FBI Director James Comey acknowledged Tuesday that his agency failed to get access to Democratic National Committee servers and the smartphone of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman allegedly hacked by Russia in the 2016 presidential race.Gee, I wonder what they're trying (and apparently succeeding) to hide?
Thousands of emails from the servers and Chairman John Podesta’s device were stolen, then made public during the race, which Clinton lost to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
But the FBI’s repeated requests for access to the devices were denied. So the agency instead had to rely on the findings of a “highly respected private company,” Comey said.
“Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server involved,” he said in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about Russia’s intelligence activities during the election.
Comey said he didn’t know why the FBI was denied access.
A professor of finance and business economics at the University of Michigan-Flint combats what he calls “eco-guilt” and “green nitwittery” — one email at a time.Notice: It’s OK to print this
Professor Mark Perry includes the following information (in bright green type) at the bottom of each email he sends:
Notice: It’s OK to print this email free of any “eco-guilt.” Paper is a biodegradable, renewable, sustainable product made from trees. Growing and harvesting trees provides jobs for millions of Americans. Working forests are good for the environment and provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Thanks to improved forest management, we have more trees in America today than we had 100 years ago.In a phone interview with The College Fix, Perry said his signature was inspired by an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal in 2011 titled “Save a Forest: Print Your Emails: It’s okay to use paper. Trees are renewable, recyclable and sustainable.”
The authors of the article, self-described “tree farmers, environmentalists, foresters, and wild-life biologists” note that “well-intentioned email taglines inspired by sincere desire to help the planet have become ubiquitous in recent times: ‘Please don’t print this email,’ ‘Save trees: Print only when necessary,’ or ‘Please consider the environment before printing this email.’”
Yet, these taglines reveal a fundamental misconception about the environmental effects of producing paper. It is acceptable to print emails, the authors argue, as “the nation’s forest landowners can’t keep growing trees without markets for this natural, organic and renewable product.”
If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2016
"It is amazing to me that Donald Trump apologizes for Vladimir Putin's Russia at every turn and is now recklessly inviting him to engage in cyber-attacks against our own home country."
Instapundit recalls that when a Republican's (Sarah Palin's) emails were hacked the New York Times put them all out for the public, and asked for help combing through them for dirt.1) There was nothing secret in HRC's 30K deleted e-mails.— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) July 27, 2016
2) It's a "national security issue" if Russia gets them.
Pick one, Hillary camp.
.@toddlemmon Hillary has foreign policy experience like Typhoid Mary had nursing experience— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 27, 2016
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen referred congressional charges of corrupt Clinton Foundation “pay-to-play” activities to his tax agency’s exempt operations office for investigation, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.But I'm sure nothing will happen before the election, and after the election? Speaking of Lawfare, Clinton campaigns move to force Trump super-PAC ad off TV. Hillary is no fan of the first amendment.
The request to investigate the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation on charges of “public corruption” was made in a July 15 letter by 64 House Republicans to the IRS, FBI and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They charged the foundation is “lawless.”
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The lawmakers charged the Clinton Foundation is a “lawless ‘pay-to-play’ enterprise that has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years and should be investigated.” . . . House Republicans singled out Laureate Education and Uranium One as two companies that seemed to have paid lavish sums to the Clintons and later received official government benefits.
Now, in truth these boards and commissions are routinely used to reward supporters. Usually, however, that isn’t handled by fundraising staff so as to avoid making it into an explicit quid pro quo. It would be handled as Clinton’s team handled the Fernando appointment, which still wound up embarrassing them. This is as blatant as it gets, and should result in serious probes of the White House’s connection to these pay-for-play fundraising efforts at the DNC. After all, Kaplan had to be sending this data to someone over there to make this scheme work.Bill Clinton's prime time sonnet to Hillary got people talking. Juanita Broaddrick said Slick Willy raped her twice on the same day. But I doubt he has that kind of stamina anymore. Rachel Maddow found heterosexual talk in it, ‘Shocking and Rude’ The New York Times worries if Hillary Clinton Wins: What to Do With Bill? I'm sure he'll find someone or something to fill the time. After all, how much trouble could he get into? Although the media constantly pesters Ivanka Trump with questions about her father's affairs they won't ask Chelsea Clinton about her father's treatment of women. Johan Goldberg said the speech was a Wasted Opportunity.
