happened. And the on record accounts suggest that this was done to protect Hillary. Why are you even questioning them? Do you know something they don't, or are you simply arguing for the sake of arguing?

I'm making the point that an anonymous opinion should be treated as such, even if it comes from an employee of the FBI.

The State Department source never said why pressure was applied so it's useless for demonstrating bias.

 

[psrock]

It's quite fair to questioned the validity of these situations, but there is such a yearning for a big scandal right now towards Hillary, it's getting crazy.

 

[MIMIC]

Trump calls this Watergate: http://time.com/4534375/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-emails-watergate/

I'm making the point that an anonymous opinion should be treated as such, even if it comes from an employee of the FBI.

The State Department source never said why pressure was applied so it's useless for demonstrating bias.

The FBI agent wasn't anonymous; his name was redacted.

As for the State Department source, I don't think they have to explicitly say "why" they're feeling pressured. It's obvious, considering the circumstances. From the Guardian:

Other officials have made similar complaints to investigators of unusual pressure not to mark information as classified in Clinton’s emails last year. According to earlier documents the FBI released in September, at least one official at the state department told investigators that there was pressure by senior department officials to mislead the public about the presence of classified information in Clinton’s emails ahead of their public release.

I highly doubt there's any other reasonable reason for why they'd be pressured to mislead the public.

 

[QuantumZebra]

Did you stop reading after my first line. All this "pressure" resulted in one guy from State Dept attempting to unclassify a retroactively classified email with an FBI agent, and failing miserably. Where's the fucking scandal I ask.

It's all there!! Don't you see it!!?

 

[Omegasquash]

It's quite fair to questioned the validity of these situations, but there is such a yearning for a big scandal right now towards Hillary, it's coming off as desperate.

FTFY

 

[MIMIC]

Did you stop reading after my first line. All this "pressure" resulted in one guy from State Dept attempting to unclassify a retroactively classified email with an FBI agent, and failing miserably. Where's the fucking scandal I ask.

Why does it have to be a scandal? It's news.

I know certain people (Clinton supporters) are sick of hearing about these types of things, but no is forcing them to take part in the discussion.