DOJ to Hand Over Official’s Anti-Trump Texts, Amid Contempt Threat
Posted: December 7, 2017 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, White House | Tags: Cheryl Mills, Christopher Wray, Congress, Contempt, Devin Nunes, FBI, Huma Abedin, Peter Strzok, Rod Rosenstein, Tucker Carlson, video 1 CommentTucker’s Thoughts: Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin both lied to the FBI in the Clinton email server case, but thy are not going to jail like Michael Flynn, who also lied. A partisan FBI is treating him differently. #Tucker
The Justice Department is in the process of handing over to the House Intelligence Committee the anti-Trump text messages that got a key FBI official removed from Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Fox News has learned — a move that comes as the panel weighs a possible contempt resolution.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had demanded the text messages between FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom Strzok was romantically involved. Both were part of Mueller’s Russia team at the time. Page has since returned to the FBI, and Strzok was reassigned to the FBI’s HR department after the discovery of the anti-Trump texts.
[Tucker: Why Peter Strzok’s political views matter]
The existence of the texts first emerged publicly over the weekend. A source familiar with the discussion between the DOJ and House panel told Fox News on Tuesday that Nunes has been assured those messages will be turned over in the coming days.
The exact timeline is unclear, and only the relevant texts will be turned over.
Also unclear is whether this will satisfy committee Republicans who had been looking to move forward with a contempt resolution against top DOJ and FBI officials barring a breakthrough – after the agencies did not comply with a deadline to hand over long-sought information that goes well beyond text messages.
Rep. Devin Nunes. (AP, File)
Nunes originally had given the agencies until “close of business” on Monday to “fully” comply with the panel’s demands. Otherwise, he threatened to move a contempt of Congress resolution against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
[MORE: The Incredible Tale of a Reckless, Partisan FBI Agent and Our Partisan Bureaucracy]
Strzok is a focus of their efforts. House investigators have long regarded him as a key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump “dossier” and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.
Nunes has sought documents and witnesses from the DOJ and FBI to determine what role, if any, the dossier played in the move to direct the surveillance.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe is facing renewed scrutiny from Capitol Hill. (AP)
[MUELLER AIDE FIRED FOR ANTI-TRUMP TEXTS FACING REVIEW FOR ROLE IN CLINTON EMAIL PROBE]
Strzok briefed the committee on Dec. 5, 2016, sources said. But within months of that session, House Intelligence Committee investigators were contacted by an informant suggesting that there was “documentary evidence” that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the dossier. Read the rest of this entry »
Anthony Weiner Fined $65K for Using Campaign Cash for Personal Use
Posted: December 2, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Anthony Weiner sexting scandals, Daily Mail, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey, New York, New York Post Leave a comment
The New York City Campaign Finance Board hit disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner with a $65,000 fine for a number of violations including using campaign funds from his failed 2013 mayoral run for his own personal use.
The board found that Weiner accepted contributions over the donation limit, failed to show that money he spent was in furtherance of his 2013 mayoral campaign and spent money after the election that was not related to the campaign.
The board is also ordering him to return $195,377 in matching campaign funds, DNA Info reported.
The NYC Campaign Finance Board hit disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner with a $65,000 fine for a number of violations including using campaign funds from his failed 2013 mayoral run for his own personal use (pictured above in 2013)
The board found that Weiner (pictured above in 2013) accepted contributions over the donation limit, failed to show that money he spent was in furtherance of his 2013 mayoral campaign and spent money after the election that was not related to the campaign
Money that Weiner spent for personal use included him paying his cell phone bill and another personal line he used for fundraising. For that violation, he was fined $2,308. Read the rest of this entry »
Paul ‘Black Helicopters’ Krugman Speculates on an FBI Virtual ‘Alliance with Putin’
Posted: November 21, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Paranoia, propaganda, Twitter Leave a comment
Bob Bryan reports: Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist, suggested Thursday that an “alliance” between a faction of the FBI and Russian President Vladimir Putin swung last week’s election in favor of Donald Trump.
“So it looks more and more as if we had an election swung, in effect, by a faction of our own security sector in alliance with Putin.”
— Paul Krugman, during a psychotic break, on Twitter
Krugman said that given the small margin in swing states that decided the election, the FBI’s reactivation of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was just enough to change the minds of some voters.
“The economist has frequently taken to Twitter in the days after the election to bemoan the outcome and to draw concern over early policies of Trump.”
FBI Director James Comey announced the discovery of new emails “pertinent” to the case on October 28 — 11 days before the election — before clearing her again a week later.
[Read the actual news item here, at Business Insider]
“As evidence accumulates that Trump benefited from a lot of late deciders breaking his way, the case that it was Comey gets stronger,” Krugman wrote in a tweet.
The US intelligence community publicly accused the Russian government of being behind the hacks of emails of members of Democratic Party organizations and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose electronic communications were released in droves by WikiLeaks during the final weeks of the campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Unexpectedly, In Wake of Hillary’s Defeat, Donations to Clinton Foundation Dry Up
Posted: November 21, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Clinton Foundation, Democratic Party (United States), Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey 2 Comments
Who could have seen this coming?
Donations to the Clinton Foundation plummeted amid Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential run, it has been revealed. The non-profit organization’s latest tax filings show contributions fell 37 per cent to $108million – down from $172million in 2014, according to the New York Post.…(read more)
Clinton Staffers Popped Champagne on Election Day Before Loss
Posted: November 18, 2016 Filed under: Food & Drink, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Champagne, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, The New York Times 1 Comment
Hillary Clinton’s aides were so sure she would win that they reportedly popped champagne on the campaign plane on Election Day.
Hours later, instead of becoming the nation’s first female president as polls had predicted, Clinton suffered one of the most stunning political defeats in history, 
and Donald Trump became the new president-elect.
“There is no question that a week from Election Day, Secretary Clinton was poised for a historic win. In the end, late breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome.”
The New York Times reported the champagne element on Saturday, as part of a story that detailed Clinton’s comments echoing a memo from her campaign that blamed her shocking loss on FBI Director James Comey.
“Instead of becoming the nation’s first female president as polls had predicted, Clinton suffered one of the most stunning political defeats in history, and Donald Trump became the new president-elect.”
A mere 11 days before the election, Comey sent a letter notifying Congress that the FBI was looking into new emails related to Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.
The agency discovered the emails while investigating former congressman Anthony Weiner. But the Sunday before Election Day, Comey announced the emails didn’t warrant additional investigation, and again cleared Clinton.
The Clinton campaign and prominent Democrats slammed Comey for his timing, accusing the Republican FBI director of trying to sway the election. Read the rest of this entry »
Dark days for Obama’s White House
Posted: November 10, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Air Force One, Americans, Anthony Weiner, Barack Obama, Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Oval Office 1 Comment
President Obama on Thursday will welcome Donald Trump to the White House.
Jordan Fabian reports: President Obama on Thursday will welcome Donald Trump to the White House, beginning a transition of power that is pure anguish for many in the Democratic Party.
The meeting, which seemed improbable just 72 hours ago, will likely stand as one of the most humbling moments of Obama’s presidency.
Trump rose to political stardom in Obama’s first term by questioning his birthplace, spurring Obama to label him a “carnival barker.” The feud carried over into this year’s campaign, where Obama repeatedly described Trump as unfit for the Oval Office.
But despite his efforts, and vigorous campaigning by first lady Michelle Obama, Trump vanquished Hillary Clinton with victories in swing states that Obama had carried in 2008 and 2012.
Now Obama must begin to hand the keys to the White House to a leader who has pledged to unravel much of his legacy, from ObamaCare to environmental protections to Wall Street reform and the Iran nuclear deal.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 09: U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement on the election results as Vice President Joseph Biden listens in the Rose Garden at the White House November 9, 2016 in Washington, DC. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has won the election and will become the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“I’m not saying it’s going to be an easy meeting,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
Dark clouds hung over the White House the day before Trump’s visit, mirroring the mood inside the executive mansion.
But the sky cleared before Obama entered the Rose Garden Wednesday afternoon to put a positive spin on the results.
The president recalled a video he recorded on election night, in which he reminded the country that “the sun would come up in the morning” no matter who won.
“That is one bit of prognosticating that actually came true,” he said. “The sun is up. And I know everybody had a long night. I did as well.
“But the day after, we have to remember that we’re actually all on one team.”
