Hillary Clinton’s very bad email week gets worse
We can’t let this crisis go to waste.
Hillary’s midnight tweet may have earned some headlines that spared her from awkward questions about her e-mail habits, but judging by the way this story has simply refused to die, I think we can be sure that it won’t be going away any time soon.
Under fire, the State Department has agreed to release Clinton’s e-mails, but officials are now saying that the process could take months:
Clinton tried to cool the brewing firestorm late on Wednesday, saying she wanted the State Department to release the emails quickly. But a senior State Department official told Reuters on Thursday the task would take time.
“The review is likely to take several months given the sheer volume of the document set,” the official said.
At the same time, the department is investigating whether Clinton violated policies intended to protect sensitive information when she conducted all of her official business through a personal account while serving as secretary from 2009 to 2013, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing a senior department official.
It’s a convenient (but in all likelihood realistic) timeline, which will give Team Hillary plenty of time to whip out some mirrors and a smoke machine; but if we play our cards right, we have more than enough ammunition to keep the story rolling.
We know that she used servers in her own home—and that it’s unclear whether or not those servers were approved, or if anyone even checked to see that their use was legal.
We also know that both independent groups like Judicial Watch, and the United States Congress, are ready to take this crap sandwich through official channels to see what’s inside.
We also know that it’s gotten to the point where top Dems are pushing the “who gives a shit” line (literally) to the liberal faithful in an attempt to do damage control:
The only move left on this chessboard is to ignore all that and simply insist that voters won’t care regardless. That’s not untrue, but it’s revealing that this is what Team Blue has been reduced to arguing.
Clinton supporters have pushed back against the media and Republicans, waving off the stories as yet another Twitter-fueled much-ado-about-nothing that has little resonance with the typical voter beyond Washington.
“Voters do not give a sh-t about what email Hillary used,” said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton ally and CNN contributor. “They don’t even give a fart.”
But if regular voters aren’t paying attention, the Democratic power brokers who hold sway over the nomination process in key states — the legislators, local party chairmen and plugged-in activists — most definitely are. The questions some of them are raising are less about the specifics of the stories and more about the long-established narratives they feed: That the secretive Clintons, enabled by unquestioning loyalists, play by their own rules.
“The questions relating to Hillary are more about, are we tired of the same old thing?” asked one prominent Democratic state Senator in South Carolina who wished to remain anonymous.
Meanwhile, the White House has found itself in an awkward position, being forced to defend itself while at the same time being careful so as to not throw anyone else under the bus.
Hmmm: Obama counsel not aware of Clinton's email practice #clintonemail. http://t.co/MbQGTgLQfO
— JohnCornyn (@JohnCornyn) March 5, 2015
From Yahoo News:
The White House counsel’s office was not aware at the time Hillary Clinton was secretary of state that she relied solely on personal email and only found out as part of the congressional investigation into the Benghazi attack, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person said Clinton’s exclusive reliance on personal email as the nation’s top diplomat was inconsistent with the guidance given to agencies that official business should be conducted on official email accounts.
Never mind the rampaging hypocrisy:
Hillary Clinton signed a diplomatic cable in 2011 banning the use of personal accounts due to security concerns. http://t.co/AGsSrfWlAh
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 5, 2015
Greta has it:
Fox News has exclusively obtained an internal 2011 State Department cable that shows Secretary of State Clinton’s office told employees not to use personal email for security reasons, while at the same time, HRC conducted all government business on a private account. Sent to Diplomatic and Consular Staff in June 2011, the unclassified cable, with Clinton’s electronic signature, makes clear to “avoid conducting official Department from your personal e-mail accounts” and employees should not “auto-forward Department email to personal email accounts which is prohibited by Department policy.”
This wasn’t just a matter of personal preference; using her own personal e-mail to relay sensitive information, if that happened, was an actual violation of State Department policy:
Intentionally RT @ThisWeekABC: BREAKING: Clinton Was in Violation of State Dept Policy for Nearly 6 Years http://t.co/8ISLhLGhpg @jonkarl
— Drew McCoy (@DrewMTips) March 5, 2015
I’m not sure how this will play out, but I do know that, at least for now, we have a truckload of evidence to suggest that Hillary Clinton isn’t comfortable with either transparency or accountability. Democrats are going to do their best to convince voters not to care about her e-mails; that’s fine. Let them. What we need to focus on is her disregard for her role as a public servant.
