Anybody wanna lay odds that sometime shortly after this coming Tuesday there will be an investigation launched by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General into probable Hatch Act violations in the NYC FBI office ?
#draintheswamp
Not if it involves real money that I'd have to pay out. But if we're dealing with home plastic poker chips, I'd give odds of 100-to-1 against. (And on the DOJ OIG doing the actual investigating, the odds are somewhere way north of a
googleplex-to-1 against, unless there's some kind of related criminal charges involved beyond the Hatch Act.) The Hatch Act isn't about results, it's about
intent. The Act restricts the ability of most federal employees to engage in political campaign activities, especially while on the job, or to otherwise
"use [their] official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election."
Harry Reid's assertion that Comey violated the Hatch Act is just retarded, and despite being an angry, senile old man, I think he knows it. Comey earlier testified that the Clinton email server investigation was completed, and when asked if any new evidence of any significance surfaced would he look at it and reopen the investigation, he said yes, and that he'd let Congress know if that happened. It happened, and he let Congress know. He didn't inform Congress that, contrary to his previous testimony, the investigation is suddenly no longer complete,
for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the results of an election, despite the fact that the election may very well be affected by it. He let Congress know because he said he would let them know if his earlier testimony regarding the status of the investigation had changed.
The NYC FBI office is leaking like a sieve, but there's no evidence (other than partisan accusations, if you want to call that evidence) that they are leaking information for the explicit intent of interfering with the election results. There's more evidence that they are leaking information because they feel they have a prosecutable case, or at least enough of a case to send it to a grand jury, and they're mad at Comey and Lynch for whitewashing and killing the investigation.
In any case, the Hatch Act isn't even a criminal statute. It's an administrative constraint on government employees. The DOJ's Office of the Inspector General does not investigate employee related matters, especially violations of the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act is investigated and enforced by the independent US Office of Special Council (Hatch Act, Whistleblower Protection Act, and a couple of other statues regarding civil service and employment and reemployment of government employees). Violations of the Hatch Act result in disciplinary action, up to and including suspensions, fines, demotions, duty restrictions, or, in especially serious cases, termination. But that's as far as it goes.