While Obama emphasized the importance of a smooth transition and a unified American government, there was no mistaking the pain felt by those on hand.
Dozens of shell-shocked staffers filed into the Rose Garden to watch the statement, including Valerie Jarrett, Denis McDonough and Susan Rice — all members of the president’s inner circle.
Obama’s team gave him an ovation that lasted for more than a minute after Vice President Biden and he returned to the Oval Office arm in arm.
No two-term president did more than Obama to ensure the election of his preferred successor in Clinton. But her colossal failure on Election Day could result in much of his legacy being wiped away. Read the rest of this entry »
Presidential Election 2016: A New Yorker Magazine Editor’s Tragedy
Posted: November 9, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Barack Obama, Classified information, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Kellyanne Conway 2 Comments
‘The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness’
There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted.
[Read the entire, self-serving, vicious, inflated, bloated, painful, ridiculous, hysterical, ignorant, hateful rant here, at The New Yorker]
The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.
Early on Election Day, the polls held out cause for concern, but they provided sufficiently promising news for Democrats in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and even Florida that there was every reason to think about celebrating the fulfillment of Seneca Falls, the election of the first woman to the White House. Potential victories in states like Georgia disappeared, little more than a week ago, with the F.B.I. director’s heedless and damaging letter to Congress about reopening his investigation and the reappearance of damaging buzzwords like “e-mails,” “Anthony Weiner,” and “fifteen-year-old girl.” But the odds were still with Hillary Clinton.
All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. Read the rest of this entry »
Media: ‘We Didn’t Get It. We Still Don’t Get It’
Posted: November 9, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, D.C., Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Donna Brazile, Elections in the United States, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, John Podesta, New York City, Republican Party (United States), The Washington Post, United States presidential election, Washington Leave a comment
It would be too horrible. So, therefore, according to some kind of magical thinking, it couldn’t happen.
Margaret Sullivan writes: To put it bluntly, the media missed the story. In the end, a huge number of American voters wanted something different. And although these voters shouted and screamed it, most journalists just weren’t listening. They didn’t get it.
They didn’t get that the huge, enthusiastic crowds at Donald Trump’s rallies would really translate into that many votes. They couldn’t believe that the America they knew could embrace someone who mocked a disabled man, bragged about sexually assaulting women, and spouted misogyny, racism and anti-Semitism.
Sanctimonious and condescending, this self-serving passage perfectly illustrates Washington D.C.’s contempt for the American public.
It would be too horrible. So, therefore, according to some kind of magical thinking, it couldn’t happen.
“The Election of Donald Trump to the presidency is nothing short of a tragedy for David Remnick,” America writes. https://t.co/7z8lUpCulo
— Mike (@Doranimated) November 9, 2016
Journalists — college-educated, urban and, for the most part, liberal — are more likely than ever before to live and work in New York City and Washington, D.C., or on the West Coast. And although we touched down in the big red states for a few days, or interviewed some coal miners or unemployed autoworkers in the Rust Belt, we didn’t take them seriously. Or not seriously enough.
And Trump — who called journalists scum and corrupt — alienated us so much that we couldn’t see what was before our eyes. We just kept checking our favorite prognosticating sites and feeling reassured, even though everyone knows that poll results are not votes.
[Read the full story here at The Washington Post]
After all, you never know who’ll show up to vote, especially when votes are being suppressed as never before. And even the most Clinton-leaning prognosticators allowed for some chance of a Trump win.
But no one seemed to believe it in their bones. We would have President Clinton, went the journalistic conventional wisdom, and although she would be flawed, she would be a known quantity. There was a kind of comfort there.
Make no mistake. This is an epic fail. And although eating crow is never appealing, we’ll be digesting feathers and beaks in the next weeks and months — and maybe years.
The strange thing, of course, is that the media helped to give Trump his chance. Read the rest of this entry »
State Dept. has up to 31,000 Pages of New Clinton Records from the FBI’s Investigation; Wants Five Years to Process Them
Posted: November 7, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Rep. Anthony Weiner, Sexting, United States Department of Justice, United States Department of State Leave a comment
(Washington DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding developments during today’s court hearing concerning Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking emails sent or received by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her official capacity during her tenure as secretary of state:
The Obama State Department is doing a political favor for Hillary Clinton for suggesting to a federal court today that Judicial Watch wait as long as five years to see up to 31,000 new Clinton documents found by the FBI. We learned in this lawsuit that the State Department is slow-walking the release of Hillary Clinton’s deleted and hidden emails. Ironically, this Clinton/Obama State Department stonewalling has guaranteed that the Clinton email scandal won’t be resolved for years.
The court has set the next hearing in this case for November 29 to discuss the status of 650,000 emails reportedly found on the computing devices of Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] MSNBC Terrorism Analyst Misidentifies Victor David Hanson as Russian Spy
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Russia | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump presidential campaign, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Fox News Channel, Hillary Clinton, Hoover Institution, Huma Abedin, James Comey, The Wall Street Journal, United States, Victor Davis Hanson Leave a comment
On AM Joy, MSNBC terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance, bragging that he knows some of the FBI spy catchers, says “guys who have taken down big names, such as Aldrich Ames and Victor Davis Hanson.”
Hanson, an historian and one of America’s leading conservative intellectuals, is currently a Senior Fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is surely not a spy.
Nance presumably had in mind Robert Philip Hanssen, a former FBI agent who was convicted of spying for the Soviets and Russians. Read the rest of this entry »
BREAKING: James Comey says ‘We have not changed our conclusions’ from July
Posted: November 6, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Andrew C. McCarthy, Department of State, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey, United States Department of Justice Leave a comment
New #Comey announcement is as predicted in this column & pertains to classified info investigation not ClintonFdn https://t.co/K1AZy0wG5j
— Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) November 6, 2016
Read more here….
[VIDEO] Huma Abedin Emerges Out of Seclusion for First Time Since New Email Uproar, Says Only One Word
Posted: November 5, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Classified information, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Rep. Anthony Weiner, Sexting, United States Department of Justice 2 Comments
Since the FBI announced its second investigation into Hillary’s emails, her senior aide, Huma Abedin, has been in seclusion.
Until now…(read more)
Source: ijr.com
Anthony Weiner’s Laptop: FBI Finds Emails Related to Hillary Clinton’s State Department Tenure
Posted: November 3, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Anthony Weiner sexting scandals, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Rep. Anthony Weiner, Sexting, United States Department of Justice 2 CommentsThe new emails, which prompted the FBI’s announcement last week, came from former congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
The FBI has found emails related to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the laptop belonging to the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner, according to a U.S. official.
These emails, CBS News’ Andres Triay reports, are not duplicates of emails found on Secretary Clinton’s private server. At this point, however, it remains to be seen whether these emails are significant to the FBI’s investigation into Clinton. It is also not known how many relevant emails there are.
In a letter to Congress last Friday, FBI Director James Comey indicated that the agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Clinton’s private email server. Those emails came from the laptop of Weiner, a former New York congressman. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Payton on FNC: Early Voting Is Bad For Democracy
Posted: November 2, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Alabama, Anthony Weiner, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey, United States Congress, United States Department of Justice Leave a comment
Payton mentioned a conversation she had on Monday with a Californian who had been planning to vote for Hillary Clinton, but changed his mind after news broke that the FBI is re-opening its investigation into her use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of State.
“Early voting is bad for democracy,” she said. “I could see a lot of people who did cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, [who are now] seeing all this kind of stuff, become really frustrated with the political system and the way that powerful people are able to skirt the law.” Read the rest of this entry »
Forget the FBI Cache; the Podesta Emails Show How America is Run
Posted: November 1, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump presidential campaign, Facebook, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Sexting, Silicon Valley, WikiLeaks 2 Comments
WikiLeaks’ dump of messages to and from Clinton’s campaign chief offer an unprecedented view into the workings of the elite, and how it looks after itself.
Thomas Frank writes: The emails currently are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
“When you search ‘Vineyard’ on the WikiLeaks dump that you realize these people truly inhabit a different world from the rest of us. By ‘vineyard’, of course, they mean Martha’s Vineyard, the ritzy vacation resort island off the coast of Massachusetts where presidents Clinton and Obama spent most of their summer vacations. The Vineyard is a place for the very, very rich to unwind, yes, but as we learn from these emails, it is also a place of high idealism; a land of enlightened liberal commitment far beyond anything ordinary citizens can ever achieve.”
