Bill O’Reilly promised “New Information!” about Hillary Clinton’s email investigation, but actually served up a biased, imbalanced serving of right wing opinions about the matter.
There were two guests: Andrew Napolitano and David Tafuri. Napolitano, a former judge and Fox News contributor, was identified as "judge" and given a fair amount of legal respect, as usual. Tafuri was identified merely as “someone who worked for the State Department” and as a “former Obama campaign foreign policy advisor.” In reality, Tafuri is a partner at Dentons and an expert in international law, with a J.D. from Georgetown. He practices law in Washington, D.C., and is a former aide to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Napolitano, unsurprisingly, offered his opinion that the evidence of Clinton's guilt is “overwhelming,” that she should be indicted and convicted of crimes. He painted a gloomy picture of Clinton’s upcoming testimony before the FBI, saying that he thought it was a bad idea for her to do so but that she may need to do so for the optics. He also offered his thought that FBI director James Comey would resign if Attorney General Loretta Lynch doesn’t proceed with an indictment.
O’Reilly gave Napolitano extra cred by saying that if the evidence of Clinton's guilt is overwhelming to Napolitano, it must be for the FBI, too.
Tafuri was then presented with a black and white question of whether he agreed with “The judge”, who was “100 percent certain there’s enough evidence to indict.” Tafuri then had to take time to explain what is actually a more complicated legal situation. He noted that people were either saying she was absolutely about to be indicted or saying that this situation was nonsense. Tafuri was careful not to endorse either opinion. He said the only questions the FBI would be looking at were whether Hillary Clinton knowingly released classified information and whether there was enough evidence to persuade a jury.
Tafuri was able to discuss the key difference between Clinton's situation and that of David Petraeus. Petraeus admitted on tape that he knew he was giving classified information to Paula Broadwell, Tafuri said, while Hillary Clinton has repeatedly stated that she had no intention of doing such a thing.
You would think that Tafuri’s comments would effectively end the discussion. But O’Reilly was clearly set on the idea that the FBI would only care that Clinton had classified material on the server, regardless of her intent. Tafuri corrected him, insisted that the intent is actually crucial, since the FBI would need to show that Clinton released the classified material on purpose.
Tafuri agreed that Clinton’s upcoming FBI testimony would be critical to the outcome. O’Reilly then countered that the recent questioning under immunity of Bryan Pagliano, the former Clinton staffer who set up her private email server, would somehow be important - under O’Reilly’s premise that the FBI would look to see if anything Clinton said contradicted Pagliano. And if her testimony didn’t line up with Pagliano's, “IT GOES,” O’Reilly said emphatically. With that, O’Reilly decided this had been a good discussion and closed the segment.
It’s a good thing that Tafuri was able to at least make the points he did.
This segment was simply an excuse for Fox to smear Clinton as deceitful and criminal. The constant repetition of the story, including this needless “update,” keeps the idea of a Clinton indictment in the forefront of viewers’ minds. And by keeping the story going, Fox News can continue to make it a part of ongoing campaign coverage. So, even after the FBI concludes their examination of this matter, the right wing can hope to have generated as much PR damage as possible.
Watch it below, from the April 21 The O’Reilly Factor.
Correction: This post originally credited the wrong author.
As for the Huffington Post, I’ve noted a shift in tone since Ms Adriana sold the business some time ago. Many articles since then seem to reflect completely different positions than those that characterised the Huffington Post. And yet, RWingers continue to throw it up as an authoritative source for the left.
Thanx again for a very instructive thread.
As for Ramsay, I’m honestly confused by the tone of his last posts. For someone who claims legal expertise, he seems to not understand how libel works and thinks that pointing out that reality must be some kind of threat rather than a statement of law. But no matter.
The record is thankfully preserved as to what this thread intended, and how various individuals such as Ramsey attempted to hijack it. It is regrettable that he had nothing other than what sounds like angry rants to offer, once his arguments had been fully rebutted. I do appreciate that he acknowledged that he had learned something here.
When I edit posts other people have written, the name of the author defaults to me. I sometimes forget to correct that.
