wikileaks...
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/14/seven-more-hillary-clinton-scandals-exposed-wikile/
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The avalanche dump of emails from John Podesta,Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, keep coming from WikiLeaks, exposing the insider nature and corruption within the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party. Here’s an updated list.
1. Clinton Foundation donors expected “benefits in return for gifts.”
The Daily Caller uncovered an independent “governance review” by a law firm that specializes in nonprofits. The review was requested byMrs. Clinton’s daughter Chelsea who had concerns about the Clinton Foundation and potential conflict-of-interests with its donors, and was sharply opposed by her father’s friends and donors. The review, conducted in December 2010, concluded many of the foundation’s donors had “an expectation of a quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts.”
2. Obama’s Cabinet picked by Citigroup executive — during the bailout — a month before the election.
The New Republic uncovered an email from Michael Froman, who was an executive at Citigroup during 2008’s election, that listed potential Cabinet picks in an Obama administration, a month before the general election. The bank was being bailed out at the time.
The revelations reinforce “the need for critical scrutiny of Hillary Clinton, and for advocacy to ensure the next transition doesn’t go like the last, at least with respect to the same old Democrats scooping up all the positions of power well in advance,” the New Republic wrote.
3.Mrs. Clinton tried to save a profitable Wall Street speech before her campaign launch.
Mrs. Clinton didn’t want her husband’s speech before Morgan Stanley to be canceled before her campaign rollout, despite the bad optics, Breitbart reported.
“HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” Huma Abedin said. “I will have to tell her that WJC chose to cancel it, not that we asked.”
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook argued that continuing on with the speech would be a political risk, saying it would be “begging for a bad rollout.”
4. Qatar, an Islamic State funder, gave former President Bill Clinton $1 million for his birthday.
Qatar gave the Clinton Foundation $1 million for Mr. Clinton’s birthday present in 2012. Ami Desai, director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, told several staffers about the check.
“[Qatar] Would like to see WJC ‘for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011,” Mr. Desai wrote.
In a 2014 email, Mrs. Clinton said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both giving financial and logistical support to the Islamic State terror group and other extremist Sunni groups.
5.Mrs. Clinton team poll-tested attacks on Obama’s Muslim heritage.
An email exchange between Mr. Podesta, Paul Begala and a Clinton pollster worked a list of negatives about Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign. The pollster wrote, “we have reworked the Obama message into the survey as requested,” and then lists the negatives, including: “* 7 Obama (owe-BAHM-uh)’s father was a Muslim and Obama grew up among Muslims in the world’s most populous Islamic country.”
Mr. Begala told the New York Post on Thursday that the poll was to test potential right-wing attacks on Mr. Obama to prepare him for the general election and was not used by the Clinton campaign.
6.Mrs. Clinton discussed hiding emails from Mr. Obama, then deleted them.
On March 4, 2015, Mr. Podesta wrote Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer Cheryl Mills about hiding Mrs. Clinton’s emails to Mr. Obama from congressional investigators. The day before, her team was subpoenaed to turn over all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
“Think we should hold emails to and from potus?” Mr. Podesta asked. “That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but seems like they will.”
Three weeks later, Mrs. Clinton’s team BleachBit more than 33,000 emails.
7.Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman urged her to lie to the public on whether she sent classified information.
Bloomberg News reported Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spokesman Brian Fallon urged her to issue a blanket denial that she ever sent classified information through her private email server because anything less could open her up to charges she broke the law.
“We should not think it is fine to find something that ‘should have been classified at the time,’ ” Mr. Fallon, the spokesman, wrote to other top campaign officials on Aug. 22, 2015, as they debated a statement Mrs. Clinton would make on her use of an email server in her home.
“Our position is that no such material exists, else it could be said she mishandled classified info,” Mr. Fallon wrote.
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The avalanche dump of emails from John Podesta,Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, keep coming from WikiLeaks, exposing the insider nature and corruption within the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party. Here’s an updated list.
1. Clinton Foundation donors expected “benefits in return for gifts.”
The Daily Caller uncovered an independent “governance review” by a law firm that specializes in nonprofits. The review was requested byMrs. Clinton’s daughter Chelsea who had concerns about the Clinton Foundation and potential conflict-of-interests with its donors, and was sharply opposed by her father’s friends and donors. The review, conducted in December 2010, concluded many of the foundation’s donors had “an expectation of a quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts.”
2. Obama’s Cabinet picked by Citigroup executive — during the bailout — a month before the election.
The New Republic uncovered an email from Michael Froman, who was an executive at Citigroup during 2008’s election, that listed potential Cabinet picks in an Obama administration, a month before the general election. The bank was being bailed out at the time.
The revelations reinforce “the need for critical scrutiny of Hillary Clinton, and for advocacy to ensure the next transition doesn’t go like the last, at least with respect to the same old Democrats scooping up all the positions of power well in advance,” the New Republic wrote.
3.Mrs. Clinton tried to save a profitable Wall Street speech before her campaign launch.
Mrs. Clinton didn’t want her husband’s speech before Morgan Stanley to be canceled before her campaign rollout, despite the bad optics, Breitbart reported.
“HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” Huma Abedin said. “I will have to tell her that WJC chose to cancel it, not that we asked.”
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook argued that continuing on with the speech would be a political risk, saying it would be “begging for a bad rollout.”
4. Qatar, an Islamic State funder, gave former President Bill Clinton $1 million for his birthday.
Qatar gave the Clinton Foundation $1 million for Mr. Clinton’s birthday present in 2012. Ami Desai, director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, told several staffers about the check.
“[Qatar] Would like to see WJC ‘for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011,” Mr. Desai wrote.
In a 2014 email, Mrs. Clinton said Saudi Arabia and Qatar are both giving financial and logistical support to the Islamic State terror group and other extremist Sunni groups.
5.Mrs. Clinton team poll-tested attacks on Obama’s Muslim heritage.
