Final Score: Hillary's Unsecure Server Held 2,079* Classified Emails

[Draggingtree]

Clinton Email Mess: The Fight to Indict Hillary

March 22, 2016 by The Bear

http://www.theabsurdreport.com/

[SrWoodchuck]

How secret is it? (17)

Scott Johnson

Mar. 18 2016

 

A reader writes to comment on part 16 of this series. I think that his (lightly edited) message may advance the analysis for readers following the saga of the Clinton private email server used for her official business as Secretary of State:

 

 

 

I am a retired Foreign Service Specialist who served as an Information Management Specialist. I worked on all Department communications systems. This whole thing with Hillary is proof that the DNC has completely destroyed the integrity of every government agency and politicized everything. Remember too that numerous Obama appointees have been caught at DoJ, the IRS and in the White House using private emails as well – this is a systemic problem from the top down; the government headed by Obama tried to shield its activities from FOIA, official systems and the American people. Nixon was a piker compared to this crew.

 

(Snip)

 

In the final leg of my long career in government service, spanning a career with the Army, jobs with the EPA, VA, USMC/Navy, DoD-Army and the Department of State, I was a BlackBerry admin for the Department in South America and was an actual foreign service specialist doing information management work on all the systems Hillary (her team included) used. Many of us in the Department questioned why HRC22 was showing up in emails from the Secretary of State. We were told to drop it. In the Department of State those in management or supervisory positions frequently flout the rules for the rank and file employees; that is life in the Foreign Service.

 

At the Department of State, anyone who even leaves a classified document on his desk overnight is given a security violation; two or more mean reassignment to Washington, D.C., without a chance of promotion for five years. In the Department of Defense if an officer has a security violation, he rarely ever sees a promotion ever again and is forced out. The standard for a violation is not actual or accidental disclosure, but rather MISHANDLING of Classified information. To top it all off, nothing at the Department of State is classified below S-E-N-S-I-T-I-V-E-B-U-T_U-N-C-L-A-S-S-I-F-I-E-D and therefore not allowed on private systems or Gmail, Yahoo, Live Email addresses.

 

(Snip)

 

How can anyone ever again be prosecuted for mishandling classified information?

 

(Snip)

 

HILLARY FOR PRECEDENT!

(Let any scoundrel accused of gubmint info mismanagement, use Killary as an example)

[clearvision]

Judicial Watch: New Clinton Documents Raise Questions on Benghazi, Clinton Foundation

[Valin]

Judicial Watch: New Clinton Documents Raise Questions on Benghazi, Clinton Foundation

 

 

 

The documents also point to a chain of emails that show Haim Saban, a top Clinton donor, sought to entice Bill Clinton into to travelling to Damascus in 2009 to meet with a high-level Syrian delegation. The meetings were part of the Saban Forum. Evidently, the trip never took place.

 

FYI Haim Saban

[Valin]

Role of tech who set up Clinton's server unknown to bosses at State
Jonathan Allen
Mar. 24 2016

Soon after Hillary Clinton's arrival at the State Department in 2009, officials in the information technology office were baffled when told that a young technician would join them as a political appointee, newly disclosed emails show. The technician, Bryan Pagliano, was running the off-grid email server that Clinton had him set up in her New York home for her work as secretary of state. But even as years passed, Pagliano's supervisors never learned of his most sensitive task, according to the department and one of his former colleagues.

* Pagliano's immediate supervisors did not know the private server even existed until it was revealed in news reports last year, the colleague said, requesting anonymity because of a department ban on unauthorized interviews. Clinton's decision to side-step the official state.gov email system has since shrouded her campaign for the U.S. presidency this year in controversy and legal uncertainty. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting one of several inquiries into the arrangement, which saw classified information passing through her unsecured clintonemail.com account.

The newly disclosed emails show Patrick Kennedy, the department's under secretary for management, oversaw the hiring of Pagliano. But Clinton and the department continued to decline this week to say who, if anyone, in the government was aware of the email arrangement. "There was no permission to be asked," Clinton said earlier this month. State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to say whether this was correct, citing the ongoing inquiries.

 

(Snip)

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

* I'm thinking the only reason they did not know is they did not want to know.

 

H/T Hot Air

[Valin]

FBI Reveals New Details About Its Probe Into Hillary Clinton's Use of Private Email Server
Jason Leopold
March 26, 2016

The FBI submitted a classified declaration to a federal court judge late Friday explaining details about the bureau's "pending investigation" into the use of a private email server by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The declaration addresses why the FBI can't publicly release any records about its probe in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by VICE News.