In this case, I distinctly remember changing it here but I must have left the page without saving it.
My apologies to Kevin, who not only did the work but put together a great post that has provoked a lot of discussion here!
See…you were indeed a bit instructive after all…
Come on…just say it one more time…Powell did the same thing as Hillary…just so it’s fresh in everyone’s mind
Ramsay attempts to deflect from the appropriate criticism he has taken for his name-calling by assuming that this was only about his insult at Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He fully knows that this is not the only name-calling he’s engaged in, and this attempt to deflect is odd – given that anyone can simply scroll down to see his behavior.
It’s good to hear that Ramsay finally watched the video. It’s a shame that he didn’t pay attention to what David Tafuri (not Tafuro) was trying to tell him. He selectively tunes out what Tafuri was saying, which I suppose is helpful if the intent is to support an angry right wing opinion.
Tafuri didn’t ignore O’Reilly’s question – he did what I said he did. He tried to explain the situation to O’Reilly in a manner that wasn’t in the “Yes or no? Answer me NOW!” mode that O’Reilly probably wanted. He didn’t say that the situation was totally black and white – he was saying that this is the way the situation is perceived. Fans of Hillary will tell you this is nonsense, Haters of Hillary will tell you she’s going to jail. This isn’t that hard to understand, and one has to wonder why Ramsay is having trouble here.
Ramsay once again asserts his legal expertise – something one has to wonder about when he decides what is legal about the server and what is not. Is Ramsay a lawyer in DC with credentials in national security matters? Not from the posts he’s written here, he’s not. Ramsay assumes he knows which codes will be applied, presumably from watching Sean Hannity’s attempts to discuss this matter. As Ramsay should know, there are multiple codes that can apply. It is not up to Ramsay to decide which ones. That will be up to the Department of Justice and the Attorney General. I would hope that Ramsay would understand that this is their decision, not his.
Ramsay then assumes that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was somehow lying. Except that he forgets that she wasn’t and that this assertion was already discredited and dismissed.
Whatever…I just want her off the political power stage for good…
Really..? Is that why you and Tafuro brought it up…or was it to obfuscate…etc
as evidenced by your attempts to obfuscate in paragraph 2…while avoiding the accusation about yours and wasserman’s statement….that powell did the same…
And I believe Wassername was in there only once = what was the continue to name call about…?
Why not?
You’re not gonna cry are ya?
First = Tafuro completely ignores Bill’s question…like any aspiring politician…and jumps right into his talking points = just like you accuse others of doing…
Then…he lies = either you’re convinced Hillary’s going to jail = or YOU"RE convinced it’s nonsense.
This is the complete horse-hockey…as even he portrays himself as neither…
It’s a way to artificially frame this in black or white…all or nothing = despicable if you ask me!
Then he goes on…talking like HE IS Comey…but lecturing us on his enlightened and evolved knowledge…
Tafuro Says: “Ignore the server…it wasn’t in violation of the law”
Maybe..? But as soon as classified info was on it = it was a violation of at least 1 law…
So of course…someone “running cover for Hillary” would say = pay no attention to that…
Tafuro Says: You have to look at the prosecution of other officials
Really? => only to opine, obfuscate, and speculate…
Are any courtroom proceedings really gonna be about what Petraeus did…and said..?
The only time it could possibly be contemplated…is at sentencing…tho-I-suspect-not…
There’s no server in his story = The server is the instrument used in Hillary’s transgressions.
The exposure to lawbreaking via that server containing ever-increasing amounts of classified info…while it was located in many different unauthorized locations over the years…is the essence of the laws at hand.