An email exchange between Mr. Podesta, Paul Begala and a Clinton pollster worked a list of negatives about Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign. The pollster wrote, “we have reworked the Obama message into the survey as requested,” and then lists the negatives, including: “* 7 Obama (owe-BAHM-uh)’s father was a Muslim and Obama grew up among Muslims in the world’s most populous Islamic country.”
Mr. Begala told the New York Post on Thursday that the poll was to test potential right-wing attacks on Mr. Obama to prepare him for the general election and was not used by the Clinton campaign.
6.Mrs. Clinton discussed hiding emails from Mr. Obama, then deleted them.
On March 4, 2015, Mr. Podesta wrote Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer Cheryl Mills about hiding Mrs. Clinton’s emails to Mr. Obama from congressional investigators. The day before, her team was subpoenaed to turn over all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
“Think we should hold emails to and from potus?” Mr. Podesta asked. “That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but seems like they will.”
Three weeks later, Mrs. Clinton’s team BleachBit more than 33,000 emails.
7.Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman urged her to lie to the public on whether she sent classified information.
Bloomberg News reported Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spokesman Brian Fallon urged her to issue a blanket denial that she ever sent classified information through her private email server because anything less could open her up to charges she broke the law.
“We should not think it is fine to find something that ‘should have been classified at the time,’ ” Mr. Fallon, the spokesman, wrote to other top campaign officials on Aug. 22, 2015, as they debated a statement Mrs. Clinton would make on her use of an email server in her home.
“Our position is that no such material exists, else it could be said she mishandled classified info,” Mr. Fallon wrote.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2e8a...ow-clinton-inner-circle-grappling-email-issue
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hacked emails show that Hillary Clinton's campaign was slow to grasp the seriousness of the controversy over her use of a homebrew email server and believed it might blow over after one weekend.
Two days after The Associated Press was first to report in March 2015 that Clinton had been running a private server in her home in New York to send and receive messages when she was secretary of state, her advisers were shaping their strategy to respond to the revelation.
WikiLeaks began releasing on Friday what it said were years of messages from accounts used by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. He said Tuesday that the FBI told him it was looking into the breach as part of its ongoing investigation into the hacking of Democratic organizations by Russian intelligence.
Among the emails made public Tuesday by WikiLeaks was one from Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill, who optimistically suggested that the issue might quickly blow over.
"Goal would be to cauterize this just enough so it plays out over the weekend and dies in the short term," Merrill wrote on March 6, 2015.
It did not, and became the leading example of Clinton's penchant for secrecy, which has persisted as a theme among her campaign critics and rivals throughout her election season. Clinton did not publicly confirm or discuss her use of the email server until March 10 in a speech at the United Nations, nearly one week after AP revealed the server's existence.
Months after Merrill's message, the campaign was still preoccupied with emails. In May 2015, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon alerted other staffers that the Justice Department was proposing to publish Clinton's work-related emails by January in response to requests by news organizations. Fallon, a former Justice Department spokesman, wrote that unspecified "DOJ folks" told him there was a court hearing planned soon in the case. The name and email address of the person who shared the information with Fallon had been deleted.
Donald Trump on Tuesday called Fallon's email "unbelievable," and his supporters said it showed collusion between the Obama administration and Clinton's campaign.
The dates of court hearings would have been publicly posted in advance on the court's docket. Fallon did not respond to a request for comment from AP. The Justice Department declined to discuss Fallon's email.
It wasn't immediately clear who hacked Podesta's emails, though U.S. intelligence officials last week blamed the Russian government for a series of breaches intended to influence the presidential election. Podesta has acknowledged his emails were hacked. He has warned that messages may have been altered or edited to inflict political damage but has not pointed to any specific case of this.
Podesta said Tuesday that Russia may prefer Trump's policy positions, but he also suggested the motive could be "Mr. Trump's deep engagement and ties with Russian interests in his business affairs."
Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak dismissed the accusations as untrue.
"We are watching very carefully the election campaign in this country," Kislyak said at a discussion of bilateral affairs at Johns Hopkins University's campus in Washington. "We don't interfere (in) the internal affairs of the United States, neither by my statements nor by electronic or other means."
The messages stolen from Podesta's account describe how Clinton's closest advisers considered responding to key events during the campaign, including the discovery of her email server and her congressional testimony over the deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
In emails from March 2015, Merrill suggested a strategy — ultimately nixed by Clinton herself — of having comedian Larry Wilmore and Bill Clinton joke during an event for the Clinton Global Initiative charity in Coral Gables, Florida, before having Clinton join them on stage.
Merrill laid out the scenario in emails to Podesta and other aides: "Wilmore could sit down with WJC and Chelsea and say something like 'Thanks for having me here, it's a pleasure. And I should tell you, I just emailed HRC (I hear she's a big emailer), and asked if she'd join as well. (Laughter).'" He added that Hillary Clinton could then walk out "to applause."
"It would be just light-hearted enough while giving her the opportunity to address this seriously, be a little conciliatory as discussed, and then get back to a discussion about CGI etc.," Merrill wrote in the email.
In the end, Hillary Clinton's team drafted talking points Clinton used at the news conference at the United Nations.
Clinton said she "fully complied with every rule that I was governed by" and that "there is no classified material" among her work-related emails.
Both of those statements were later proved false.
The State Department's internal watchdog concluded in an audit released that Clinton ignored clear written guidance that her email setup broke federal record-keeping rules and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers. The FBI's recently closed investigation concluded that more than 100 emails exchanged through Clinton's private server contained information that was later determined to be classified.
As the email controversy escalated in the summer of 2015, Clinton herself seemed slow to grasp the continuing political damage. Communications director Jennifer Palmieri in August expressed concerns that Clinton "wasn't in the same place" on the issue as some on her campaign staff.