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
“Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.”
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.
Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by sorting through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been a Washington power broker for decades. I admit that I feel uncomfortable digging through this hoard; stealing someone’s email is a crime, after all, and it is outrageous that people’s personal information has been exposed, since WikiLeaks doesn’t seem to have redacted the emails in any way.
[Read the full story here, at The Guardian]
There is also the issue of authenticity to contend with: we don’t know absolutely and for sure that these emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from John Podesta. The supposed authors of the messages are refusing to confirm or deny their authenticity, and though they seem to be real, there is a small possibility they aren’t.
“The dramatis personae of the liberal class are all present in this amazing body of work: financial innovators. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement.”
With all that taken into consideration, I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty.
The dramatis personae of the liberal class are all present in this amazing body of work: financial innovators. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement. Read the rest of this entry »
OH YES THEY DID: Hillary Clinton Staffers Knew Weiner Was Talking to Underage Girl Five Years Ago; Did Nothing
Posted: October 31, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Twitter 3 Comments
John Podesta and Neera Tanden, another adviser, were forwarded news of an investigation into Weiner’s online contact with a 17-year-old Delaware high school student by Jennifer Palmieri, the current campaign communications director, in June 2011.
Hillary Clinton’s staffers knew as early as 2011 that Anthony Weiner had been messaging an underage girl, but they did nothing about it, according to WikiLeaks emailspublished Monday.
John Podesta – now chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign – and Neera Tanden, another adviser, were forwarded news of an investigation into Weiner’s online contact with a 17-year-old Delaware high school 
student by Jennifer Palmieri, the current campaign communications director, in June 2011.
“Back in April 2011, the then-teenager openly expressed her love for Weiner, who followed her on Twitter. Palmieri forwarded the news article to Podesta and Tanden with the comment, ‘Oof’.”
At the time he was married to Huma Abedin, another member of Clinton’s inner circle, who is now at the center of fresh FBI investigation into the handling of classified material while Clinton was in office.
The email detailed lurid claims of private messages to an underage girl being investigated by police – and was met with the response ‘oof’ by Podesta.
‘Police on Friday afternoon came to the home of a 17-year-old high school junior to ask her about direct online communications she has had with Rep. Anthony Weiner,’ email read, quoting a Fox News article from the same time.
‘Two officers from the New Castle County Police Department arrived at the girl’s home around 4:30 p.m. and asked to speak with the girl’s mother about the daughter’s contact with Weiner. Another officer appeared at the home a short time later.’
Palmieri forwarded the news article to Podesta and Tanden.
Six days later, on June 16, 2011, Weiner announced his resignation after accidentally tweeting a photo of himself in bulging briefs to all of his followers.
Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s current campaign communications director, forwarded news of an investigation into Weiner’s contacts with a 17-year-old Delaware girl to John Podesta and Neera Tanden (pictured left and center, respectively, with Clinton) in 2011
Despite that Abedin stood by him.
Sources close to the 17-year-old at the time told Fox News that the girl and Weiner had direct-messaged each other on Twitter.
Back in April 2011, the then-teenager openly expressed her love for Weiner, who followed her on Twitter.
Palmieri forwarded the news article to Podesta and Tanden with the comment, ‘Oof’
In her feed, she expressed her love of married men, according to Patterico.com.
At one point she said: ‘HE IS MINE ALL MINE HE LOVES ME AND NO ONE ELSE ILY ILY ILY!!!’ and added ‘@RepWeiner I’m in love with you’ two days later.
At the time Weiner admitted that he had contact with the girl, but denied sending inappropriate messages, according to Politico.
The FBI sensationally announced on Friday that it was investigating thousands of emails that might be related to the former secretary of state’s private server. Read the rest of this entry »
Heartbreak: Daily News Bromance with James Comey Falls On Hard Times
Posted: October 31, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Entertainment, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: FBI, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, journalism, New York, news, NY, NYC, Tabloid, The Daily News Leave a comment
Colleagues: Huma, What’s In Those Emails?’ Abedin: ‘Hey, I’m in the Dark, Don’t Ask Me!’
Posted: October 31, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Anthony Weiner sexting scandals, BlackBerry, Classified information, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey, United States Department of Justice, United States Department of State Leave a comment
Clinton aide said to be unsure how emails ended up in her husband’s laptop, and what their significance could be.
“The newly found emails number in the tens of thousands or more, with at least some pertaining to the period when Abedin worked for the State Department from 2009 to 2013, first as a deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Clinton and later as a consultant, a law enforcement source said. Some of the messages could already be among the large set of messages the FBI pieced together from a variety of different devices and sources during the yearlong inquiry into Clinton’s private email server”
Word that Abedin claims to be unaware of the cache of messages came as a U.S. official revealed that the FBI obtained a warrant to examine the emails in greater detail.
The disclosure of an additional trove of emails that FBI Director James Comey says may be relevant to the Clinton email investigation has rocked the final days of the presidential campaign, with Comey coming under withering criticism for disclosing to Congress last week that new work was underway in the Clinton probe as a result of the discovery of the new set of messages.
“Sources familiar with the investigation said the laptop was seized early in October as part of an FBI probe into allegations that Weiner, a former congressman, traded sexually explicit messages with an underage girl.”
Late Sunday, already intense heat on Comey from the Clinton campaign and its allies grew even more searing. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Comey “may have broken the law” by engaging in partisan political activity. And former Attorney General Eric Holder became the most prominent figure to join a long list of former prosecutors condemning the FBI director’s decision to disclose the new politically sensitive discovery just 11 days before the presidential election.
The newly found emails number in the tens of thousands or more, with at least some pertaining to the period when Abedin worked for the State Department from 2009 to 2013, first as a deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Clinton and later as a consultant, a law enforcement source said. Some of the messages could already be among the large set of messages the FBI pieced together from a variety of different devices and sources during the yearlong inquiry into Clinton’s private email server, officials said.
“Despite sharp disagreement with Comey’s decision to publicize the discovery of the new set of emails just days before the presidential election, Justice Department officials pressed quickly for the warrant once they learned of the messages and are trying to organize a quick review of the emails.”
Abedin had an account on that server, but there were conflicting news reports about whether the newly found set of messages was from her clintonemail.com account and whether it contained messages exchanged with Clinton. Until the warrant was issued Sunday, legal concerns limited the analysis the FBI could do of the messages.
Sources familiar with the investigation said the laptop was seized early in October as part of an FBI probe into allegations that Weiner, a former congressman, traded sexually explicit messages with an underage girl.
[Read the full story here, at POLITICO]
Despite sharp disagreement with Comey’s decision to publicize the discovery of the new set of emails just days before the presidential election, Justice Department officials pressed quickly for the warrant once they learned of the messages and are trying to organize a quick review of the emails, a U.S. official told POLITICO.
However, it seems impossible that a full analysis will be completed by Election Day on Nov. 8 because if potentially classified messages that haven’t been found before are located, they will have to be farmed out to various intelligence agencies for classification review. That interagency process often takes months.
“As painful as this is for people, this was not a close call.”
— FBI Director James Comey
While Comey’s extensive public comments on the Clinton email investigation have angered many of his current and former Justice Department colleagues, legal experts said they also created awkwardness for prosecutors seeking to draft arguments that would justify a search or seizure warrant for the new batch of Abedin emails.
For months, Comey has been public about his agency’s conclusion that the evidence obtained in an almost-yearlong investigation into Clinton’s private server setup was not remotely close to what would justify filing criminal charges against the former secretary of state or her advisers.
“As painful as this is for people, this was not a close call,” the FBI chief told skeptical Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee last month.
However, to get the warrant, Justice Department lawyers appear to have mounted nearly the opposite argument: that the newly discovered messages were likely to contain evidence of a crime. Read the rest of this entry »
FBI Obtains Warrant Needed to Start Reviewing Emails Found on Laptop Used by Clinton Aide
Posted: October 30, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, CNN, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, The New York Times 2 Comments
Federal investigators looking into the Hillary Clinton email matter have obtained the warrant needed to start reviewing the emails found on a laptop used by Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
FBI Director James Comey told Congress Friday that the agency was again reviewing emails related to Clinton’s personal server, after it learned of additional information that might be relevant to the case.
Comey sent a letter to key members of Congress informing them that although the FBI had previously announced the completion of its investigation into Clinton’s email server, new information had prompted additional review.