This is one instance where I think that we could pull off the “you work for us” narrative with real results. Why? Here’s why:
New @foxnewspoll: Does "Honest" Describe #HillaryClinton? @FoxNews #SpecialReport Your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/Cymb4lVxdP
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) March 5, 2015
It’s just one poll, but it’s more than we had a month ago.
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Comments
“The questions relating to Hillary are more about, are we tired of the same old thing?”
Well, yes. Speaking for myself, I am VERY tired of this drain bamaged, corrupt, lying, anti-American spawn of Alinsky, “old thing”.
She should…by all rights…live out the rest of her days in the Federal penal system, perhaps making uniforms for the military she loaths.
Its – The Return of the Clinton Scandals. And, she is not even nominated yet!
Dems must be asking themselves if they want to commit to another 4-8 years of fantasy reporting and farcical arguments in support of incompetence and lies.
Well, the media has been lying and covering up for Obama for 8 years and it doesn’t seem to bother them, so as long as they get their woman in the Whitehouse they’ll happily keep on covering for her.
Shouldn’t the HillaryServers at the center of this scandal be impounded,confiscated, secured, or removed at once?
It would be a shame if they were damaged in a fire or something.
Unless it’s too late and they’ve already been lobotomized or grew legs.
To a few of us out here any “trustworthyness rating” of anything less than, say, 98%, is not acceptable for ANY leadership position.
I read something this morning, an article whose headline made me expect to get angry when I read it, but it surprised me, made imminent sense. From Florida political analyst Rick Wilson, advising the GOP on how to proceed re: Hillary’s email scandal:
“Rick Wilson has some advice for the GOP on Hillary: This isn’t about you, so shut up
In the next two weeks, try something new; maintain discipline, hold focus, and keep an eye to a bigger objective than your daily press release. Try to play the long game, and help Hillary Clinton self-destruct.
Proceed against Clinton with a measured pace and tone. Don’t make it all about Benghazi or the records-keeping laws. Focus instead on the grave national security risks that her amateur-hour email server shenanigan posed. Do it with the sickly-sweet, sincere tone of “I just want to work in a bipartisan way for good, transparent government… and to protect national security secrets from the Chinese, Russians, and other threats” that the Acela media claims to worship.
Press the sore spots, subtly, but constantly. Use it as way to leverage discussion of the Clinton family’s infamous contempt for the law and remind the public of their their obsessive secrecy, paranoia, habitual lawbreaking. Wonder, in serious tones, how much of the email traffic has to do with the other scandal that reporters have been desperately trying to cover up; the Clinton Foundation’s scuzzy foreign-money vacuum. Welcome the chance for Mrs. Clinton to give her side of the story in press conferences, and hearings.”
Ricochet article:
https://ricochet.com/go-dark/
Hot Air article excerpting from Ricochet (and using their own clickbait headline):
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/06/rick-wilson-has-some-advice-for-the-gop-on-hillary-this-isnt-about-you-so-shut-up/
I read that, but it wasn’t a surprise since I’d been seeing tweets about it. He’s right. The whole thing will disappear as soon as some republican pol says anything the press can call a gaffe.
So you guys are gonna put your faith in the MSM and “honest” Democrats to keep this story alive? Guccifer exposed this two years ago! Yawn!
Straw man much? While Gasper speaks for himself (herself?), I trust the MSM on nothing, haven’t since 1979. I am saying that it makes sense that if one of your political enemies (MSM) is busily taking down another (HRC), it might be best to stand still and quiet and watch, popcorn optional.
I also acknowledge the fact that the GOP frequently and inadvertantly rescues Dems in trouble by saying stupid stuff, which also makes the stand quiet plan make sense.
Should we trust congressional Republicans to do it? Hahahahaha. Uh, NO.