At the time, the political aides were working out details of revealing that Clinton had directed her staff to hand over her server and a thumb drive with copies of her emails to the Justice Department. Palmieri was writing other campaign aides to arrange for a Univision reporter to ask "a few questions on emails" during an interview that would otherwise focus on college affordability.
"As you all know, I had hoped that we could use the 'server moment' as an opportunity for her to be viewed as having take a big step to deal with the email problem that would best position us for what is ahead," Palmieri wrote. "It is clear that she is not in same place."
Clinton's email practices were not the only controversy her campaign's brain trust was addressing.
On October 2015, speechwriter Dan Schwerin circulated among top Clinton advisers a draft of her opening statement to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, to be delivered the following week.
The draft itself wasn't attached in the emails published Tuesday, but other messages showed how it was shaped, including a section referring to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.
"We might consider softening the 'Chris did not believe retreat was an option — and neither do I' line," wrote Katherine Turner, a law partner of Clinton's personal attorney David Kendall. "I don't think we want to suggest that there was a commitment to be there at any and all costs."
Following Clinton's tense Oct. 22 testimony, Podesta proposed in an email that she could publicly joke, "I used to be obsessed with Donald Trump's hair, that was until I got to spend 11 hours staring at the top of Trey Gowdy's head," a reference to the slicked-back white coif of the South Carolina Republican who chairs the committee.
Other Clinton aides shot down the idea.
"I love the joke too but I think HRC should stay above the committee," adviser Jake Sullivan replied, "and especially above personal insults about it. She's got every inch of the high ground right now."
Palmieri replied: "Wow. You people are a bunch of ninnies."
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hacked emails show that Hillary Clinton's campaign was slow to grasp the seriousness of the controversy over her use of a homebrew email server and believed it might blow over after one weekend.
Two days after The Associated Press was first to report in March 2015 that Clinton had been running a private server in her home in New York to send and receive messages when she was secretary of state, her advisers were shaping their strategy to respond to the revelation.
WikiLeaks began releasing on Friday what it said were years of messages from accounts used by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. He said Tuesday that the FBI told him it was looking into the breach as part of its ongoing investigation into the hacking of Democratic organizations by Russian intelligence.
Among the emails made public Tuesday by WikiLeaks was one from Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill, who optimistically suggested that the issue might quickly blow over.
"Goal would be to cauterize this just enough so it plays out over the weekend and dies in the short term," Merrill wrote on March 6, 2015.
It did not, and became the leading example of Clinton's penchant for secrecy, which has persisted as a theme among her campaign critics and rivals throughout her election season. Clinton did not publicly confirm or discuss her use of the email server until March 10 in a speech at the United Nations, nearly one week after AP revealed the server's existence.
Months after Merrill's message, the campaign was still preoccupied with emails. In May 2015, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon alerted other staffers that the Justice Department was proposing to publish Clinton's work-related emails by January in response to requests by news organizations. Fallon, a former Justice Department spokesman, wrote that unspecified "DOJ folks" told him there was a court hearing planned soon in the case. The name and email address of the person who shared the information with Fallon had been deleted.
Donald Trump on Tuesday called Fallon's email "unbelievable," and his supporters said it showed collusion between the Obama administration and Clinton's campaign.
The dates of court hearings would have been publicly posted in advance on the court's docket. Fallon did not respond to a request for comment from AP. The Justice Department declined to discuss Fallon's email.
It wasn't immediately clear who hacked Podesta's emails, though U.S. intelligence officials last week blamed the Russian government for a series of breaches intended to influence the presidential election. Podesta has acknowledged his emails were hacked. He has warned that messages may have been altered or edited to inflict political damage but has not pointed to any specific case of this.
Podesta said Tuesday that Russia may prefer Trump's policy positions, but he also suggested the motive could be "Mr. Trump's deep engagement and ties with Russian interests in his business affairs."
Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak dismissed the accusations as untrue.
"We are watching very carefully the election campaign in this country," Kislyak said at a discussion of bilateral affairs at Johns Hopkins University's campus in Washington. "We don't interfere (in) the internal affairs of the United States, neither by my statements nor by electronic or other means."
The messages stolen from Podesta's account describe how Clinton's closest advisers considered responding to key events during the campaign, including the discovery of her email server and her congressional testimony over the deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
In emails from March 2015, Merrill suggested a strategy — ultimately nixed by Clinton herself — of having comedian Larry Wilmore and Bill Clinton joke during an event for the Clinton Global Initiative charity in Coral Gables, Florida, before having Clinton join them on stage.
Merrill laid out the scenario in emails to Podesta and other aides: "Wilmore could sit down with WJC and Chelsea and say something like 'Thanks for having me here, it's a pleasure. And I should tell you, I just emailed HRC (I hear she's a big emailer), and asked if she'd join as well. (Laughter).'" He added that Hillary Clinton could then walk out "to applause."
"It would be just light-hearted enough while giving her the opportunity to address this seriously, be a little conciliatory as discussed, and then get back to a discussion about CGI etc.," Merrill wrote in the email.
In the end, Hillary Clinton's team drafted talking points Clinton used at the news conference at the United Nations.
Clinton said she "fully complied with every rule that I was governed by" and that "there is no classified material" among her work-related emails.
Both of those statements were later proved false.
The State Department's internal watchdog concluded in an audit released that Clinton ignored clear written guidance that her email setup broke federal record-keeping rules and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers. The FBI's recently closed investigation concluded that more than 100 emails exchanged through Clinton's private server contained information that was later determined to be classified.
As the email controversy escalated in the summer of 2015, Clinton herself seemed slow to grasp the continuing political damage. Communications director Jennifer Palmieri in August expressed concerns that Clinton "wasn't in the same place" on the issue as some on her campaign staff.
At the time, the political aides were working out details of revealing that Clinton had directed her staff to hand over her server and a thumb drive with copies of her emails to the Justice Department. Palmieri was writing other campaign aides to arrange for a Univision reporter to ask "a few questions on emails" during an interview that would otherwise focus on college affordability.
