Connecting the dots on Hillary Clinton

[superbeets]

Hillary Clinton's email scandal will likely be looming over the Democratic presidential candidate throughout the rest of the primary season as federal prosecutors have just begun contacting the lawyers of her top aides in order to set up formal interviews.
The Los Angeles Times, which reported the pending interviews, didn't name which aides would be called in for questioning by FBI agents and prosecutors, but contacted Philippe Reines, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan and Cheryl Mills, who all worked closely with Clinton during her time as secretary of the state.
None of the lawyers for the foursome would speak on the record about the investigation.
Prosecutors are also expected to bring Clinton in for an interview, but the newspaper had no information about timing.
Another aide, IT staffer Bryan Pagliano, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors and provided security logs for Clinton's server that revealed no evidence of foreign hacking, the paper reported

 

[superbeets]

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The email scandal won't go away just yet, as federal prosecutors have contacted the lawyers of some of Hillary Clinton's top aides in order to set up interviews

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Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff at the State Department, could soon be interviewed by federal prosecutors and FBI agents as they investigate Clinton's email situation to see if the former secretary of state mishandled classified information

 

[superbeets]

Who could be questioned? Philippe Reines (left), Jake Sullivan (center ) and Cheryl Hines (right) all had top positions in Hillary Clinton's State Department

'The interviews are critical to understand the volume of information they have accumulated,' James McJunkin, the former head of the FBI's Washington field office, told the Los Angeles times.
'They are likely nearing the end of the investigation and the agents need to interview these people to put the information in context,' he continued.
'They will then spend time aligning these statements with other information, emails, classified documents, etc., to determine whether there is a prosecutable case.'
The Washington Post yesterday published its own investigation into how the email scandal came to be, noting how from day one Clinton wanted to be able to use her Blackberry to send and receive email as secretary of state.
Instead she was forced to lock up her Blackberry, which State Department security experts warned could be hacked and turned into a spying device, before heading into her 'Mahogany Row' office.
'From the earliest days, Clinton aides and senior officials focused intently on accommodating the secretary's desire to use her private email account, documents and interviews show,' the Washington Post wrote.
'Throughout they paid insufficient attention to laws and regulations governing the handling of classified material and the preservation of government records, interviews and documents show.
'They also neglected repeated warnings about the security of the Blackberry while Clinton and her closest aides took obvious security risks in using the basement server,' the Post's investigation continued.
The Post's piece also revealed that 147 agents have been deployed to assist with the investigation, as FBI Director James Comey wants it resolved sooner than later as to not interfere with the presidential election.

 

[superbeets]

+4


Hillary Clinton has pushed back at allegations that she was sending classified material over her private server saying none of the emails she handled were marked classified at the time

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As part of the ongoing FBI and Justice Department investigation, Hillary Clinton will likely be interviewed, but the Los Angeles Time had no information about timing

The Justice Department and the FBI opened up their investigation in July upon receiving a security referral from the inspector general of the intelligence community, who concluded at the time that Clinton had sent emails deemed 'secret,' the highest level of classification, through her personal email system.
The inspector general's office was leafing through the 30,500 emails Clinton had turned over from her homebrew server that she said were work-related.
'None of the emails we reviewed has classification or dissemination markings, but some included [intelligence community]-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified appropriately marked, and transmitted via a secure network,' Inspector General I. Charles McCollough wrote Congress in a letter at the start of the investigation.
Previously, the inspector general and the State Department were shown to be in a dispute over whether these correspondences should be considered classified.

 

[superbeets]

Since then the State Department has released the emails publicly, as part of Freedom of Information Act requests, and 22 emails were marked 'top secret,' while hundreds of others were marked 'secret' or 'confidential.'
None of the emails had markings indicating their classified nature at the time.
Clinton has used this as part of her public defense of the email scandal explaining that these emails were 'retroactively' classified.
She's complained of the government's overzealous nature in classifying the documents and called for the contents of them to come out publicly so that the stink of the scandal would subside.
Clinton had also deleted 31,830 emails from her server that were personal correspondence.
The Los Angeles Times found out that most of those emails have since been recovered since Clinton handed the physical server over to the FBI in August.

