Franken Calls for Hearings: on Alleged Violations of the Hatch Act and the evidence for the Republican politicizing of the FBI to alter election outcomes for Trump

Our Senator, the excellent Al Franken, is calling for hearings on FBI director Comey.  The issue will be the application of the Hatch Act. Well there should be hearings, there is apparent corruption in the form of politicization of the FBI taking place to alter election outcomes.  From CNN:

"I think that there should be hearings, and I'm certain there will be hearings in the Judiciary Committee on this matter," the Franken told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."

"Even more troubling is what we've heard from sort of the rogue elements of the FBI seemingly tipping off former (New York City) Mayor (Rudy) Giuliani that something was up. I mean, it just seems like -- that's not the FBI," Franken said.

"We will have hearings. I'm sure that FBI Director Comey will be before us," Franken said. "I think he should be able to answer questions about this, and he should be able to control the FBI."

The Daily Beast did an excellent job of documenting the money and other ways, not just the Hillary Clinton email issues, where current and former members of the FBI was allegedly acting for political purposes on behalf of Republicans, and ties the New York office of the FBI to the Trump campaign.  It is too long to post here, but well worth a read.  It names not only Rudely Guiliani, who ran his mouth far too much about his secret surprises that sound very much like he meant the Huma Abedin emails, the article mentioned Jim Kallman as well.  Read it here.

I was disappointed and took exception to the speech Comey made about Hillary Clinton back in July of this year.  It deviated significantly from the usual FBI policy regarding investigation results.  I thought it showed tremendous bias, particularly as subsequent information including from the FBI has further supported Clinton, including the statements in September and this past weekend.

Too bad for the Trumpanzees, too bad for the GOP.  What should never have been a controversy has been resolved in favor of Hillary Clinton.

As I noted at the time there was no 'new controversy'; the emails were duplicates, without any sensitive much less classified information.  I would argue that in advance of any findings of wrong doing FBI director Comey should never have announced the discovery of emails on a computer (or at a minimum have said there was no evidence these e-mails meant anything at all but were being looked at as part of a thorough judicial review process).

The big question of course remains, will the news reach voters in time.  Does good news ever reach as many people as news of scandal? No, not usually; and it appears harm was done by the "leak" of this non-scandal.

Rudely Guiliani, a man who has made a lot of dishonest statements in his day, including dozens about this election, appears to have been telling the truth when he ran his mouth about what appears to be the FBI statements by and letter from Comey.  Now he tries to walk that back, but the record of his statements are all too clear.

We saw the right-wing try to corrupt and suborn and subvert democracy, honest representative government, under Dubya, with the attempt to politicize the DOJ.  The GOP and specifically the Trump campaign, and the Trump charity money, has apparently been more successful in doing that with the FBI.