"As you all know, I had hoped that we could use the 'server moment' as an opportunity for her to be viewed as having take a big step to deal with the email problem that would best position us for what is ahead," Palmieri wrote. "It is clear that she is not in same place."
Clinton's email practices were not the only controversy her campaign's brain trust was addressing.
On October 2015, speechwriter Dan Schwerin circulated among top Clinton advisers a draft of her opening statement to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, to be delivered the following week.
The draft itself wasn't attached in the emails published Tuesday, but other messages showed how it was shaped, including a section referring to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.
"We might consider softening the 'Chris did not believe retreat was an option — and neither do I' line," wrote Katherine Turner, a law partner of Clinton's personal attorney David Kendall. "I don't think we want to suggest that there was a commitment to be there at any and all costs."
Following Clinton's tense Oct. 22 testimony, Podesta proposed in an email that she could publicly joke, "I used to be obsessed with Donald Trump's hair, that was until I got to spend 11 hours staring at the top of Trey Gowdy's head," a reference to the slicked-back white coif of the South Carolina Republican who chairs the committee.
Other Clinton aides shot down the idea.
"I love the joke too but I think HRC should stay above the committee," adviser Jake Sullivan replied, "and especially above personal insults about it. She's got every inch of the high ground right now."
Palmieri replied: "Wow. You people are a bunch of ninnies."
http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...k-obama-emails-wikileaks-john-podesta-concern
With the president’s knowledge — and involvement — in Hillary’s private e-mail scheme, it’s clear there was never going to be a prosecution.
Among the most noteworthy of the hacked e-mails from John Podesta’s accounts is an exchange in which Podesta consults Clinton consigliere Cheryl Mills about the private e-mail exchanges between President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As readers may recall, I have long maintained (see here and here) that the principal reason why Mrs. Clinton was not prosecuted, despite a mountain of evidence that she committed felony mishandling of classified information, is the fact that Obama engaged in the same kind of misconduct. The president’s use of a private, non-secure channel to discuss sensitive matters with high level officials may not have been systematic, as Mrs. Clinton’s was. (Obama’s disturbing use of an alias, however, suggests that Clinton was not the only one he was privately e-mailing.) Nevertheless, the fact that the president was e-mailing Clinton means he not only participated in her misconduct but also that the Obama-Clinton e-mails would have been admissible evidence in any criminal trial of Clinton.
For the parties to prove such culpable conduct on the president’s part in a high-profile criminal trial would have been profoundly embarrassing to him, to say the least. Therefore, it was never going to happen. As I’ve noted before, after exclaiming, “How is that not classified?” upon being shown an Obama-Clinton e-mail by the FBI, Hillary’s confidant Huma Abedin asked agents if she could have a copy of the exchange. She obviously realized that if Obama had been communicating on Clinton’s non-secure server system, no one else who had done so was going to be prosecuted for it. We now know that Podesta was very concerned about the Obama-Clinton e-mails and turned to Mills for advice. His succinct e-mail to Mills is dated March 4, 2015 (at 8:41 p.m.), and he entitled it “Special Category.” He stated: Think we should hold emails to and from potus? That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I [sic] seems like they will. Plainly, Podesta was suggesting to Mills that the Obama-Clinton e-mails were in a “special category” — i.e., distinct from the tens of thousands of other Clinton e-mails — because they involved the president. Only the president has power to invoke executive privilege, and Podesta believed such invocation would legitimately cover a communication between Obama and his secretary of state, since such consultations are “the heart of” the privilege recognized by the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon. (I think he was wrong about that, but that’s a matter for another day.)
If Mills ever responded to Podesta’s question, we do not have an e-mail to that effect. It is unlikely Mills would have ignored Podesta, particularly on a matter of such significance. Thus, I suspect further discussion was had face-to-face, by phone, or through intermediaries. The timing of the March 4 Podesta-Mills e-mail is highly significant. The date places it about three weeks after Podesta left his White House job as the president’s top advisor in order to head up the Clinton presidential campaign; the transitioning Podesta was still involved in Oval Office doings, and the Clinton campaign was up and running though not yet publicly launched. More significantly, the e-mail occurred when both the administration and the campaign were in crisis mode: It was immediately after the New York Times publicly exposed Clinton’s private e-mail system, and the House Benghazi committee had just issued a subpoena, demanding that Clinton preserve and provide any private e-mails within the scope of the committee’s investigation. With that as background, we should consider three salient matters.
1. OBAMA’S CONCEALMENT OF HIS E-MAILS WITH CLINTON
In the days immediately after the Times’ revelation of Mrs. Clinton’s systematic use of private e-mail to conduct government business, President Obama sat for interviews in which he claimed that he’d learned of Clinton’s personal e-mail use through “news reports” like everyone else. He flatly denied that he had any personal knowledge about the matter. Clearly, the president was lying to the American people: He knew he personally had engaged in several e-mails with Clinton. By extension, Obama was also lying to the Congress. As he well knew, congressional committees had been investigating matters (most prominently, Benghazi) in which communications between Obama and Clinton were of immense importance. Now, we know Obama not only had intimate personal awareness of what Clinton was doing; his top White House advisor, Podesta, was both aware of and concerned about the Obama-Clinton e-mails. Did Obama figure that because he had used an alias, the public and the Congress would never find out about his e-mails with Clinton (and with whomever else he has been exchanging e-mails while using the alias)? Did the president figure he could quietly invoke executive privilege such that no one would ever find out about his e-mails with Clinton? Given that Obama was manifestly determined to conceal his e-mails with Clinton, what is the chance that he would ever have permitted a prosecution of Clinton, which would necessarily have exposed those e-mails? To repeat what I’ve been arguing, I’d rate it as something less than non-existent.