 

[superbeets]

Legal experts suggested to the Times that it would be difficult to prosecute Clinton over her handling of classified information as prosecutors would have to prove she knew the information was classified at the time she was sending it.
While Democratic rival Sanders has shied away from criticizing Clinton for the email scandal – famously saying on the first Democratic debate stage that 'the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails' – Republicans have been chomping at the bit over it.
Throughout the campaign they've portrayed Clinton as worse than former CIA head David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty of a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material and thus was spared prison time.
'I mean look at Petraeus – good guy, made a mistake, and by the way, leave the guy alone,' said Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in January. 'Leave Petraeus alone. Right? Enough already. Enough. They've gone after him, they've destroyed him and yet Hillary's flying safe and she did 100 times worse than what he did,'
But there's a pivotal distinction between the Petraeus case and the ongoing one swirling around Clinton.
Petraeus knowingly provided classified material to his mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell, legal experts pointed out to the paper. Broadwell was a civilian.
Clinton's emails, even the ones that were later marked classified, were sent to aides who had been cleared to receive the contents.
'Those cases are just so different from what Clinton is accused of doing,' American University law professor Stephen Vladeck told the Times. 'And the Justice Department lawyers know it.'

 

[superbeets]

[h=2]Bernie Sanders calls George Clooney's $33,400-a-ticket Hillary Clinton fundraiser 'obscene'[/h]

George Clooney is hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on April 15 where seats at the head table cost $353,400 a couple. The next night, another fundraiser will be held at Clooney's Los Angeles home and tickets are $33,400 each. On Sunday, Bernie Sanders called the two fundraisers 'obscene' in an interview on CNN. 'The people coming to this event have undue influence on the political process,' Sanders said. Most of Sanders' fundraisers are '$15 or $50', he said.

 

[superbeets]

[h=1]Bernie Sanders calls George Clooney's $33,400-a-ticket Hillary Clinton fundraiser 'obscene'[/h]

• George Clooney is hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on April 15 where seats at the head table cost $353,400 a couple
• The next night, another fundraiser will be held at Clooney's Los Angeles home and tickets are $33,400 each
• On Sunday, Bernie Sanders called the two fundraisers 'obscene' in an interview on CNN
• 'The people coming to this event have undue influence on the political process,' Sanders said
• Most of Sanders' fundraisers are '$15 or $50', he said

Bernie Sanders took a shot at Hollywood on Sunday, calling two upcoming Hillary Clinton fundraisers organized by George Clooney 'obscene'.
The actor is hosting a fundraising dinner for the Democratic candidate in San Francisco on April 15, where two seats at the head table with Clinton, Clooney and his wife Amal cost $353,400.
The following night, Clooney is hosting yet another event at his home in Los Angeles where tickets are $33,400 each.

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Bernie Sanders on Sunday slammed Hillary Clinton for 'going to big-money people' like George Clooney to fund her campaign



'It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big-money people to fund her campaign,' Sanders said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.
'I have a lot of respect for George Clooney. He’s a great actor. I like him,' Sanders continued. 'But this is the problem with American politics … Big money is dominating our political system. And [my supporters and I] are trying to move as far away from that as we can.'
'So it’s not a criticism of Clooney. It’s a criticism of a corrupt campaign finance system, where big money interests - and it’s not Clooney, it’s the people coming to this event - have undue influence on the political process.'

 

[superbeets]

'The people coming to this event have undue influence on the political process,' Sanders said. Hillary Clinton pictured on the left on March 24. On the right, an invitation to the April 15 event

Sanders campaign has largely been funded by small donations and he says tickets to his events usually just cost '$15 or $50' to get into.
'It’s not only this Clooney event,' Sanders said. 'It is the fact she has now raised well over $15 million from Wall Street for her super-PAC, and millions more from the fossil fuel industry, and from the drug companies.'


Despite winning both the Alaska, Washington and Hawaii primaries on Saturday, Sanders is currently tailing Clinton by more than 700 delegates. But he believes he can make up ground in June during the California primary where 475 delegates are at stake.
'We think we do have a path to victory,' he said. 'We’ve won the last five out of six contests, all of them in landslide victories.'