The simple fact is that everyone expects husbands to speak well of their wives — even Bill Clinton. That was a box he could have checked in 10 minutes of his speech. Instead, he took the 9,072 minutes of his speech (by my rough estimate) reading Hillary Clinton’s C.V. The biggest problem is that the more he talked the weirder it was that he didn’t address the elephant(s) in the room. This is not a great marriage by any normal person’s definition, unless you measure them almost solely on the metric of political success.Insty: Slate: No, Bill Clinton’s Speech About Hillary Didn’t Address the Elephant in the Room.
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Oh, and let’s return to the fact that Bill needed to humanize Hillary Clinton. The woman has been in public life for three decades and the highest best use of her former president husband is to spend an entire convention speech trying to convince voters that she’s human.
But, you know, the cheating and the rape accusations and Hillary’s efforts to destroy women who spoke out didn’t really fit his theme for the evening.At the Atlantic, Peter Beinart chided Bill for suggesting that American Muslims should love America and freedom and hate terror.
Related: Bill Clinton leaves us wondering how he could have been such a louse to Hillary. “Much of America knows how Bill repeatedly cheated on Hillary during the allegedly blissful years he depicted tonight. His cheating isn’t a serious issue in this year’s race, but it provides an unfortunate gloss on his testimony about the marriage. Stated differently, for many Americans, it may have been the 800 pound gorilla in the convention hall. How does one square Bill’s love story with his serial adultery and predatory behavior towards women? It can, perhaps, be done. But only at a psychological level that neither Bill nor Hillary wants us to get anywhere near.”
Whether Clinton meant to or not, he lapsed into Trumpism: the implication that Muslims are a class apart, deserving of special scrutiny and surveillance, guilty of terrorist sympathies until proven innocent.Bill Clinton at the DNC: Hillary is a ‘change-maker’ who's never heard of Chesterton's Fence:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
So now it's time for Hillary's Thought Police — of Democratic Party operatives, political show ponies, and pro-Hillary pundits and talking heads — to begin the hard work of grinding those kids down.OK, getting near the end now, but it's getting harder and harder to link them:
Hillary Clinton has taken both sides on this issue for as long as she’s been in politics. You’ll recall that Clinton was so “concerned” about protecting the rights of gun owners during her first run at the presidency that Barack Obama referred to her as Annie Oakley. But the political winds have changed a bit since then, and so have Clinton’s deeply held beliefs.
“The senator is not personally for repeal of the Hyde Amendment,” a spokesman for the Clinton-Kaine campaign said Wednesday. He added: “But as he’s made clear, he is committed to carrying out Secretary Clinton’s agenda.”The coin has Hillary's face; or it soon will.
State Department staffers wrestled for weeks in December 2010 over a serious technical problem that affected emails from then-Secretary Hillary Clinton's home email server, causing them to temporarily disable security features on the government's own systems, according to emails released Wednesday.Now that was pretty stupid. Clinton hasn't driven a car since the 1996. But now you understand why Bryan Pagliano took the 5th more than 125 times in the course of his 90 minute deposition in the Judicial Watch suit. It also suggests why the RNC demands Clinton aides’ emails be released before election. I'd sure there's more good stuff out there. Hypocrisy alert: Clinton Signed NDA Laying Out
The emails were released under court order Wednesday to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, which has sued the State Department over access to public records related to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's service as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013.
The emails, reviewed by The Associated Press, show that State Department technical staff disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses. They were trying urgently to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Clinton's private server.
. . .
Days after the technical crisis, on Jan. 9, 2011, an IT worker was forced to shut down Clinton's server because he believed "someone was trying to hack us." Later that day, he wrote, "We were attacked again so I shut (the server) down for a few min." It was one of several occasions when email access to Clinton's BlackBerry smartphone was disrupted because her private server was down, according to the documents.
The AP reported last year that in the early morning hours of Aug. 3, 2011, Clinton received infected emails, disguised as speeding tickets from New York. The emails instructed recipients to print the attached tickets. Opening an attachment would have allowed hackers to take over control of a victim's computer.
Clinton, campaigning in North Carolina, called Trump's charges "outlandish lies."11 Explosive Clinton Cash Facts Mainstream Media Confirm are Accurate
"He's going after me personally because he has no answers on the substance," Clinton said. "All he can try to do is try to distract us."
