Connecting the dots on Hillary Clinton

[russ1945]

[h=1]STATE DEPARTMENT DID NOT GIVE HILLARY CLINTON HER BLACKBERRY[/h]

Kevin Lamarque AP

by PATRICK HOWLEY19 Aug 2015742

[h=2]The State Department testified that it did NOT give Hillary Clinton the BlackBerry that she used while she was Secretary of State.[/h]State Department lawyers said Wednesday, as part of a civil case involving the nonprofit group Judicial Watch, that the agency never gave Clinton a secure BlackBerry, and it may also have destroyed the devices given to top Clinton advisers.
“[The State Department] does not believe that any personal computing device was issued by the Department to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and has not located any such device at the Department,” the Department said in a court filing.
“[The State Department] believes that Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin were each issued BlackBerry devices. [The State Department] has not located any such device at the Department … Because the devices issued to Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin would have been outdated models, in accordance with standard operating procedures those devices would have been destroyed or excessed.”
The revelation suggests that Clinton used her own, less secure BlackBerry, while at the State Department.
Clinton was reportedly not allowed to use her BlackBerry on the secure seventh floor of the State Department, where her office was located.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]JOHN PODESTA: HILLARY CLINTON REGRETS USING PRIVATE EMAIL SERVER[/h]

by PATRICK HOWLEY19 Aug 2015434

As Frank Sinatra would say, “Regrets. She’s had a few…”
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said Wednesday that Clinton regrets using a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
Facing an onslaught of critical questions, even from self-identified supporters, while addressing a senior center in Columbia, South Carolina, Podesta briefly answered a question about the email scandal.
“Wouldn’t you?” Podesta replied to someone asking if Clinton regretted using the server.
Podesta also promised to respond to the negative publicity surrounding the Clinton campaign by activating more of the Clinton camp’s surrogates.
“We’re going to get more voices out there,” Podesta said.
Clinton has turned over her private emails and email server to Department of Justice and FBI investigators. The State Department has already identified more than 300 emails that could have potentially contained classified information. It is unclear whether any foreign agents were able to steal the classified information on Clinton’s private server.
This is not the first time that Podesta has expressed concern about the Clinton campaign. He was recently caught talking on a cell phone in a liquor store, stating his fear that Jeb Bush was going to out-fundraise Clinton.

 

[russ1945]

HILLARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN GIVES ODDEST EXCUSE YET FOR EMAIL SCANDAL

ABC via YouTube/ Rising Response

by PATRICK HOWLEY19 Aug 2015421

The Hillary Clinton campaign has offered its weakest excuse yet for the fact that potentially hundreds of classified emails ended up on Clinton’s private email server.

Via Politico, the Clinton campaign argued Wednesday that the State Department has engaged in “overclassification.” The Clinton campaign cited a 1974 exchange between then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and then-CIA director William Colby regarding Turkey’s planned invasion of Cyprus. The exchange is currently redacted by the National Security Archive, but was published in unclassified form by the State Department a few years ago for some history book.
Well, that settles the whole thing, doesn’t it?
Nope. Though Kissinger annoyed Richard Nixon with his propensity to leak, it’s unlikely that foreign agents were able to steal Kissinger’s private strategy decades after he talked to Colby about it.
”The fact that someone in the intelligence community apparently sought to redact a 40-plus-year-old document, despite it being in the public sphere already in completely unredacted form, drives at exactly the point we are making about how entire agencies within the government can have competing views on what is sensitive and what is not,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon, who used to be the spokesman for the Department of Justice. “This is a window into the phenomenon of overclassification that is currently bottling up the review of former Secretary Clinton’s emails.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t explain Clinton’s swapping of classified emails on a private server. Even Clinton-friendly Politico had to admit that not all of Clinton’s emails were classified by the State Department in hindsight, as her campaign claimed. Politico reported that State classified them “in many cases retrospectively.” But not all cases.
As Breitbart News first reported, Clinton exchanged multiple emails on her private server that were “classified when originated.”

 

[russ1945]

^^^^^^The Clinton campaign comes up with the term "overclassification". How about the term "undercooperation".

