"If she or anyone else had wanted to document the claim that Obama said to proceed 'by the book,' the appropriate course would have been an official memo that copied others who were present and would have gone into the file... [S]he was C’ing her own A. Rice was nervous about the fact that, at the president’s direction, she had failed to 'share information fully as it relates to Russia' with President Trump’s incoming national security team. This violated longstanding American tradition. Outgoing administrations have always cooperated in the transition to a new administration, whether of the same or the opposing party, especially on matters relating to national security.... CYA memos are rarely a good idea. Most often, they reveal what the author was trying to conceal...."
From "Why Susan Rice Wrote and Email to Herself" by John Hinderaker at Power Line.
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It was a CYOA memo.
She knew her own ass was on the line. The late send is the tell. Hinderaker is right.
Of course, it also hints at other shenanigans by the O crew to spy on and delegitimate Trump & Co.
CYA memos are rarely a good idea. Most often, they reveal what the author was trying to conceal...
True that! The longer I look at Barack Obama and the people with whom he surrounded himself, the deeper my level of contempt.
I wouldn't be surprised if, Comey-like, she starts tweeting passages from the Boy Scouts Handbook
Think about you, email myself: Divinyls.
-6W
Good SOP in many applications, but this was CYA, well beyond creating a "record".
#SheKnew #SheProgressed and prepared for a reckoning.
I can only hope that the whole story comes out. It really seems like parts of Obama's team were corrupt to the extreme.
For her to say that P.O. warned them to do the investigation "by the book" on Jan. 5 is to suggest that prior to that, they may not have behaved by the book.
Where's cruel neutrality and your obsession with language?
Hinderaker writes that: "Rice was nervous", and states his read on her intentions as fact.
You routinely fisk Left people when they do that about Trump. Why present this without such comment?
"For her to say that P.O. warned them to do the investigation "by the book" on Jan. 5 is to suggest that prior to that, they may not have behaved by the book."
{ nods head }
I often think it's a good thing people like Rice are such mendacious twits rather than brilliant villains.
Their asses are stuck to each other. She was covering for both.
When I read Hinderaker's post last night, I thought "he's got it."
Here's her response (through her attorney) that the email did not involve the Steele dossier:
“The discussion that Ambassador Rice documented did not involve the so-called Steele dossier,” said Ruemmler in a statement. “Any insinuation that Ambassador Rice’s actions in this matter were inappropriate is yet another attempt to distract and deflect from the importance of the ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in America’s democracy.” Susan Rice Lawyer
Notice that Hinderacker doesn't believe it is the dossier - he thinks it involves her failure to cooperate with the incoming Flynn.
Someone at power line noted that she sent this email after Trump was sworn in, so this email could not be protected due to executive privilege. Things are getting curioser and curioser.
OGWiseman:
Physician, heal thyself.
You tell us what reason Rice had for writing this memo just after the new president had taken the Oath of Office.
Meeting minutes, Minute Rice: hot water.
-6W
“The discussion that Ambassador Rice documented did not involve the so-called Steele dossier,”
Classic head fake. No one said it did.
Libs will immediately take this as exculpatory however, and post it all over the internet to counter the "right-wing lies".
I am Six Words or Less said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hey! That's eight words!
Ann takes the opportunity to impress the choir with her reading of Powerline. Look forward to her recap of Breitbart and the Duran's coverage.
Blogger John Pickering said...
Ann takes the opportunity to impress the choir with her reading of Powerline. Look forward to her recap of Breitbart and the Duran's coverage.
Have fun defending Obama after he is indicted.
Democrats are 100% supportive of spying on political opponents.
John Pickering blames the messenger.
Easier than confronting the facts.
“Have fun defending Obama after he is indicted.”
Obama is very likely the one person who couldn’t be indicted here. Rice, yes. Obama no.
"You tell us what reason Rice had for writing this memo just after the new president had taken the Oath of Office."
revenge - best served after the President's term was cold.
She stuck a knife in Obama. There were zero records of that meeting until she wrote the email. The emails proves Obama and Comey liars.
Bruce Hayden:
Conspiracy to deprive people of civil rights is a crime.
Hillary lost. They knew there was a chance that all the dominoes they set up were going to fall.....she knew and was covering for all of them.
Have fun defending Obama after he is indicted.
If even unpopular, unlikeable Hillary can flagrantly break Federal laws with immunity, I can imagine no scenario under which Barack Obama is indicted. Democrats just aren't held to the same standards.
When Obama told Comey to go by the book, he was holding up either Rules for Radicals or a Tijuana Bible.
Who is going to believe Rice about anything. She is a confirmed liar.