A Swiss billionaire and seven-figure Clinton Foundation donor is pouring millions of dollars into a nonprofit voter registration and turnout operation and appears to have shared information about the project with the Democratic Party, a leaked document reveals.Hillary will be the best female president money can buy.
Hansjörg Wyss is accelerating a $100 million registration and get-out-the-vote plan in order to more quickly impact elections and the U.S. policy landscape, according to a document detailing the proposed work by his charitable group, the Wyss Foundation.
The document details the scope of Democratic efforts to boost grassroots organizing, and sheds light on how some of the left’s deepest pockets are facilitating those efforts through nonprofit vehicles generally restricted to charitable activity.
As I explained in this column in January, one of the most controversial of Ms. Clinton’s emails released by the State Department under judicial order was one sent on June 8, 2011 to the Secretary of State by Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary’s unsavory friend and confidant who was running a private intelligence service for Ms. Clinton. This email contains an amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country. Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only twenty-four hours before.So, How did GAMMA compartment info end up in Hillary’s unclassified e-mail?
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Now, over two months later, I can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011 email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The Agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.
Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence. Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program or SAP, several of which from CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.
Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.
Still, Jazz Shaw is sure we now know that Hillary Clinton will not be prosecuted for anythingHow Mr. Blumenthal got hold of this Top Secret-plus reporting is only the first question. Why he chose to email it to Ms. Clinton in open channels is another question. So is: How did nobody on Secretary Clinton’s staff notice that this highly detailed reporting looked exactly like SIGINT from NSA? Last, why did the State Department see fit to release this email, unredacted, to the public?Those are very good questions. The FBI certainly seems to be working hard to answer them. Reports on that effort put the number of agents involved in the investigation at 150, which if true would put it on par with the operation that caught Russian mole Robert Hanssen in February 2001. James Comey might not sit quietly if that kind of effort got shoved under the door at the DoJ if and when the probe results in actionable criminal referrals. Having Comey resign in the fall over such an attempt to quash prosecution wouldn’t do much for Hillary’s electoral chances, no matter how much Obama calls for party unity for his former Secretary of State.
With the President being so clearly invested in electing a Democrat in general and Hillary Clinton in particular to continue his legacy, there’s simply no way he would risk putting his thumb on the scale for a candidate who might be essentially disqualified if she had to run the last stage of her campaign from a jail cell. With all that in mind, it’s difficult to conclude anything other than a presumption that Obama knows that Clinton will face no such peril. But how could he know that if the investigation isn’t even finished yet?Laws are for the little people, and maybe Republican politicians.
It’s a question which is answered rather easily, and it all comes down to Huma Abedin. It’s true that we’ve previously speculated that Huma might be the undoing of Clinton once all of her records are examined, but she also serves as an example of just how far the Obama administration is willing to go to block any damage to Clinton’s historic candidacy. When the Inspectors General turned over an embezzlement case against Abedin for prosecution, the Justice Department promptly dropped it in the circular file as an act of prosecutorial discretion and that was the end of it.
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The game is rigged, folks. At this point even the FBI must be wondering why they’re even bothering with all this work.
It was big news last October when an investigator with the Benghazi committee named Bradley Podliska claimed he had been fired after taking issue with the committee’s partisan focus on Hillary Clinton. Democrats seized on the allegation as proof that the House committee was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt. Today, Politico reports that Podliska’s lawyers have quietly dropped everything about Hillary Clinton from his lawsuit for wrongful termination. . .With recent revelations that Obama's Fast and Furious guns are still killing people in Mexico, it seems to good time to ask What Does Hillary Know About The Hundreds Murdered With Fast And Furious Guns?
. . .
It’s worth noting that there is a strategic motive for Podliska’s lawyers dropping the claims about Clinton now. Deliberations made by the Benghazi committee are protected by the speech and debate clause which gives those involved complete immunity from lawsuits. By dropping the claims about Hillary now, Podliska’s attorneys avoid giving a judge a clear reason to toss out his entire lawsuit (he is left with the claim that he was fired for taking leave to serve the Air Force).
