FBI Director James Comey once again has put the spotlight on disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, a situation he can’t possibly relish, as he is now portrayed as little more than a copy boy for former spouse Huma Abedin, who “regularly emailed classified documents” to him so he could print them out for her.
On Thursday, according to The Blaze, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether Abedin violated federal law when she forwarded then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails to Weiner so he could print them out for her boss.
But, Comey insisted in an appearance on Capitol Hill Wednesday, “With respect to Ms. Abedin in particular, we didn’t have any indication that she had sense (that) what she was doing was in violation of the law; couldn’t prove any sort of criminal intent.”
That little bombshell came out during Comey’s appearance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, an irony of sorts since Comey’s testimony suggested there was not a lot of intelligence at work in the arrangement. As Fox News’ Sean Hannity points out in an opinion piece, federal law “does not require intent.”
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That was essentially what Blumenthal told MSNBC.
“If there was classified information and it was improperly passed to a person unauthorized to receive it, yes, naturally it’s a crime,” he said. “Without knowing what the intentions were and so forth, there is potentially a prosecutable crime.”
Weiner could get roasted over this revelation. He’s gone from being a rising star in Congress to being the butt of off-color jokes, and now he’s visibly reduced to having essentially become office staff to his then-wife, who was Clinton’s aide.
Back in 2011, when Weiner considered himself a real hotdog on the Hill and he was something of a protégé for anti-gun Sen. Charles Schumer, he had an infamous confrontation with then-Congresswoman Michele Bachmann from Minnesota over the rising national debt. When she accused Weiner of dealing in fiction, he condescendingly told her, “I don’t think you want to go there. I don’t think you want to go there, Bachmann.”
Today it is Weiner who shouldn’t go anywhere. His “sexting” scandal forced him from public office, and when he tried to get into the New York mayoral race, he couldn’t get any traction.
And now this; Hannity openly called him a “pervert.” And Comey just told Congress that he had access to classified documents.
This raises more questions. Why couldn’t Abedin print her own documents? If, as Comey suggested, she had “no sense” that what she was doing, perhaps Abedin should not have been in the position she was in at the time, either.
In his column, Hannity quoted a tweet from President Donald Trump that observed, “Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds.”
It would be pure speculation at this point as to whether Abedin, and perhaps by default Weiner, end up as the subjects of an investigation over those classified documents. It should be kept in perspective just where those documents came from, and who they belonged to.
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