2. THE BENGHAZI ANGLE
We know that on the evening of March 4, when Podesta e-mailed Mills, the matter of greatest concern to the fledgling Clinton campaign was the House Benghazi committee’s subpoena for former Secretary Clinton’s private e-mails. Before Podesta contacted her, Mills received an e-mail from Robby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager. There had been discussion among Clinton operatives about whether the State Department would release all of the e-mails Clinton had turned over (i.e., the 30,000 she had surrendered, not the 33,000 she had withheld and would soon undertake to destroy). Mook thus wanted “clarity” on whether “this House subpoena is just for Libya, right?” Mills replied that this was “right.”
In the midst of this discussion about the subpoena, Mills received Podesta’s message about the Obama-Clinton e-mails — just a half-hour before she responded to Mook. Given that the House subpoena was front-and-center at the time, one must ask whether Podesta was concerned about possible connections between the Obama-Clinton e-mails and Benghazi. To be sure, this is not necessarily the case. The Clinton camp and the Obama White House were also dealing with the overarching problem of how to handle the e-mail mess in general. Any Obama-Clinton e-mails were going to be a problem for both the White House and the Clinton campaign, not just any Benghazi-related e-mails. Still, the Benghazi question must be asked. Among the most central Benghazi issues were whether Obama-Clinton communications had occurred and, if so, what they were about. For example, why did the White House first deny that Obama had been in contact with Clinton on the night of the terrorist attack when, in fact, the two had spoken on the phone around 10 p.m.? Was there a connection between this call and the statement by Secretary Clinton, issued almost simultaneously, which blamed the anti-Muslim video (rather than al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists) for the attack? To this day, the Obama-Clinton e-mails have not been made public. Quite apart from the question of why the president and secretary of state were communicating on high-level policy matters over a private, non-secure channel, there remains the question whether any of their e-mail communications were related to Benghazi — the appalling lack of security before the attack, the disgraceful lack of a military response during the attack, or the cynical “blame the video” cover-up after the attack.
3. THE OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND FBI IGNORE AND DESTROY CHERYL MILLS’S E-MAILS
Let’s place the Podesta e-mails (with Mills and other Clinton campaign operatives) in broader context. Not only did they occur right after the public revelation of the Clinton homebrew server and the House subpoena. They occurred in the midst of what we know are communications between Mills and Platte River Networks, the contractor servicing the Clinton server. In late March, Paul Combetta, the PRN technician with whom Mills was in touch, deleted and undertook to destroy all the e-mails on Clinton’s server — including the 33,000 that Clinton had never provided to the State Department, and that she falsely claimed involved only personal matters and contained no classified information. At a minimum, the Podesta e-mails demonstrate that, when Clinton’s homebrew system was revealed, the reaction among Obama-Clinton operatives was not stunned disbelief. Their conduct was, instead, what one would expect from people who were well aware of Clinton’s e-mail situation, and who now understood their mission was to control damage and minimize disclosure. This state-of-mind evidence would have been crucial to any prosecution against Clinton and her confederates for mishandling classified information, destroying government files, or obstruction of justice.
Since that is so obviously the case, and would have been even more obviously the case to FBI agents and prosecutors working on the Clinton e-mails investigation, why on earth would the Justice Department make a deal with Cheryl Mills that prevented the FBI from examining her e-mails during this critical March 2015 time frame? Consider just one small example: As noted above, it does not appear that Mills replied in writing to Podesta’s March 4 e-mail about concealing the Obama-Clinton e-mails. Did Mills e-mail others in the Clinton camp about the matter? We’ll probably never know. The Justice Department agreed that the FBI would not examine anything on Mills’s laptop computer post-dating January 31, 2015 and, unbelievably, that the FBI would destroy the laptop after its limited examination. Why would the Justice Department grant Mills immunity from prosecution and negotiate such severe restrictions on the FBI’s ability to review and preserve her e-mails in exchange for access to Mills’s laptop computer? After all, they could have forced Mills to produce the laptop, without making accommodations, by simply issuing a grand-jury subpoena. And why, after Mills asked for and received immunity from prosecution for her conduct, would the Justice Department and the FBI permit her to sit in — as a lawyer — on Clinton’s FBI interview, a decision that not only flouted ethical rules and federal law but would also have damaged the case against Clinton had there been an indictment?
Try this for a theory: Since President Obama had used an alias to discuss sensitive matters on Clinton’s private, non-secure e-mail system, had then falsely denied knowledge of that system, and had decided to conceal his e-mails with Clinton from the public, the Justice Department knew that no one was ever going to be prosecuted anyway. The Justice Department and the FBI could rationalize cutting otherwise inexplicable deals that they would never cut in a case they were actually trying to make because they knew there was not going to be a case — not against Mills, not against Clinton, not against anyone.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...k-obama-emails-wikileaks-john-podesta-concern
With the president’s knowledge — and involvement — in Hillary’s private e-mail scheme, it’s clear there was never going to be a prosecution.
Among the most noteworthy of the hacked e-mails from John Podesta’s accounts is an exchange in which Podesta consults Clinton consigliere Cheryl Mills about the private e-mail exchanges between President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As readers may recall, I have long maintained (see here and here) that the principal reason why Mrs. Clinton was not prosecuted, despite a mountain of evidence that she committed felony mishandling of classified information, is the fact that Obama engaged in the same kind of misconduct. The president’s use of a private, non-secure channel to discuss sensitive matters with high level officials may not have been systematic, as Mrs. Clinton’s was. (Obama’s disturbing use of an alias, however, suggests that Clinton was not the only one he was privately e-mailing.) Nevertheless, the fact that the president was e-mailing Clinton means he not only participated in her misconduct but also that the Obama-Clinton e-mails would have been admissible evidence in any criminal trial of Clinton.