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]Idiom: Connect the dots[/h]
[h=2]Idiom Definitions for 'Connect the dots'[/h]

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When you connect the dots, you understand the connections and relationships.

 

[Acebb]

This may very well be the worst presidential campaign in modern history


[h=1]Hillary Clinton Campaign Says Classified Emails Were on Server[/h]
An inspector general for the intelligence community said earlier this year he found four emails containing material that were classified at the time they were written.

 

[Acebb]

[h=2]Quinnipiac: Clinton Has Nearly 2-to-1 Dishonesty Ratings in Key Swing States[/h]
"Hillary Clinton's poll numbers are like a leaky faucet: drip...drip... drip. She is now getting less than half the vote in all three states' Democratic primaries," Brown added. "Perhaps most telling is how poorly she scores when all voters in these three key states are asked about her empathy, honesty and temperament. In Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania she averages a negative 37 - 55 percent favorability.

 

[CHOPTALK]

She is 100% done

 

[Acebb]

[h=3]Woman's request in obituary: Don't vote for Hillary Clinton[/h]
RUNNEMEDE, N.J. (AP) - A New Jersey woman has used her obituary to make a final request to friends and family: Please don't vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton for president.
Elaine Fydrych's husband said Wednesday she was a registered Democrat and not "a political person."
But he said she grew to strongly dislike Clinton after the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi and believed Clinton's handling of the matter as secretary of state was "terrible."

Thankyou)(&

 

[russ1945]

Classified Clintonemail.com messages included Benghazi, military intel

POSTED AT 8:41 AM ON AUGUST 20, 2015 BY ED MORRISSEY

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Late yesterday, Fox News identified two e-mails that began a cascade of revelations about Hillary Clinton’s secret e-mail server and the likely exposure of highly classified material. These two are not the communications later flagged by intelligence community Inspectors General as containing Top Secret/compartmented information on signals intelligence, but one used military intelligence to describe Libyan troop movements, risking the sourcing of the intel. The other dealt directly with the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi. Both went through two of Hillary’s top aides at the State Department, and who now work on her presidential campaign:

Fox News has identified two of the Benghazi-related emails on the server that were deemed to contain classified information at the time they were sent.
The first was forwarded by Clinton adviser Huma Abedin and contained classified material from military intelligence sources. The 2011 email forwards a warning about how then-Ambassador Chris Stevens was “considering departure from Benghazi” amid deteriorating conditions in a nearby city. The email was mistakenly released by the State Department in full, and is now considered declassified.
The second was sent by Clinton aide Jake Sullivan and contained classified information as well as sensitive law enforcement information on Benghazi. The partly redacted November 2012 email detailed how Libyan police had arrested “several people” with potential connections to the terror attack.
​

The Hill goes into greater detail on the first e-mail, which was written by State Department aide Timmy Davis to Huma Abedin, who then forwarded it to Hillary:

That document, which is completely unredacted, includes information on military movements.
“AFRICOM reported Qadhafi’s forces took the eastern and western gates of Ajdabiyah, with 5 vehicles at the eastern gate and 50 at the western gate. More Qadhafi forces are heading to Ajdabiyah from Brega,” the document reads.
Davis’s original email included an “SBU” designation, indicating it was sensitive but unclassified in his eyes. A government official told CBS News that since the email contained military intelligence it should have been marked “classified.”
​