“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote in a letter released Friday.
In conversations with FBI counterparts hours before Comey disclosed that the FBI was hoping to review newly discovered emails possibly “pertinent” to the Clinton probe, Justice Department officials emphasized that the department has long steered clear of taking such investigative actions close to an election if those actions could potentially influence the outcome of an election, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. Read the rest of this entry »
FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe
Posted: October 30, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Classified information, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Terry McAuliffe, Twitter 1 Comment
Devlin Barrett reports: As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.
“The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the teenager.”
Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.
“In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.”
The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner.
The new investigative effort, disclosed by FBI Director James Comey on Friday, shows a bureau at times in sharp internal disagreement over matters related to the Clintons, and how to handle those matters fairly and carefully in the middle of a national election campaign. Even as the previous probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email use wound down in July, internal disagreements within the bureau and the Justice Department surrounding the Clintons’ family philanthropy heated up, according to people familiar with the matter.
The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.
The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the teenager.
“At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said.”
In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.
At a meeting early last week of senior Justice Department and FBI officials, a member of the department’s senior national-security staff asked for an update on the Weiner laptop, the people familiar with the matter said. At that point, officials realized that no one had acted to obtain a warrant, these people said. Read the rest of this entry »
Huma Abedin: On the Bus? Or Under it
Posted: October 30, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: 2016, Anthony Weiner, Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, James Comey, The New York Times, United States Department of State 2 Comments
The jolting development highlighted not only the intersecting lives of Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Abedin and Mr. Weiner, but also the pattern that has characterized the Clintons’ relationships with the sometimes oddly behaving inhabitants of their insular world.
Amy Chozick and Mark Lander report: In the summer of 2013, Hillary Clinton had just left the State Department and returned to New York. She planned a quiet year, basking in sky-high approval ratings and enjoying a respite from the media spotlight as she laid the groundwork for a second presidential run.
Then Carlos Danger happened.
Anthony D. Weiner, the husband of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin, was running for mayor of New York when news broke that he had continued to exchange lewd messages with women online after the practice cost him his congressional seat. This time, he used the embarrassing Spanish-inspired moniker.
The Run-Up
The podcast that makes sense of the most delirious stretch of the 2016 campaign.
The tawdry story line and Ms. Abedin’s closeness to Mrs. Clinton made the events explode far beyond New York, dragging Mrs. Clinton’s name into messy headlines about penis pictures, Mr. Weiner’s descriptions of his sexual appetites and his online paramour named Sydney Leathers.
Now, with Mrs. Clinton seemingly on the cusp of winning the White House, Mr. Weiner, who once described himself as “a perpetually horny middle-aged man,” has pulled her into another drama. Federal investigators looking into his sexual messaging with an underage girl stumbled upon thousands of emails potentially pertinent to the F.B.I. inquiry into Mrs. Clinton’s private email server.
[Read the full story here, at The New York Times]
The jolting development highlighted not only the intersecting lives of Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Abedin and Mr. Weiner, but also the pattern that has characterized the Clintons’ relationships with the sometimes oddly behaving inhabitants of their insular world: Even amid accusations of sexual or financial impropriety, the Clintons’ first instinct is to hunker down and protect those in their orbit, sometimes leading to more ugly eruptions later and, eventually, to messy public breakups.
On Friday, several of Mrs. Clinton’s friends and allies suggested she distance herself from Ms. Abedin, a painful prospect given that Mrs. Clinton has described Ms. Abedin as a surrogate daughter and has relied on her more than anyone else during her nearly two-year pursuit of the White House.
The two women’s closeness has both intimidated those in the Clinton circle of status-conscious advisers and caused envy. Even as Mrs. Clinton learned on Friday that the F.B.I.’s interest in her email server, which she thought had ended in July, had reignited, Ms. Abedin was by her side as she prepared to make a statement to the news media in Des Moines.
Pressed by a reporter there about the emails’ having been discovered during the investigation into Mr. Weiner’s sexting, Mrs. Clinton dismissed the reports as “rumors.”
“We of course stand by her,” her campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, said on Saturday when asked whether Ms. Abedin would step down from the campaign.
Mrs. Clinton has always been circumspect about Mr. Weiner and her feelings toward him. She has steadfastly supported Ms. Abedin, 40, as the younger woman stood by her husband, despite the public ridicule and career damage that resulted from his behavior. The Clintons have never publicly criticized Mr. Weiner. Read the rest of this entry »
‘HAPPY HALLO WEINER’: New York Post Cover for Sunday, October 30, 2016
Posted: October 29, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, journalism, media, New York, New York Post, news, Tabloid 2 Comments
Did She, or Didn’t She? Huma Abedin Swore Under Oath She Gave Up ‘All the Devices’ With State Department Emails
Posted: October 29, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Classified information, CNN, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Jason Chaffetz, The New York Times 3 Comments
The FBI found emails pertinent to its Clinton investigation, reportedly on a computer from her aide’s home. That doesn’t jibe with she told lawyers this summer.
M. L. Nestel and Jackie Kucinich report: In a normal election year, a normal candidate’s close aide who caused even minor embarrassment to a campaign so near to Election Day would be whisked away as quickly as possible to avoid becoming a distraction.
But Huma Abedin is not simply a close aide, she’s a critical member of Hillary Clinton’s tiny inner circle that protects and — at times — enables the deeply flawed and secretive Democratic nominee.
So despite FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the bureau is reviewing emails from Abedin’s time at the State Department reportedly found on a laptop she shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband Anthony Weiner (confiscated as a part of the FBI’s investigation into allegations he sexted with a 15-year-old North Carolina girl), the campaign made clear on Saturday that she’s not going anywhere.
John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, told reporters on a conference call that Abedin had been nothing but cooperative with investigators and sat for hours of depositions last summer as part of the civil lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.
“There’s nothing that she’s done that we think calls into question anything that she’s done with respect to this investigation… we fully stand behind her,” Podesta said.
But the new information that the FBI found State Department-related email on her home laptop also calls into question whether Abedin in fact turned over all of the devices she used to send and receive email while working at State.
[Read the full text here, at The Daily Beast]
On June 28, 2016, Abedin said under oath in a sworn deposition that she looked for all devices that she thought contained government work on them so the records could be given to the State Department. (These records were subsequently reviewed by the FBI.)
“How did you go about searching for what records you may have in your possession to be returned to the State Department?” Attorney Ramona Cotca for Judicial Watch asked her.
“I looked for all the devices that may have any of my State Department work on it and returned — returned — gave them to my attorneys for them to review for all relevant documents. And gave them devices and paper,” Abedin answered.
Cotca then asked Abedin specifically what devices she gave her attorneys.
“If memory serves me correctly, it was two laptops, a BlackBerry, and some files that I found in my apartment,” Abedin said, adding the BlackBerry was associated with her Clintonemail.com account.
Abedin maintained that she was “not involved in the process” of what records on her devices would be given to the State Department.
[VIDEO] REWIND: Breitbart Hijacks Andrew Weiner’s Press Conference
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Mayor of New York City, New York City, Rep. Anthony Weiner, Twitter Leave a comment
Published on Jun 6, 2011
In Full: Andrew Breitbart came forward at Rep. Anthony Weiner‘s New York City press conference to defend himself against allegations claiming he hacked the congressman’s Twitter account.
Most Dangerous Man in America: FBI Director James Comey
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: 2016, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Clinton Foundation, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Donald Trump presidential campaign, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Republican Party (United States), Robby Mook, United States 1 Comment
FBI Director James B. Comey decided to inform Congress that he would look again into Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails during her time as secretary of state for two main reasons: a sense of obligation to lawmakers and a concern that word of the new email discovery would leak to the media and raise questions of a coverup.
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
— Director Janes Comey, in a memo to FBI employees
The rationale, described by officials close to Comey’s decision-making on the condition of anonymity, prompted the FBI director to release his brief letter to Congress on Friday and upset a presidential race less than two weeks before Election Day. It placed Comey again at the center of a highly partisan argument over whether the nation’s top law enforcement agency was unfairly influencing the campaign.
“It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election. The Director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining.”
— John Podesta, chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign
In a memo explaining his decision to FBI employees soon after he sent his letter to Congress, Comey said he felt “an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.”
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record,” Comey wrote to his employees.