For the parties to prove such culpable conduct on the president’s part in a high-profile criminal trial would have been profoundly embarrassing to him, to say the least. Therefore, it was never going to happen. As I’ve noted before, after exclaiming, “How is that not classified?” upon being shown an Obama-Clinton e-mail by the FBI, Hillary’s confidant Huma Abedin asked agents if she could have a copy of the exchange. She obviously realized that if Obama had been communicating on Clinton’s non-secure server system, no one else who had done so was going to be prosecuted for it. We now know that Podesta was very concerned about the Obama-Clinton e-mails and turned to Mills for advice. His succinct e-mail to Mills is dated March 4, 2015 (at 8:41 p.m.), and he entitled it “Special Category.” He stated: Think we should hold emails to and from potus? That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but I [sic] seems like they will. Plainly, Podesta was suggesting to Mills that the Obama-Clinton e-mails were in a “special category” — i.e., distinct from the tens of thousands of other Clinton e-mails — because they involved the president. Only the president has power to invoke executive privilege, and Podesta believed such invocation would legitimately cover a communication between Obama and his secretary of state, since such consultations are “the heart of” the privilege recognized by the Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon. (I think he was wrong about that, but that’s a matter for another day.)
If Mills ever responded to Podesta’s question, we do not have an e-mail to that effect. It is unlikely Mills would have ignored Podesta, particularly on a matter of such significance. Thus, I suspect further discussion was had face-to-face, by phone, or through intermediaries. The timing of the March 4 Podesta-Mills e-mail is highly significant. The date places it about three weeks after Podesta left his White House job as the president’s top advisor in order to head up the Clinton presidential campaign; the transitioning Podesta was still involved in Oval Office doings, and the Clinton campaign was up and running though not yet publicly launched. More significantly, the e-mail occurred when both the administration and the campaign were in crisis mode: It was immediately after the New York Times publicly exposed Clinton’s private e-mail system, and the House Benghazi committee had just issued a subpoena, demanding that Clinton preserve and provide any private e-mails within the scope of the committee’s investigation. With that as background, we should consider three salient matters.
1. OBAMA’S CONCEALMENT OF HIS E-MAILS WITH CLINTON
In the days immediately after the Times’ revelation of Mrs. Clinton’s systematic use of private e-mail to conduct government business, President Obama sat for interviews in which he claimed that he’d learned of Clinton’s personal e-mail use through “news reports” like everyone else. He flatly denied that he had any personal knowledge about the matter. Clearly, the president was lying to the American people: He knew he personally had engaged in several e-mails with Clinton. By extension, Obama was also lying to the Congress. As he well knew, congressional committees had been investigating matters (most prominently, Benghazi) in which communications between Obama and Clinton were of immense importance. Now, we know Obama not only had intimate personal awareness of what Clinton was doing; his top White House advisor, Podesta, was both aware of and concerned about the Obama-Clinton e-mails. Did Obama figure that because he had used an alias, the public and the Congress would never find out about his e-mails with Clinton (and with whomever else he has been exchanging e-mails while using the alias)? Did the president figure he could quietly invoke executive privilege such that no one would ever find out about his e-mails with Clinton? Given that Obama was manifestly determined to conceal his e-mails with Clinton, what is the chance that he would ever have permitted a prosecution of Clinton, which would necessarily have exposed those e-mails? To repeat what I’ve been arguing, I’d rate it as something less than non-existent.
2. THE BENGHAZI ANGLE
We know that on the evening of March 4, when Podesta e-mailed Mills, the matter of greatest concern to the fledgling Clinton campaign was the House Benghazi committee’s subpoena for former Secretary Clinton’s private e-mails. Before Podesta contacted her, Mills received an e-mail from Robby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager. There had been discussion among Clinton operatives about whether the State Department would release all of the e-mails Clinton had turned over (i.e., the 30,000 she had surrendered, not the 33,000 she had withheld and would soon undertake to destroy). Mook thus wanted “clarity” on whether “this House subpoena is just for Libya, right?” Mills replied that this was “right.”
In the midst of this discussion about the subpoena, Mills received Podesta’s message about the Obama-Clinton e-mails — just a half-hour before she responded to Mook. Given that the House subpoena was front-and-center at the time, one must ask whether Podesta was concerned about possible connections between the Obama-Clinton e-mails and Benghazi. To be sure, this is not necessarily the case. The Clinton camp and the Obama White House were also dealing with the overarching problem of how to handle the e-mail mess in general. Any Obama-Clinton e-mails were going to be a problem for both the White House and the Clinton campaign, not just any Benghazi-related e-mails. Still, the Benghazi question must be asked. Among the most central Benghazi issues were whether Obama-Clinton communications had occurred and, if so, what they were about. For example, why did the White House first deny that Obama had been in contact with Clinton on the night of the terrorist attack when, in fact, the two had spoken on the phone around 10 p.m.? Was there a connection between this call and the statement by Secretary Clinton, issued almost simultaneously, which blamed the anti-Muslim video (rather than al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists) for the attack? To this day, the Obama-Clinton e-mails have not been made public. Quite apart from the question of why the president and secretary of state were communicating on high-level policy matters over a private, non-secure channel, there remains the question whether any of their e-mail communications were related to Benghazi — the appalling lack of security before the attack, the disgraceful lack of a military response during the attack, or the cynical “blame the video” cover-up after the attack.
3. THE OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND FBI IGNORE AND DESTROY CHERYL MILLS’S E-MAILS
Let’s place the Podesta e-mails (with Mills and other Clinton campaign operatives) in broader context. Not only did they occur right after the public revelation of the Clinton homebrew server and the House subpoena. They occurred in the midst of what we know are communications between Mills and Platte River Networks, the contractor servicing the Clinton server. In late March, Paul Combetta, the PRN technician with whom Mills was in touch, deleted and undertook to destroy all the e-mails on Clinton’s server — including the 33,000 that Clinton had never provided to the State Department, and that she falsely claimed involved only personal matters and contained no classified information. At a minimum, the Podesta e-mails demonstrate that, when Clinton’s homebrew system was revealed, the reaction among Obama-Clinton operatives was not stunned disbelief. Their conduct was, instead, what one would expect from people who were well aware of Clinton’s e-mail situation, and who now understood their mission was to control damage and minimize disclosure. This state-of-mind evidence would have been crucial to any prosecution against Clinton and her confederates for mishandling classified information, destroying government files, or obstruction of justice.
