Hillary Was NOT Lying. Clinton's emails

Many Republicans are in an uproar about FBI Director James Comey's decision not to indict anybody in the private email "scandal".  But they are very pleased that Comey's editorializing sounded pretty negative towards Clinton.  They are jumping on Clinton as "incompetent" at the same time they applaud Donald Trump, a man with the common sense of a flea; a man who is happy to broadcast his racism and xenophobia all over the Internet via Twitter.  (If the man can't keep his mouth shut on Twitter, how can he handle any kind of government discretion at all?)

But what did Comey really say about Hillary Clinton?  Let's read between the lines and break down his statements, some of which sound like a trial in the court of public opinion at the same time he confesses that there is nothing indictable in Hillary Clinton's actions.

From the FBI's statement found HERE:

Comey discusses how the FBI determined whether or not a given email contained classified information: 

Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).

Note that Comey does not say that any of these emails were MARKED as classified; he said that they were sent to the OWNERS of that information and the OWNERS were asked to make a DETERMINATION as to whether or not the email contained classified information at the time it was sent or received. 

So the OWNERS are in effect asked to determine if these emails are marked as classified AFTER THE FACT... perhaps YEARS after the emails were sent. 

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.

Again, the OWNERS determined AFTER THE FACT that 110 emails in 52 email chains DID contain classified information at the time they were sent or received, but it is NOT CLEAR that any of these 110 emails were MARKED as classified at the time they were sent or received.

Does anybody not understand the difference?

With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”

Again, Comey does not say if any of those three emails were MARKED as classified at the time they were sent or received. He says that the "owning" agency CLAIMED they were classified... which is not the same as saying they were marked as classified.

Finally, Comey tosses out a condemnation with no background:

There is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

Who is "they"? Does "they" include Clinton herself? Not clear. Again, was the supposedly highly classified information MARKED as classified at the time it was sent or received?  And, again, who is determining that "they" were actually handling very sensitive, highly classified information?

Just trash, and we should expect more from the FBI and its director; it's REPUBLICAN director I should add, a man who apparently financially supported the Republican candidates for President in the last two elections.