In a separate public declaration, David Hardy, the chief of the FBI's FOIA office, said there are a number of documents exchanged between the FBI and the State Department relating to the FBI's ongoing investigation of Clinton's use of a private email server, which stored all of the official government emails Clinton sent and received during her tenure as Secretary of State. But the FBI, which consulted with attorneys within its Office of General Counsel "who are providing legal support to the pending investigation," cannot divulge any of them without "adversely affecting" the integrity of its investigation.

Some of the documents at issue concern "server equipment and related devices obtained from former Secretary Clinton," Hardy said. The documents "consist of memoranda from the FBI to the Department of State regarding evidence. The purpose of these communications with the Department of State was to solicit assistance in furtherance of the FBI's investigation."

VICE News sought a wide-range of records from the FBI last December related to Clinton's private email server. Specifically, we asked the FBI for any emails and other documents retrieved from her server, thumb drive, and any other electronic equipment that has not been publicly disclosed; any correspondence and other documents between the FBI and Clinton or her representatives; correspondence between the FBI and the State Department about Clinton's server; and any documents memorializing authorizations granted to the FBI to disclose to the media what the bureau seized from her server. In his declaration, Hardy said the FBI does not have any documents showing that the bureau communicated with Clinton or her aides nor does the FBI have any records about disclosures to the media. The FBI has asked US District Court Judge Randolph Moss to dismiss VICE News' FOIA lawsuit on grounds that the documents it does have about Clinton's private email server are located in files pertaining to a pending investigation that is exempt from disclosure because their release would interfere with active law enforcement proceedings.

 

(Snip)

 

More than 1,800 emails were withheld or heavily redacted under exemptions to the FOIA law, including 22 that were not released because they were deemed Top Secret and would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if disclosed. About 65 others were classified Secret and were heavily redacted. VICE News is currently fighting in federal court for a summary of the information contained in those emails.

 

 

Clinton has insisted she never sent or received any emails that contained classified information.

 

H/T DU

[Valin]

What We Know...So Far

How Clinton’s email scandal took root
Robert O'Harrow Jr.
March 27 2016

Hillary Clinton’s email problems began in her first days as secretary of state. She insisted on using her personal BlackBerry for all her email communications, but she wasn’t allowed to take the device into her seventh-floor suite of offices, a secure space known as Mahogany Row.

For Clinton, this was frustrating. As a political heavyweight and chief of the nation’s diplomatic corps, she needed to manage a torrent of email to stay connected to colleagues, friends and supporters. She hated having to put her BlackBerry into a lockbox before going into her own office.

Her aides and senior officials pushed to find a way to enable her to use the device in the secure area. But their efforts unsettled the diplomatic security bureau, which was worried that foreign intelligence services could hack her BlackBerry and transform it into a listening device.

On Feb. 17, 2009, less than a month into Clinton’s tenure, the issue came to a head. Department security, intelligence and technology specialists, along with five officials from the National Security Agency, gathered in a Mahogany Row conference room. They explained the risks to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, while also seeking “mitigation options” that would accommodate Clinton’s wishes.

“The issue here is one of personal comfort,” one of the participants in that meeting, Donald Reid, the department’s senior coordinator for security infrastructure, wrote afterward in an email that described Clinton’s inner circle of advisers as “dedicated [blackBerry] addicts.”

Clinton used her BlackBerry as the group continued looking for a solution. But unknown to diplomatic security and technology officials at the department, there was another looming communications vulnerability: Clinton’s Black­Berry was digitally tethered to a private email server in the basement of her family home, some 260 miles to the north in Chappaqua, N.Y., documents and interviews show.

Those officials took no steps to protect the server against intruders and spies, because they apparently were not told about it.

(Snip)

Last month, in a hearing about a Judicial Watch lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Sullivan cited that email as part of the reason he ordered the State Department produce records related to its initial failures in the FOIA searches for Clinton’s records.

Speaking in open court, Sullivan said legitimate questions have been raised about whether Clinton’s staff was trying to help her to sidestep FOIA.

“We’re talking about a Cabinet-level official who was accommodated by the government for reasons unknown to the public. And I think that’s a fair statement: For reasons heretofore unknown to the public. And all the public can do is speculate,” he said, adding: “This is all about the public’s right to know.”

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

H/T Power Line

 

This one's gonna leave a mark!

[Valin]

The Justice Department’s Hillary Stonewall
Andrew C. McCarthy
March 29, 2016

When it comes to Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, the most important thing to bear in mind — even more than classified information — is this: It was all about avoiding accountability.