This is why Jennifer Palmieri and Team Clinton tried to get ahead of this yesterday by claiming that Hillary was nothing more than a “passive recipient of information that subsequently became classified.” First, that’s not true; information from military intelligence about a hot war in real time will almost always be classified. This actually became subsequently unclassified, and only because State didn’t redact it when they published the e-mail this spring. Besides, it’s worth noting that federal law prohibits the transmission of sensitive information over unsecured channels as well. In 18 USC 793, the word “classified” is never mentioned; all that is necessary is that the “note” or “information” relates to national security, and that gross negligence or malign intent causes it to be exposed. Classification makes that easier to prove, but isn’t a required component.
Legally, all of these officials could be in trouble, and that’s not even counting the two TS/compartmented e-mails that prompted the referral to the Department of Justice. If Davis used classified military intelligence and routed it as SBU through an unsecured communications channel, those are two serious violations. But both Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton should have recognized this, too; their security briefings would have made it clear how to recognize classified material (especially intel) and how to deal with security violations. And we know that Hillary got trained on this topic, because State’s Diplomatic Security unit bragged about her training in 2009 (page 21 in the booklet):
So professions of ignorance, such as those from Jennifer Palmieri yesterday, don’t cut it — and should be viewed as an embarrassment anyway. Even if one wants to credit Hillary with only being a “passive recipient” of classified material sent through unsecured channels, one has to also include that the person who forced her aides to use that that unsecured channel was Hillary Clinton herself. Hillary set up the private e-mail server; she is the one who chose to use it exclusively rather than use a State Department e-mail that would have provided more security; and she did nothing about the numerous security violations and classified-material retention at her house during the four years she served as Secretary of State. There is nothing passive about Hillary’s role in this gaping hole in national security.
The other e-mail is very interesting for other reasons. Chris Stevens was recommending that the US shutter its consulate in Benghazi a year prior to the attack. Why didn’t we? And what did Hillary Clinton do to improve the security situation in Benghazi in response to Stevens’ concerns? I wonder what difference it might have made at that point if Hillary had listened to that advice.
Addendum: I also wonder whether Congress or the so-called Accountability Review Board ever saw that Stevens e-mail and its contemplation at the highest levels of State before the exposure of Hillary’s secret server. I’d bet the answer is no.

From the above: . And we know that Hillary got trained on this topic, because State’s Diplomatic Security unit bragged about her training in 2009 (page 21 in the booklet):

also "There is nothing passive about Hillary’s role in this gaping hole in national security."

 

[russ1945]

POLITICS[h=1]From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton Scandal Primer[/h]The former secretary of state turns over her private server to the Justice Department after investigators discover top-secret emails on it.

Esam Al-Fetori / Brian Snyder / Gary Cameron / Jim Young / Reuters / Brennan Linsley / Susan Walsh / AP / razihusin / Shutterstock / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

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• DAVID A. GRAHAM
• AUG 12, 2015

The investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails is heating up.
The saga began with Representative Trey Gowdy’s select committee on Benghazi. Those investigations led to the public revelation that the former secretary of state had maintained a private email server, and produced a court order to release the emails in 30-day tranches. Clinton says she neither sent nor received any classified information on the account, but that some material has since been classified.
On Tuesday, federal investigators told members of Congress in a letter that two highly classified emails had been found on Clinton’s personal email system. In response, Clinton’s attorney turned over the server to the FBI, along with thumb drives containing thousands of emails that had previously been turned over to the State Department, The Washington Post reports.
[h=4]RELATED STORY[/h]
Among the Hillary Haters
In addition to the possible legal ramifications, the investigation has turned up some interesting facts about how much effort Clinton put into the running and upkeep of the server. The server itself had been purchased for her unsuccessful 2008 run for president. Initially, it was run by a former Senate aide, who was then hired by the State Department. Later, amid concerns about reliability, she hired Platte River, the Denver company now subject to FBI questions.
The email controversy is quickly turning into a classic Clinton scandal. Her use of a private email account became known during the course of an investigation into the 2012 deaths of U.S. personnel in Benghazi, Libya. Thus far, the investigations have found no wrongdoing on her part with respect to Benghazi, but Clinton’s private-email use and now the referral concerning classified information have become stories unto themselves. This is something of a pattern with the Clinton family, which has been in the public spotlight since Bill Clinton’s first run for office, in 1974: Something that appears potentially scandalous on its face turns out to be innocuous, but an investigation into it reveals other questionable behavior. The classic case is Whitewater, a failed real-estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978. While no inquiry ever produced evidence of wrongdoing, investigations ultimately led to President Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

​

With Hillary Clinton leading the field for the Democratic nomination for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to Clinton’s State Department emails—will be under the microscope. (No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—has fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.) Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.

