Cinton.com Taking the Fifth

Shades if Lois Lerner: Staffer who worked on Clinton’s private e-mail server faces subpoena

A former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail server tried this week to fend off a subpoena to testify before Congress, saying he would assert his constitutional right not to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself.

The move by Bryan Pagliano, who had worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009, came in a Monday letter from his lawyer to the House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The letter cited the ongoing FBI inquiry into the security of Clinton’s e-mail system, and it quoted a Supreme Court ruling in which justices described the Fifth Amendment as protecting “innocent men . . . ‘who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.’ ”
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Pagliano, who worked in the State Department’s information-technology department from May 2009 until February 2013, left the agency when Clinton departed as secretary. He now works for a technology contractor that provides some services to the State Department.

Because what he was doing seemed so innocent.

Clinton aides pushed to view top-secret material on handhelds, emails show

Hillary Clinton's aides appear to have pushed for handheld devices capable of handling classified material soon after Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state -- a request that was discussed by senior security personnel at the agency, according to newly-disclosed emails.

Some of those top-level security officials also appeared to have concerns about requests from Clinton's aides that they be permitted to view "SECRET" and "TOP SECRET" material on personal electronic devices, the heavily-redacted emails indicate.
. . .
The newly-disclosed emails shed some light on that mystery by indicating that the State Department's senior leadership on security issues had at least some knowledge of devices Clinton and her senior aides used. However, the messages don't definitively show that anyone at State formally approved Clinton's account or made an assessment of potential security risks posed by her using the family server, housed at the time at the Chappaqua, N.Y. home she shares with President Bill Clinton.
. . .
An official with Judicial Watch, the conservative group that obtained the emails last week, said the messages support the notion that Clinton's aides wanted to use classified information in ways other officials did not approve or authorize.

"I read that to mean that [Clinton aides] pushed and to no avail thus far for secret or TS capable PDAs," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in an interview. "Evidently, they wanted that and the security people were unwilling to give it to them, so they did whatever they wanted to do."

Rules are for the little people. Not for people who have people like Lanny Davis:

Lanny's Letter to Hillary Is D.C.'s Most Cringe-Inducing Document Ever

The latest stash of emails from Hillary Clinton's private server released by the State Department has (once again!) revealed Washington to be a particularly unbearable place, employing particularly insufferable people. From Clinton's email correspondence with her senior staff we can observe how those with proximity to power engage in rare forms of backstabbing, obsequiousness, pettiness, bad humor, and self-obsession.

There was the revelation that Huma Abedin, Clinton's aide-de-camp who held down multiple six-figure salaries at outside consulting firms while making $135,000 at State, apparently complains about not getting "paid enough." Another top Clinton aide, Philippe Reines, was seen tattling on a colleague directly to the secretary. "I for one loved that you finally called out the ogrish males on your staff who roll their eyes at womens [sic] issues and events," Reines wrote to Clinton before calling out one such male staffer by name.

The Reines email might be the second most cringe-inducing document in Washington ever. The top (so far!) prize, however, certainly goes to Clinton lawyer, advocate, and all-around flunky Lanny Davis. In September 2010 Davis sent his "dear friend Hillary" an email with the subject line "Personal - a personal favor." What follows are two pages of over-the-top praise for the former first lady, more than a healthy dose of self-promotion on Davis's part, several hand-wringing apologies for even bothering the great and powerful Hillary Clinton with such a terrible request, and four groveling "pleases."

The email has to be seen to be believed:

Go look at the letter itself. It sound like it was written by a courtier of the Sun King, praying to be granted a duchy, but fearing execution instead. 

Hillary Clinton is not an email crook

Last month, famed Washington Post reporter andWatergate investigator Bob Woodward said that the
email scandal engulfing former secretary of State Hillary Clinton “reminds me of the Nixon tapes: thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations that Nixon thought were exclusively his."

Woodward’s impression is justified, and not just by the steady drip, drip of new secrets in the latest batch of Clinton emails released by the State Department on Monday. There is also a remarkable resonance between Nixon’s statements during the evolving Watergate crisis and Clinton’s public statements regarding her emails:

The people come first

Nixon: I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.

Clinton: I think it's kind of fun. People get a real-time behind-the-scenes look at what I was emailing about and what I was communicating about.

Go to the article to see the rest of the list. It brings back memories, if you're old enough to remember Watergate.