Do you have a credible source for your statement? Guccifer hacked her public account in 2013, and did that by targeting her associates first. But, I was not aware her personal email account was hacked, and her personal acccount is what makes this story big. Please help me understand. Perhaps I missed that. Henry: I am Mr. Gasper
I don’t really see this as an MSM take-down of HRC. They are getting out the bad news in advance of the coronation. When the announcement comes, they will all fall in line and leave this nonsense behind. Again, the Hillary server story is NOT news!
The emails Hillary chose to give to the State Department will be released after her coronation. Mind you, JUST the ones SHE CHOSE…
I am still intrigued by the media’s aggressiveness on this story in light of their past habit of just ignoring scandals in hopes they just goes away. Some were reluctant to jump on board but realized they couldn’t ignore The Grey Lady’s wailing. When Hillary has been ousted, and her successor named by this same media, they will revert back to their normal mode and ignore all the tantalizing stories that could be written. Those stories are easily found here: http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/
That surprised me, too. At first I thought maybe the MSM had finally awakened, but doubted that on reflection. Their uncharacteristically going after Hillary instead of defending her may indicate an upriver issue, that is, they may wish to pin it on Hillary so the scandal doesn’t go ‘upriver’ to the White House. In other words, the ONLY way they’ll go after Hillary like this is in order to protect Obama.
Your comment made me wonder if the New York Times may have known about this for quite some time. If so, why did they decide to release it now? This happened quite some time ago and Hillary was obviously emailing scores of people, anyone who could be their source. Hillary should be banned from running for higher office just on the basis of her extreme ignorance in thinking none of those people would eventually reveal what she was doing.
Spiking a story to protect political friends is common, so I wouldn’t doubt it one bit.
For the WH not to know that Hillary was using a private email address, they would have to have never received any email from her. That lie will be exposed when Congress looks at the emails, or FOIA puts them before the public. Can they redact all the WH recipients? I doubt it.
So good, Obama decided to get this poop on his shoes too. Of course he’s so covered in poop the doesn’t care anymore. The current news cycle is all he every bothered with anyway, knowing that with the media’s help, none of his scandals would have media legs anyway. Hell, he waged war on the 2nd Amendment by intentionally causing as many murders in Mexico as he could, and the media refused to cover that one.
As you correctly note, it is simply not credible for the White House to say that they “didn’t know” — they need only look at the address of the incoming email from “[email protected]” to know.
It’s a shameless lie, and yet they’re not going to be called on it by the MSM.
Read that again:
It was discovered that the State Department was in possession of absolutely no e-mail she had sent. (anything that was official business she was supposed to forward)
The Trey Goudy committee knew last summer that she had used at least two non-State Department e-mail addresses but did not know she had never used any State Department e-mail adddresses.
The State Department, probably only because of subpoenas from the committee, requested all previous Secretaries of States going back to Madeleine Albright (1997-2001) to send them any official government business e-mails they had.
What Hillary’s people probably did was adopt as limited a defintion of official business as possible – possibly, all or mostly e-mail sent to state.gov e-mail addresses. Secretary of State John Kerry seems to have hinted at that limited definition of official business.
Let’s say a Saudi businessman asked her to do something. That’s not official business. That’s improper influence. It wouldn’t be sent to the State Department.
Or say, she forwarded something to Bill Clinton. That’s not official business either, right?
I have to ask if NSA read her emails, and if so, why they didn’t flag a security problem. And if not, what good is their system.
An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Sure they scanned her emails – she was Secretary of State. Sure the WH was notified. But they sure weren’t going to hold a press conference to announce it.
Maybe Snowden can release all her emails.
Or Putin. Or the Chinese…
Reddit is deleting discussions of this, just as they deleted discussions of net neutrality.
They have deletion wars about several subjects, including the Palestinians. The Ronulans pioneered this game.
Guys, I recall that the last time the Democrats had “only” Hillary to run, they would up fielding an unknown, inexperienced person, and they won. I am more concerned that they will launch another cult of personality around a total unknown, because it worked the last time.
Not as effectively as being opposed by campaign master juggernauts John McCain and Mitt Romney.