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Clinton’s State Department Emails

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton checks her phone on board a plane from Malta to Tripoli, Libya. (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)What? Setting aside the question of the Clintons’ private email server, what’s in the emails that Clinton did turn over to State? While some of the emails related toBenghazi have been released, there are plenty of others covered by public-records laws that haven’t.
When? 2009-2013
How serious is it? Moderately. The fact that Clinton sorted her own emails would seem to offer some inoculation. But a federal judge’s ruling that the State Department must release new batches of cleared emails every 30 days means there will be a monthly cycle of reporters digging into the cache—bad news for a candidate who’d rather put it behind her. Plus there have already been some strange revelations, like the fact former Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthalwas advising her on Libya and a wide range of matters, and may have been the source of initial, misleading ideas the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous mob violence.

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Benghazi

A man celebrates as the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi burns on September 11, 2012. (Esam Al-Fetori / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)What? On September 11, 2012, attackers overran a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Since then, Republicans have charged that Hillary Clinton failed to adequately protect U.S. installations or that she attempted to spin the attacks as spontaneous when she knew they were planned terrorist operations.

​

When? September 11, 2012-present
How serious is it? Benghazi has gradually turned into a classic “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” scenario. Only the fringes argue, at this point, that Clinton deliberately withheld aid. A House committee continues to investigate the killings and aftermath. But it was through the Benghazi investigations that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server became public—a controversy that remains potent.

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The Clintons’ Private Email Server

Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticWhat? During the course of the Benghazi investigation, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt learned Clinton had used a personal email account while secretary of state. It turned out she had also been using a private server, located at a house in New York. The result was that Clinton and her staff decided which emails to turn over to the State Department as public records and which to withhold; they say they then destroyed the ones they had designated as personal.
When? 2009-2013, during Clinton’s term as secretary.
Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; top aides including Huma Abedin
How serious is it? The rules governing use of personal emails are murky, and Clinton aides insist she followed all rules. There’s no evidence at this point that proves otherwise. The greater political problem for Clinton is it raises questions about how she selected the emails she turned over and what was in the ones she deleted. Are those emails truly deleted? Could the server have been hacked? Some of the emails she received on her personal account are marked sensitive. Plus there’s a entirely different set of questions about Clinton’s State Department emails. The FBI is investigating the security of the server as well as the safety of a thumb drive belonging to her lawyer that contains copies of her emails.

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Sidney Blumenthal

Blumenthal takes a lunch break while being deposed in private session of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)What? A former journalist, Blumenthal was a top aide in the second term of the Bill Clinton administration and helped on messaging during the bad old days. He served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and when she took over the State Department, she sought to hire Blumenthal. Obama aides, apparently still smarting over his role in attacks on candidate Obama, refused the request, so Clinton just sought out his counsel informally. At the same time, Blumenthal was drawing a check from the Clinton Foundation.

​

When? 2009-2013
How serious is it? Some of the damage is already done. Blumenthal was apparently the source of the idea that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous, a notion that proved incorrect and provided a political bludgeon against Clinton and Obama. He also advised the secretary on a wide range of other issues, from Northern Ireland to China. But emails released so far show even Clinton’s top foreign-policy guru, Jake Sullivan, rejecting Blumenthal’s analysis, raising questions about her judgment in trusting him.

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The Speeches

Keith Bedford / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticWhat? Since Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001, both Clintons have made millions of dollars for giving speeches.
When? 2001-present
Who? Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton; Chelsea Clinton
How serious is it? This might be the most potent of all the current Clinton scandals. For the couple, who left the White House up to their ears in legal debt, lucrative speeches—mostly by the former president—proved to be an effective way of rebuilding wealth. They have also been an effective magnet for prying questions. Where did Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton speak? How did they decide how much to charge? What did they say? How did they decide which speeches would be given on behalf of the Clinton Foundation, with fees going to the charity, and which would be treated as personal income? Are there cases of conflicts of interest or quid pro quos—for example, speaking gigs for Bill Clintonon behalf of clients who had business before the State Department?