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Report: FBI Moves to Interview Top Clinton Aides in Email Probe[/h]SHARE
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AP​

BY: Natalie Johnson
March 28, 2016 4:54 pm

FBI officials are preparing to question top Hillary Clinton aides at the State Department in the latest leg of the federal government’s probe into her unsecured email system.
The Los Angeles Times reported:

Federal prosecutors investigating the possible mishandling of classified materials on Hillary Clinton’s private email server have begun the process of setting up formal interviews with some of her longtime and closest aides, according to two people familiar with the probe, an indication that the inquiry is moving into its final phases. … No dates have been set for questioning the advisors, but a federal prosecutor in recent weeks has called their lawyers to alert them that he would soon be doing so, the sources said. Prosecutors also are expected to seek an interview with Clinton herself, though the timing remains unclear.
​

The interviews, along with the case’s final review, could take weeks to complete, threatening to haunt the former secretary of state for the remainder of the presidential primary elections.
Intelligence officials told the Times that the interviews will help the government plod through legal questions surrounding whether Clinton and her aides knowingly or negligently used an unsecured system to discuss classified material.
The Washington Post reported Sunday evening that 147 FBI agents are now investigating Clinton’s private email server, though an unnamed official later disputed the report in a conversation withPolitico.
Clinton has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, claiming that none of the emails sent or received on her private server were marked classified at the time. The State Department meanwhile has upgraded thousands of messages to classified status throughout its review of Clinton’s work-related correspondences.
Legal experts who spoke to the Times predicted that Clinton likely will not be prosecuted even if federal officials find that she or her aides sent classified information across the unsecured system.
Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University, said it’s not “clear” that federal law explicitly prohibited Clinton from using her private email system to transmit sensitive material.
Government officials found that more than 2,000 emails on Clinton’s server contain classified information, though none were marked classified on her personal email. Twenty-two messages have been deemed “top secret,” the highest classification level, and were withheld from public release.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department granted immunity to former State Department computer staffer Bryan Pagliano, who set up Clinton’s server in her home in 2009. The ex-Clinton aide has been cooperating with the FBI.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]Hillary in 2008: ‘You Should Be Willing To Debate Anytime, Anywhere’[/h]

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by IAN HANCHETT28 Mar 201657
Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, “You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere” while discussing her 2008 campaign for president with the Sioux Fall Argus Leader on May 23, 2008.
Clinton said, “[H]onestly, I mean, I just believe that this is the most important job in the world, it’s the toughest job in the world. You should be willing to campaign for every vote. You should be willing to debate anytime, anywhere. I think it’s an interesting juxtaposition, where we find ourselves. And, you know, I have been willing to do all of that, during the entire process, and people have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa.”
On Monday, Joel Benenson, the Chief Strategist of Hillary for America responded to calls for a debate between Clinton and her Democratic opponent,
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%​

in Brooklyn by stating that Hillary’s campaign would only consider debates with Sanders if he had the right “tone” in his campaign.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]Exclusive — Donald Trump: Hillary Only ‘Being Nice to Obama’ Because She ‘Wants to Get Protected’ from Looming Indictment[/h]

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AP

by MATTHEW BOYLE28 Mar 2016Washington, DC2,747
[h=2]Billionaire Donald Trump, the 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner, told Breitbart News exclusively in a phone interview that he believes that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is only “being nice to” President Barack Obama because she wants him to prevent the FBI from indicting her over her email scandal.[/h]Trump’s comments came in response to a question about his thoughts on former President Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband, calling President Obama’s administration an “awful legacy” in a Spokane, Washington, speech last week.
“If he said that, Hillary will be indicted,” Trump said of Bill Clinton’s remarks on Obama’s administration. “In all fairness, that’s incredible, because I think she’s being nice to Obama for only one reason: She wants to get protected. That’s the only reason she’s nice to him.”
These comments come as reports surfaced that Hillary Clinton is facing what amounts to an army of investigators from the FBI zoning in on her email scandal. The Washington Post reported on Monday morning that a whopping 147 FBI agents are investigating the Democratic frontrunner.
“One hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey,” the Washington Post reported. “The FBI has accelerated the investigation because officials want to avoid the possibility of announcing any action too close to the election.”
Trump added in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News that Bill Clinton’s statement in Spokane will deteriorate the relationship between Hillary Clinton and President Obama.
“If Bill Clinton made that statement, that is a disaster for Hillary’s election,” Trump said. “And it’s a disaster for the relationship between Hillary and Obama.”
Trump’s comments, made in a lengthy interview that lasted about a half an hour late last week, came in the wake of the Brussels terror attack. Trump argued that the attack proves the “terrorists are totally winning” their war on the West under the leadership of President Obama, much of which Hillary Clinton is responsible for given the fact she was Secretary of State at the time.
Trump noted that Clinton’s weakness on terror policy puts her at risk in the general election. Trump said in that part of the interview, which Breitbart News published last week:

The terrorists will cause Hillary Clinton to lose the election. She’s weak on borders. She’s weak on crime. She’s weak on anything having to do with controversy other than controversy with herself. She’s weak on the police. She’s weak on anything having to do with strength. Hillary is so weak on the borders, and so afraid to talk negatively about protecting our people, that it will end up costing her the election in my opinion.
​

In this interview, Trump also made the case that Hillary Clinton would further the globalist trade agenda that’s abjectly failed for American workers—causing massive job loss to foreign nations as companies throughout America’s heartland and rustbelt ship their operations overseas to places like Mexico, China, Canada, and other nations around the world, especially throughout the Pacific Rim.
Trump said when asked about the differences between him and Clinton on trade policy:

I want to bring jobs back. It’s very simple. We have been losing on trade, just like we have been losing on everything else. I want to bring jobs back to our country. I want to make trade smart for our country and if it’s not going to be smart, I don’t want to do it. We’re going to have a great trade policy. We’re going to get along with people but we’re either going to make good deals or we’re not going to make deals at all. I want to bring jobs back to the United States.
​

This interview comes after a series of great successes on the campaign trail for Trump, where he won Arizona’s winner-take-all primary after a week earlier winning five out of six contests—including Florida’s plum prize of 99 delegates, knocking
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

79%​

out of the race—but ahead of what appears to be a long protracted battle from here for the nomination.As Trump moves to unite the GOP behind him ahead of the party’s nominating convention in Cleveland in July, his two remaining rivals,
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

97%​

and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are working to attempt to deny him the necessary delegates to win the nomination outright on the first ballot. It is mathematically impossible at this time for Kasich to win the nomination, and Cruz would need to amass nearly 90 percent of outstanding delegates to get there—something that’s highly improbable—so the only realistic way to stop Trump at this point is through a contested convention.A contested convention in Cleveland would be a bloody and devisive process for the party and may—in the words of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker—produce a GOP presidential nominee who isn’t currently running for the nomination. There’s lots of talk that that the potential nominee may end up being House Speaker
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

56%​

, although Ryan—as he did before running for the Speakership—denies wanting the nomination.Trump is trying right now to pivot towards the general election and pick a fight with Hillary Clinton, but he needs to win a few more decisive contests—like in Ryan’s Wisconsin or his home state of New York, both of which are coming up around the corner—to put the “Never Trump” crowd away once and for all.
Current general election polling between Trump and Clinton shows a big advantage for Clinton at this time–but that’s roughly the same advantage former President Jimmy Carter had over Ronald Reagan at about this point in the year 1980. A Washington Postcomparison of three different maps of the electoral college results from the 2012 election shows that while Trump is a higher risk candidate in the general election for the GOP than Cruz, he has much more room to expand and grow on the map into states Republicans have traditionally stood no chance in–therefore making him a higher reward candidate.
Trump’s populist appeal across the rust belt states, and to ordinary American workers across the country, has the Clinton camp rethinking their entire strategy. A piece in Politico Magazine on Sunday from progressive pundit Bill Scher argues that Clinton should look especially at
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)

4%​

, or at Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

8%​

–both populist progressives in the mold of Clinton primary foeSen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

16%​

of Vermont–as her potential vice president.“Before Donald Trump, Franken wouldn’t possibly have merited serious consideration,” Scher wrote in the piece, which was highlighted by the massively influential Politico Playbook written by the publication’s keystone reporter Mike Allen.