The real question is why Podliska and his attorneys included any of this in the lawsuit in the first place. The speech and debate clause hasn’t changed since last October. Podliska’s lawyers certainly knew then, as they clearly do now, that this was a non-starter in court. Whatever their reasoning, the accusations were a boon to Hillary Clinton and a serious blow to the Benghazi committee just a few days before Clinton’s highly publicized testimony.
The State Department would have been responsible for coordinating weapon intercepts with the Mexican government as they were when an attempt to catch weapon smugglers was attempted during Operation Wide Receiver during the George W. Bush Administration. No such liaison was apparently established for Fast and Furious under Obama and Clinton.You know you're hitting the target when both Team Hillary and Putin are complaining:
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We also know that Mrs. Clinton is running for President on a platform of radical gun control. It’s time that we start pressing her on what she knew about Fast & Furious, and what she’s really capable of doing—and who and what she’s willing to sacrifice—in pursuing her radical anti-gun agenda.
THE ONION RUNS PHOTOSHOP OF A BLOOD-SPLATTERED MITCH McCONNELL HOLDING ALOFT MERRICK GARLAND’S SEVERED HEAD, while standing on the steps of the Senate.And they complain that Trump isn't classy. . .
So just to confirm, Sarah Palin’s printer-registration marks clip art is the end of the world, but The Onion running an image of the Senate Majority Leader holding up the severed head of the president’s Supreme Court nominee? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
One of the classified email chains discovered on Hillary Clinton’s personal unsecured server discussed an Afghan national’s ties to the CIA and a report that he was on the agency’s payroll, a U.S. government official with knowledge of the document told Fox News.So what's a Clinton do, claim, "We already knew that, and anyway, too much stuff is classified"
The discussion of a foreign national working with the U.S. government raises security implications – an executive order signed by President Obama said such unauthorized disclosures are “presumed to cause damage to the national security."
The U.S. government official said the Clinton email exchange, which referred to a New York Times report, was among 29 classified emails recently provided to congressional committees with specific clearances to review them. In that batch were 22 “top secret” exchanges deemed too damaging to national security to release.
Based on the timing and other details, the email chain likely refers to either an October 2009 Times story that identified Afghan national Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of then-Afghan president Hamid Karzai, as a person who received “regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency” -- or an August 2010 Times story that identified Karzai aide Mohammed Zia Salehi as being on the CIA payroll. Ahmed Wali Karzai was murdered during a 2011 shoot-out, a killing later claimed by the Taliban.Did she get an American spy killed? Only Hillary knows for sure. She simply can't be trusted to keep national secrets secret, if it makes her life complicated enough to carry two devices.
While the Clinton campaign claims the government classification review has gone too far, Executive Order 13526, in a section called "classification standards,” says, "the unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to the national security."But remember, the democrats jailed Scooter Libby because Richard Armitage exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA worker. Yeah, that makes sense.
Conservative watchdog group Citizens United is calling on the State Department and the Clinton Foundation to turn over details about Bill Clinton’s invitation to a North Korea-connected event in 2012, amid Pyongyang’s latest escalation of its nuclear weapons program.Could we find out how much the Norks offered to pay Bill, Hill and Chillsee?
The North Korean request to Bill Clinton was included in a collection of State Department emails obtained by Citizens United through a public records request last year. The emails concern Bill Clinton’s paid foreign speaking engagements, which had to be approved by the State Department.
But the State Department has yet to release a May 2012 email attachment that contained details about the North Korea invitation, according to Citizens United. The group is calling on the State Department and the Clinton Foundation to turn over the document, in light of the Kim Jong-Un regime’s increasingly aggressive nuclear testing.
The Secret Service wouldn't let Hillary Clinton out of her car for a few minutes outside the building where a rally was held in Bronzeville Wednesday because there was a rogue drone making them nervous.Hillary Clinton Donors Hear Concerns About Nevada Outcome
The alleged pilot, who was standing across the street, was questioned by agents.
Donors also voiced some frustration with the lack of media scrutiny of Mr. Sanders, who they said was essentially getting a pass. They pressed Mr. Mook to demonstrate that the Vermont senator’s policy proposals were entirely implausible promises and that his responses to essentially all substantive questions drew on excerpts of his stump speech and rants about the “millionaires and billionaires.”Heh! You shall reap as you have sown.