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The Clinton Foundation

A brooch for sale at the Clinton Museum Store in Little Rock, Arkansas (Lucy Nicholson / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)What? Bill Clinton’s foundation was actually established in 1997, but after leaving the White House it became his primary vehicle for … well, everything. With projects ranging from public health to elephant-poaching protection and small-business assistance to child development, the foundation is a huge global player with several prominent offshoots. In 2013, following Hillary Clinton’s departure as secretary of State, it was renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

​

When? 1997-present
Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; Chelsea Clinton, etc.
How serious is it? If the Clinton Foundation’s strength is President Clinton’s endless intellectual omnivorousness, its weakness is the distractibility and lack of interest in detail that sometimes come with it. On a philanthropic level, the foundation gets decent ratings from outside review groups, though critics charge that it’s too diffuse to do much good, that the money has not always achieved what it was intended to, and that in some cases the money doesn’t seem to have achieved its intended purpose. The foundation made errors in its tax returns it has to correct. Overall, however, the essential questions about the Clinton Foundation come down to two, related issues. The first is the seemingly unavoidable conflicts of interest: How did the Clintons’ charitable work intersect with their for-profit speeches? How did their speeches intersect with Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department? Were there quid-pro-quos involving U.S. policy? The second, connected question is about disclosure. When Clinton became secretary, she agreed that the foundation would make certain disclosures, which it’s now clear it didn’t always do. And the looming questions about Clinton’s State Department emails make it harder to answer those questions.

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The Bad Old Days

Supporter Dick Furinash holds up cardboard cut-outs of Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Jim Young / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic)What is it? Since the Clintons have a long history of controversies, there are any number of past scandals that continue to float around, especially in conservative media: Whitewater. Troopergate. Paula Jones. Monica Lewinsky. Vince Foster.
When? 1975-2001
Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; a brigade of supporting characters
How serious is it? Not terribly. Some are wholly spurious (Foster). Others (Lewinsky, Whitewater) have been so exhaustively investigated it’s hard to imagine them doing much further damage to Hillary Clinton’s standing. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal famously boosted her public approval ratings. But that doesn’t mean you won’t hear plenty about them.

 

[Dave007inVegas]

Serious question for anyone to answer.

Can a person run for POTUS if they are under indictment?

 

[SheriffJoe]

Serious question for anyone to answer.

Can a person run for POTUS if they are under indictment?

I'm thinking if a Kenyan can run and win without any scrutiny or resistance, being under indictment shouldn't be a problem.

Of course you have to belong to the right party.

 

[russ1945]

I'm thinking if a Kenyan can run and win without any scrutiny or resistance, being under indictment shouldn't be a problem.

Of course you have to belong to the right party.

That's right party not right wing lol

 

[russ1945]

Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from start...

State Dept did nothing to protect after hack...

TOP AIDE: Hillary invaded Libya 'without any idea of what might come next'...

Clinton reneges on promise to do 'more press'...

Fresh worries among congressional Dems...

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Clinton’s Email Server Firm Scrubs ‘Data-Disposal’ References from Website[/h]Former secretary of state under fire for hosting potentially classified emails on personal server
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BY: Alana Goodman
August 21, 2015 5:00 am