Tafuro Says:
You have to prove intent to the grand jury…to get an indictment (WRONG)
18 U.S. Code § 793 does not require intent = only negligence
…Which by the way…is what Hillary will have to plead in order to TRY to avoid guilt regarding:
18 U.S. Code § 1924
I’m curious why you would think anyone is going to “lump Hillary Clinton in with Petraeus, Robers and Libby”. I honestly don’t know who Robers is. But I wasn’t “lumping” Clinton in with anyone. I was noting that right wingers will regularly state that David Petraeus’ actions were far less serious than Clinton’s. It’s good to see that you are acknowledging his behavior was a lot more serious than the right wing has wanted to admit lately. I brought up Scooter Libby’s conviction because the right wing will regularly say that he did nothing wrong, and will not even acknowledge the obvious implication about Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. That doesn’t mean that Clinton is “lumped in” – it points out that the right wing is selective about who they believe should be prosecuted over matters of national security. If you’re saying that you understand the crimes that were committed by Libby and the others, that’s a good step toward understanding the difference between that situation and Clinton’s email.
There is also a relevant point I’ve made here – that the right wing’s anger over those earlier scandals has led them to frantically try to smear the Democrats with one if they can. We saw this over the course of Bill Clinton’s presidency and then again over President Obama’s terms. If you look at the situation dispassionately, it becomes obvious that the right wing wants to be able to rewrite the history to either pillory the left or to muddy the waters so much that it appears that everyone is corrupt. I’d rather they just owned their behavior and stopped trying to so hard to find scandals around every corner. If there’s a real scandal, it will become evident fairly quickly, as we’ve repeatedly seen over time. (This is another pernicious aspect of Fox News – the constant search for a scandal that will stick, whether it makes any sense or not. And if you check the history of Fox News, you’ll find that they’ve been trumpeting a Hillary Clinton indictment since 1996…)
Nobody is “trying so hard to help protect Hillary Clinton”. If the DOJ finds that she’s committed serious crimes, she’ll be prosecuted. It’s a matter of law and fact.
You seem to have fixated on my comments regarding the attack articles in the Huffington Post. But you forgot to look up the materials at Democracy Now, FAIR and Pacifica Radio. You would find those materials educational. First, Democrats are not necessarily left-wing, and left-wingers are not necessarily Democrats. I’m surprised to need to explain that to anyone. As a left-winger, I have no problem with any public official being prosecuted if they’ve broken the law. I would hope that you would have the same position. Had you actually spent some time watching Amy Goodman’s left wing program, read the materials at FAIR or listened to regular programming at Pacifica stations like KPFA, KPFK and WBAI, you would know that there is a wide variety of opinion among left wing thinkers. Many of them are not fans of the Clintons, as I thought I made clear before. For much of the left, including Amy Goodman, a prosecution of Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be a bad thing.
The problem I keep seeing, and it pops up frequently on this site, is that right wingers regularly project their own anger and their own issues onto left wingers with whom they disagree. For the record, over the past 25 years, I have noted that the left wing as a whole has been quite consistent when it has come to dealing with issues of war and peace, crime and punishment, civil rights, etc. The left has consistently called for accountability when it comes to corporate and government malfeasance. That’s why I recommended you listen to Amy Goodman’s interview of Bill Clinton from 2000 – if you think that’s a friendly softball interview, I’d shudder to hear what you think constitutes a hostile one. At the same time, I have noted that the right wing has been suspiciously malleable. When Bill Clinton was President, the right wing and Fox News were an angry opposition, ready to attack at any opportunity. The moment George W. Bush was able to get into the White House, the right suddenly reversed polarity and began supporting the President to a fault. After the 9/11 attacks, we were even told by the right wing that any opposition was tantamount to treason. That is, until Barack Obama won the Presidency in 2008. And then the seesaw went back the other way. To be fair, there are some on the far, far extremes of the right and the left who buck these trends. There were some far leftists who actually thought that Libby, Rove and Cheney’s conduct was great, since the far left really hates the CIA anyway. And there were some far rightists who made one challenge against the George W. Bush presidency when they thought that convicted former Border Patrol agents Ramos & Compean should be let out of prison. But those extremes are few and far between.
Based on what you are saying about Huffintgon Post I am left to believe that the only time Democrats are in favor of prosecuting Democrats in public office who have broken the law is when it benefits their preferred candidate. That is not a resounding endorsement of the entire community of liberal thinkers. It is just this kind of thinking on both the left and the right that is the real problem.