Was she maybe planning to write a book?
Buy the book.
Buy the book.
Ann takes the opportunity to impress the choir with her reading of Powerline. Look forward to her recap of Breitbart and the Duran's coverage.
It is very clear from this, the leftists are unable to use facts to counter the conclusions reached.
The only thing left is weak attempts to smear the source, not rebut the facts
”Rice was nervous about the fact that, at the president’s direction, she had failed to 'share information fully as it relates to Russia' with President Trump’s incoming national security team.”
She was certainly nervous about something.
Rice is another one of the odious people that surround the Clintons, like Pigpen's cloud of dirt. That repugnant miasma was alone enough to keep me from voting for her- these people should never be allowed near the corridors of power.j
Susan Rice is the evil leftwing twin of Condoleeza Rice. Kinda like bearded Mr. Spock in a parallel Star Trek world.
“Bruce Hayden:
Conspiracy to deprive people of civil rights is a crime.”
Several reasons to question whether Obama could, or would be tried for crimes committed while President:
- sole remedy for a President violating the law while President is impeachment. Partially, this is a result of his Executive power. Partly, as a result of his Pardon power and, in any case, necessary for him to do his job
- It would be horrible precedent for one President to prosecute his predecessor for crimes while the latter was President. We take pride in our orderly successions to power after elections. Expect this to be no longer the case for some less scrupulous Presidents, facing jail if they give up power.
- Similarly, while it is becom8ng ever more evident that Crooked Hillary cheated to try to win election, and some of that might have been abetted by Obama, I expect that it would become much more blatant and excessive, if the outgoing President faced imprisonment if the candidate from the other party won.
Eh. Obama used Clinton's server. Abedin committed perjury. Clinton's campaign destroyed subpoenaed evidence.
There's no rational reason to believe anyone will be called to account.
Here’s what I think happened. Rice was in her office going through paperwork and emails on her last day. She found this email unsent in her draft email folder. What to do? If she deletes it, there’s every reason to think the server may have saved a copy, and then it looks like she’s trying to hide it. If she leaves it in her draft email folder. that raises the question of why she didn’t send it. So she finished it and sent it.
”We take pride in our orderly successions to power after elections.”
That’s what so odious about all this “Russian” crap. It’s a naked attempt to overturn an election.
"It would be horrible precedent for one President to prosecute his predecessor for crimes while the latter was President. We take pride in our orderly successions to power after elections. Expect this to be no longer the case for some less scrupulous Presidents, facing jail if they give up power."
I agree, but what are the limits? Can POTUS do ANYTHING, no matter how vile or despicable a violation of law it is, and know they will not be held accountable? I think you would agree that there must be a line which cannot be crossed without consequences. The real question is where that line is. I'm not so sure that Obama himself crossed it, but I think he could see it from where he was. I also think that based upon what we know for a fact right now that this is the greatest scandal this country has ever had inflicted on it, by far. Watergate was shoplifting lollipops compared to this. We've finally reached a point where the "-gate" suffix for scandals will fade away.
Obama's already been president for ALMOST 8 full years and he still has to tell his most senior aides and longtime agency heads that he wants them to proceed by the book?
Why do they need to be told?
Why does Obama think they need to be told?
Is there any record of Rice writing down that Obama told people to do things by the book at other meetings? Or is this the only time among all of Rice's meeting documents.
Why is the National Security Advisor playing secretary?
Crimso said...
(Bruce said)
"It would be horrible precedent for one President to prosecute his predecessor for crimes while the latter was President. We take pride in our orderly successions to power after elections. Expect this to be no longer the case for some less scrupulous Presidents, facing jail if they give up power."
Pretty extra double super horrible precedent for all this to be done, to be revealed, and to be ignored, I think. And the ratchet only works one way, a R would never get your quality of mercy from a D.
Blogger Left Bank of the Charles said...
Here’s what I think happened.
Muahahahahahahahahahaa! Did it hurt to write that? It was painful to read.
”Why is the National Security Advisor playing secretary?”
The same reason the UN ambassador was playing secret agent.
Rice eventually will sing under oath. Obama will not be charged never mind indicted but the disclosures will permanently tarnish him. As mentioned up thread it is not a good idea for the current president to prosecute his immediate predecessor. However in Bill Clinton's case, his mafia like meeting with then AG Lynch doesn't garner him the same deference due to Obama in this instance.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
Here’s what I think happened. Rice was in her office going through paperwork and emails on her last day. She found this email unsent in her draft email folder. What to do? If she deletes it, there’s every reason to think the server may have saved a copy, and then it looks like she’s trying to hide it. If she leaves it in her draft email folder. that raises the question of why she didn’t send it. So she finished it and sent it.