The firm Hillary Clinton hired to manage her private email server quietly removed information from its website in recent days, including references to its partnership with a Colorado data-scrubbing company.
Platte River Networks, the Denver-based company that hosted Clinton’s email server, deleted several pages from its website, including a section about how it outsources its data-disposal work to a local firm called Techno Rescue. That page appears to have been removed earlier this month, but can still be viewed in a cached version on major search engines.
On the now-removed page, Platte River Networks said it provided its customers with “complimentary e-waste technology recycling” through its partnership with Techno Rescue, including the “disposal of data still residing on old technology.”
“In order to ensure our customers recycle responsibly, we provide them complimentary e-waste technology recycling,” said Platte River Networks. “We partner with Techno Rescue—a fully certified Colorado Electronics Recycling and Data Destruction E-waste company. It is illegal and socially irresponsible to throw your electronics in the trash. Responsible electronics recycling also includes the safe and proper disposal of data still residing on old technology.”
On the Techno Rescue website, Platte River Networks’ director of business development David DeCamillis said his company “use Techno Rescue for all our customers technology recycling needs.”
An attorney for Platte River Networks told reporters earlier this month that Clinton’s private server was made “blank” as of June 2013 but did not clarify how this process took place.
An attorney for Clinton said this week that her email server was wiped clean of data before Platte River Networks turned it over to the FBI. Federal authorities are currently trying to recover the deleted information, according to reports.
In a recent press conference, Clinton said she did not know whether her server had been erased.
A public relations firm hired by Platte River Networks did not respond to request for comment on whether Techno Rescue had any involvement in disposing of the data from Clinton’s email server. Techno Rescue’s president, Nidal Allis, did not return calls from the Washington Free Beacon.
If a third-party company such as Techno Rescue disposed of the server data, it could add to the list of individuals who had access to Clinton’s email information—and potentially raise new security concerns.
Techno Rescue says it uses a Department of Defense standardized method for data removal that guarantees “100 percent data destruction.”
“Even if you run forensic data recovery, the disk will be clean,” Allis told the Highlands Ranch Heraldin 2009.
But the company has also come under fire for its business practices. A 2010 Colorado I-News Network investigation found that Techno Rescue was “recycling” electronics by shipping them to Hong Kong, a practice that is frowned upon for environmental and security reasons.
Techno Rescue is registered to comply with international environmental standards, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s facilities registration database.
Techno Rescue’s Iyad Allis is listed as the company’s regulatory contact in the EPA database. He wascharged with selling illegal firearms and bank fraud in a 2008 FBI sting, according to court records. He ultimately pleaded guilty in 2009 to four counts of bank fraud.
A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign on Thursday afternoon did not comment on who was directly responsible for wiping the server or whether an outside company was used.
Alex McGeorge, a tech security expert at Immunity, said there are plenty of firms that will scrub servers for a price, but it is also a relatively simple process that can be done at home.
“In 10 steps that I could explain to my grandma, I could tell you how to do it,” said McGeorge.
McGeorge said there are many ways to delete data, and it can often be recovered depending on the removal technique. But he said if the information is “overwritten” with other code it could be impossible to retrieve.
In addition to deleting information about Techno Rescue from its website, Platte River Networks also removed a page that listed its top executives, a “Techno Rescue” logo from its “Partners” page, and references throughout its site to a construction firm that is one of its clients.
The small company has come under international public scrutiny in recent weeks, with the Daily Mailreporting that it was previously run out of a residential loft and housed its servers in the bathroom.

 

[russ1945]

[h=2]Union Official Charged With Illegal Clinton Donations Indicted for Mail Fraud[/h]Former Broward Teachers Union president allegedly steered illegal contributions to Clinton’s 2008 campaign
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AP​

BY: Lachlan Markay
August 20, 2015 11:30 am

Federal authorities indicted the former president of a Florida teachers’ union on fraud charges on Thursday, even as he faces additional charges in his home state over allegedly illegal campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton.
The Justice Department charged former Broward Teachers Union (BTU) president Patrick Santeramo with two counts of mail fraud for his alleged role in embezzling more than $35,000 in payments from a local school district.
“It is alleged that after the BTU received the $80,000 payment from the School Board of Broward County, Santeramo authorized payments from the [union’s] Accountability Program account for himself and at least one other employee of the BTU to which they were not entitled,” DOJ said in apress release announcing the indictment.
Those funds were supposed to go toward training programs and leave time for teachers working on “accountability projects,” DOJ said. Instead, Santeramo pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in payments from Broward schools.
As he faces those charges, Santeramo is also awaiting trial in Broward County on 20 criminal counts, including racketeering, grand theft, fraud, money laundering, and charges involving illegal campaign contributions.
The latter involves alleged schemes to illegally direct tens of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, among other political efforts.
According to Florida authorities, Santeramo approached BTU colleagues beginning in 2007 asking them and their family members to contribute to Clinton’s campaign and that of then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink.
“Fraudulent reimbursements were used to conceal and launder these contributions by disguising them in the BTU books and records using false account classification designations such as: ‘miscellaneous expense, building expense, organizing, staff training, new education program, office supplies, lobbying, communications, negotiation and bargaining, other committees, steward training and special events,’” according to the criminal complaint against Santeramo.
Authorities charge that 26 individuals were involved in the scheme, which also involved contributions to the 2010 campaign of Broward County School Board member Nora Rupert.
Santeramo also allegedly used BTU’s operating account to reimburse members for contributions to the union’s political action committee, effectively concealing political donations as business expenses. “The total amounts of these political contributions were sent” to the national American Federation of Teachers union, according to the indictment.
Santeramo’s trial on those and other Florida charges is scheduled to begin in October.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]HILLARY CLINTON’S AIDES COULD FACE PROSECUTION FOR MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED MATERIAL[/h]

