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Hillary Email Scandal Tag

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.

Earlier this week, we highlighted the case of a sailor in the U.S. Navy who was being prosecuted for using his phone to take pictures in a nuclear submarine. His lawyer cited Hillary Clinton as a defense. At the time, I said:
Cases like these highlight the growing feeling among many Americans that there are two sets of rules in this country and that some people are above the law if they have the right connections.
Unfortunately for the sailor, the Clinton defense didn't work. U.S. News and World Report has the story:

Former President Bill Clinton told staffers at the Clinton Foundation if Hillary wins the presidency they will stop accepting foreign and corporate donations. From Fox News:
While Hillary Clinton stepped down from its board after launching her 2016 campaign, her husband and daughter have remained in leadership roles, leading to questions about the ability of the organization to continue its work should Clinton win the White House.

The FBI has sent over some of the classified documents and notes from their untaped interview for their Hillary Clinton investigation to the House Oversight Committee in order to understand why Director James Comey did not recommend charges against her. However, Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz said the FBI heavily redacted the majority of the documents:
“As the chairman of the chief investigative body in the House, it is significant I can’t even read these documents in their entirety,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah told Fox News. “This shows how dangerous it was to have this intelligence, highly classified to this day, on the former secretary’s unsecured personal server where it was vulnerable.”

Now that his wife has been "cleared" of any wrongdoing in her email scandal, Bill Clinton is getting a bit more bold in his defense of Hillary. It's apparently not enough that she got a walk for something that would have meant serious trouble for anyone else, now Bill has to rub the FBI's nose in it. The New York Post reports:
Bill Clinton accuses FBI of serving up a ‘load of bull’ Bill Clinton is accusing the FBI director of serving up “the biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard” — marking the first significant public comments from the husband of the Democratic nominee on the scandal that’s plagued his wife’s campaign for over a year.

The latest batch of Hillary Clinton emails show that right after she became Secretary of State, top donors asked the State Department for favors for unidentified associates. In April 2009, Clinton Foundation official Doug Band sent an email to Clinton's top aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin about a favor. He reminded them it is important to take care of [Redacted]." Officials blacked out the name, but Abedin said "Personel has been sending him options." This is not the only one, though.

The Iranian government hanged Shahram Amiri, a nuclear scientist, for giving "vital information to the enemy."  The enemy being, despite Obama's desperate groveling, the United States:  "This person who had access to the country's secret and classified information had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan" a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said. NPR reports:
Iran has executed a nuclear scientist who allegedly provided U.S. officials with information about the country's nuclear program. In 2010, Shahram Amiri returned from the US. to Iran, where he was eventually arrested, as NPR's Peter Kenyon told our Newscast unit. "The spokesman for Iran's judiciary tells the official IRNA news agency that Shahram Amiri was executed following his conviction on treason charges," Peter reported. That spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, said in a news conference that Amiri "had access to top secret information about the Islamic Republic of Iran," which he provided to the United States, according to IRNA.

Hillary Clinton appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning, and repeated her denial that she told the families of the men killed in Benghazi that the attack was caused by a video. She went one step further, and patronized the families, declaring "I don't hold any ill feeling" towards family members who "may not fully recall everything that was or wasn't said." Later in the interview, Hillary again dodged responsibility. Wallace played the statement by FBI Director James Comey that—contrary to what Clinton had claimed—she did in fact send and receive classified material on her home-brewed email system. This time, Hillary blamed some of the professionals who "made the wrong call" by sending her classified material. "I relied on and had every reason to rely on" their judgment, said Clinton.

Hillary Clinton has never adequately explained her decision to use an alternate and insecure email system. Her initial excuse (wanting to use one device) turned out to be untrue, and people have speculated ever since on the real reasons. But no one---not even Hillary herself---has ever offered a possible reason that was altruistic. Unlike the case of Jason Brezler, in which his motive was decidedly selfless.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch would not answer questions about the Hillary Clinton email scandal at a hearing with the House Judiciary Committee. She said:
“While I understand that this investigation has generated significant public interest, as attorney general, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on the underlying facts of the investigation or the legal basis for the team’s recommendation,” Lynch told the House Judiciary Committee.

As I've previously noted, Hillary's current email scandal echoes the '90's Project X scandal in which she was also involved in hiding sensitive high level email communications.  That's not the only echo from the past:  prosecutors during the Clinton presidency weighed whether or not to charge Hillary with a crime.  They even went so far as to draw up an indictment. The Washington Post reports:
While history remembers the 1990s probe led by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr for its pursuit of President Bill Clinton over the possibility he had lied under oath about his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky, internal documents from the inquiry show how close prosecutors came to filing charges at that time against Hillary Clinton. They even drew up a draft indictment for Clinton, which has never been made public. At issue then was legal work Clinton had performed in the 1980s while an attorney at Little Rock’s Rose Law Firm on behalf of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, which was owned by a business partner of the Clintons who was later convicted of fraud in connection with bad loans made by the thrift. Clinton said that her legal work was minimal and that she was unaware of the wrongdoing at Madison Guaranty.
Prosecutors, according to WaPo, weighed the likelihood of a conviction based on Hillary's then-status as First Lady.
The released records include a memo, written by Starr’s team, summarizing the evidence against Clinton. The prosecutors noted that she made numerous sworn statements between January 1994 and February 1996 that they thought “reflected and embodied materially inaccurate stories.”

Suspension of disbelief is the term that came to mind when I watched FBI Director James Comey's decision to recommend no charges against Hillary. As Comey went through the litany of Hillary's misdeeds, lies, defalcations of duty, extreme carelessness, cunning and risks to national security, Comey made the case for any of a series of charges against Hillary. Then, with the reputation of the FBI about to be vindicated, Comey dropped the dreaded "however." In House testimony, Comey again confirmed every factual point demanding prosecution, yet defended his decision not to recommend charges because he was treating Hillary just like he would any other citizen. Can anyone seriously claim, as Comey has, that Hillary was treated as any other citizen would? It's laughable and requires the suspension of disbelief. Either Comey is the dumbest person on earth, or he thinks we are.

Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and John Cornyn (R-TX) have presented a bill to strip Hillary Clinton and her aides of their security clearances after the FBI recommended she not face prosecution over her emails. Gardner said:
“The FBI’s investigation into Secretary Clinton’s personal email server confirmed what Americans across the country already know: Secretary Clinton recklessly accessed classified information on an insecure system–establishing a vulnerable and highly desirable target for foreign hackers,” Gardner said. “If the FBI won’t recommend action based on its findings, Congress will. At the very least, Secretary Clinton should not have access to classified information, and our bill makes sure of it.”

The State Department has decided to restart their own investigation into how Hillary Clinton and her aides mishandled any classified information. The presumptive Democrat presidential candidate escaped prosecution when the FBI recommended the Department of Justice not bring charges against her.