But I think there still is a very deep set of concerns that people have, which very often they’re not even aware of or they couldn’t articulate. There’s nothing overt about it in most instances. People are very convinced they want to vote for the right person. And then . . . you know, you get little hints that maybe they’re not as comfortable with a woman being in an executive position. Especially in a big, rough-and-tumble setting like New York City or the United States of America.The problem couldn't be you.
“There is absolutely no way that one could not recognize SAP material,” a former senior law enforcement with decades of experience investigating violations of SAP procedures told Fox News. “It is the most sensitive of the sensitive.”As Ace puts it.
She had one goal: Keeping her emails secret from Republicans, citizens, and the inevitable prosecutors.Will this be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and causes Loretta Lynch and the Obama administration to seek an indictment against Hillary and the people running the server? Meanwhile, the Pentagon is looking at demoting Petraeus over handling of classified material. It's almost like they are different kind of animals.
Keeping America's secrets secret didn't even make the list.
Nobody, of course, genuinely longs for Hillary Clinton. This ought to be seen as more than the product of bias, but the signal of a much deeper political cancer — and the reason for Sanders' side eye perfectly captures why. Cornered in a losing fight, Clinton is utterly shameless in her counterattacks.
Both Hillary and Bill Clinton are skillful spinners of their record, but as the campaign grinds on to the November election, some voters may weary of the potential for history to repeat itself with them. When you vote for a Clinton, you do indeed “buy one and get one free.” And both of then have shown through their past misbehavior that they carry with them a substantial danger that they will bring the exact opposite of dignity and honor to the Oval Office.Bill Clinton Privately Mocked Paula Jones as an Attention-Seeking ‘Floozy’. It seems to be his type. But now Hillary is keeping the "Big Dog" on a short leash with a prong collar:
It was a muted Bill Clinton who stumped for his wife in New Hampshire on Monday.Altouse comments The big dog that didn't bark.
Only a few weeks back, Mr. Clinton was thought to be Hillary Clinton’s “secret weapon.” Well, he has just made his first two appearances of the 2016 campaign—and the Associated Press describes him as “subdued,” while the New York Times says he “seemed to be on a tight leash.”
Not to mention how adrift he looked when a reporter asked him about Donald Trump’s slams about his treatment of women.
Very little coverage of that Bill Clinton rally yesterday. What's up? What does the press silence mean?
I wrote about it yesterday, here, thinking I'd have a transcript to work from later, but I can barely find anything.
The NYT has 2 write-ups by Patrick Healy (one a "first draft" and the other more fleshed out): "Bill Clinton, in Restrained Mode, Returns to Campaign Trail in New Hampshire." and "Bill Clinton, the Subdued Spouse, Makes His Campaign Debut."
We know he has no shame, so it has to be a tactic. One notable comment that Bill did make was to describe "the ideas and work ethic of immigrants as potential “meal tickets” for the American economy". Which is true, as far as it goes, but not a cogent argument for open borders. A commentor at Althouse suggests that women attend Bill Clinton speech attending mattresses, Althouse suggests that is not appropriate because Lewinsky didn't need one. So they suggest knee-pads and or cigars. Meanwhile Bill’s female 'fan club' backfires: As Hillary Clinton’s husband hits stump for the first time the women on stage behind him scowl, grimace and look like they'd rather be ANYWHERE else. Ace is pissed that the media refuses to discuss The Jeffrey Epstein Case (What the Media Thought the Duke Lacrosse and UVA Frat Cases Were). So Why Aren't They Covering it?Jeffrey Epstein took a plea after being charged with paying underage girls for sex -- statutory rape in Florida. This plea involved the slap on the wrist sentence of 13 months -- and he got to spend his waking hours at his Palm Beach mansion. That is, he only had to check into his "jail" eight hours a day.On a lighter side, and speaking of two for the price of one, did you know that Bill Clinton believes we've been visited by aliens, and Hillary Clinton talks to ghosts? Hillary promises to look into Area 51. I'm sure the Air Force brass is thrilled. The party of science, doncha know.
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Why no interest in a case in which federal prosecutors fought to hide the easy-peasy conditions of the sentence from the underage victims?
Well, take a guess. It involves Bill Clinton palling around with Epstein, taking the Lolita Express to Pedophile Island, and local Democrat prosecutors who don't seem as interested in a Democrat mega-donor's statutory rape as they were in Rush Limbaugh's pain pill addiction.