Even though his seven-year record as a senator from Minnesota suggests he’s a genuinely committed legislator, the first rule of V.P. picks is ‘do no harm’—and pre-Trump, the trove of politically incorrect barbs from Franken’s past would have been far too much baggage for a presidential nominee to want to carry. The spotlight would have been on him instead of Clinton. Candidate Trump erases the old standards. Nothing that Franken said decades ago would be remotely as incendiary as the insults Trump spews as a matter of campaign strategy. And Trump’s presence demands new rhetorical weaponry. As Trump himself might say, Franken’s ‘classy’ and ‘elegant’ wit is just what the ticket needs to avoid the kind of brawl that drags everyone down to Trump’s level. Clinton will want to stay above the fray, and Franken can provide the buffer.
​

‘Scher’s piece was highlighted by the massively influential Politico Playbook written by the publication’s keystone reporter, Mike Allen.

 

[vitterd]

Can you dummies connect the dots on this:

Clinton vs Trump

Fox News ----CLINTON +11
Bloomberg---CLINTON +18
CNN ---CLINTON +10


"vitterd prediction of Hillary will go down as worst ever"--Sheriff Joe

bwaaaaaaaaaaaaHhhhhhh!!!!

 

[ScottL]

"George Clooney is hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on April 15 where seats at the head table cost $353,400 a couple"

Vitterd, you getting a new tux?

 

[vitterd]

"George Clooney is hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on April 15 where seats at the head table cost $353,400 a couple"

Vitterd, you getting a new tux?

I only attend and donate to fundraisers that fight a horrible disease or assist kids.

Cant believe anyone would waste money and time going to something like that.

 

[ScottL]

I only attend and donate to fundraisers that fight a horrible disease or assist kids.

Cant believe anyone would waste money and time going to something like that.

It's a lousy $353,400 for a good cause. Cut the Summer vacation a day short!

 

[superbeets]

I only attend and donate to fundraisers that fight a horrible disease or assist kids.

Cant believe anyone would waste money and time going to something like that.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]147 FBI Agents Working on Hillary Clinton’s Email Investigation[/h]

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Kevin Lamarque AP

by PATRICK HOWLEY28 Mar 20161,077
[h=2]The Hillary Clinton private email server investigation is being worked on by 147 FBI agents.[/h]The Washington Post reports that 147 different agents are working all sides of the probe, according to a lawmaker who spoke with FBI director James Comey about what is transpiring behind the scenes.
The FBI recently kicked its investigation into high gear, as agents and prosecutors are setting up interviews with Clinton’s top aides, presumably including Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.
The case hinges on whether Clinton violated a provision of the Espionage Act of 1913.
The law (18 U.S. Code & 793 subsection f) makes clear that anyone who has materials “relating to the national defense” cannot lose or give them away. The law is broken “through gross negligence permits [materials] to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed.”
The penalty? A fine, a prison term of up to ten years, or “both.”
Clinton used a non-secure BlackBerry to conduct classified State Department business, and there is evidence that her device was compromised on her first official trip to China as secretary of state.
On March 11, 2009, a State Department official, whose name is redacted, sent an email to another State Department official, whose name is redacted. That email, obtained in a lawsuit by Judicial Watch, might be the smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton email case.
The official stated that Hillary Clinton approached Ambassador Boswell and asked him about BlackBerry use. Specifically, Clinton asked about the fact that the Department had “intelligence concerning the vulnerability during her recent trip to Asia.”
The official wrote:

After this mornings “management meeting” with the A/Secys, Secretary Clinton approached Ambassador Boswell and mentioned that she had read the IM and that she “gets it.” Her attention was drawn to the sentence that indicates we (DS) have intelligence concerning this vulnerability during her recent trip to Asia.
Secretary Clinton has asked Ambassador Boswell for this information. Please prepare a short informal paper OR provide the A/Secy with a briefing on this matter. Your assistance is appreciated. The Secretary did not provide a “due date”…BUT the Ambassador would like to close this loop as soon as possible.
​

