Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton emails

Doing The Job The Media Has Forgotten How To Do

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On Thursday, Judicial Watch posted the following:

Judicial Watch Fights State Department for Full Accounting of Clinton-Related Emails on Anthony Weiner’s Laptop

State claims only 3,000 of the ‘hundreds of thousands’ of emails were agency records – but has not released information on how they reviewed them or how they made that determination

 

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it is fighting the State Department for a full production of records responsive to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the emails found by the FBI on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. According to then-FBI Director James Comey, Weiner’s laptop contained “hundreds of thousands” of emails of former Secretary Clinton.

Weiner is an ex-Congressman and the incarcerated husband of former Clinton top aide Huma Abedin. He was convicted of having sexually explicit communications with teenage girls. In October 2016, FBI investigators from its New York field office discovered Abedin’s emails on Weiner’s laptop, including data indicating the emails went through Clinton’s “private” non-“state.gov” email system.

The court filing comes in May 2015 lawsuit Judicial Watch filed against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)). Judicial Watch sued after the State Department failed to respond to a March 2015 FOIA request seeking:

  • All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov’ email address.

In an April 15, 2018, interview with George Stephanopoulos, former FBI Director James Comey stated that there were “hundreds of thousands” of Hillary Clinton-related emails that had been found “on Anthony Weiner’s laptop” in its investigation of the Clinton email scandal.

In fighting the State Department’s effort to close the case, Judicial Watch refers to the State Department claim that only 3,000 of those “hundreds of thousands” are agency records and 147 total emails were unique agency records. Judicial Watch argues that the State Department has not released information on the total number of emails that they reviewed, how they reviewed them, how many emails were personal and not agency records and how the agency would have made those determinations.

Again, all we know is that the FBI provided an unspecified number of emails to [the State Department], that [the State Department] reviewed the emails, and that [the State Department] identified 3,000 emails that contained evidence of [the State Department’s] activities. [The State Department] has not even attempted to explain the discrepancy between the “hundreds of thousands” of emails identified by ex-Director Comey and the mere 3,000 emails identified by [the State Department]. At this late point in the Secretary Clinton email saga, [the State Department] should not get the benefit of the doubt.

This filing is part of Judicial Watch’s extensive and ongoing investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal. The investigation has produced numerous examples of Clinton using her non-“state.gov” email system to transmit classified information.

Judicial Watch’s April 2014 pivotal revelation of the Benghazi talking points originating in the Obama White House brought about the May 2014 formation of the House Benghazi Committee. In February 2015 the State Department admitted to the court that it needed to make “additional searches” of Benghazi-related material. In March 2015 Clinton admitted to using a non-government email system.

In September 2017 Judicial Watch made public 1,617 new pages of documents from the State Department revealing numerous additional examples of classified information being transmitted through Abedin’s unsecure, non-state.gov account, as well as many instances of Clinton donors receiving special favors from the State Department.

On January 4, 2018, Judicial Watch revealed that at least 18 classified emails in a total of 798 documents produced by the State Department from the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s illicit email system were found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Thirteen emails contained classified information and discussions about Saudi Arabia, The Hague, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the identity of a CIA official, Malawi, the war in Syria, Lebanon, Hamas, and the PLO.

On January 19, 2018, Judicial Watch released 78 pages of new documents from State Department containing emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent and received over her unsecure, non-“state.gov” email system. These documents exposed that Clinton had detailed knowledge about the security issues with in her non-State Department email system contrary to her statement that she “really didn’t stop to think about what kind of email system there would be.”

“After uncovering the Clinton email scandal, Judicial Watch now wants a full accounting of the Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “We’ve confirmed classified Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop, which would have been enough to get anyone else arrested.”

Campaign Financing

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When the Citizens United case was decided by the Supreme Court, a howl went up from Democratic politicians. “Take the money out of politics,” they said. “This will open the floodgates for corporations to buy elections.”

I have posted charts from opensecrets.org before. These charts show that the top spenders (before and after Citizens United) are still the unions. No one is talking about taking away the right of unions to donate to campaigns. Also, keep in mind that the people who pay union dues and provide the money for the donations don’t have a say in where the money is donated. At least the leaders of a corporation that donates to a PAC are accountable to their stockholders. The fact that government employee unions give political donations is also a bit questionable–they donate to the people they are going to negotiate contracts with. Is it possible to do that without a conflict of interest?

Any, here is one of the charts from opensecrets.org:

campaigndonationsSo why am I mentioning this? First of all, I firmly believe that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If unions are allowed to make campaign donations, corporations should also be allowed to make campaign donations. If you want to eliminate one, take them both away. Otherwise, you are creating an unbalanced situation where the government is suppressing free speech.

The National Review is reporting today that according to the Hillary Clinton emails, Mrs. Clinton was planning to reverse the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United as soon as possible.

The article reports:

Although President Obama came out swinging against the decision during his State of the Union address a few day later — prompting some Justices to boycott future speeches — Clinton remained largely silent on the issue for years. She didn’t openly declare her opposition to Citizens United until April 2015, after she’d already announced her candidacy. In May, she said she’d use opposition to Citizens United as a litmus test for any Supreme Court nominee.

The Ready for Hillary Super PAC — founded under the new Citizens United rules — raised $15 million for the Clinton campaign before it was disbanded early this summer following her presidential announcement.

Mrs. Clinton’s emails to Sidney Blumenthal show a desire to overturn the Citizens United decision, yet she was willing to take advantage of the law up until the time she ran for President. She disbanded the PAC before any low-information voters would learn about it. Also, there is the question of the money flowing through the Clinton Foundation that might have made the PAC unnecessary. Remember that most of the Clintons travel expenses are paid through the Foundation, and a large part of campaigning is travel. That may or may not be illegal, but it is questionable at best. The hypocrisy is amazing.