The last time Comey found himself in the campaign spotlight was in July, when he announced that he had finished a months-long investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information through the use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. After he did so, the denunciation was loudest from Republican nominee Donald Trump and his supporters, who accused the FBI director of bias in favor of Clinton’s candidacy. There was also grumbling within FBI ranks, with a largely conservative investigative corps complaining privately that Comey should have tried harder to make a case.
[Read the full story here, at The Washington Post]
Republicans and Democrats respond as the FBI makes new inquiries related to Hillary Clinton’s private email server. (Dalton Bennett, Alice Li, Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)
This time the loudest criticism has come from Clinton and her supporters, who said Friday that Comey had provided too little information about the nature of the new line of investigation and allowed Republicans to seize political ground as a result. The inquiry focuses on Clinton emails found on a computer used by former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), now under investigation for sending sexually explicit messages to a minor, and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who is Weiner’s wife. The couple have since separated. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] State Dept Knows Nothing About FBI Reopening Clinton Private Server Case
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Email investigation, Email server, FBI, Hillary Clinton, Hogan's Heroes, Huma Abedin, media, news, State Department, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Chris Wallace: Substantial Reason for Comey to Reopen Clinton Case
Posted: October 28, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Chris Wallace, Email server, Fox News, Huma Abedin, Investigation, James Comey, media, news, video Leave a comment
[VIDEO] Krauthammer: Clinton Foundation Corruption Motivated Private E-mail Server
Posted: October 27, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Clinton Cash, Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, United States Department of State 1 Comment
“Look, this brings us back full-circle to where we started. The original question was: ‘Why does she have a private e-mail?’ She said convenience — obviously, that was ridiculous, she’s carrying around a whole lot of devices — it was obvious she was hiding something. Think about it: She set it up in 2009, before becoming secretary of state. So she anticipated having exchanges that she would not want anyone to see.”
“We have been asking ourselves on this set for a year almost, “What exactly didn’t she want people to see? Well now we know. As we speculated, the most plausible explanation was the rank corruption of the Clinton Foundation and its corrupt — I don’t know if it’s illegal, but corrupt relationship with the State Department. And her only defense, as we saw earlier, the Democrats are saying, ‘Well, there was nothing that she did — as in the Raytheon case — that was corrupted by donations.’ You can believe that if you want, there’s a reason that people give donations in large amounts. That’s to influence the outcome of decisions. We are getting unfolding to us exactly what she anticipated having to hide. And it’s really dirty business.”
Source: National Review
Undeniable: Hillary Clinton Committed Perjury
Posted: October 14, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Democratic National Committee, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Justin Cooper (aide), United States Department of State 2 Comments
Hillary Clinton finally submitted her court-ordered written response to 25 questions posed by Judicial Watch regarding her private email practices. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the deposition it’s this: Clinton has absolutely committed perjury.
Why? Let’s break down the facts.
In Clinton’s sworn deposition to Judicial Watch she says she never got permission for her private, unsecure email server, and that she got the idea from former Secretary of State Colin Powell. But she told the FBI in July that she didn’t get the idea from Powell. She also told the House Select Committee on Benghazi she’d gotten permission for her server.
All three of those stories can’t be true.
Deductive reasoning says:
- If her Judicial Watch testimony is true, then she lied to the FBI about Powell. That’s a crime.
- If her Judicial Watch testimony is true, then she lied to the Benghazi Committee about the server. That’s a crime.
- If her FBI testimony is true, then she lied in a deposition. That’s a crime, and it’s what got Bill Clinton impeached and disbarred.
- If her Benghazi Committee testimony is true, then she lied in a deposition. That’s a crime, and it’s what got Bill Clinton impeached and disbarred.
Furthermore, the fact that she wasn’t under oath when speaking to the FBI is irrelevant. It is a crime to lie to the FBI in any interview setting.
The Judicial Watch press release is below, along with all of Clinton’s answers.
Judicial Watch Releases New Hillary Clinton Email Answers Given under Oath
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released received responses under oath from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concerning her email practices. Judicial Watch submitted twenty-five questions on August 30 to Clinton as ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.
The new Clinton responses in the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit before Judge Sullivan was first filed in September 2013 seeking records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former deputy chief of staff to Clinton. The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).
Judicial Watch has already taken the deposition testimony of seven Clinton aides and State Department officials.
Below is text from the document filed with the court today:
NON-PARTY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON’S RESPONSE
TO PLAINTIFF’S INTERROGATORIES
Pursuant to the Court’s August 19, 2016 order and Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Non-Party Hillary Rodham Clinton hereby responds to Plaintiff’s Interrogatories dated August 30, 2016. The General Objections and the Objections to the Definitions set forth below are incorporated into each of the specific responses that follow. Any specific objections are in addition to the General Objections and Objections to the Definitions, and failure to reiterate a General Objection or Objection to the Definitions does not constitute a waiver of that or any other objection.
GENERAL OBJECTIONS
- Secretary Clinton objects to the Interrogatories on the ground that any discovery of Secretary Clinton is unwarranted in this case, for the reasons set forth in Secretary Clinton’s Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion to Depose Hillary Rodham Clinton, Clarence Finney, and John Bentel (Dkt. #102) and Surreply in Further Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion to Depose Hillary Rodham Clinton, Clarence Finney, and John Bentel (Dkt. #109), and as stated by Secretary Clinton’s counsel during the Court hearing on July 18, 2016. Secretary Clinton will answer the Interrogatories notwithstanding this objection, subject to the other objections stated herein.
- Secretary Clinton objects to the Interrogatories insofar as they request information outside the scope of permitted discovery in this case. The Court permitted discovery of Secretary Clinton on the topics of “the purpose for the creation and operation of the clintonemail.com system for State Department business,” as well as “the State Department’s approach and practice for processing FOIA requests that potentially implicated former Secretary Clinton’s and Ms. Abedin’s e-mails and State’s processing of the FOIA request that is the subject of this action.” Dkt. #124, at 14, 19 (internal quotation marks omitted). Secretary Clinton will answer the Interrogatories insofar as they seek non-privileged information related to those topics.
- Secretary Clinton objects to the Interrogatories insofar as they request information relating to events that occurred, or actions taken by Secretary Clinton, after her tenure as Secretary of State. Such post-tenure actions or events are not within the scope of the permitted topics of discovery set forth in General Objection No. 2.
- Secretary Clinton objects to the Interrogatories insofar as they request information about Secretary Clinton’s use of her clintonemail.com account to send and receive e-mails that were personal in nature, as such use is not within the scope of the permitted topics set forth in General Objection No. 2. Secretary Clinton will construe the Interrogatories to ask only about her use of her clintonemail.com account to send and receive e-mails related to State Department business.
- Secretary Clinton objects to the Interrogatories insofar as they request information about management, retention, and/or preservation of federal records. This action arises under FOIA, which does not govern management, retention, or preservation of federal records. See Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 152 (1980). Accordingly, management, retention, and/or preservation of federal records are not within the scope of the permitted topics of discovery set forth in General Objection No. 2.
- Secretary Clinton objects to Instruction No. 1 insofar as it purports to require Secretary Clinton to provide information that is not within her personal knowledge. The purpose of the limited discovery permitted by the Court is to obtain Secretary Clinton’s “personal knowledge of her purpose in using the [clintonemail.com] system.” Dkt. #124, at 16; see also id. at (directing Plaintiff “to propound questions that are relevant to Secretary Clinton’s unique first-hand knowledge”). Secretary Clinton is answering these Interrogatories based on her direct personal knowledge. She is not undertaking to provide information known only to other persons, including but not limited to her attorneys, representatives, persons acting under, by, or through her, or subject to her control or supervision, or other persons acting on her behalf.
- Secretary Clinton objects to these Interrogatories to the extent that they call for the production of information that is privileged or otherwise protected from discovery by the attorney-client privilege, the work product doctrine, or any other applicable privilege, protection, or immunity. Secretary Clinton will respond only to the extent privileged or otherwise protected information is not required and to the extent that the Interrogatory is not otherwise objectionable.
- Secretary Clinton objects to Instruction No. 5 insofar as it purports to require Secretary Clinton to identify the factual and legal basis for a claim of privilege. Secretary Clinton is not providing herewith a privilege log.