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

by JOHN SEXTON20 Aug 20152,043

[h=2]Aides to Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State could face prosecution for mishandling classified material. The FBI is now investigating how such material wound up in Hillary’s inbox.[/h]A new report at Bloomberg cites an unnamed official with knowledge of the FBI’s ongoing investigation who says there is already some indication that Clinton’s aides at State summarized classified sources in emails sent to her.
“There’s a responsibility to safeguard classified information,” Michael Hayden tellsBloomberg. Hayden is a former NSA and CIA director who is now an adviser for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign.
Clinton’s story regarding classified information in her email has shifted gradually since March. At first she offered a flat denial that she either sent or received any classified information. Later she shifted to saying any such information wasn’t classified “at the time.” More recently, Clinton has emphasized that nothing she received was “marked” classified.
So far, there is no evidence of classified material being sent to Clinton with security markings removed, which would be a crime. But the inspectors general for State and the Intelligence Community believe information gleaned from classified sources did appear in Hillary’s inbox. Representatives of the intelligence community have sided with the IGs, judging that two emails contained Top Secret information from satellites or wire intercepts.
The State Department, in the form of Undersecretary Pat Kennedy, continues to deny this and has appealed to the Director of National Intelligence to overturn the decision. Meanwhile, a review of about 20% of the emails Hillary turned over to State has identified 305 emails which were recommended for classification. Most of these would be classified below Secret. It’s not clear how many would have been classified at the time they were sent/received and how many were classified retroactively.
As for Hillary herself, she is not out of the woods even if she was not the source of any of the classified material. Admiral Pickering tells Politico, “She might have had some responsibility to blow the whistle.” Pickering says a conclusion can’t be reached until the details of the emails are investigated; however, there are circumstances in which Hillary, as Secretary, would be expected to know material was classified and did not belong on her private server.
Political scientist Ian Bremmer tweeted the following statement from an unnamed Senior Obama administration source earlier today:

Senior Obama Admin official (to me): “If I did what (Hillary) Clinton did, I think I’d be in jail.”
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 20, 2015
​

Bremmer’s anonymous quote jibes with what Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department employee, told me earlier this month, “It’s clear she has done stuff that is way out of the bounds of what any other employee in the State Department would be allowed to do without an investigation.” However, Van Buren was skeptical that Hillary would be held accountable, pointing out that many people at State and the White House had known about her private account for years and apparently done nothing.

 

[russ1945]

[h=1]JUDGE ORDERS STATE DEPARTMENT TO COOPERATE WITH HILLARY INVESTIGATORS[/h]

Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images/AFP

by PATRICK HOWLEY20 Aug 2015318

A federal judge has ordered the State Department to cooperate with the investigation into the Hillary Clinton private email scandal, Breitbart News has learned.
Judge Emmett Sullivan, who presides over the nonprofit group Judicial Watch’s lawsuit against the State Department for Clinton’s emails, ordered the State Department Thursday to “begin a dialogue” with Department of Justice and FBI investigators.
“This is one government,” Sullivan said, apparently miffed at the State Department’s unwillingness to help investigators.
Sullivan ordered State Department lawyers to come back to him with a full written report by September 20 detailing the ways in which it has engaged with DOJ and FBI, and he set a new hearing for October 1, shortly before Clinton will be forced to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The State Department recently said that it is not going to search Clinton’s email server. An internal agency investigation of Clinton’s emails has already turned up more than 300 emails that could have potentially contained classified information.
The State Department also admitted that it might have destroyed the Blackberries of top Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

 

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REPORT: HILLARY CLINTON, HUMA ABEDIN ABUSE SECRET SERVICE AGENTS

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

by WILLIAM BIGELOW20 Aug 201588

Ronald Kessler, writing for The Daily Mail, testifies that Hillary Clinton and her long-time aide Huma Abedin were detested by members of the Secret Service because the two women arrogantly treated the Secret Service agents like dirt.

