Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hillary Clinton. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2015
[VIDEO] Hillary Campaign Defends Against Emails: It’s Fine, Trust Us
Hillary Clinton’s press secretary Brian Fallon released a video Friday responding to Tweets regarding Hillary’s private email server, saying John Boehner is “dead wrong” in asserting that Clinton is under criminal investigation.
Thursday, U.S. District Court judge Emmet Sullivan stated in regards to Hillary Clinton, “We wouldn’t be here today if this employee had followed government policy.”
Brian Fallon: When John Boehner tells you that Hillary Clinton is under criminal investigation for mishandling of classified emails, he is dead wrong. Number one, the Justice Department, itself has said that this is a noncriminal inquiry. Number two, Hillary Clinton herself is not the target. Number three, in every case that has surfaced to date, the State Department has said that none of the information was classified at the time it was sent.
State Dept.: Hey, we never issued a computer to Hillary
I guess this shouldn’t be surprising when you think about it. If Hillary was using a homebrew server for all her e-mails, she’d have to get State Department IT help to set up the account on a government-issued computer, right? We already know Hillary wasn’t too interested in getting government IT staff mixed up in her personal any type of her business. So why even bother to issue Hillary a computer when she wasn’t going to use it anyway? You think she was going to sit there and do work on it?
No way. Hillary was going to use her own device connected to her own server. You try to get away with that at your job and tell me how it goes, but we all know the rules don’t apply to America’s self-styled royalty:
As the guy from CNET explains, (video below) this only further exacerbates the security problems inherent in Hillary’s makeshift IT scheme. Anyone who’s ever used a work-issued computer understands this. Your employer orders the computer and has it prepared in certain ways to be compatible with what’s expected of you in your job. That will include the pre-loading of certain security software and possible blocking software. And in the case of the government, it apparently also includes a rather sophisticated process for marking classified material. In response to a recent column, reader UCrawford, who appears to have some knowledge about this, explained:
Classified and unclassified information are on separate servers entirely. Information classified as SECRET, for example, would never be processed on an unclassified system not rated to handle classification. You can move unclassified data up to a classified system through transferable media fairly easily (the media would have to be approved and scanned for viruses, malware, etc). But for classified data to move down to an unclassified system, it’s not just about removing markings and doing a virus scan on the thumbdrive…the data itself would have to be scrubbed of all classified references/sources/information, approved through a declassification authority, and transferred to an entirely different portable media (any unclassified thumb drive plugged into a TOP SECRET system, for example, would automatically be classified TOP SECRET and could never be plugged into an unclassified system again). It’s a cumbersome process and most requests to declassify current TS data (which she’s accused of having on her system) are automatically rejected because the chance of spillage is so great. And nobody would authorize TS data that hadn’t been scrubbed to go to a unclassified government system…and especially not a personal system. Would never happen.
If Clinton had multiple instances of TS data on her unencrypted personal server, there’s simply no way it was ever approved for transfer. Zero chance of that being a simple mistake or someone just deleting classification markings. They would have a) had to have been given access to a classified network (meaning they were briefed on proper procedure, thoroughly and repeatedly), b) put some kind of portable media into the network (illegal unless approved by the security officer…which is very unlikely), and c) downloaded classified data to it, removing the portion markings (highly illegal…and clearly explained as such to anyone with a clearance). Most people would be arrested and charged immediately for doing that if caught. In most cases, the server would be immediately seized as soon as it was recognized that classified data had been placed on it. And Clinton would have been briefed on proper procedure about classified as well, and is responsible for the behavior of all people operating under her instructions. There is zero chance she did not know that transferring data to her home server was illegal…procedure is spelled out in every single document she signed for her clearance and access.
Making College More Affordable (and Less PC)
Outside of the 50 or so top schools, American higher education is troubled. This is especially true as tuition soars and students receive diplomas of questionable value. In 2014, for example, the average bill at a private college for tuition plus room and board was $42,419; at a public school the tab was $18,943. And the long-term trend is for even larger increases. Meanwhile, in 2013 students typically graduated with $28,400 in debt they can scarcely pay back while many have difficulty finding decent jobs thanks to “expertise” in gender studies and similar empty calorie majors.
