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State Department Tag

Russian officials asked three states if they could attend polling stations during the Nov. 8 election while Kremlin propaganda sites like Russia Today reported that Russia's Central Elections Commission even asked the State Department for permission to watch the polls. The State denied a request even came through:
"Any suggestion that we rejected Russia's proposal to observe our elections is false," Toner said, noting that allowing foreign observers is up to individual states. Russian officials could have participated in an observer delegation through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Toner added, but declined to do so, making their new complaints "nothing more than a PR stunt."

Holy cow, this story keeps going back and forth. I'm getting whiplash. First, Wikileaks said Ecuador cut Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's internet access at its embassy in London. Then the anti-secrecy website said sources claimed Secretary of State John Kerry did it. Today the Ecuadorian government said it cut the internet to stop the website from influencing the presidential election since Wikileaks has been publishing Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's emails. Now NBC reports that the U.S. did have a hand in the internet outage "after U.S. officials conveyed their conclusion that Assange is a willing participant in a Russian intelligence operation to undermine the U.S. presidential election."

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange lost his internet access at the Ecuadorian embassy in London over the weekend after the website published three Hillary Clinton speeches to Goldman Sachs. First the organization blamed the Ecuadorian government, but today the group claimed Secretary or State John Kerry pushed the government to deny Assange access to the internet. The State Department has now denied Kerry had anything to do with the incident:
“While our concerns about WikiLeaks are longstanding, any suggestion that Secretary Kerry or the State Department were involved in shutting down WikiLeaks is false,” [State Department spokesman John] Kirby said. “Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period.”

The Hillary Clinton email scandal just got much worse. New files indicate the possibility of "quid pro quo" between the State Department and the FBI. FOX News reports:
New FBI files contain allegations of 'quid pro quo' in Clinton's emails FBI interview summaries and notes, provided late Friday to the House Government Oversight and Intelligence Committees, contain allegations of a "quid pro quo" between a senior State Department executive and FBI agents during the Hillary Clinton email investigation, two congressional sources told Fox News.

The State Department caused waves earlier today when it announced it would release the first batch of emails from Hillary Clinton that the FBI discovered AFTER the agents finished their investigation. Turns out its a bunch of almost nothing. On its website, the State Department published 75 emails consisting of 270 pages. The majority belong to previously published email chains, but the new additions are from Hillary asking her aides to print the chains.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) provided a few documents to The Wall Street Journal that shows the White House worked with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign over her private email server when she served as secretary of state:
Their discussion included a request from the White House communications director to her counterpart at the State Department to see if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions during media appearances about Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement. In another instance, a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has drawn more criticism from U.S. officials after he made these disturbing comments comparing himself to Hitler:
"Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now there is 3 million, what is it, 3 million drug addicts (in the Philippines), there are," he said in a speech in his hometown of Davao City. "I'd be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have (me). You know my victims, I would like (them) to be all criminals, to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition."
But after officials criticized his remarks, Duterte has issued an apology.

What a shock. The FBI dumped about 200 pages of its interview notes from the Hillary Clinton email investigation on Friday evening. The interviews include top aide Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and even the Romanian hacker Guccifer. Somehow NO ONE, not a single soul, knew that Hillary used a private email server. A few other bombshells include President Barack Obama using a pseudonym in his emails to Hillary, the fact that Hillary did not know how to use a computer, a low key interview with Mills that does not explain why the FBI gave her immunity, and the fact that NO ONE received any training at the State Department on how to handle classified information or email guidelines. I read the 189 pages and below are the parts that stuck out to me.

The other day we reported on Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's video in which he pointed out that advocating the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") is hardly a path to peace, Ethnic Cleansing of Jews For Peace is Absurd: Netanyahu was factually correct on the goals of the Palestinian leadership, and not only from Hamas:

Everyone perked up when the State Department said it found 30 Benghazi emails in the 15,000 Hillary Clintons they discovered on a disc. Well, the officials only found ONE Benghazi email. That's right. Only ONE. It's from then- U.S. Ambassador to Brazil to Hillary after she testified in front of Congress in 2013, fawning over her performance.

It's the controversy that won't go away for Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. It only became worse when the FBI released its notes and documents from its year long investigation that showed aides destroyed her BlackBerry devices, no one knows the location of the Archive laptop (which came from the Clinton Foundation), and Hillary couldn't remember hardly anything. So here is a refresher article on what we do know from this long process.

Dang, Hillary. No matter how hard you try a lie cannot become the truth because Judicial Watch keeps producing emails that shows deep ties between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during your tenure as secretary of state. This time, the Hillary emails show that Clinton Foundation donors and officials sought diplomatic passports from her, Hillary talking about a foundation meeting in Ireland, and a major donor setting up an interview with a journalist friend. The watchdog group reported this batch included 37 emails that the State Department never received. So far Judicial Watch has uncovered 228 new emails not part of the 55,000 Clinton sent to the department.

So remember how the State Department miraculously found a disc with 15,000 Hillary Clinton emails after the FBI finished their investigation? Yeah, now officials said at least 30 of those deleted emails are possibly about Benghazi. Wait. I thought Hillary only deleted personal emails about yoga classes? The department must hand over those emails and documents to Judicial Watch by September 13 for its investigation into Hillary's private email server.

The FBI came under fire when Director James Comey decided not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton over her private email server and when the department revealed no one actually taped its interview with her. The media responded with numerous Freedom of Information Acts requests for more details, which has led the department to release the notes agents took during the investigation and from Hillary's interview.

Whoops! Judicial Watch's investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal continues as a federal judge told the State Department to expedite the release of 15,000 emails the FBI discovered that her attorneys did not turn over. The watchdog group has kept a close eye on the scandal, at first questioning Clinton aide Huma Abedin's jobs before she went to the State Department. It unraveled to show that Hillary used an unsecure server and that many of her foundation's donors asked her for special favors when she served as Secretary of State.

Judicial Watch has tried for years to get records of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin's employment outside of the State Department, which has led to questions about Clinton's private email server. The watchdog group has continuously received her emails from her time as Secretary of State, but overall the group does not believe Hillary has ever provided a justified answer as to why she used this server. Now, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court in Washington put Judicial Watch a step closer by telling Hillary she must provide written testimony under oath, also known as interrogatories, about her private email server in connection to Judicial Watch's lawsuit.