It still is.
Mrs. Clinton did not set out to damage national security and compromise defense secrets, although she obviously had no compunction about doing so as necessary to serve her higher personal interests. For a generation, she has been a public person whose most intimate companion has been scandal. She knew her State Department stewardship would be no different. Her motive in designing a communication system that circumvented government recordkeeping and disclosure laws was to avoid a day of reckoning as she campaigned in 2016 for the power of the presidency she craves.

And that is where Loretta Lynch comes in.

(Snip)

As I’ve previously pointed out, the federal embezzlement statute makes it a felony to destroy government files or convert them to one’s private use. The FBI has reportedly been able to recover at least some and possibly all of the e-mails Clinton tried to erase. Unless you really believe that one of the busiest high officials in the U.S. government had time for 32,000 e-mails about yoga routines and Chelsea’s wedding dress, it is inevitable that some of those e-mails, probably a goodly portion, related to State Department business — i.e., they were government files

With such neon indicators of serious wrongdoing, it seems highly likely that the FBI, which has reportedly devoted substantial time and resources to the investigation, will recommend prosecution. For all we know, that may have happened already. Once such a recommendation has been made, the ball is in the Justice Department’s court: It will be up to Attorney General Lynch — with whatever direction she gets from her boss, the president — to decide whether to indict Clinton.

(Snip)

Now, the goal is in sight. To pull the scheme off, all Clinton needs is for the current (and future?) attorney general to stonewall for another eight months. Don’t forget: The Obama Justice Department has been stonewalling on the egregious Fast and Furious investigation — in which a federal agent was murdered — for over five years. You don’t think Lynch can tap dance for eight months?

The question is, Will the public, the media, and the Republican-controlled Congress let her do it behind the Clintonian curtain?

[Valin]

Reporter on Hillary: There’s a higher bar to clear when you’re filing charges against someone who’s running for president

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tZYXRd-fbE

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uqlzd8B0pw

[Valin]

Second federal judge orders discovery regarding Clinton emails
Paul Mirengoff
March 29, 2016

Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. district court in Washington D.C. today became the second federal judge to order discovery regarding Clinton emails. Both cases were brought by the invaluable Judicial Watch.

 

As we have discussed, Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, has already granted Judicial Watch discovery on the Clinton email matter in separate litigation. Judicial Watch’s discovery plan in that case seeks the testimony of eight current and former State Department officials, including top State Department official Patrick Kennedy, former State IT employee Bryan Pagliano, and Clinton’s two top aides at the State Department: Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin.

 

The discovery ordered by Judge Lamberth pertains to emails surrounding the infamous Benghazi talking points — the Obama administration’s attempt to hide the fact that the Benghazi attacks were the premeditated effort of a group connected with al Qaeda.

 

Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeks from Hillary Clinton and her top State Department staff::

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Jim Vandehei: Clinton’s Biggest Problem Is That The FBI ‘Dug In’
Alyssa Canobbio
March 30, 2016

 

Politico co-founder Jim Vandehei said on Wednesday’s Morning Joe that Hillary Clinton’s biggest problem when it comes to the scandal surrounding her use of a private server is that the FBI has gotten heavily involved with this case.

 

“I think the bigger problem is not just the media, it’s the FBI,” Vandehei said. “Now scores of people at the FBI are dug in on this case and who are leaking lots of material to said reporters.”

 

Vandehei said that the federal judges on the case are making it easier for people to go after the material surrounding the case.

 

On Tuesday, Politico reported that a federal judge allowed Judicial Watch to pursue legal discovery on details of how Clinton’s private email account was fused into the State Department’s record-keeping system as well as sworn testimony from State Department officials.

 

(Snip)

[Geee]

Clinton aides unite on FBI legal strategy

 

Four of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides appear to have adopted an unusual legal strategy, hiring the same ex-Justice Department attorney to represent them in the FBI’s investigation of Clinton's private email server.

 

Beth Wilkinson, a well-connected former assistant U.S. attorney best known for prosecuting Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, is listed as representing three of Clinton’s top State Department staffers, according to a congressional letter obtained by POLITICO and dated Feb. 10. A fourth Clinton aide, Philippe Reines, is also represented by Wilkinson, according to sources familiar with their representation.

 

The united front suggests they plan to tell investigators the same story — although legal experts say the joint strategy presents its own risks, should the interests of the four aides begin to diverge as the probe moves ahead.

The quartet includes Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, who counseled Clinton politically and legally; deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, whom sources say authored a number of emails to Clinton that are now considered “top secret”; Heather Samuelson, Mills’ deputy who initially sorted Clinton’s work-related emails from personal messages that were then deleted; and Reines, who served as Clinton’s spokesman and also used personal email for work purposes at State.