People need to understand something very, very basic t this whole issue. Once Hillary’s e-mails are released, then there cannot be one mark out, not one redaction anywhere for if there is, then that means there is sensitive or secrete information present. What everyone needs to know is that every person who works with or for (e.g., contractors) the US government has to undergo annual training about how documents will be classified according to their level of secrecy, the storage requirements for each level of secrecy, and the retention period/requirements for each level. This training comes with a comprehension test and a signature acknowledging that it has been read and the legal ramifications understood.
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Having worked as a contractor for the government for almost 30 years, I find it incomprehensible that someone as high as the Secretary of State could compose so many e-mails without having a large number be confidential, sensitive, secret or whatever. The difficulty is that Hillary, by owning the server, essentially owns the keys to her own jail cell and the only way we will find out she did anything wrong is if a receiver of a classified e-mail rats here out. Being that the person did not alert the authorities of classified material being sent to them on an unclassified system, then doing so now will cause charges against them so this avenue for discovery is likely absent.
If a bulldog-ish Congressional probe kept after it, a grant of immunity to the right someone might release the floodgates (assuming someone wanted to undercut HRC enough and had the wherewithal or influence to get it done).
Obama and the privileged and rigged Hillary Clinton desperately want to control the dialogue, their dubious secrets and their legacies.
Hillary’s legacy server and backup tapes containing controlled information (Gov’t’s. and Hillary’s) should be subpoenaed and removed from her control now.
She fit right in with the Obama Administration. Her boss has been practicing taqiyya ever since he entered the public sphere.
Last night in a dream I saw Hillary Clinton at a press conference bitterly announcing she will not run for her party’s nomination for president of the US. It was eerily Nixonian with themes of “after all I’ve done for you people!” and “you won’t have Hillary Clinton to kick around any more!”
Breaking!! White House denies any knowledge of Hillary Clinton having served as Secretary of State; media blames Scott Walker for starting rumors. Because secret routers and Koch Brothers.
By this time the Clinton servers (the computers, not the enablers in the media) have been scrubbed clean of all remnants of any questionable emails. And since this is a private server, there is no backup system on which deleted emails can be located. Poof! Gone!
That server is a clean as the Rose Law Firm billing records.
The other Clinton servers (the ones in the media, not the computers) will (a) deny that anything bad happened, and (b) claim that if anything bad DID happen, it didn’t really happen, and doesn’t matter at all. Because we need an (elected) vagina in the White House, and Hillary! has a vagina that is the most qualified vagina in America.
But most of America is sick an tired of the Clintons; a fact that the CMG (Clinton Media Group, a perfect Venn Diagram fit with the MSM) is starting to realize. And their meal ticked is starting to slowly disappear, so look for a lot of panic and anger. And any Dem candidate wannabes warming up in the bullpen will be slammed. Watch for it.
Walker, that BASTARD.
Psst, Henry! SHHH, but I heard that Scott Walker is actually Bush’s secret illegitimate son…
Which Bush?
And here I would have just naturally blamed Dick Cheney…
Ahh…but there are people who received emails from her computer and many of those messages undoubtedly exist.
It makes one wonder whether this government has a sanctioned shadow email system. Wasn’t it the Director of the EPA who was last involved? Too bad we don’t have an inquisitive media to see how far this practice extends.
Gasper – Trey Gowdy’s staff has long believed that the WH staff has its own private email system.
It would be better of all this came out after Hillary is nominated and the dems are committed to her as their candidate.
Don’t rush her off the stage too early in the play.
Isn’t that the purpose of the ancient and honorable theatrical appliance called “the trap door”?
Hillary has had plenty of time to destroy and delete whatever emails and backups she needed to cover her ass. This is just getting the story out there early so it is forgotten. After all it is just those wascally Wepublicans twying to wuin the weputation of the first female Pwesident! So she used her own email…”What difference does it make!”
This story is absurd.
To believe the Clinton line. First we must believe that SOS never sent or received an email from any other cabinet officer. Second, we must believe that the entire counterintelligence apparatus and the internal security apparatus assigned to POTUS and SOS were ignorant to the existence of this email system.
Hmmm, seems to me that out there somewhere sitting on who knows how many servers there might be a goodly number of emails from secret Hillary accounts asking for campaign contributions, or contributions to some PAC, org, or another. If so, isn’t that a new set of charges, if these secret email accounts are supposedly unofficial official SoS accounts?
