Lost in the Shuffle: Two Key Nuggets Missed in Yesterday’s Hubbub

News comes at you fast these days – so fast, in fact, that stories which might have been considered bombshells in years gone by often shoot right past with barely a blip, lost in the shuffle of hyperbolic headlines and overblown outrage.  Such was the case with two little tidbits from yesterday’s news cycle.

First, as Newsbusters astutely pointed out, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart conveniently omitted mention in his column regarding Congresswoman Maxine Waters of her rather stunning admission that she has not seen anything in intelligence briefings to back up the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians:

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I’ve got to ask you, because you leveled a whole lot of accusations out there about collusions and hacking and all of that. Have you seen anything, either through the intelligence briefings, anything to back up any of the accusations that you’ve made?

MAXINE WATERS: First of all, don’t forget that all of our intelligence agencies say, yes, they have the documentation that they did the hacking on the DNC and on some of us.

CAPEHART: But the collusion, though?

WATERS: No, we have not. That’s why investigations are so important, to drill down and to connect those dots and to get the facts. What we have is a lot of smoke that causes us to want to know more about what has happened. Why is it there are so many people around him are connected to oil? Why is it that Michael Flynn, who evidently has a great relationship with Putin, who has received payments for so-called speeches and who’s spent a lot of time in Russia and was accused of talking about sanctions, he lied about it and he got caught?

Well, that’s funny. Considering Waters’ impeachment rallying cry. As RedState’s Susan Wright noted just last week, Waters has become the darling of the MTV set due, in large part, to her vocal opposition to Donald Trump and his administration.

So…she’s repeatedly called for Trump’s head and she’s just certain there’s fire in all the smoke, but despite the ongoing investigation and the scrutiny directed toward it, she has yet to see any actual evidence of it?  Seems like not much has changed in the two months since Senator Chris Coons acknowledged to Chris Wallace that he’d seen no hard evidence of collusion either.

But that’s okay – we’ll just keep banging the impeachment drum on this hunch!  (Just to be clear, if there is fire behind the smoke, then I hope it gets blown wide open for all the world to see. But at this point, it sure seems an awful lot like “alternative facts” aren’t just for the Trump set anymore.)

Second, the story which looked to be yesterday’s BIG NEWS before Comey got chopped was the clarification letter issued by the FBI regarding his May 3^rd testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  In the letter, Assistant Director for the Office of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower stated:

“Investigators ultimately determined that two e-mail chains containing classified information were manually forward to Mr. Weiner’s account.  Ten additional chains containing classified information also were found on the laptop computer as a result of backup activity.  All twelve chains previously had been reviewed by investigators.”

The buzz surrounding the letter was that Comey had bungled his testimony and caused some confusion regarding the number of classified e-mails forwarded by Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Anthony Weiner’s laptop.  His testimony that she had, “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information,” while technically correct, may have been a bit misleading.  (“Bad Comey! What a screwup! What a horrible man! Burn him! Wait…you FIRED him?! Oh. My. Gawd!!!”)

In fact, as Mr. Brower’s letter noted, there were only two e-mail chains containing classified information which appeared to have been manually forwarded – i.e., deliberately sent – and ten chains containing classified information which appeared to have been “forwarded” via backup.  They weren’t “new” in that they had already been reviewed by investigators.  But take a moment to let that sink in – we’re still talking about twelve e-mails containing classified information which were forwarded to Anthony Weiner’s laptop – two of them intentionally!

I’m old enough that I remember when one such e-mail would have been deemed a big deal. And had it been forwarded by or on behalf of a Republican? Capital offense!

So, to review, two things we learned/confirmed yesterday: 1) Maxine “Impeach him yesterday!” Waters acknowledges she has yet to see any actual evidence of an impeachable offense; and 2) Classified material definitely was forwarded from Hillary Clinton’s e-mail account(s) to Anthony Weiner’s laptop. But there’s nothing to see here…move along.

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