Clinton continued to use her BlackBerry as late as 2011, two years after this warning,according to former State Department official Wendy Sherman.
Since the FBI seized Clinton’s emails in August, the scandal has haunted her campaign.
Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett threw Clinton under the bus, saying that the White House provided guidance to the State Department, telling employees to use official government email accounts.
Breitbart News first reported, based on high-level government sources, that of seven emails originally being analyzed by investigators to determine their classification status, two were deemed “top secret,” and at least two were already classified when they were sent, meaning Clinton was sending and receiving classified information that she knew to be classified. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made the classifications.
Our exclusive report galvanized our readers and other media outlets, quickly picking up more than 12,000 social media shares and 5,000 comments. The Clinton campaign could not find a suitable talking point on the issue. The campaign tried to claim that Clinton did not send emails that were classified “when originated.”
But Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, now under attack by Team Clinton, confirmed, “IC classification officials reviewed two additional emails and judged that they contained classified State Department information when originated.”
The inspector general went on to make a comprehensive report, filed earlier this month. He found that “several dozen” emails had classified information in them. “These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined … to be at the confidential, secret and top secret/sap levels,” McCollough wrote in a letter to Congress. A “sap” level is an even higher classification status than “top secret.”
Clinton’s server was highly vulnerable to attack, like the kind that occurred to several of her email contractors and could have happened to her when she opened a virus-infected email from her friend.
Breitbart News reported that Clinton’s server was operating on the same email network, and was housed in the exact physical space, as the server for the Clinton Foundation, indicating that they were sharing a server. Additionally, that space was in New York City, not in the basement of Clinton’s Chappaqua, New York, home, as she claimed. Daughter Chelsea Clinton’s office was also using the email network.
Numerous Clinton Foundation employees used the clintonemail.com server for their own email addresses, which means that they were using email accounts that, if hacked, would have given any hacker complete access to Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails, as well.
Clinton’s server had an open webmail portal that gave potential hackers unrestricted access to Clinton’s personal information.
In fact, Clinton’s server went down at least three times during her tenure as secretary of state, including weeks after the Benghazi terrorist attack. Clinton never even told her own IT Help Desk at the State Department that she was using a private server, keeping them in the dark about her secret activities.
Furthermore, Clinton went so far as to hide the identity of the people running her private server, paying a company called Perfect Privacy, LLC. That company, based in Jacksonville, enters its own meaningless contact information into official Internet databases so that its clients’ identities will not be exposed.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]National Archives Blocks Release of Hillary Whitewater Indictment[/h]

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C-SPAN

by CHARLIE SPIERING28 Mar 2016659
[h=2]Should the American public be allowed to view the draft indictment of Hillary Clinton over the Whitewater case? Judicial Watch, the organization founded to promote transparency in government, has sued to make the allegations against her public.[/h]According to Judicial Watch:
The draft indictments relate to allegations that Clinton provided false information and withheld evidence from federal investigators to conceal her involvement with the defunct Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, the collapse of which lead to multiple criminal convictions. Clinton provided legal representation to Madison Guaranty as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. Clinton’s Rose Law Firm billing records, long sought by prosecutors, were found in the private quarters of the White House shortly after an important statute of limitations had expired.
But the National Archives argues that Clinton’s privacy must be protected in this instance.
“While there may be a scintilla of public interest in these documents since Mrs. Clinton is presently a Democratic presidential candidate, that fact alone is not a cognizable public interest under FOIA, as disclosure of the draft indictments would not shed light on what the government is up to,” a statement from the organization read.
The draft indictment would open up new questions about the Whitewater case, which dogged the Clintons in the 1990’s and again remind the public of Hillary’s scandalous efforts to cover up politically damaging stories. Judicial Watch has sued the National Archives for the documents, filing a brief in February. The organization has already forced the release 246 pages of previously undisclosed Office of Independent Counsel internal memos related to the case.
“It is absurd for the Obama administration to argue that Hillary Clinton’s privacy would keep a draft indictment from the American public,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “One can’t help but conclude that the Obama administration is doing a political favor for Hillary Clinton at the expense of the public’s right to know about whether prosecutors believed she may have committed federal crimes.”

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Stripping the wheat from the shaft. Everything you need to know about the Grannies email scandal.