1. You create a separate foreign “charity.” In this case one in Canada.These are deeply crooked people. Under no circumstances should they be allow access to power in the United States.
2. Foreign oligarchs and governments, then donate to this Canadian charity. In this case, over 1,000 did — contributing mega millions. I’m sure they did this out of the goodness of their hearts, and expected nothing in return. (Imagine Putin’s buddies waking up one morning and just deciding to send untold millions to a Canadian charity).
3. The Canadian charity then bundles these separate donations and makes a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation.
4. The Clinton Foundation and the cooperating Canadian charity claim Canadian law prohibits the identification of individual donors.
Oh, by the way, the Canadian “charity” includes as a principal one Frank Giustra. Google him. He is the guy who was central to the formation of Uranium One, the Canadian company that somehow acquired massive U.S. uranium interests and then sold them to an organization controlled by Russia. This transaction required U.S. State Department approval, and guess who was Secretary of State when the approval was granted. As an aside, imagine how former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell feels. That poor schlep is in jail because he and his wife took $165,000 in gifts and loans for doing minor favors for a guy promoting a vitamin company. Not legal but not exactly putting U.S. security t risk.
5. The Clinton Foundation then spends some of this money for legitimate good works programs. Experts estimate that The Clinton Foundation has donated no more than 15 percent of the donations to charitable pursuits. Much of the balance goes to enrich the Clinton’s lavish salaries, and lavish lifestyle, particularly travel, and virtually all tax free. In on year alone, the foundation spent over $8 million in travel expenses.
6. The Clinton Foundation, with access to the world’s best accountants, somehow fails to report much of this on their tax filings. They discover these “clerical errors” and begin the process of re-filing 5 years of tax returns.
7. Net result — foreign money, much of it from other countries, goes into the Clinton’s pockets tax free and untraceable back to the original donor. This is the textbook definition of money laundering.
If you’re still not persuaded this was a cleverly structured way to get unidentified foreign money to the Clinton’s, ask yourself these questions: Why did these foreign interests funnel money through a Canadian charity? Why not donate directly to the Clinton Foundation? Better yet, why not donate money directly to the people, organizations and countries in need?
Although with her being a democrat, I'm sure I despise most of the policies she espouses: Indicted Pennsylvania AG releases raunchy e-mails of gov’t officialsIf anyone expected Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane to exit public life quietly, they are getting the shock of their lives — and so are a number of public officials in the Keystone State. After being indicted in a leak scandal for perjury and obstruction, and having her law license revoked, Kane has started releasing explicit and raunchy e-mails sent and received through the AG’s office. The releases have already ended public careers, and Pennsylvania officials are waiting for the next shoes to drop:
These are all on government email systems, where you sign your right to privacy away as a condition of employment. The least you could do is save the trash for your private email. It may be the Chinese or Anonymous may release it, but at least it wasn't illegal to begin with.Facing criminal charges, relieved of her law license and threatened with removal by the Legislature, Pennsylvania’s attorney general seems to have decided that if she has to go, she’s going to take others down with her.It’s created “a freaking mess,” according to one former ally of Kane . . .
Since all three branches of state government began moving against her over the past year, Kathleen Kane has released hundreds of sexually explicit or otherwise crude emails that had been sent or received by current or former public officials on their government accounts.
The tangled scandal has led to the downfall of a state environmental secretary and shamed a state police commissioner, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice and several former top officials in the attorney general’s office. Another high-court justice resigned after newspapers disclosed his involvement.
Four of the country's largest newspapers on Wednesday kept the latest developments in Hillary Clinton's growing E-mail scandal off the front page (one kept it out of the paper completely). The revelation that the Democratic candidate had top secret information on her server was relegated to the bottom of page A13 in the New York Times.Count on the Brits to handle what the American press won't:
The Washington Post managed to place the news that Clinton will finally turn over her server on A2. The Los Angeles Times hid the story on A9. All of these newspapers, however, did better than USA Today, which completely skipped Clinton's scandal in the print edition.
As panic infiltrated Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign on Wednesday, following the revelation that 'top secret' classified material was found among the former secretary of state's home-brew private emails, her communications director blasted an email to Clinton's supporters pleading her case.