Ramsay references a completely separate interview between Chris Wallace and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, assuming that perhaps he misspelled her name in an innocent fashion. But the interview with Wallace doesn’t have her “running cover”. It has her repeating what Hillary Clinton has already said – that the notion that she’ll be prosecuted for felonies is “ludicrous”. Based on the facts we’ve already seen, that’s a reasonable position. Schultz said that she wasn’t commenting on whether the FBI’s work was a “waste of time” as Wallace tried to bully her into saying, but did say that “when they take a close look, I think she’s going to be fine.” Somehow, Ramsay thinks this means that she’s running cover for Hillary. Perhaps Ramsay knows how a statement that she thinks Clinton conducted herself legally means she’s covering for felonies. Schultz would be the first to say that an indictment brought by the Attorney General should be taken extremely seriously.
Ramsay then appears to engage in some projection about other people being “purposely dense” so that he can continue to name-call and throw more right wing talking points about. The problem is that the accusations he’s making were already discredited in earlier posts here. So he’s just continuing to throw the mud and hope nobody notices that it isn’t sticking.
Ramsay then declares himself a legal expert, since he now believes he has proof that Hillary Clinton engaged in “breaking law, hiding it and lying about it.” One wonders if Ramsay will be able to provide us with the proof of his allegations. He should also be aware that accusing someone of such things without proof can be considered libel, since he’s asserting his expertise in this area.
Ramsay then pretends he didn’t read the earlier posts discussing how Fox News has tried to spin the David Petraeus scandal vis a vis the Clinton emails. Having already conceded that point, he now tries to resurrect it, presumably to demonstrate his legal acumen. Anyone actually reading this thread already knows that Petraeus’ situation is not being raised by Fox News and right wing radio for its applicability in court. It’s being raised in right wing media as another way to smear Hillary Clinton – so that even if the DOJ doesn’t return the massive felony prosecution Ramsay clearly hopes to see, the right wing can continue to discuss the supposed injustice of Petraeus being punished while Clinton was not. Unless Ramsay is totally unaware that Fox News has been preparing for just that scenario, which I tend to find unlikely.
Ramsay’s attempts here to troll this subject will thankfully be preserved, as will the multiple corrections that have been made to his statements. He is correct to note that the historical record will show the behavior of Fox News to try to establish a right wing version of our current history. But he fails to realize that the historical record will also preserve his own unfortunate statements about this matter. In the future, when he tries to assert any legal or moral authority in this area, his actual comments will not help his case.
Did you see the interview with Debbie Wassername Schultz…?
She was attempting to “run cover for Hillary”
(just one in an endless list including YOU)
She failed…Wallace called her on it…she admitted the server made what Powell did = different than what Hillary did…Nevertheless, YOU still spout off with the liberal talking point lie:
“then we also must say that Colin Powell was doing the same “bad things”.
So tell me Kevin…did they do the same thing…? or did you “forget” like Schultz about the server..?
If you didn’t “forget”….explain how it’s the same thing…
You are just being purposely dense in order to spout the debunked liberal talking points…like you blame others of doing…
You…like others running cover for Hillary = just playin’ stupid…What do call it? = Attempting to lie about the facts in defense of Hillary? if not “running cover”
Yes…give us the liberal progressive term for it.
“Ramsay wants to parse the records requests made to Hillary Clinton’s staff to allege that the various disputes about it somehow mean that Hillary Clinton “did some bad things”.
“Some Bad things” = a pitiful attempt to call breaking law, hiding it, and lying about it = a “bad thing”
Yes it’s a bad thing to hide your emails from FOIA records requests…Yes…it’s a bad thing to keep silent…knowing that the State Department is responding to records requests for your email = none found…There’s no “various disputes” involved…
Hillary’s server thwarted FOIA requests as she intended…and it would have continued, if a couple of knuckle head congressman didn’t figure it out 6 years later…Nobody else was smart enough? Yeah Right?
What I said about Petraeus still stands…and indeed has no bearing on Hillary’s case…No matter who is talking about it = You, Nap, Fox news = doesn’t matter. If there is a court case about this down the line…NOBODY will be mentioning the Petraeus name on the record…because yes…it is indeed irrelevant to the Hillary email server case. Perhaps you can tell us why it would be part of the court proceeding..?