Wilkinson and the four staffers, as well as the Clinton campaign, did not respond to requests for comment.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-fbi-strategy-emails-221435

[Valin]

 

The united front suggests they plan to tell investigators the same story — although legal experts say the joint strategy presents its own risks, should when the interests of the four aides begin to diverge as the probe moves ahead.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-fbi-strategy-emails-221435

 

There fixed it. Often in situations like this questions are not asked if the truthful answers are not known.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

A Year And Counting

 

 

Ten questions that Hillary and the State Department still need to answer about the email scandal.

[Valin]

Todd Presses Clinton on Poor Record of Transparency, FBI Investigation into Emails

 

[Geee]

Clinton: Prison time over email scandal a GOP 'fantasy'

 

Hillary Clinton insisted Friday that there's no way Republicans will get their wish, which is to see her in handcuffs and charged with violating the law by allowing top secret and classified information to end up on her private email server.

 

"I know that they live in that world of fantasy and hope because they've got a mess on their hands on the Republican side. That is not going to happen," Clinton said on NBC's "Today" show. "There is not even the remotest chance that is going to happen."

 

"But look, they've been after me, as I say, for 25 years," she added. "And they have said things about me repeatedly that have been proven to be not only false but kind of ridiculous."

 

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-prison-time-over-email-scandal-is-a-republican-fantasy/article/2588013

[Valin]

*Geee

 

Sad to say but probably correct. She's To Big To Jail.

[Valin]

Source: No 'coincidence' Romanian hacker Guccifer extradited amid Clinton probe
Catherine Herridge and Pamela K. Browne
Apr. 8 2016

The extradition of Romanian hacker “Guccifer” to the U.S. at a critical point in the FBI’s criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email use is “not a coincidence,” according to an intelligence source close to the case.

One of the notches on Guccifer’s cyber-crime belt was allegedly accessing the email account of Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, one of Clinton’s most prolific advice-givers when she was secretary of state. It was through that hack that Clinton's use of a personal account -- clintonemail.com -- first came to light.

Former law enforcement and cyber security experts said the hacker, whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, could – now that he’s in the U.S. – help the FBI make the case that Clinton’s email server was compromised by a third party, one that did not have the formal backing and resources of a foreign intelligence service such as that of Russia, China or Iran.

“Because of the proximity to Sidney Blumenthal and the activity involving Hillary’s emails, [the timing] seems to be something beyond curious,” said Ron Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2012-2014.

 

(Snip)

[Smokin_Joe]

Any one of those would have the average schmuck in irons and a dark cell. Why is that woman running for President? She should be in an orange pantsuit in a Federal lockup.

[Valin]

Obama: There Was a ‘Carelessness’ With How Clinton Managed Her Emails

 

[Valin]

[Valin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaS4ocUfDWo

[Valin]

[Draggingtree]

Discriminations

 

Contra My “Contra Obama, Hillary Did Not ‘Own’ Her Email”

13 April 2016

A couple of days ago, here, I criticized Obama for, among his other comments on Hillary’s email, this one:

 

“I continue to believe she has not jeopardized America’s national security,” Obama defended Clinton. “Now what I also said is that — and she’s acknowledged — that there’s a carelessness in terms of managing e-mails that she has owned.

 

My criticism: “the Secretary of State did not own those emails! They were, and are, government property, as specified among other places in the Federal Records Act.”

 

Since then two readers have asked me to listen to Obama’s comment, and consider that what he probably meant was that Hillary had “owned up” to her “mistake” in using a private email server.

http://www.discriminations.us/

[Geee]

State Department Hid Key Clinton Benghazi Email from Judicial Watch

 

Email Info Could Have Exposed Clinton Server in 2014

 

(Washington, DC) – The Obama State Department last week admitted it withheld a key Benghazi email of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from Judicial Watch since at least September 2014. If the State Department disclosed the email when first supposedly found, Clinton’s email server and her hidden emails would have been disclosed nearly two years ago, before Clinton authorized the alleged deletion of tens of thousands emails.

 

The developments come in a July 2014 Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records related to the drafting and use of the Benghazi talking points (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). The lawsuit, which forced the disclosure of the Clinton email records, seeks records specifically from Clinton and her top State Department staff:

 

Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

 

Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

 

Contradicting an earlier statement to the court, an April 18, 2016, State Department letter admits that it found the email at issue in 2014 but was held back in its entirety:

 

Also, upon further review, the Department has determined that one document previously withheld in full in our letter dated November 12, 2014 may now be released in part.

 

The referenced November 12, 2014, letter does not reference any withheld emails. A search declaration suggests the hidden email was found in September 2014 as a result of a search in response to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit.

 

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/state-department-hid-key-clinton-benghazi-email-from-judicial-watch/