OBJECTIONS TO DEFINITIONS
- Secretary Clinton objects to the definition of “Clintonemail.com email system” insofar as it refers to e-mail system(s), server(s), provider(s), and infrastructure used to host her clintonemail.com e-mail account after her tenure as Secretary of State. Information concerning the e-mail system(s), server(s), provider(s), and infrastructure used to host her clintonemail.com account after her tenure as Secretary of State is not relevant to the purpose for the creation and operation of the clintonemail.com account during her tenure as Secretary of State, and therefore is outside the scope of the permitted discovery. In answering these Interrogatories, Secretary Clinton will construe the term “Clintonemail.com email system” to refer to the e-mail system(s), server(s), provider(s), and infrastructure used to host her clintonemail.com e-mail account during her tenure as Secretary of State.
- Secretary Clinton objects to the definition of “Clintonemail.com account” insofar as it refers to e-mail addresses used by other individuals ending in the domain name “clintonemail.com.” In answering these Interrogatories, Secretary Clinton will construe the term “Clintonemail.com account” to refer to hdr22@clintonemail.com, which was the clintonemail.com account used by Secretary Clinton during her tenure.
RESPONSES TO INTERROGATORIES
- Describe the creation of the clintonemail.com system, including who decided to create the system, the date it was decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and when it became operational.
Response: Secretary Clinton objects to Interrogatory No. 1 as outside the scope of permitted discovery. The clintonemail.com system, as that term is defined in the Instructions and subject to Secretary Clinton’s objection to that definition, consisted of equipment set up to host e-mail for President Clinton’s staff. Information regarding the creation of that system, including the reasons for its creation, is irrelevant to this lawsuit and outside the scope of permitted discovery. The Court permitted discovery in this case on the question of “the purpose for the creation and operation of the clintonemail.com system for State Department business.” Dkt. #124, at 17 (emphasis added). That question is the subject of Interrogatory No. 2, which is answered below.
- Describe the creation of your clintonemail.com email account, including who decided to create it, when it was created, why it was created, and, if you did not set up the account yourself, who set it up for you.
Response: In the Senate, when Secretary Clinton began using e-mail, she used a personal e-mail account for both work-related and personal e-mail. Secretary Clinton decided to transition from the account she used in her tenure at the Senate to the clintonemail.com account. She recalls that it was created in early 2009. Secretary Clinton did not set up the account. Although Secretary Clinton does not have specific knowledge of the details of the account’s creation, her best understanding is that one of President Clinton’s aides, Justin Cooper, set up the account. She decided to use a clintonemail.com account for the purpose of convenience.
- When did you decide to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and whom did you consult in making this decision?
Response: Secretary Clinton recalls deciding to use a clintonemail.com e-mail account to conduct official State Department business in early 2009. She does not recall any specific consultations regarding the decision to use the clintonemail.com account for official State Department business.
- Identify all communications in which you participated concerning or relating to your decision to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and, for each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the communication.
Response: Secretary Clinton objects to Interrogatory No. 4 insofar as it purports to request information about communications after her tenure as Secretary of State, which communications would be irrelevant to the purpose for the creation and operation of her clintonemail.com account while she was Secretary of State. Subject to the foregoing objection, Secretary Clinton states that she does not recall participating in any communications before or during her tenure as Secretary of State concerning or relating to her decision to use a clintonemail.com account to conduct official State Department business. Read the rest of this entry »
James Comey’s Clinton Immunity Coverup
Posted: September 28, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Barack Obama, Breitbart News, Cheryl Mills, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Message transfer agent, United States Department of State 1 Comment
More questions about the FBI’s special handling of the email case.
FBI Director James Comey appears Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where he’ll get another chance to explain his agency’s double standard regarding Hillary Clinton. His probe of the former Secretary of State’s private email server is looking more like a kid-glove exercise with each new revelation.
House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz on Friday disclosed that the FBI granted immunity to Mrs. Clinton’s top aides as part of its probe into whether Mrs. Clinton mishandled classified information. According to Mr. Chaffetz, this “limited” immunity was extended to former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and senior adviser Heather Samuelson, in order to get them to surrender their laptops, which they’d used to sort through Mrs. Clinton’s work-versus-personal emails.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
Why the courtesy? “If the FBI wanted any other Americans’ laptops, they would just go get them—they wouldn’t get an immunity deal,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told Politico. He’s right. The FBI merely had to seek a subpoena or search warrant. By offering immunity, the FBI exempted the laptops and their emails as potential evidence in a criminal case.
Beth Wilkinson, who represents Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson, says the immunity deals were designed to protect her clients against any related “classification” disputes. This is an admission that both women knew their unsecure laptops had been holding sensitive information for more than a year. Meanwhile, Mr. Comey also allowed Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson to serve as lawyers for Mrs. Clinton at her FBI interview—despite having been interviewed as witnesses and offered immunity. Read the rest of this entry »
Friday Night FBI Document Dump: Obama Used a Pseudonym in Emails with Clinton
Posted: September 23, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, attorney-client privilege, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, Muslim Brotherhood, Pay to play, United States Department of State 5 Comments
The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents on Clinton’s email investigation.
President Barack Obama used a pseudonym in email communications with Hillary Clinton and others, according to FBI records made public Friday.
The disclosure came as the FBI released its second batch of documents from its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
The 189 pages the bureau released includes interviews with some of Clinton’s closest aides, such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills; senior State Department officials; and even Marcel Lazar, better known as the Romanian hacker “Guccifer.”
In an April 5, 2016 interview with the FBI, Abedin was shown an email exchange between Clinton and Obama, but the longtime Clinton aide did not recognize the name of the sender.
“Once informed that the sender’s name is believed to be pseudonym used by the president, Abedin exclaimed: ‘How is this not classified?'” the report says. “Abedin then expressed her amazement at the president’s use of a pseudonym and asked if she could have a copy of the email.”
The State Department has refused to make public that and other emails Clinton exchanged with Obama. Lawyers have cited the “presidential communications privilege,” a variation of executive privilege, in order to withhold the messages under the Freedom of Information Act.
The report doesn’t provide more details on the contents of that particular email exchange, but says it took place on June 28, 2012, and had the subject line: “Re: Congratulations.” It may refer to the Supreme Court’s ruling that day upholding a key portion of the Obamacare law.
A report on the FBI’s June 7, 2016 interview with “Guccifer” confirms FBI Director James Comey‘s claim that Lazar falsely asserted that he’d surreptitiously accessed Clinton’s server.
“Lazar began by stating that he had never claimed to hack the Clinton server. [An FBI agent] then advised that Fix News had recently published an article which reported that Lazar had claimed to have to Clinton server. Read the rest of this entry »
And Now a Word from Hillary’s Doctor
Posted: September 14, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Health and Social Issues, Politics, White House | Tags: 2016 Presidential Campaign, Beijing, Cheryl Mills, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Muslim, New York Post, Paul Sperry, Physician, Pneumonia, State Department, Women's rights 2 Comments
Jim Geraghty: ‘Picture Comey’s Office When the Complete 68 Pages of the FBI Investigation Comes to his Desk’
Posted: September 9, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Muslim Brotherhood, Sexting, United States Department of State 2 Comments
Jim Geraghty writes:
…Picture Comey’s office when the complete 68 pages of the FBI investigation comes to his desk. It’s a mess for her:
- Despite many public denials, 110 of her e-mails contained classified information. This, by itself, is a crime.
- She and/or her team destroyed e-mails that were under congressional subpoena.
- Her team used BleachBit to erase e-mails that were required to be preserved under public-records laws.
- She had not turned over work-related e-mails as she claimed; several thousand work-related e-mails were not given to the State Department, as required by law.
- Despite her continued insistence that her system was secure, an unknown individual using the encrypted privacy tool Tor to hide their tracks accessed an e-mail account on a Clinton family server.
- The evidence pointed to a deliberate, ongoing effort to keep all of her communications off of the secure State Department system, which would be subject to subpoenas and Freedom of Information Act requests. She used several different e-mail servers on her private system, as well as 13 mobile devices and five iPads.
- At no time did she get permission, as required, to do official work on her mobile devices. Clinton frequently lost her phones — which included her e-mails with classified information — and she and her staff could not account for them. An assistant to former president Bill Clinton lost a laptop holding Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. Again, as secretary of state, she swore an oath to protect that information. As Comey declared in his statement, “even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”
- Either she or her staff lied to the FBI; Clinton said she never had a computer in her Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility (basically, a room that is nearly impossible to bug or eavesdrop). Huma Abedin said she did.