'Hillary didn't send any classified materials over email,' Jennifer Palmieri wrote Wednesday in the mass-email.
'Hillary only used her personal account for unclassified email. No information in her emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them. She viewed classified materials in hard copy in her office or via other secure means while traveling, not on email.'
Eight words – 'at the time she sent or received them' – could either give Clinton a legal safe harbor or open her up to new questions about why she was handling sensitive materials on an unsecured email server in the first place.
Palmieri did not respond to a request for comment about whether Clinton regrets her earlier blanket denials that she ever sent or received classified information through the private email address she used exclusively during the four years when she was America's top diplomat.
Meanwhile, Washington sources say Vice President Joe Biden is waiting in the wings for the Obama administration to run her over so he can step in and run for president.
Hillary Clinton’s empty excuses on emailing classified infoUnderstandably, those who have never dealt with classified material — the general public — can be misled by “political spin.”She was the Secretary of State, after all, and a former
It’s important to put the questions about Clinton’s personal storage of government emails into the same context in which they are viewed by national-security professionals.
Clinton’s spokesperson vehemently and repeatedly claimed that press reports about her emails were “false.”
However, the most troubling allegation — that the emails on Clinton’s personal server were found to contain classified information — was not specifically refuted.
Probably because it’s not “false.”
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According to Office of Inspector General spokesperson Andrea Williams, those emails were “classified when they were sent and are classified now.”
Clinton’s spokesperson argued that Clinton couldn’t have been aware that the material was classified because it wasn’t specifically marked.
But that statement ignores how the process works. The reason government officials with security clearances are required to keep their correspondence on the appropriate government server is so the material can be vetted and classified prior to hitting “send” to an uncleared recipient.
The CIA goes to such great lengths to protect classified information that it even requires opposing counsel in legal cases to submit their briefs and exhibits for clearance before they can be filed.
Clinton’s argument is a sham. The reason the documents weren’t marked is because she never submitted them for clearance.
Moreover, Clinton should have been sufficiently aware of what was “classifiable.”
Hillary Server "Blank"The e-mail server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton when she served as secretary of state was turned over to the FBI late Wednesday afternoon from a private data center in New Jersey, according to an attorney familiar with the transfer.But as we all know, there is a difference between a file on a hard drive being "erased", which usually means it has been marked as not available, and truly being obliterated, which is much more difficult. The FBI may be able to recover plenty of the missing 30,000 emails.
“It was picked up about 4 p.m.,” said Barbara J. Wells, a Denver lawyer who represents Platte River Networks Inc., a small computer services firm that has managed the Clintons’ private e-mail system since mid-2013.
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Before it was taken to the data center in New Jersey, the server had been in the basement of the Clintons’ private home in Chappaqua, N.Y., during the time she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the Clintons’ e-mail network.
After she left government service in early 2013, the Clintons decided to upgrade the system, hiring Platte River as the new manager of a privately managed e-mail network. The old server was removed from the Clinton home by Platte River and stored in a third party data center, which are set up to provide security from threats of hacking and natural disaster, Wells said.
Platte River Networks has retained control of the old server since it took over management of the Clintons’ e-mail system. She said that the old server “was blank,” and no longer contained useful data.
There are signs that even the usual Clinton lovers in the public are getting tired of rushing to her defense and making lame excuses. Poll: Most want criminal probe of Clinton emailsMore than half of registered voters say a criminal investigation should be launched into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email system while serving as secretary of State, according to a new poll.
The Monmouth University survey, released Wednesday, was conducted before Tuesday evening’s revelation that Clinton had turned over to the government her personal email server and USB thumb drives containing copies of the emails, following news that at least two emails had been classified as “top secret.”
According to the poll, 52 percent of voters say that Clinton's emails “should be subject to a criminal investigation for potential release of classified material.”
A federal judge issued an order Wednesday requiring the State Department to make public batches of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails every 30 days starting next month.Hillary, of course, is claiming that she would like to release all her emails immediately. That may even be true, since she has already deleted anything that might prove embarrassing to her. The State Dept, though, has it's own interests in mind.
U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras also set particular targets for the agency to meet each month as it wades through the roughly 30,000 emails totaling about 55,000 pages. (The percentages set for each disclosure can be viewed in the judge's written order, posted here.)