Congratulations = You are only the most recent “poster child” for accusing others = the “right-wing”… of doing exactly what you are doing…
The historical record will show not only the facts of what has happened, but also the repeated attempts by the left to change the narrative.
It sounds like you didn’t take any time to look up Amy Goodman, Democracy Now or FAIR or Pacifica. Had you done so, you might have heard an actual left-wing perspective on Hillary and Bill Clinton. I still hope you will do so. You’d see that the left wing has mounted plenty of attacks on the Clintons, usually based on the notion that they took the Democrats far to the right during the Clinton presidency in the 90s. The articles you’re mentioning in the Huffington Post are currently intended to promote Bernie Sanders’ campaign. There were similar articles in many left wing outlets back in 2000 and 2004 to promote Ralph Nader’s famous runs.
But their basis for criticism is different from the right wing notion of “let’s throw her in jail.” The left wing perspective is that of the government actually having a role to play in people’s lives. The left wing position sees government as a way for the people of a society to act together for everyone’s common good. The right wing position sees government as a sometimes necessary evil that really should just protect the country and stay out of everyone’s way. The farther right libertarian position is to say that there should be almost no government at all and that everyone should just take care of themselves, ie no taxes.
As I said before, if it turns out that the DOJ finds that Hillary Clinton committed felonies, I’d be the first one to say she should be prosecuted. That hasn’t happened, and does not look likely. (The right wing position on that is to say that the system is being rigged for her, or that the Dems can’t be trusted to prosecute her…) But if I were to see Loretta Lynch announcing major criminal indictments, I’d take that extremely seriously. I again wonder if you yourself applied the same standards when you learned of the proven criminal actions of people like David Petraeus and Scooter Libby, and of the corrupt actions taken by Alberto Gonzales.
I don’t know that the left wing “tries to cover up their scandals”. Have you ever listened to or watched Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now? Or to anything on Pacifica Radio? You might have a different perspective if you did so. Goodman is famously equal-opportunity when it comes to uncovering scandals. Her Election Day interview with Bill Clinton in 2000 is a tutorial in how to deal with such an opportunity if you’re doing so from the left.
I also know that the right wing continues to be angry over having been caught and called out on multiple scandals going back decades. Rather than accept that they’ve behaved badly, a lot of the same people, like Ailes, continue to throw mud at everyone else. A big part of the importance of this website is that it is able to accurately call out what Ailes and Fox News have been doing along those lines. Thus, the historical record will show not only the facts of what has happened, but also the repeated attempts by the right wing to change the narrative.
I do appreciate that he applies the same standard to Colin Powell. And I actually do agree with much of his post regarding Hillary Clinton. I’m not personally a fan of the Clintons, but not because of how they’ve been portrayed by the right wing. If the DOJ comes back with a conclusion that Hillary Clinton committed major felonies here, I would be the first person to say she should be prosecuted like anybody else.
I don’t think that the Clintons are necessarily the corrupt criminals the right wing have spent 25 years trying to paint them to be. I do think that like all politicians they do enjoy the limelight and the perks of office. Both parties do this, and I agree that it’s something that rubs most of us the wrong way.
I’ll state again that I don’t see anybody running cover for Hillary Clinton, on the left or in the Democrat party. What I’ve repeatedly seen is Clinton agreeing to answer questions and saying that this is a bureaucratic matter that’s been seriously blown out of proportion. From what I’ve seen, she’s probably right. Everyone involved has said let’s see what the DOJ concludes – and I agree with that approach. I don’t agree with the attempts by the right wing to pre-emptively declare her a criminal and a felon. That may be emotionally satisfying for the right wing, as they’ve believed that to be the case for 25 years, but the only real purpose to that approach at this time is to do what this thread has stated – to continue the repetition of these smears against Hillary Clinton and attempt to damage her reputation before the inevitable fall campaign against Donald Trump. I understand why the right wing is taking this action, given how that match-up is likely to go, but that doesn’t mean anyone should condone it.
Ramsay seems to have forgotten the initial reason he started posting right wing talking points here – that he felt that David Tafuri was “in the tank” for Hillary Clinton and that any mention of David Petraeus’ scandal was irrelevant. Or perhaps he’s conceded that he was mistaken on both of those points. Either way, he now wants to support fellow right wing poster James. Ramsay wants to parse the records requests made to Hillary Clinton’s staff to allege that the various disputes about it somehow mean that Hillary Clinton “did some bad things”. Parsing those requests does not mean that she necessarily “did bad things” – it does mean that right wing talking points want to portray the situation to look that way.
Ramsay also appears to have still refused to actually watch the discussion with David Tafuri before again repeating his unfounded opinions. He references an interview with “Schultz” as proof of something, except that nobody named Schultz was interviewed here. The first discussion was with Judge Napolitano and the second discussion was with David Tafuri, who O’Reilly attempted to diminish in his treatment, which was of course part of the point of this thread in the first place.
I patiently repeat my request that Ramsay actually take a few minutes and study this matter, and actually watch the interview with David Tafuri. He may find it educational.
To James, it’s interesting that you’ve conceded the whole point of the article. The point of this thread was to discuss that O’Reilly and Fox News were dismissing Tafuri’s comments while insisting they had new information rather than just a repetition of the smears they’ve already tried to throw.
James also seems to have completely missed that the point of this website has been to document the various examples of right wing bias that Fox News has inflicted over the past 20 years while trying to pass itself off as a news network. He asks “how is that anything new for a news outlet today?” The answer is that before Fox News, a news broadcast was intended to be an objective reportage of the facts, not a biased account intended to support one political faction. Fox News was expressly begun by Murdoch and Ailes to support a right wing narrative, both to influence current perception of events and to establish an alternative right wing history of this country. Were it not for attentive people like Ellen and for sources like FAIR, this strategy might well have worked. As it is, we continue to encounter people like James who have either been led to believe the Fox News perspective is correct, or who find that it confirms their own preconceptions.
I do appreciate that James is admitting that he is not a legal expert and that he is simply stating his opinions about this matter. I would recommend that he actually watch this segment and take a minute to listen to David Tafuri, who does have the legal expertise to explain this situation to him.
I also do appreciate that James is unhappy with the conduct of public officials, all of whom are public employees and not just Hillary Clinton. I do hope that James had the same issues with the George W. Bush administration officials who were not just alleged but factually shown to have actually broken the law. People like Scooter Libby (who really did obstruct an investigation) and disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Assuming James is applying the same standards, I would think that he must have been repeatedly calling for their prosecutions as well.
The reason I state as fact that she broke the law is because, as I said in my first post, she set up her email so that ALL of the email she received as Secretary of State went to her unsecured server. Any Secretary of State WILL receive classified emails. So she put herself in a position where she could not avoid breaking the law. I believe that to be fact. My opinion is that she did this to avoid accountability. So we can all sit here and bemoan Fox news and how biased they are but as an American citizen I do not feel that Fox news owes me anything. I do feel that my public officials who are supposed to be serving me owe me at least the decency of obeying the laws and having some accountability for their actions while in office.
Fact:
Records requests for Hillary’s emails were, in MANY cases, replied to = No Records Found.
That is not a right-wing opinion. Hillary and staff knew that was happening…and also knew why it was happening.(the server) Case Closed
Bad things = (hidden server) Avoid accountability = (untrue response to records requests)
“And if we’re going to say that Clinton was doing “bad things” here, then we also must say that Colin Powell was doing the same “bad things”.
Kevin, have you actually watched this segment or even read this post before offering your own obfuscation? It appears you have not. Even Shultz had to admit (in the interview) your statement is untrue…a LIE!
The sheer number of words you can type has no bearing on their meanings…or truthfulness
“Nobody is “running cover for Hillary”
I rest my case! Kevin, it sounds like you forgot to actually watch the segment before commenting.
What was Shultz attempting to do in the interview..? Perhaps you meant nobody is SUCCESSFULLY running cover for Hillary.