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Sidney Blumenthal Tag

Earlier this week we wrote about the possible involvement of Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal in feeding information to Christoper Steele, author of the infamous Clinton/DNC funded dossier. That dossier formed a key part of the FBI's presentation to the FISA court to obtain a warrant to surveil Carter Page. One of the key links in the Blumenthal-Steele stories was former State Department employee Jonathan Winer:

Richard Painter is the Vice Chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a left-wing activist group. In December 2016, Painter replaced in the position of Vice Chair ... wait for it ... David Brock. Yes, that David Brock, the consummate Democratic oppo-research attack dog, leader of Media Matters, and now American Bridge. That David Brock was Vice Chair of CREW tells you everything you need to know about the group. But you will almost never hear this part of Painter's resume when he appears on TV, which he does quite often. You might hear that he's a professor at U. Minnesota Law School. But most of all, you will hear that he is a former George W. Bush administration Chief Ethics Lawyer (2005-2007).

You may recall that the State Department produced certain Sidney Blumenthal emails with Hillary Clinton that were not included in the emails Hillary turned over to the State Department. The story of more Blumenthal emails beyond what Hillary turned over called into question Hillary's repeated claim that everything work-related was turned over to the State Department, and only purely personal emails (like regarding Yoga) were deleted. In searching the Wikileaks database of the Podesta email hack, Mary found the email exchange below which shows that the Clinton campaign received a heads up that the State Department was to produce the emails to a House committee, and team Clinton scrambled to prepare a response in advance of the State Department turning over the emails to Congress. There are several aspects of this email that are important, including that the State Department was considering planting a story with a friendly reporter at AP and that the Clinton campaign and the State Department were working together to create messaging for Hillary:

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.

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.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has asked the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (USADC) to review the email case against Hillary Clinton because evidence "may amount to obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence." The FBI released its notes from its investigation into the private server Hillary used when she served as secretary of state. Agents discovered that some of her aides destroyed a few of her BlackBerry devices with a hammer while no one can find an Archive Laptop with 902 emails. Someone, the FBI blacked out the name, told agents that he/she "deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported."

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.

A massive hack of the Democratic National Committee's email system cost former Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz her job. A few weeks after Wikileaks published more than 19,000 hacked emails from top Democratic Party officials, investigators have indicated the personal email accounts of more than 100 Hillary campaign officials and other organizations may have been targeting in the attack. The New York Times reported:
The main targets appear to have been the personal email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations.

Long ago, I foresaw that Hillary Clinton eventually would have to come to grips with her Max Blumenthal problem. That problem was that Max's toxic anti-Israel politics would become a political liability Hillary could not ignore despite her affection for and affliction with Max's father, Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. On May 19, 2015, I wrote that Hillary has a Blumenthal Problem – Two of Them:
I knew that Hillary was going to have a Blumenthal problem for her 2016 campaign. But I expected that the problem would be Max Blumenthal, son of close Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal. Max, the virulently anti-Israel activist, has been the subject of much controversy because of his penchant for vituperative and outlandish attacks on Israel, not the least of which was his call for Israeli Jews to be indigenized after the end of the Jewish state. See our Max Blumenthal Tag for some background.

This is rich. Republicans understandably have an issue with George Stephanopoulos after the debacle of the 2012 Republican presidential debate, when he prepped the landscape for the Obama "War on Women" campaign theme: After Stephanopoulos failed to disclose his contributions to the Clinton Foundation while he was excoriating the author of Clinton Cash, Stephanopoulos was removed by ABC News from its list of Republican debate moderators.

Bernie Sanders gave a glimpse at his potential foreign policy on Sunday, and his choices of BDS supporter James Zogby and left-wing J Street raise serious questions. Sanders, the Jewish Senator from Vermont, is infamous for his avowed socialism.  On foreign policy, he is more or less a blank slate, making his choice of foreign policy advisers a valuable window into his mindsight and the least-worst predictor of a President Sanders's policy. On Sunday, two of the three advisers Sanders chose to identify were vehemently anti-Israel.  Sanders told Meet The Press he met recently with Larry Korb, Jim Zogby and J Street.

Hillary Clinton has a big problem. As a candidate, she wants to be seen as an advocate for women but her husband's past and her defense of it conflicts with that message. She simply can't have it both ways. To make matters worse, some of Bill Clinton's accusers are starting to come forward. Mark Hensch and Jonathan Easley report at The Hill:
Bill Clinton rape accuser: Hillary 'tried to silence' me A woman who publicly accused former President Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978 is resurrecting her claims on social media. “I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me,” Juanita Broaddrick tweeted Wednesday.

Judicial Watch has obtained new emails (available here) that reveal a bit more about Hillary Clinton's time at State than we knew before (or than she probably wants revealed). Judicial Watch reports:
Judicial Watch today released a new batch of emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton connected to the Benghazi attack. Included is an email chain showing that Clinton slept late the Saturday after the Benghazi attack and missed a meeting that her staff had been trying to set up about sensitive intelligence issues, including the Presidential Daily Brief, on a day she was to make a slew of phone calls to foreign leaders.
There was also an interesting detail in an email concerning Bowe Bergdahl's father's concern over "Crusader paradigm."
The documents contain an email passed to Clinton in the days following the Benghazi attack in which the father of alleged Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl anguishes over the “‘Crusade’ paradigm” which he says “will never be forgotten in this part of the world.”
You may remember Mr. Bergdahl from Obama's over-the-top, tin-eared, and inappropriate Rose Garden ceremony announcing the exchange of Bowe Bergdahl, who has since been charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, for five top Taliban leaders.

The State Department published another batch of Hillary's emails Monday as part of their rolling release thanks to a court order. The emails are a portion of the chunk Hillary turned over to the State Department from her personal server. She or her legal counsel (Clinton has been opaque here) determined what emails were worthy of State Department record. Pilfering through the emails, readers have found all kinds of fun stuff. Evidently, everyone loved Hillary's glasses. And Blumenthal thought he had a huge scoop:

After the attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama Administration moved quickly to blame the carnage on "The Innocence of Muslims" video on YouTube. Remember? The Administration attempted to blame the violence on "an awful video that we had nothing to do with" no less than seven times, even as it became abundantly clear that the murderers who laid waste to the compound were there on a mission, and not as part of a spontaneous protest. Now, new documents from the State Department, acquired by advocacy group Judicial Watch, show that the White House attempted to shuttle the blame onto another, more obscure YouTube video almost immediately after the attacks took place.