The monthly disclosure essentially splits the difference between the State Department's most recent proposal of releases every 60 days and lawyers for Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, who proposed releases every two weeks.
The State Department initially proposed releasing the vast majority of the emails in a single batch by next January, but Contreras rejected that suggestion, citing the public interest in the materials.
Sidney Blumenthal emailed Hillary Clinton at least two intelligence reports about Libya which were not included in the trove of 296 emails released by the State Department on Friday.Which makes the chance of the emails being released accurately reflecting the truth 0%.
Clinton has claimed that in December she turned over all official government emails she sent or received from her personal account while in office. In turn, the agency has claimed it turned all Clinton emails related to Libya or Benghazi over to the House Select Committee investigating the Benghazi attack.
But a screenshot of Blumenthal’s email inbox, which the Romanian hacker Guccifer published in March 2013, shows two reports about Libya emailed to Clinton which were not released in Friday’s batch.
Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton family associate, made $10,000 a month as an employee of the Clinton Foundation while he advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to a Thursday report from Politico.Yep; definitely part time.
According to the report, which cited "multiple sources familiar with the arrangement," Blumenthal was employed by the foundation full-time from 2009 to 2013 when he became a consultant for the organization, which was founded by former President Bill Clinton. It was during this same time that Blumenthal sent Hillary Clinton, now the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, what she described as "unsolicited" memos about Libya, where he was trying to arrange business deal.
The embattled Clinton Foundation can add a new name to its long list of donors under scrutiny — the scandal-tarred world soccer federation.That's a running start on Sid's salary, anyway.
FIFA donated as much as $100,000 to the charity headed by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, foundation records revealed, with no further details available.
On Wednesday, US authorities indicted 14 soccer officials.
FBI agents arrested the officials meeting in Switzerland, as the head of the Justice Department described a conspiracy of bribery and corruption in the selection of World Cup host countries and sponsors.
The Clinton Foundation, already under fire for accepting multimillion-dollar contributions from nations including Saudi Arabia, disclosed only the range of the contribution — from $50,001 to $100,000.
The original Associated Press story said that WJC, LLC, the “shell company” in question, was formed in Delaware in 2008.Just in the nick of time to keep that cash flow going behind the scenes. Quite a coinkydink.
It’s more interesting when you find out the specific date. I searched the database of the Delaware Department of State’s Division of Corporations. There is one listing for WJC, LLC. According to the information on file, the company was formed December 3, 2008. President Obama had confirmed Hillary Clinton as his choice for secretary of state just two days earlier, on December 1, 2008.
I am not supplying any conclusions here. I’ll simply note that this is a pattern in the ongoing Clinton controversy. For instance, the domain name for clintonemail.com, Hillary’s private email system, was registered on January 13, 2009, eight days before the Senate confirmed Clinton as the country’s top diplomat. Why the rush to arrange all these complex and secretive business affairs immediately after Clinton’s future as the most powerful Cabinet member was set in motion?
Hillary Clinton is an artful dodger when it comes to taking positions on lots of issues, but last Friday she opened a clear gap between herself and virtually every possible GOP presidential candidate. Breaking with sincere progressives such as Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Hillary went out of her way to endorse the Export-Import Bank, a little-known government agency that guarantees loans so that American corporations can sell products overseas. Its charter is set to expire on June 30 unless Congress rescues it from critics who have long opposed its record of funneling the vast majority of its loans to mega-companies such as Boeing, General Electric, and Caterpillar — all of which can easily secure trade financing on their own.Boeing donated $900,000 to Clinton.com, GE, between $500,000 and $1,000,000 and Caterpillar a measly $1,000, to $5,000. Nothing to see here, move on.org.
But Hillary appears to have no trouble embracing such corporate welfare. While secretary of state she shilled for the Ex-Im Bank. In 2009, she appeared in Moscow with officials of the Russian airline Rosavia to tout its pursuit of Ex-Im funding. This is how she put it: “This is a shameless pitch for Rosavia — I’ve said what you wanted me to say, Sergey — to buy Boeing aircraft. Right? The Ex-Im Bank would welcome an application for financing from Rosavia to support its purchase of Boeing aircraft, and I hope that on a future visit I’ll see lot of new Rosavia-Boeing planes when I land in Moscow.”