- During the interview with the FBI, Clinton said she “couldn’t recall” more than three dozen times. One portion of the report suggests Clinton could not remember whether or not she received security briefings. But she had previously signed official documents declaring she had been properly briefed.
[Read the full text here, at National Review Online]
Comey looked at that report and saw plenty of potential reasons to recommend impaneling a grand jury. But had the FBI recommended seeking an indictment of Hillary Clinton, it undoubtedly would have created a political earthquake.
The entire Democratic Party would have exploded in rage at the bureau. Comey would have instantly been painted as worse than Ken Starr, worse than Inspector Javert, worse than Torquemada. Clinton defenders would charge that the FBI was torpedoing her presidential campaign, and they might just be right: At the time of Comey’s decision, the Democratic convention was just three weeks away. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Comey’s Agents Were Forgiving About Some Incriminating Evidence’
Posted: September 8, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics | Tags: Bill Clinton, Cheryl Mills, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, CNN, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Emmet G. Sullivan, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, James Comey, Judicial Watch, United States Department of State 5 Comments
The FBI’s Blind Clinton Trust.
The closer we look at the FBI’s investigative file on Hillary Clinton’s emails, the more we wonder if Director James Comey always intended to let her off the hook. The calculated release before the long Labor Day weekend suggests political favoritism, and the report shows the FBI didn’t pursue evidence of potential false statements, obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence.
“The notes also show the G-men never did grill Mrs. Clinton on her “intent” in setting up her server. Instead they bought her explanation that it was for personal convenience. This helped Mr. Comey avoid concluding that her purpose was to evade statutes like the Federal Records Act. Mr. Comey also told Congress that indicting her without criminal intent would pose a constitutional problem.”
Mr. Comey’s concessions start with his decision not to interview Mrs. Clinton until the end of his investigation, a mere three days before he announced his conclusions. Regular FBI practice is to get a subject on the record early then see if his story meshes with what agents find. In this case they accepted Mrs. Clinton’s I-don’t-recall defenses after the fact.
“Ms. Mills has a particular reason for denying early knowledge of the server: She became Mrs. Clinton’s personal lawyer after they both left State. If Ms. Mills knew about the server while at State, she’d be subject to questions about the server. But if she didn’t know about the server until leaving State, she can argue that conversations with Mrs. Clinton are protected by attorney-client privilege. The FBI ignored all this, and it even allowed Ms. Mills to accompany Mrs. Clinton to her FBI interview as Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer.”
The notes also show the G-men never did grill Mrs. Clinton on her “intent” in setting up her server. Instead they bought her explanation that it was for personal convenience. This helped Mr. Comey avoid concluding that her purpose was to evade statutes like the Federal Records Act. Mr. Comey also told Congress that indicting her without criminal intent would pose a constitutional problem. But Congress has written many laws that don’t require criminal intent, and negligent homicide (for example) has never been unconstitutional.
The FBI notes also blow past evidence that Clinton advisers may have engaged in a cover-up. Consider page 10 of the FBI report: “Clinton’s immediate aides, to include [Huma] Abedin, [Cheryl] Mills, Jacob Sullivan, and [redacted] told the FBI they were unaware of the existence of the private server until after Clinton’s tenure at State or when it became public knowledge.”
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
That’s amazing given that Ms. Abedin had her own email account on the private server. It is also contradicted by page 3: “At the recommendation of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s long-time aide and later Deputy Chief of Staff at State, in or around fall 2008, [ Bill Clinton aide Justin] Cooper contacted Bryan Pagliano . . . to build the new server system and to assist Cooper with the administration of the new server system.”
The FBI must also have ignored two emails referred to by the State Inspector General showing Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin discussing the server while they worked at State: “hrc email coming back—is server okay?” Ms. Mills asked Ms. Abedin and Mr. Cooper in a Feb. 27, 2010 email. Read the rest of this entry »
The Devil’s Cupcake: Meet the Mastermind Behind Clinton’s Massive Email Coverup
Posted: September 4, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, New York Post, Paul Sperry, United States, United States Department of State, White House, White House Chief of Staff 4 Comments
Despite signs Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills obstructed efforts by investigators to obtain Clinton’s emails, the FBI invited Mills to attend Hillary’s interview at FBI headquarters as one of her lawyers.
Paul Sperry reports: Newly released FBI documents detailing the bureau’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails reveal the aide who would likely follow her into the White House as chief counsel was central to a cover-up of evidence sought by investigators.
“It’s absolutely outrageous. The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence,” he added, “and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let her sit in on the interview.”
— Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President
Yet despite signs Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills obstructed efforts by investigators to obtain Clinton’s emails, the FBI invited Mills to attend Hillary’s interview at FBI headquarters as one of her lawyers.
[Kaine Hammered Over Clinton Email Report, Falsely Claims She Used One Device for Email]
“It’s absolutely outrageous,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.
“The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence,” he 
added, “and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let her sit in on the interview.”
[Order Paul Sperry’s book “The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession” from Amazon.com
The smoking gun is on page 16 of the FBI’s 47-page report. It details how Mills ultimately made the determinations about which emails should be preserved before she and Clinton decided to delete the rest as “personal.” Clinton conducted both government and personal business using a personal email account — clintonemail.com — tied to an unsecured server set up in the basement of her New York home.
The FBI makes clear the procedure Mills used to sort out the emails was suspicious.
“The whole thing was designed to keep Clinton Foundation emails away from investigators.”
For starters, Mills was the one who ordered the server host to move the emails from the server to a laptop where she could screen them. She told investigators she could “not recall” if emails with non-gov addresses were included in the transfer. It’s unlikely they were, because an aide who helped her search told the FBI she only screened for emails sent to or from Clinton with .gov and .mil — not .com — addresses.
[Read the full story here, at the New York Post]
That means messages involving government business between Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin — the only aide who had an email account on the clintonemail.com system— were not likely captured. Nor were messages sent between Clinton and Mills and other aides using personal email addresses.
“The FBI saw massive document destruction and clear intent to withhold material evidence and they just ignored that obstruction, and even let [Mills] sit in on the interview.”
– Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch President
Correspondence between Clinton and Abedin (who regularly emailed her boss from huma@clintonemail.com and HAbedin@hillaryclinton.com) is crucial, Fitton says, because Abedin acted as the go-between on requests for access to Clinton from shady foreign Clinton Foundation donors. He says the mushrooming “pay-for-play” scandal is the real reason the former secretary of state set up a private email system in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
Hillary Stonewall Clinton Told FBI She (Cough) ‘Couldn’t Recall’ Key Details 26 Times
Posted: September 4, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Law & Justice, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Classified information, Clinton Foundation, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton email controversy, Huma Abedin, IPad Mini, Muslim Brotherhood, Special access program, United States Department of State 3 Comments
…Clinton could not even recall when she got her security clearance. She told FBI agents she wasn’t sure if she carried it over from the U.S. Senate or if she got it from State. But perhaps even worse, Clinton told FBI agents she couldn’t even remember any briefing or training by State “related to the retention of federal records or handling of classified information.”
That admission could raise the question if Clinton was ever trained at all in handling secret information.
Below is the list of things Clinton could not recall in the FBI interview:
- When she received security clearance
- Being briefed on how to handle classified material
- How many times she used her authority to designate items classified
- Any briefing on how to handle very top-secret “Special Access Program” material
- How to select a target for a drone strike
- How the data from her mobile devices was destroyed when she switched devices
- The number of times her staff was given a secure phone
- Why she didn’t get a secure Blackberry
- Receiving any emails she thought should not be on the private system
- Did not remember giving staff direction to create private email account
- Getting guidance from state on email policy
- Who had access to her Blackberry account
- The process for deleting her emails
- Ever getting a message that her storage was almost full
- Anyone besides Huma Abedin being offered an account on the private server
- Being sent information on state government private emails being hacked
- Receiving cable on State Dept personnel securing personal email accounts
- Receiving cable on Bryan Pagliano upgrading her server
- Using an iPad mini
- An Oct. 13, 2012, email on Egypt with Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal
- Jacob Sullivan using personal email
- State Department protocol for confirming classified information in media reports
- Every briefing she received after suffering concussions
- Being notified of a FOIA request on Dec. 11, 2012
- Being read out of her clearance
- Any further access to her private email account from her State Department tenure after switching to her HRCoffice.com account
Martha Stewart wishes she’d thought of saying “I don’t recall” to FBI agents.
