Saturday, August 29, 2020

Clinesmith Guilty Plea: Lying about Lying

Clinesmith Guilty Plea: Lying about Lying
Excerpt: Consider for a moment how much effort Clinesmith must have put into tampering with the document: A government lawyer thinking about whether to falsify a document from another government agency, understanding that a court would be deceived, and crafting the alteration in a way that would not tip off an experienced supervisory FBI investigator. It is worth thinking about, not least because, when the IG first asked about the alteration, Clinesmith insisted that he was not sure how it had happened. Only when he knew he was caught did Clinesmith confess to tampering with the email. Only then did he shift to his new and improved story: Yes, he had gone through the trouble of manipulating the document, but it still accurately reflected the “impression” he’d formed from telephone conversations with the CIA liaison that only he recalls having. [It has taken a while for this third part of Andy McCarthy’s report on Clinesmith’s guilty plea to become available. For reasons unknown to me, National Review didn’t make this part easily available. I had to go searching to find it. Now, we have it, and it ties the ribbon of facts in a nice bow. Ron P.]

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