Kessler, the author of The Secrets of the FBI and The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents, dismisses claims by members of the media that the current FBI investigation of Clinton is restricted to a “security investigation.” He attests that the investigation of Clinton means that she violated criminal laws, as the FBI will not launch an investigation unless laws have been violated. Kessler points out that Clinton’s protestations that the material under investigation was not marked classified is immaterial, writing, “The pertinent laws make no distinction between classified material that is marked as such or not. If material is classified and is handled improperly, that is a violation of criminal laws.”
The FBI investigation has been galvanized further by recent revelations involving emails sent by Abedin and Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, as well as the fact that State Department BlackBerry devices belonging to Abedin and Mills have likely been liquidated or sold.
Some of the anecdotes involving the imperiousness and haughtiness of Clinton and Abedin include:
In 2008, Abedin lost her way driving Chelsea Clinton to the February 2008 Democrat presidential debate in Los Angeles. One agent who tried to help Abedin recalled, “She was belligerent and angry about being late for the event, no appreciation for any of it, not a thank-you or anything. That was common for her people to be rude.”
Another Los Angeles imbroglio occurred when Abedin, who was not wearing a pin certifying her identity, tried to bluster past a female Secret Service agent. The agent, unaware of Abedin’s identity, said, “You don’t have the proper identification to go beyond this point.” Another agent told Kessler, “Huma basically tried to throw her weight around. She tried to just force her way through and said belligerently, ‘Do you know who I am?’’”
Kessler noted that Secret Service Agents are not required to carry luggage for their protectees, but they will if they like them. One agent recollected that, in Abedin’s case, “The agents were just like, ‘Hey, you’re going to be like that? Well, you get your own luggage to the car. Oh, and by the way, you can carry the first lady’s luggage to the car, too. She’d have four bags, and we’d stand there and watch her and say, ‘Oh, can we hold the door open for you?’” The agent added, “When it’s convenient for them, they’ll utilize the service for whatever favor they need, but otherwise, they look down upon the agents, kind of like servants.”
An agent who still works for the Secret Service asserted:

There’s not an agent in the service who wants to be in Hillary’s detail. If agents get the nod to go to her detail, that’s considered a form of punishment among the agents. She’s hard to work around, she’s known to snap at agents and yell at agents and dress them down to their faces, and they just have to be humble and say, “Yes ma’am,” and walk away. Agents don’t deserve that. They’re there to do a job, they’re there to protect her, they’ll lay their life down for hers, and there’s absolutely no respect for that. And that’s why agents do not want to go to her detail.
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The most egregious example of Clinton’s arrogance was evidenced in one particularly nasty incident when she was First Lady. One former agent related, “The first lady steps out of the limo, and another uniformed officer says to her, ‘Good morning, ma’am.’ Her response to him was ‘F—- off.’ I couldn’t believe I heard it.”
Hillary was famous for wanting the Secret Service to be invisible; one former agent said, “We were basically told, the Clintons don’t want to see you, they don’t want to hear you, get out of the way. Hillary was walking down a hall, you were supposed to hide behind drapes used as partitions. Supervisors would tell us, ‘Listen, stand behind this curtain. They’re coming,’ or ‘Just stand out of the way, don’t be seen.’”
Hillary berated a White House electrician changing a light bulb, screaming that he should have waited until the First Family was gone. Franette McCulloch, the assistant White House pastry chief at the time, remembered, “He was a basket case.”
FBI agent Coy Copeland told Kessler that Hillary had a “standing rule that no one spoke to her when she was going from one location to another.”
One agent was abused by Hillary during the Kenneth Starr investigation of the Whitewater scandal; he said, ”Good morning, Mrs. Clinton,” and she ranted, “How dare you? You people are just destroying my husband… And where do you buy your suits? Penney’s?”
Weeks later, the agent confessed to Copeland, “I was wearing the best suit I owned.”