Andrew McCarthy: What Was Cheryl Mills Doing There?
Posted: September 2, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, BlackBerry, Brian Fallon, Cheryl Mills, Classified information, Clinton Foundation, Doug Band, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act (United States), Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, James B. Comey, James Comey, United States Department of Justice, United States Department of State 2 Comments
Andrew C. McCarthy writes:
…Among the most eye-popping claims Clinton made to the FBI was that she was unfamiliar with the markings on classified documents. Yes, you read that correctly: one of the highest ranking national security officials in the United States government – an official whose day-to-day responsibilities extensively involved classified information; who had secure facilities installed in her two homes (in addition to her office) so she could review classified information in them; and who acknowledged to the FBI that, as secretary of state, she was designated by the president as “an Original Classification Authority,” meaning she had the power to determine what information should be classified and at what level – had the audacity to tell the interviewing agents that she did not know what the different classification symbols in classified documents signified…
“I nearly fell out of my chair upon reading the very first paragraph of the notes of Clinton’s interview, which identifies the lawyers for Clinton who were permitted to be present for the interview. Among them is Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s longtime confidant and chief-of-staff at the State Department.”
…Clinton also claimed that she “did not pay attention to the ‘level’ of classified information.” The interview notes do not explain how the FBI squared this with, for example, (a) Clinton’s acknowledgement that top-secret “special access program” (SAP) information was delivered to her by paper in her office and she knew it was supposed to be handled with extraordinary care; and (b) Clinton’s admission that she made use of her Original Classification Authority at times (though she couldn’t say how often). That means she had to have assigned to some information the very classification levels with which she portrays herself as scarcely familiar.
[Read the full story here, at National Review]
We also learn in the FBI documents not only that Mrs. Clinton frequently lost her Blackberry devices, but that the FBI failed to account for some thirteen of them, most if not all of which she used while transmitting the over 2,000 classified emails the FBI identified.
“As Clinton’s chief-of-staff, Mills was intimately involved in issues related to Clinton’s private email set up, the discussions about getting her a secure BlackBerry similar to President Obama’s, and questions that were raised (including in FOIA requests) about Clinton’s communications.That is to say, Mills was an actor in the facts that were under criminal investigation by the FBI.”
Clinton aides told the FBI that her devices – loaded with stored emails – would at times disappear and their whereabouts would become unknown. Interestingly, in the notes of Mrs. Clinton’s interview, the FBI says she told them that her BlackBerry devices would occasionally “malfunction”; when this happened, “[h]er aides would assist in obtaining a new BlackBerry.” I have not yet found indications that the FBI asked her about lost rather than malfunctioning devices.
[Full text here, at National Review]
We do learn, though, that on February 9, 2016, the Justice Department asked Clinton’s lawyers to turn over all 13 mobile devices that the FBI identified as having potentially transmitted emails. Almost two weeks later, on February 22, the lawyers told the FBI “they were unable to locate any of these devices.” As a result, the notes recount, “the FBI was unable to acquire or forensically examine any of these 13 mobile devices.” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] MSNBC Host Thomas Roberts Says He Doesn’t Want to Talk About Anthony Weiner Huma Abedin Scandal
Posted: August 29, 2016 Filed under: Breaking News, Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Seiner, Drudge Report, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, media, MSNBC, New York Post, news, video Leave a comment
WEINERMAGEDDON: Anthony Sexted Busty Brunette (while his son was in bed with him)
Posted: August 28, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Anthony Weiner, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Donny Deutsch, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Huma Abedin, Joe Scarborough, Kellyanne Conway, New York, New York City, New York Post, Sexting, Twitter 1 Comment
This is baby-sitting — Anthony Weiner-style.
“Weiner then hit ‘send’ on the cringe-inducing image, which shows a bulge in his white, Jockey-brand boxer briefs and his son cuddled up to his left, wrapped in a light-green blanket.”
While his wife, Huma Abedin, travels the country campaigning for Hillary Clinton, the disgraced ex-congressman has been sexting with a busty brunette out West — and even sent her a lurid crotch shot with his toddler son in the picture, The Post has learned.
The stay-at-home cad shot the revealing photo while discussing massage parlors “near my old apartment” shortly after 3 a.m. on July 31, 2015, a screen shot of the exchange shows.
Weiner was clearly aroused by his conversation with the 40-something divorcee when he abruptly changed the subject.
“Someone just climbed into my bed,” Weiner wrote.
“Really?” she responded.
“Screen shots show the electronic chats began in late January 2015 and continued through earlier this month, according to the woman, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity.”
Weiner then hit “send” on the cringe-inducing image, which shows a bulge in his white, Jockey-brand boxer briefs and his son cuddled up to his left, wrapped in a light-green blanket.
“You do realize you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman wrote.
Moments after forwarding the photo, Weiner freaked out over the possibility he had accidentally posted it publicly — just as he did during the infamous episode that forced him to resign from Congress in 2011.
[Read all about it – where else? – New York Post]
“Ooooooh . . . I was scared. For half a second I thought I posted something. Stop looking at my crotch,” Weiner wrote back.
“Whatever. You did it on purpose,” she replied.
“The object of Weiner’s affections is his polar opposite politically: a self-avowed supporter of Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association who’s used Twitter to bash both President Obama and Clinton.”
“O I see you thought you posted on your TL [public timeline] not DM [direct message]. S–t happens be careful,” she added.
The object of Weiner’s affections is his polar opposite politically: a self-avowed supporter of Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association who’s used Twitter to bash both President Obama and Clinton.
Screen shots show the electronic chats began in late January 2015 and continued through earlier this month, according to the woman, who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity.
And while Weiner repeatedly invited her to visit him in New York City, she said, “We never met.”
Asked for comment, Weiner admitted he and the woman “have been friends for some time.”
“She has asked me not to comment except to say that our conversations were private, often included pictures of her nieces and nephews and my son and were always appropriate,” he said.
But the picture featuring his son was one of more than a dozen selfies sent to the woman by Weiner, 51 — and most show him posing shirtless to flaunt his well-toned physique.
[Read the full story here, at the New York Post]
One is even a near-replica of the crotch shot that first turned him into a national laughingstock — except he was wearing white boxer briefs instead of gray ones.
Weiner wrote, “My mood . . .” before sending the overtly sexual photo on June 14, 2015, prompting the woman to respond, “O goodness.”
Many of Weiner’s messages show him bragging about his manhood and shamelessly lusting after the woman.
The latest online dalliance developed when Weiner began exchanging direct messages with her via Twitter following an online clash with a second woman, according to the gal.
As their conversation progressed, she mentioned having “over 30 nieces and nephews,” at which point Weiner responded by asking: “Wow. Got your own? (Weiner sees opening to ask about [your] status).”
When she tried to end the conversation by saying “it’s time for bed,” Weiner wrote back: “Sleeping alone? Asking for a friend?” before adding, “That was a fib.”
“One is even a near-replica of the crotch shot that first turned him into a national laughingstock — except he was wearing white boxer briefs instead of gray ones.”
Weiner frequently steered the conversation toward sex, as many of their discussions initially involved such mundane topics as their respective workout regimens.
“I am always, uh, raging after the gym,” he wrote in one of several apparent references to his genitalia.
Another time, he wrote about how “Id [sic] put someone’s eye out with this thing. #Overdue.”
When the woman sent Weiner a selfie that showed her in a cleavage-baring, red lace dress, Weiner’s response was “Holy f–kity f- -k,” while another shot of her standing next to a woman at the same event prompted him to write: “Conjured some high school fantasies.” Read the rest of this entry »
New Abedin Emails Reveal Hillary Clinton State Department Gave Special Access to Top Clinton Foundation Donors
Posted: August 22, 2016 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Global, Politics, White House | Tags: Bahrain, Casey Wasserman, Cheryl Mills, Clinton Foundation, Doug Band, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Jeffrey D. Feltman, Judicial Watch, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, United States Department of State 3 Comments
Crown Prince of Bahrain Forced to Go Through Foundation to See Clinton, after Pledging $32 Million to Clinton Global Initiative.
Hollywood Executive Casey Wasserman, Slimfast Mogul Daniel Abraham, Controversial Appointee Rajiv Fernando also among Clinton Foundation Donors Granted Special Favors from Clinton State Department.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.
The new documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.
The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of “Clinton family matters.”
Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Read the rest of this entry »
pundit from another planet 