The problem, though, is she sent the email to herself. If it had been sitting unsent in her draft email folder and she was just cleaning things up on her last day, she could have just left it there. She didn't need to actually go to the effort to send it to herself. If someone later said "why was this unsent email in your draft folder" she could have said it was just a memo to herself memorializing the meeting. To me, the fact that she took the time to send it to herself only after Trump's inauguration means that she wanted someone to find it; regardless of the reason she wanted someone to find it, it was more than just tidying up unsent draft emails.
”She didn't need to actually go to the effort to send it to herself.”
Yeah. She already had it.
She found this email unsent in her draft email folder. What to do?
As a Democrat? There are lots of options:
* keep it on a private server and delete bc it's "private"
* send email under a pseudonym instead of your real name
* destroy the device that stores the data with a hammer
* entrust the email and server to family of foreign nationals; cover for them when they steal everything and flee to Pakistan
* wipe the hard drives and backup tapes even if they're under subpoena
* explain that yes, it happened under my name, but it wasn't me
All she has to do is remember that the law exists to constrain people who are not on her side.
In a different sort of country, one in which the law is applied equally to everyone, she'd be in trouble. But as the Democrats like to remind us, that's not who we are.
Let me add that they probably not prosecute Crooked Hillary for her private email server. Absolutely nothing illegal for AG Lynch to decide not to prosecute, nor for Obama to say not to prosecute. They had pretty much unfettered prosecutorial discretion, and Obama’s statement about Cokked’s culpability could arguably been just that - his use of that prosecutorial discretion. Also, as with Obama, prosecuting the losing Presidential candidate would be bad precedent, for similar reasons. Prosecuting Bill though would be a different situation. He hasn’t been President for 17 years now. And her minions should also be fair game.
But I don’t see anyone successfully prosecuting either Lynch or Bill Clinton for their meeting in Phoenix. It would ptrovide a serious proof problem. Quid pro quo might be illegal, but that would mean that both would be liable, and could, therefore, refuse to testify based on the 5th Amdt. Sure, one could get immunity, but would that be worth it? Probably not.
Rice wrote the email as she was going out the door. She didn't do it to actually remind herself of anything. She did it to leave documentation that everything was on the up and up. Not that it was.
What gets me is that she did it on the last day of her job. Reports emphasized that it was the day of the Trump inaugural. No, it was the day that the NY Times wrote the first story that the feds were after the Trump campaign for contacts with Russia.
Rice read that story and realized it could lead some to say that Obama had his partisan hand in the effort. The story explicitly said that the White House was following the investigation.
Rice wrote the email going out the door as proof that Obama wasn't weaponizing the federal government. I have a bridge to sell.
It’s pretty funny, actually.
“I’ll just write ‘I did nothing wrong’ on this piece of paper and leave it where someone will find it”.
Brilliant!
I think the meeting, if it did occur, is worse than Hinderaker describes it. Remember, on January 5th 2017, there were two groups of people attending- those who would depart on January 20th, and those who were staying on- in particular here are James Comey and Sally Yates who were staying on. If Rice's memo-to-self is close to factual, this meeting was where Comey and Yates got their instructions from the outgoing president to keep Trump and his appointees in the dark after January 20th. "By the book" is CYA, of course- but keeping the incoming administration in the dark on this is sinister, and it could explain a lot of the odd things that went on until both Yates and Comey were fired. Rice was writing herself a get-out-of-jail card by putting it all on Obama and those who continued on in the DoJ and the intelligence agencies.
I stand by the advice I put forth a few days before Trump took the oath of office- his very first order after the oath should have been to fire every single person appointed by Obama, and to put every appointee who transferred into the civil service in empty rooms with no further access to any data at all. Trump was like Indiana Jones falling into the crypt with the Ark- nothing but vipers all around.
I could be wrong but Rice strikes me as an unwilling co-conspirator for both Obama and Clinton. Seems like a great candidate for an immunity deal.
from Andrew McCarthy at National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456435/rice-email-reveals-plan-dont-tell-trump-hes-being-investigated
What was Susan Rice doing at the White House after Trump was sworn in? What else was she doing besides sending emails, and who else was there?
By sending the email to herself at 1215PM on 20 JAN 2017 it would be part of the Trump Aministration and not part of the Obama administration. It seems to me that this would prevent Obama from being able to use Executive Privilege to shield the email from discovery AND it prevents the National Archives from keeping the memo help up as part of the Obama Library.
It seemed to me that she wanted this email to be discoverable. I could think of no other reason for her to send it to herself.
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