Since that is so obviously the case, and would have been even more obviously the case to FBI agents and prosecutors working on the Clinton e-mails investigation, why on earth would the Justice Department make a deal with Cheryl Mills that prevented the FBI from examining her e-mails during this critical March 2015 time frame? Consider just one small example: As noted above, it does not appear that Mills replied in writing to Podesta’s March 4 e-mail about concealing the Obama-Clinton e-mails. Did Mills e-mail others in the Clinton camp about the matter? We’ll probably never know. The Justice Department agreed that the FBI would not examine anything on Mills’s laptop computer post-dating January 31, 2015 and, unbelievably, that the FBI would destroy the laptop after its limited examination. Why would the Justice Department grant Mills immunity from prosecution and negotiate such severe restrictions on the FBI’s ability to review and preserve her e-mails in exchange for access to Mills’s laptop computer? After all, they could have forced Mills to produce the laptop, without making accommodations, by simply issuing a grand-jury subpoena. And why, after Mills asked for and received immunity from prosecution for her conduct, would the Justice Department and the FBI permit her to sit in — as a lawyer — on Clinton’s FBI interview, a decision that not only flouted ethical rules and federal law but would also have damaged the case against Clinton had there been an indictment?
Try this for a theory: Since President Obama had used an alias to discuss sensitive matters on Clinton’s private, non-secure e-mail system, had then falsely denied knowledge of that system, and had decided to conceal his e-mails with Clinton from the public, the Justice Department knew that no one was ever going to be prosecuted anyway. The Justice Department and the FBI could rationalize cutting otherwise inexplicable deals that they would never cut in a case they were actually trying to make because they knew there was not going to be a case — not against Mills, not against Clinton, not against anyone.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...k-obama-emails-wikileaks-john-podesta-concern
These encryption keys will prove the files have NOT been tampered with or edited.
1: John Kerry
4bb96075acadc3d80b5ac872874c3037a386f4f595fe99e687439aabd0219809
2: Ecuador
eae5c9b064ed649ba468f0800abf8b56ae5cfe355b93b1ce90a1b92a48a9ab72
3: UK FCO
f33a6de5c627e3270ed3e02f62cd0c857467a780cf6123d2172d80d02a072f74
more to follow...
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There should be no question that this would not go far under this administration. Justice and FBI are in the Administration, are supposed to be independent of influence. Bill's administration broke that seperation. The administration has assumed absolute control of both. The prior AG arrogantly showed his connected association to president.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/a...-sought-to-deny-any-classified-data-wikileaks
Clinton Aide Urged Denying Any Secrets Were Sent: WikiLeaks
Hillary Clinton’s campaign spokesman urged a blanket denial that she ever sent classified information through her private e-mail system because anything less emphatic could open her to charges that she broke the law, according to the latest batch of e-mails purportedly stolen from her campaign and posted by WikiLeaks.
“We should not think it is fine to find something that ‘should have been classified at the time,”’ Brian Fallon, the spokesman, wrote other top campaign officials on Aug. 22, 2015, as they debated a statement Clinton would make on her use of an e-mail server in her home. "Our position is that no such material exists, else it could be said she mishandled classified info,” Fallon wrote.
Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin said Thursday that the campaign won’t confirm whether the messages are authentic.
The Democratic presidential candidate’s shifting explanations of her reliance on her own e-mail system for work-related messages when she was secretary of State is a major campaign issue. In Sunday’s debate, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told her “you’d be in jail” for mishandling classified information if he were president.
The e-mails mark the sixth batch allegedly purloined from the e-mail account of John Podesta, who’s now Clinton’s campaign chairman, with more than 9,000 messages released so far. Clinton’s aides have suggested that the e-mails might have been fabricated or doctored. They blame Russia’s government for the leaks, as does the U.S. government.
After Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server first became known, Clinton initially said she sent no e-mails with classified information. She later amended that to say she sent none that were marked classified at the time. After FBI Director James Comey said Clinton had sent and received several e-mails that were marked confidential with a "(c)" in the body of the text, she finally settled on saying she’d sent none that were marked classified in the “header” at the top.
Shifting Explanations
Fallon’s note came just days after Clinton gave a vague answer on the erasure of e-mails that her lawyers deemed not to be work-related. Asked if she’d wiped her server, she responded: “Like with a cloth or something?”
In March 2015, an archive of her e-mails had been deleted and then wiped from the server with software called BleachBit by an employee of the company that maintained the server, according to the FBI. While Clinton’s e-mails were already under a congressional subpoena at the time, the technician told the FBI he acted on his own based on instructions pre-dating the order.
It wasn’t immediately clear when or if Clinton delivered the statement suggested by Fallon, which would have come after months of downplaying the issue. Four days after Fallon wrote the e-mail, Clinton said using the server “clearly wasn’t the best choice.”
“I’m confident that this process will prove that I never sent nor received any e-mail that was marked classified,” she said.
‘It’s Not Why’
The releases from WikiLeaks, assuming they’re accurate, have provided a rare window into the workings of a presidential campaign, from the hiring of staff and development of talking points to sniping between officials and the handling of opponents.
Statements about the e-mails, in particular, often received editing and sign-off at the highest levels.
Earlier in August 2015, Jake Sullivan, a top policy adviser, sent a version of another statement in which Clinton talked about her pride in the work of the State Department.