I’m hoping this is the result: If Hillary says these are personal, not office-related, email accounts, then any email with official content blows her up. If Hillary says these are office-related, albeit secretly set up, email accounts, then any email asking for money blows her up.
I cannot imagine Hillary never asked for money in any of these emails.
Hillary says the account and/or the server was used for everything.
Despite the opinions of a lot of people I respect hugely, I don’t think this one is going away. Here are some reasons…
1. there is unquestioned premeditation
2. there is unquestioned intent
3. Ol’ Walleyes set up a shadow State Department that she used to conduct business that affected the entire nation at the highest level, with the intent it be unreachable via normal oversight or even presidential management (ostensibly)
4. in all the foregoing, she was in violation of multiple rules, regulations, directives, and statutes.
There is no conceivable justification for this, and no legitimate purpose has been…nor could be…proffered.
I’ve noted that lawyers doing fraud work look for what are called “badges of fraud”, such as the keeping of two sets of books, or a plethora of business organizations under one central control.
I think it would be fun to try to count all the “badges of fraud” evident here.
Insert obligatory “we doan need no steenking badges!” joke here.
She’s wearing more badges than a post-WWII Soviet general in dress uniform…
Actually, that sounds kind of hot.
This whole subject probably is a little bit complicated because before there was the prohibition or discouragement of using personal e-mail addresses for official business, there was the prohibition of using official e-mail, or computers, or telephones for personal business. So all the bias was in the direction of not using government e-mail. We’re talking 1990s.
And when this was about telephones, telephone calls were not recorded. They still aren’t. E-mail originally was not archived or not archived for long.
Many corporations, and now New York State’s Governor Andrew Cuomo, have a policy of automatic deletion of all e-mails after a period of, say, 90 days, with the exception of what might be under subpoena, or likely to be subpoenaed, or, in the case of government, the subject of a Freedom of Information request. And that’s not usually going to happen within 90 days.
Hillary Clinton cold get caught up in the Sheldon Silver scandal. (which partially involved asbestos cases – the problem being is the disease of mesothelioma,really only caused by asbestos?)
While she was a Senator, she made a big thing of getting help to people who were part of September 11th site recovery efforts and allegedly had their health damaged – and some of that was fraudulant.
http://blog.chron.com/texassparkle/2010/12/the-truth-about-the-first-responders-bill-updated/
Including the person she talked about so much whom the bill was named after.
(although the subject remains in some dispute, and was never definitively resolved, and you can only deal with probabilities)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Zadroga
Assuming Hillary is corrupt as hell, her declaration that she delivered those 55,000 (?) emails, claiming that is the total of all relevant and official business, makes her vulnerable to anyone that has non-personal emails not revealed.
Any confidential SOS business conducted over that email and not delivered to dotGov would seem to make her a criminal (ianal). She is not allowed to hold that at her house, as per Petraeus charged with holding confidential documents.
So if she were POTUS, she would be subject to coercion, even if she nukes her drives. This was a big part of the CIA’s indiscretions, as I recall. Not just the lewdness, but the compromising of their security. Is there a limit on closet skeletons for a prospective leader of the free world? And in with her skeletons, she has enemies foreign and domestic, it would appear. They would own her already, but would prefer to own her as POTUS. Maybe the NSA can step up … isn’t this why they spy on us?
So Queen Hillary prefers a vulnerable home server, to keep her exempt from FOIA and internal review. Maybe she should go work at that gold mine she (apparently) delivered to her brother via the billions of taxes “she gave” to Haiti.
Intriguing thought…
what if she’d croaked while in office?
That should be fodder for about a dozen novels.
$6 billion missing in the State dept. during hitlery’s term.
2 billion arrives in the clinton foundation from foreign countries.
Coincidence? Hmmm
They may have the wrong server.
There may be dozens of them. Incalculable numbers of e-mail addresses, all throw-aways.
It is too easy.
But my larger concern is that these people are operating a shadow government where only they know what is going on, and all their policies and decisions are made to favor their personal interests.
From the security standpoint, it is difficult to estimate the damage. How many State secrets have been compromised?
Stuff like this could get someone killed.
Did it?