 

What Difference Does It Make?

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As the media covers the fact that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has finally agreed to hand over her computer server to the Justice Department, let’s back up a minute and look at the history of Secretary Clinton and her server.

On March 30, Byron York posted a story at The Washington Examiner that included the following:

The subpoena story began on Sept. 20, 2012, nine days after the attacks. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who was chairman of the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations, sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Clinton asking for “all information … related to the attack on the consulate.” Chaffetz specifically asked for all analyses, whether classified or unclassified, on the security situation leading up to the Benghazi attack, plus, among other things, all analyses that either supported or contradicted UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s assertion that the attack was the spontaneous result of outrage over an anti-Muslim video. The short version of the letter was that Chaffetz demanded “all information” on Benghazi.

Just to be clear, the Chaffetz letter included standard language telling Clinton, “In complying with this request, you are required to produce all responsive documents that are in your possession, custody, or control, whether held by you or your past or present agents, employees, and representatives acting on your behalf.”

…The routine got old fast. Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) couldn’t copy the documents and couldn’t use them at hearings. Chaffetz and Rep. Darrell Issa, then the chairman of the full Oversight and Government Reform Committee, became frustrated. In response to their protests, the State Department stressed that it had made all the relevant documents available, even if under restrictive conditions. State has “provided Congress with access to documents, comprising over 25,000 pages to date, including communications of senior Department officials regarding the security situation in Benghazi,” State official Thomas Gibbons wrote to Issa on March 29, 2013.

That did nothing to quiet Republican unhappiness. The problem came to a head on Aug. 1, 2013, when the committee issued a subpoena to the State Department. (It was officially directed to new Secretary of State John Kerry.)

Note that the date of the subpoena was August 1, 2013–more than two years ago.

Yesterday The New York Post posted a story that included the following:

Security experts warned Wednesday that the chances of recovering deleted information from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s home e-mail server are slim — unless she did a lousy scrubbing job.

“Being the fact that this is Hillary Clinton with significant resources and a reputation to uphold, I would say that those who are seeking out additional information on the servers … would have a very difficult time finding something,” Robert Siciliano, an online-security expert, told The Post.

When items are deleted they still leave a trace — or “bread crumbs,” as ­Siciliano put it — but a skilled person doing the deleting can ensure that fewer crumbs are left to recreate the missing documents.

Does anyone really believe that the Justice Department is going to uphold the law in regard to Secretary Clinton? This case will be a litmus case to see if President Obama actually supports the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I suspect the President Obama does not want Hillary Clinton to become President, but I also suspect he has seen the list of people who have opposed the Clintons in the past and faced severe consequences. Watching this unfold will be extremely educational to all of us.

The Techie Take On The Clinton Email Server

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James Rosen posted an article at Fox News yesterday about some technical people who decided to investigate some of Hillary Clinton’s claims about her private, secure email server.

Some findings from the article:

Now, working with publicly available tools that map network connectivity, experts have established that the last “hop” before the mail server’s Internet Protocol, or IP, address (listed as 64.94.172.146) is Internap’s aggregator in Manhattan (listed as 216.52.95.10). 

 “This is a very strong indication that the clintonemail.com server is in Manhattan,” the source told Fox News.  

 Obviously the server is not in Chappaqua being guarded by the Secret Service–most likely it is in President Clinton’s Manhattan office. Not that physically guarding a server is worth anything anyway unless someone is going to steal the server itself.

The ‘good hackers’ also discovered:

  Perhaps most concerning, private analysts determined that clintonemail.com has been running an older model of Microsoft Internet Information Services, or IIS – specifically version 7.5, which has been documented to leave users exposed on multiple fronts. The website CVEDetails.com, which bills itself as “the ultimate security vulnerability datasource,” is awash with descriptions of serious security vulnerabilities associated with version 7.5, including “memory corruption,” “password disclosure vulnerability,” and the enabling of “remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service.”  

The cyberlab technician who discovered the Clintons’ use of version 7.5 marveled at “the vulnerabilities the Clintons are ignoring” in an email to Fox News. “This is a big deal and just the thing real-world hackers look for in a target and will exploit to the max,” the source said.  

“Several of these vulnerabilities have been known since 2010 and yet HRC is running official State comms through it.”  

The article concludes:

Just the original decision to use a private email account, with Clinton’s own surname embedded in it, has baffled the hacker community. The analyst with experience in the intelligence community, a “white hat” hacker — the kind corporate firms retain to conduct “penetration testing” that exposes businesses’ cybersecurity lapses — told Fox News: “If we learned that the foreign minister of a major foreign country was using her own private server to send and receive emails, and was relying on outdated commercial software to operate and protect it, that’d be a hallelujah moment for us.”

As you read this article, please understand a few things. It sounds as if the people who set up the server for the Clintons lacked some of the knowledge they needed to make the server totally secure. Making a server totally secure is nearly impossible and you need really good technical people to do it. If the server was hacked during Mrs. Clinton’s time as Secretary of State, there is no reason to believe that the Clintons or anyone else would know about it. That is a serious problem. The other thing I would appreciate anyone reading this article to be aware of is that I have very little knowledge of how this all works. I have a husband and a daughter that hopefully keep me (and my computer) out of trouble. I do know, however, from being around serious techies that computer security is an issue, particularly in our government. Foreign countries that do not love America are constantly attempting to hack into military, commercial, and government computers. The last thing we need to do is to make it easy for them.