“That’s why I’ve asked the State Department to publish 55,000 pages of my work emails,” the statement said.
“I’d take out ‘That’s why’ in the next sentence,” another spokesman, Nick Merrill, wrote in response. “You know, because it’s not why...”
October Campaign
The latest WikiLeaks release came during a turbulent day in the campaign after several women accused Trump in media accounts of groping them, which follows a tape that emerged last week of Trump bragging about such conduct in lewd language.
Trump has said the comments about groping were just “locker-room talk” and he didn’t actually do it. On Thursday, he blamed media coverage of the issue on a "conspiracy" and suggested the media was burying the WikiLeaks story.
Caplin, the Clinton campaign spokesman, said WikiLeaks was engaging in a "propaganda campaign" and suggested the Trump campaign may have been involved in the leaks.
"The fact that Donald Trump refuses to condemn this intrusion by a foreign government, cheers it on, and even says it didn’t happen is yet another reason why he is unfit to be president of the United States," he said.
Clinton Aide Urged Denying Any Secrets Were Sent: WikiLeaks
Hillary Clinton’s campaign spokesman urged a blanket denial that she ever sent classified information through her private e-mail system because anything less emphatic could open her to charges that she broke the law, according to the latest batch of e-mails purportedly stolen from her campaign and posted by WikiLeaks.
“We should not think it is fine to find something that ‘should have been classified at the time,”’ Brian Fallon, the spokesman, wrote other top campaign officials on Aug. 22, 2015, as they debated a statement Clinton would make on her use of an e-mail server in her home. "Our position is that no such material exists, else it could be said she mishandled classified info,” Fallon wrote.
Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin said Thursday that the campaign won’t confirm whether the messages are authentic.
The Democratic presidential candidate’s shifting explanations of her reliance on her own e-mail system for work-related messages when she was secretary of State is a major campaign issue. In Sunday’s debate, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told her “you’d be in jail” for mishandling classified information if he were president.
The e-mails mark the sixth batch allegedly purloined from the e-mail account of John Podesta, who’s now Clinton’s campaign chairman, with more than 9,000 messages released so far. Clinton’s aides have suggested that the e-mails might have been fabricated or doctored. They blame Russia’s government for the leaks, as does the U.S. government.
After Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server first became known, Clinton initially said she sent no e-mails with classified information. She later amended that to say she sent none that were marked classified at the time. After FBI Director James Comey said Clinton had sent and received several e-mails that were marked confidential with a "(c)" in the body of the text, she finally settled on saying she’d sent none that were marked classified in the “header” at the top.
Shifting Explanations
Fallon’s note came just days after Clinton gave a vague answer on the erasure of e-mails that her lawyers deemed not to be work-related. Asked if she’d wiped her server, she responded: “Like with a cloth or something?”
In March 2015, an archive of her e-mails had been deleted and then wiped from the server with software called BleachBit by an employee of the company that maintained the server, according to the FBI. While Clinton’s e-mails were already under a congressional subpoena at the time, the technician told the FBI he acted on his own based on instructions pre-dating the order.
It wasn’t immediately clear when or if Clinton delivered the statement suggested by Fallon, which would have come after months of downplaying the issue. Four days after Fallon wrote the e-mail, Clinton said using the server “clearly wasn’t the best choice.”
“I’m confident that this process will prove that I never sent nor received any e-mail that was marked classified,” she said.
‘It’s Not Why’
The releases from WikiLeaks, assuming they’re accurate, have provided a rare window into the workings of a presidential campaign, from the hiring of staff and development of talking points to sniping between officials and the handling of opponents.
Statements about the e-mails, in particular, often received editing and sign-off at the highest levels.
Earlier in August 2015, Jake Sullivan, a top policy adviser, sent a version of another statement in which Clinton talked about her pride in the work of the State Department.
“That’s why I’ve asked the State Department to publish 55,000 pages of my work emails,” the statement said.
“I’d take out ‘That’s why’ in the next sentence,” another spokesman, Nick Merrill, wrote in response. “You know, because it’s not why...”
October Campaign
The latest WikiLeaks release came during a turbulent day in the campaign after several women accused Trump in media accounts of groping them, which follows a tape that emerged last week of Trump bragging about such conduct in lewd language.
Trump has said the comments about groping were just “locker-room talk” and he didn’t actually do it. On Thursday, he blamed media coverage of the issue on a "conspiracy" and suggested the media was burying the WikiLeaks story.
Caplin, the Clinton campaign spokesman, said WikiLeaks was engaging in a "propaganda campaign" and suggested the Trump campaign may have been involved in the leaks.
"The fact that Donald Trump refuses to condemn this intrusion by a foreign government, cheers it on, and even says it didn’t happen is yet another reason why he is unfit to be president of the United States," he said.
John Podesta Wished San Bernardino Shooter Had Been White
A recently leaked email from WikiLeaks is showing how Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta reacted after learning the name of the shooter in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
In an email to Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney, Podesta was dismayed that the shooter had a Muslim-sounding name rather than one typically associated with white people.
Podesta was responding to this tweet, in which MSNBC host Chris Hayes revealed the name of the perpetrator:
"NBC News now reporting a US citizen named Sayeed Farouk believed to be one of the people involved in the shooting."
"Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter," Podesta said to Finney in the December 3rd email, referring to the MSNBC host.
Apparently reality complicates matters for the left.
A recently leaked email from WikiLeaks is showing how Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta reacted after learning the name of the shooter in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
In an email to Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney, Podesta was dismayed that the shooter had a Muslim-sounding name rather than one typically associated with white people.
Podesta was responding to this tweet, in which MSNBC host Chris Hayes revealed the name of the perpetrator:
"NBC News now reporting a US citizen named Sayeed Farouk believed to be one of the people involved in the shooting."
"Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter," Podesta said to Finney in the December 3rd email, referring to the MSNBC host.
Apparently reality complicates matters for the left.
