[fazzone]

I thought your thesis was that there was no actual collusion between politicians and the media, just aligned incentives. I agree with your point about the incentives, but don't you agree that this email shows that there was in fact actual collusion going on as well? The evidence seems pretty compelling to me.

[spaceheeder]

The politico guy being a self-confessed hack just reeks of the same problems we would expect to arise from a chaotic system driven by short term interests. The notion that the media is cooperating with Clinton's campaign in order to make her win is contraindicated by the attention they paid to the Benghazi hearings and the email server. The Access Hollywood video simply emerged after those things stopped being news. They've taken priority over Podesta's emails because a) sex, and b) if you're not already a Trump supporter or a Bernie-or-Buster, they're mostly a nothing-burger.

[pdx]

They were very silent on the entire email server business. Did they mention it reluctantly a few times? Sure. But they failed to mention a million other things that you probably are ignorant of, if you rely on them for information.

They did not mention that the deleted emails were deleted AFTER the subpoena was issued [1]. They did not mention that Clinton aides carried hammers with them to destroy phones in case the phones were demanded by the FBI. They did not comment on the number of "I don't remember" answers that Clinton gave to the FBI. They did not comment on the fact that Clinton claimed to not remember what a "c" meant on documents. They did not comment on the fact that Clinton claimed to have no memory of receiving training on the handling of sensitive documents. I could go on for pages, but I have work to do.

Suffice it to say that the media have been complicit in matters dating back years before Podesta emails, not days or weeks. Your contention that they just aren't reporting the Podesta emails because they're boring (they are not, they are dynamite) is false on it's face.

[1] http://www.empirestatenews.net/2016/10/16/worse-than-waterga...

[kbenson]

> They did not mention that the deleted emails were deleted AFTER the subpoena was issued

Yet they were requested to be deleted long before the subpoena was issued[1]. Specifically:

In December 2014, after the work-related emails were preserved, Mills told Platte River Networks – which at the time was managing Clinton’s private server – that Clinton “decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days.” Mills instructed the PRN employee — who was not identified — “to modify the e-mail retention policy” on Clinton’s server “to reflect this change,” the FBI said.

But the PRN employee mistakenly did not make the retention-policy change and did not delete the old emails until sometime between March 25 and March 31, even though Mills had sent PRN an email on March 9 that mentioned the committee’s request to preserve emails.

The PRN employee who deleted the emails was a recipient of Mills’ message. However, the employee told the FBI that “he had an ‘oh shit’ moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server containing Clinton’s e-mails.”

Read into that whatever you want, but the fact that it's not really true might have something to do with why it isn't being reported on.

> They did not mention that Clinton aides carried hammers with them to destroy phones in case the phones were demanded by the FBI.

That's not what happened[2]. As secretary of defense, she had old phones after she switched destroyed.

> I could go on for pages, but I have work to do.

You could substantiate your statements with sources. You could have done that from the beginning. Perhaps if you looked for less biased and more fact based sources rather than blogs that feature a giant picture of Clinton snapped in an inopportune moment with giant neon green letters saying "LOL!" photoshopped on.

> Your contention that they just aren't reporting the Podesta emails because they're boring (they are not, they are dynamite) is false on it's face.

Well, I've been following and reading reporting on the emails. It's all pretty ho-hum and what I would expect from any campaign so far. Of course, it's easy to taking boring things out of context and imagine salacious components to them. That doesn't make them any more damning in reality though.

1: http://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/the-fbi-files-on-clintons-e...

2: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-hillary-clinton-aide-dest...

[r_smart]

Can I just point out as per source 1, that as a public employee, she doesn't just get to decide to destroy records? Further, she claims she wanted them deleted then, but never clarifies if they were deleted at the time of request or when the subpoena arrived.

Further, she didn't just delete emails, she went and wiped the hard drive. Perhaps just good data practice, but, when it comes to politics and public servants I'm far too cynical to believe that. Finally, she determined what was considered private and deleted it. Do you really trust that? Do you really think that things that were work related wouldn't get swept up with the personal stuff while they were going about deleting things?

Either way, I've heard rumors they've been recovered, so disagreements there could be resolved in due time. If not, we can argue then :)

[kbenson]

> Can I just point out as per source 1, that as a public employee, she doesn't just get to decide to destroy records?

If they are personal records, she does, because they are her personal property, and are covered under her fourth amendment rights until they are specifically requested by subpoena. I'm not sure if the subpoena requested all email, or work email. The question really being asked usually is whether they were all actually personal emails or not.

I think it's worth noting that her behavior with regard to deleting personal emails is not out of what would be considered normal for someone completely innocent. If I knew I was innocent but was under subpoena for work email and I had personal email that I would really rather not get out, I might delete them as well before turning everything over. Unless specififed not to, there's nothing illegal with doing so, as long as you can whether any flak if people want to cast doubt.

It's worth noting the Podesta emails address this[1]. One of the interesting thing about the Podesta email summaries I've seen is how they don't really corroborate any of the accusations we've seen.

> Further, she claims she wanted them deleted then, but never clarifies if they were deleted at the time of request or when the subpoena arrived.

It seems pretty well covered to me. She specified she wanted them deleted months prior to the subpoena, but the employee did not act on that command until much later (after the subpoena arrived). So, emails were deleted after a subpoena arrived, but the request to do so happened long prior to that.

> Further, she didn't just delete emails, she went and wiped the hard drive. Perhaps just good data practice, but, when it comes to politics and public servants I'm far too cynical to believe that.

It's your right to be cynical. That said, as I mentioned above, unless the subpoena should have covered personal emails, I'm not sure what she did was wrong, even if it does cast doubt on whether we can be sure we got all the work emails.

> Finally, she determined what was considered private and deleted it. Do you really trust that? Do you really think that things that were work related wouldn't get swept up with the personal stuff while they were going about deleting things?

Actually, I believe her lawyers determined that. They didn't actually read all the emails though, they used Subject lines and addresses. That said, while it might have miscategorized some (and some were lost prior to that for reasons explained in that summary), that process is unlikely to have randomly happened to remove all majorly incriminating emails, so you're still left with whether you trust the lawyers tasked with reviewing them or not.

What this all really comes down to is whether you think someone can really get away with criminal activity at this level for decades. My belief is that if there was real evidence in any of the umpteen things she's been investigated for, we'd have seen it. Instead, we have lots of accusations, but nothing ever seems to add up to anything. This lends itself to two conclusions, either the Clintons are masterminds at committing crime and never getting caught, or they have been a favored political target due to their high political profile for an extended period of time. Considering I think even if they originally where complicit in a problem or too long in their past, the return on investment for piddly amounts of money (to them) for what amount to favors seems a stupid trade-off. If you make millions of dollars a year, and are already one of the most powerful people in the world, why would you get caught up in the stupid things she's accused of, like taking a large donation to her charity, which she can't really use, in order to get a meeting? To my sensibilities, it's much more likely that someone donated to one of her charities in hope that it would help (or on bad info that it would help), and maybe it did help, but in the same way that donating to the Red Cross would have, by showing the person was a philanthropist and making a good impression that way.

1: http://www.politico.com/live-blog-updates/2016/10/john-podes...