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State Department Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on October 02, 2016 6 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 24, 2016 9 Comments
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.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 11, 2016 18 Comments
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:

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 07, 2016 3 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 05, 2016 11 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 02, 2016 8 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 31, 2016 13 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 30, 2016 16 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 22, 2016 17 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 21, 2016 23 Comments
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.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 18, 2016 17 Comments
The State Department has confirmed the U.S. used the $400 million payment to Iran as leverage for the prisoners they released in January. From The New York Post:
State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked at Thursday’s press briefing: “In basic English, you’re saying you wouldn’t give them $400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?” “That’s correct,” Kirby replied.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 01, 2016 9 Comments
The State Department has asked for a 27 month delay to release emails from Hillary Clinton when she served as secretary of state. That means the department would not release the emails until October 2018, over a year into Clinton's presidency if she should win in November.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 28, 2016 11 Comments
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin about alleged harassment from Russian officers towards U.S. diplomats across Europe. From The Washington Post:
In Moscow, where the harassment is most pervasive, diplomats reported slashed tires and regular harassment by traffic police. Former ambassador Michael McFaul was hounded by government-paid protesters, and intelligence personnel followed his children to school. The harassment is not new; in the first term of the Obama administration, Russian intelligence personnel broke into the house of the U.S. defense attache in Moscow and killed his dog, according to multiple former officials who read the intelligence reports.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 03, 2016 9 Comments
President Obama press advisor Jen Psaki attacked Fox News after reporter James Rosen asked for clarification over her statement about deleted footage from a 2013 press briefing about secret Iran and U.S. talks. Rosen asked then-State spokeswoman Psaki about the meeting in 2013, a year after the department denied such talks existed. Psaki admitted they took place, but Rosen found someone deleted his questions from the old video:
The department acknowledged Wednesday that several minutes of video from the 2013 briefing – at which then-State Department spokeswoman Psaki appeared to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal – had been intentionally cut. The order apparently came from an official in the public affairs office, but that individual has not been identified.
Fox News published their complete email exchange, where Psaki berates Rosen for politely asking for an explanation after Psaki referred to the transcript and not the video.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 16, 2016 20 Comments
President Obama is still pushing for the U.S. to accept more refugees from Syria, and his agenda is now being supported by the U.S. State Department. The Hill reports:
State seeks to pick up pace on bringing Syrian refugees to US The State Department is hoping to bring an average of nearly 1,500 Syrian refugees to the United States per month in order to meet President Obama's target of settling 10,000 refugees in the country by September.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 15, 2016 5 Comments
Judicial Watch has been fighting a years-long battle to obtain records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding Huma Abedin's non-State Department employment arrangement. In the course of that fight, issues regarding Hillary Clinton's handling of email and her email server have become central. Judicial Watch has won many key procedural fights, the latest of which was the Court ruling that Judicial Watch could take discovery as to State Department practices with regard to obtaining Hillary's emails. The two sides have submitted their positions to the Court, but the Court may not need to rule because an agreement was just reached (full embed at bottom of post). The agreement, in the form of a Joint Proposed Order, gives Judicial Watch what it was seeking, but puts off limits discovery regarding Hillary's handling of classified information and the FBI investigation, which Judicial Watch was not seeking in any event. Here is the key paragraph:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 09, 2016 14 Comments
A year after the House Select Committee on Benghazi made its initial request, the State Department finally handed over 1,100 pages of records. These records contain include files, "stored on network folders used by senior employees within the Office of the Secretary, and emails from Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, Huma Abedin, Susan Rice, and Patrick Kennedy," according to the Select Committee. Records received Friday were in response to requests made by the committee in November of 2014. When the requests were unanswered, subpoena's were issued in March of 2015. Rep. Trey Gowdy, Committee Chairman said:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 15, 2016 13 Comments
In late February we reported that the court in the FOIA case seeking State Department records as to Huma Abedin granted Judicial Watch's motion for discovery, and required Judicial Watch to submit a discovery plan:
In a ruling sure to keep the Hillary Clinton email scandal alive through the summer, if not longer,  a federal just has granted Judicial Watch the right to take discovery as to whether Hillary’s home server was part of an effort to evade the Freedom of Information (FOIA) law by shifting federal records off-site and into the sole control of Hillary, her attorney’s and consultants.... Given the difficulty of obtaining records, particularly in light of the destruction of at least some records maintained on Hillary’s home server, led Judicial Watch to seek discovery, including depositions of key officials. Such discovery is not routine in FOIA cases, and good cause needs to be shown to obtain discovery.... The Court granted the motion today, via two Minute Orders (meaning orders reflected on the court docket sheet, not separate documents:
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