What Are 147 FBI Agents Doing?
JONATHAN S. TOBIN / MAR. 29, 2016


Does it really take 147 FBI agents to find out whether Hillary Clinton and her aides broke the law? The scoop from the Los Angeles Times about the investigation into the former secretary of state’s use of a homebrew server on which she sent and received emails with classified information didn’t give us a timeline as to when this affair will be resolved. But the glacial pace of the probe is apparently picking up.


All those involved have now been told they will be formally interviewed by the FBI. Some experts quoted in the piece say this means the government’s examination of Clinton’s conduct is drawing to a close though given the time needed to conduct the interviews and the fact that supposedly none had yet been scheduled, probably means it won’t be concluded until the summer.


But, as the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza noted, the fact that 147 FBI agents have been rummaging around in the case undermines the Clinton campaign’s claim that the whole affair is something manufactured by the vast right-wing conspiracy that is out to get her. But what ought to be of genuine concern to both the Clinton camp and those who don’t want to see the Democratic frontrunner’s presidential hopes derailed by this case is the dual narrative that the latest stories are promoting.


On the one hand, we are being told that the government is deploying a great deal of resources to look for potential wrongdoing. We are also informed that the government has given immunity to the person that set up Clinton’s server. We’ve also been told that there’s no doubt that the insecure Clinton server was used to inappropriately send and receive classified information — some of which is so secret that it cannot be discussed publicly — and that this is a crime regardless of intent. Nor does such information need to be stamped with a label that says “top secret” like something in an old spy movie. Clinton and her staff would all have known if such information was classified and, therefore, had no business being transmitted on a private system rather than a secure government email and server. All of that would seem to point to serious legal difficulties for Clinton and her aides.


On the other hand, all of these stories keep telling us that it is unlikely that Clinton is in any legal jeopardy. How is that be possible given the draconian attitude toward infractions of security law demonstrated in the prosecution of General David Petraeus?


The answer is that we’re supposed to think that what Petraeus did was much worse because he gave information to his biographer and mistress, who did not have clearance to read the material. Yet we also know that what Clinton did exposed secret information on the Internet and to the possibility of being hacked by foreign governments and terrorists. You don’t have to be a Justice Department lawyer to know that sounds pretty bad, too.


What does this all mean?


Taken out of a political context, I don’t think there’s much doubt that anyone who did something as reckless and blatantly illegal as Clinton would not have been charged in the case. That’s especially true given the way the Obama administration has strictly enforced national security laws. Nor does it make sense that Clinton’s IT person would have been given immunity to testify if the government didn’t believe that laws were broken by somebody.


Yet every story about Clinton with anonymous government sources as well as a bevy of legal experts willing to supply quotes keeps telling us that she probably isn’t in trouble.

How can that be?


The answer is to be found in politics, not law. We can praise the professionalism of the FBI and the apolitical nature of its director James Comey. But there is no way that the Obama administration Department of Justice is going to indict the person who is still almost certain to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.


The dynamic in investigations where this much federal firepower has been used is that if 147 FBI agents are digging into someone’s life, they usually find something that can be construed as a violation of the law. In this case, the violation is obvious. While the laws involving security as applied to the age of the Internet is still evolving, the principles are the same. Despite the assurances that what Petraeus did was worse, handing over physical material to one person who was not authorized to see it but who was not a spy or security risk — as he did — cannot possibly be as dangerous as exposing a vast store of information reaching the secretary of state to hackers via the Internet on an insecure server.


Nevertheless, Federal prosecutors have wide discretion as to whether or not to indict someone for a crime. And if there is a way for the government to avoid taking out Clinton, you can bet that they will take it. Far from the information about the Clinton investigation indicating the seriousness of the government’s purpose, the opposite may be true. As much as the FBI agents working on the case may be doing their best, it won’t be up to them to bring a case that their political overlords want to bury. It’s likely that 147 FBI agents have dug up enough material for an indictment of somebody in the Clinton camp if not the former secretary of state. But the way this case has been slow-walked, it’s more likely that the leaks portend a government decision to buy the affair sometime this summer either just before or just after Clinton becomes the presidential nominee.

Any other result seems unthinkable from an administration that is determined to ensure a third consecutive term for the Democrats.

:headbeat: