Why Clinton remains inevitable - almost

[Torie]

I agree with Krauthammer here. Hillary will be the nominee unless indicted (her minority and female base is just too strong), or perhaps, if Biden gets Warren to run as her VP, so Biden can heist the Sanders vote, and cut into the Hillary vote at the same time, by just enough to derail her. An indictment I think is reasonably possible (maybe say 30% or so as a wild guess, maybe 40%), and the Biden finesse if done (a big, big if), and then being successful, maybe 5%. So that leaves about 60% odds for Hillary. Which means that she is more likely to become the next POTUS than any other person living on this planet at the moment. Which says something about the sad state of our politics.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Jeb or Biden will be able to contest her. He has just as much support among Dems as she does. Jeb's connection to Latino voters can cut into her support in CO. But Trump is running away with nomination, Clinton or Biden will beat Trump. Toss up with Jeb.

[The Mikado]

30% is way too high a chance for an indictment, and I'm someone who takes this investigation seriously. Maybe cut that to 10%, and add on a ~2% chance for freak plane crash/health problem between now and the start of the primaries. I'd give Clinton about a 7 in 8 chance of getting the nomination.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Because of how good Bill Clinton's presidency went

[Torie]

30% is way too high a chance for an indictment, and I'm someone who takes this investigation seriously. Maybe cut that to 10%, and add on a ~2% chance for freak plane crash/health problem between now and the start of the primaries. I'd give Clinton about a 7 in 8 chance of getting the nomination.

What is your legal analysis that leads you to the 10% solution?

[Nyvin]

30% is way too high a chance for an indictment, and I'm someone who takes this investigation seriously. Maybe cut that to 10%, and add on a ~2% chance for freak plane crash/health problem between now and the start of the primaries. I'd give Clinton about a 7 in 8 chance of getting the nomination.

What is your legal analysis that leads you to the 10% solution?

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/09/01/intelligence-experts-debunk-speculation-that-hi/205289

40% chance Hillary gets indicted for the emails??   Really?  You're way too much of a partisan hack sometimes.

[Torie]

1. Media Matters = David Brock = partisan

2. High resolution satellite photos are clearly in the "must have known" was classified box. That is the misdemeanor rap. In addition, not mentioned at all by Media Matters, is if they are able with forensics to recover wiped emails, and some of them are government business emails, that destroying of government documents is a felony.

3. Not all those who think Hillary has legal exposure are conservative partisan hacks, including Mukasey.

4. I was merely asking how Mikado came up with his 10% for discussion purposes.

5. There is no reason to get personal.

6. Thank you.

[The Mikado]

1. Media Matters = David Brock = partisan

2. High resolution satellite photos are clearly in the "must have known" was classified box.

3. Not all those who think Hillary has legal exposure are conservative partisan hacks, including Mukasey.

4. I was merely asking how Mikado came up with his 10% for discussion purposes.

5. There is no reason to get personal.

6. Thank you.

Well, obviously, IANAL and you are.

I see a mixture of reluctance to indict a former Secretary of State without ironclad evidence (admittedly the FBI is not heavily politicized and they are willing to go after very powerful people) and lack of (so far) a credible crime to accuse Clinton of ("classified" information that is reported in the newspapers and on television is not going to sink her). If she did mishandle classified information on the server in a demonstrable and clear-cut manner, she's toast, but there's no reason so far to believe that was the case.

Also, if Clinton is prosecuted for this, it'll open Pandora's box in Washington as a great many politicians conduct official business on personal emails.

I think saying she has a 30-40% chance of facing an indictment is highly overestimating how eager the Justice Department would be to prosecute the former Secretary of State of the same Administration while said former Secretary of State is running for president from that Administration's party. In the absence of clear-cut and incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing I suspect she is in the clear no matter how shady the business looks.

[Torie]

1. Media Matters = David Brock = partisan

2. High resolution satellite photos are clearly in the "must have known" was classified box.

3. Not all those who think Hillary has legal exposure are conservative partisan hacks, including Mukasey.

4. I was merely asking how Mikado came up with his 10% for discussion purposes.

5. There is no reason to get personal.

6. Thank you.

Well, obviously, IANAL and you are.

I see a mixture of reluctance to indict a former Secretary of State without ironclad evidence (admittedly the FBI is not heavily politicized and they are willing to go after very powerful people) and lack of (so far) a credible crime to accuse Clinton of ("classified" information that is reported in the newspapers and on television is not going to sink her). If she did mishandle classified information on the server in a demonstrable and clear-cut manner, she's toast, but there's no reason so far to believe that was the case.

Also, if Clinton is prosecuted for this, it'll open Pandora's box in Washington as a great many politicians conduct official business on personal emails.

I think saying she has a 30-40% chance of facing an indictment is highly overestimating how eager the Justice Department would be to prosecute the former Secretary of State of the same Administration while said former Secretary of State is running for president from that Administration's party. In the absence of clear-cut and incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing I suspect she is in the clear no matter how shady the business looks.

Sure, I appreciate your cynicism, and it is certainly well founded, but the prosecutor handling the investigation is the same guy who went after Patreaus, and some of the Pub oriented commentators think he is a straight shooter. If he thinks an indictment is appropriate, it will be hard to derail. So politics might not play as much as might normally be the case. And Obama is not personally invested in this to boot.

Anyway, my odds are just a wild guess. But based on what I know, the chances of indictment at the moment in my view are more than remote. At the end of the day, hoping that Hillary is indicted might not be the best for Pub prospects, because given the gang of Pub candidates in the hunt at the moment, it might well be that Biden would have an easier time than Hillary is dispatching them. He in the context of Trump, or Cruz, or Carson, is a reassuring figure it seems to me. He may be a partisan hack of somewhat mediocre intelligent and insight, but he's steady and honest and reliable and sane. That counts for a lot in the situation in which we find ourselves.

[HillOfANight]

the prosecutor handling the investigation is the same guy who went after Patreaus, and some of the Pub oriented commentators think he is a straight shooter

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/08/30/clinton-controversy-no-comparison-petraeus-column/71421242/

Petraeus prosecutor: Unlike Petraeus, Clinton did not "knowingly" store or share classified information in violation of the law.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hillarys-problem-the-government-classifies-everything

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin: there must be evidence that Clinton knew that the information was classified and intentionally disclosed it to an unauthorized person

There is a lot of hyperventilation among the right and the political mainstream media press, but there is no actual basis to assume that she has a 40% chance of indictment.

[Torie]

the prosecutor handling the investigation is the same guy who went after Patreaus, and some of the Pub oriented commentators think he is a straight shooter

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/08/30/clinton-controversy-no-comparison-petraeus-column/71421242/

Petraeus prosecutor: Unlike Petraeus, Clinton did not "knowingly" store or share classified information in violation of the law.

She's not the one in charge of this decision to indict, and I responded to her comment about the "knowingly" element of the crime, that some of the emails speak for themselves, and knowledge can be imputed. Hillary would have to claim she never read the emails in question, containing highly sensitive information. And that leaves what she sent out, which of course by definition can never be classified as classified, since she generated it, and if it needs to be stamped "classified" then that implies that Hillary is at once the defendant, jury and judge as to those emails. And that doesn't deal with the wiped email issue, if something is recovered that is government business. And there, there is no mens rea element, if I recall correctly. You destroy emails at your own risk, if it turns out the destruction was over-inclusive. So to be charitable, I would characterize her analysis and superficial and incomplete, and prematurely conclusory.

[HillOfANight]

I agree with her that based on the facts known, there is no basis for an indictment. You are working on a lot of presumptions and false facts.

Her emails never contained "High resolution satellite photos".
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/1/hillary-clinton-emails-contained-spy-satellite-dat/
"as potentially containing information derived from highly classified satellite and mapping system"

So someone thinks, but is not sure, that information from the classified system was summarized and sent to Clinton. That would be an issue for whoever sent it to her, not Clinton herself. And if they sent it to her official .gov account instead of the secure system, it would again, be an issue for the sender, not her.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/ap-top-secret-clinton-emails-include-drone-talk/
AP actually goes over the supposed satellite derived emails and determined it's possible that the email could have originated from an entirely different unclassified source.

[emailking]

I'm always weary of estimating chances for non-repeatable events (not very big on Bayesian stats) but I agree that 40% seems pretty high for an indictment. Even if she actually did break the law (which I also doubt) and the prosecutor is not deterred by the optics of it, it still seems like it'd be a hard case to win, given what we currently know. If there turns out to be Petraeus levels of guilt then sure, he'll indict. We'll see, but I doubt it gets to that point.