Fear not, however, Hillary Clinton has a rescue plan. The gist of her solution is a $350 billion ten year infusion of federal funds for both public universities and students struggling to pay off loans (they could only re-finance the loans). About $175 billion would go to states to free students from having to borrow to finance their education. In exchange for the infusion, recipient states would be obligated to boost their higher ed spending and (somehow) slow the rate of tuition increases. Funding would come from capping the value of itemized tax deductions of the wealthy. Tougher rules would be imposed on for-profit institutions while schools that serve low-income and minority students would receive financial assistance. Lastly, there would be greater transparency regarding graduation rates. All and all, open the flood gates for ever more college education, though the value of the degree is increasingly being questioned.
This plan is doomed even if Hillary is elected. It fails to address the meager employment prospects of many of today’s graduates and it is hard to imagine Republicans in Congress voting for a tax-the-rich scheme that so obviously rewards a major Democratic constituency. Hillary is just pandering and ineptly so.
But the good news is that many of the cost problems bedeviling our colleges are reversible if there is sufficient political will.
Let’s start with soaring tuition. This cannot be fixed by handing out yet more Washington subsidies. After all, tuition has climbed as federal funds to college students similarly climbed. A far better solution is to cut tuition cost and this is hardly rocket science; hundreds of profitable corporations regularly slash costs and these lessons can be applied to universities.
Think of students as consumers over-charged for a shoddy degree. Fortunately, such excesses have long been covered by consumer protection laws. Just as the government now regulates telecommunication fees, it should enact legislation requiring schools to disaggregate their services so financially hard-pressed students, like Verizon customers, can buy a barebones “education only” plans. Outside cost accountants can determine the price of this “academic only” option and thus free students from forcibly subsidizing dormitory housing, meal plans, recreational facilities, activity fees (including expensive speaker fees), healthcare, and all of today’s university mandated social engineering (e.g., mandated workshops on the joys of diversity). My guess is that few students want these imposed frills and left to their own, would save thousands per year while the PC infrastructure would go into the dustbin of history.
Then schools should be required to hire an experienced corporate cost cutter (see here) and perhaps pay them a commission for eliminating waste. For example, many schools supply expensive remedial education to their troubled admittees. What about requiring youngsters pay for their previous sloth but now permit outside firms to bid on these services? So, rather than State U tutoring semi-literate John, he will buy his literacy lessons via the Internet from a low-cost private provider (and out-of-pocket payments might even motivate him to learn). Meanwhile, students would no longer be required to buy expensive dead tree textbooks thanks to having all books available as e-books (schools might have to subsidize publisher royalties but think of the money saved by scaling back college bookstores). A once $75 chemistry book could now go for $5. Actually, this is already happening and many books are free. Similarly, the school’s library can be drastically slimmed down by developing networks for costly reference books, specialized research librarians and Google Books.
What about giving students first crack at campus jobs? Surely they can mow lawns or flip burgers. Berea College has long used this no-brainer policy and students pay zero tuition.
War with Iran is the only alternative to a deal: Anne Marie Slaughter
The opponents of the Iran deal are absolutely right about the existence of an alternative. We could bomb Iran. A sustained attack could destroy its nuclear facilities and presumably a large part of its stockpiled plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The Pentagon estimates that destruction of Iran’s current nuclear facilities would set back Iran’s weapons program by roughly two years, which is 18 months to 21 months longer than the current estimated break-out time of three months to six months with no deal.
Here is what else the military option would get us. It would be a great gift to the terrorist group Islamic State, as we would be attacking its archenemy in the ongoing Sunni-Shiite struggles.
It would strengthen the hard-liners in Iran for the next generation, confirming what they have been saying for decades about the Great Satan and cutting the ground out from under younger and moderate voices who have been arguing for trading Iran’s illegal nuclear program for ending the sanctions and opening Iran up to the world again.
It would effectively declare war on Iran as an unprovoked military strike, which would then lead to Iranian retaliation through cyber and terrorist strikes on Americans and American territory. U.S. responses to those strikes could well drag us back into open war in the Middle East.
It would provide yet another recruiting video for terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and beyond, with pictures of U.S. jets bombing a Muslim nation to stop a program that nation’s government had just agreed to stop peacefully through diplomacy. The image of Cowboy America, guns blazing, would once again become an image of Outlaw America, walking away from a deal that we negotiated at the head of international coalition of nations because we preferred to shoot it out instead.
It would end any possibility of ever again assembling a global coalition of countries against Iran, as even many of our allies and other countries opposed to Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon would nevertheless oppose our use of force without international authorization.
The hardest pill to swallow is the release of tens of billions of dollars to Iran as soon as it complies with the terms of the nuclear deal, as determined by the U.S. and its negotiating partners — the European Union , Germany, France, Great Britain , China and Russia. That means tens of billions of dollars that could flow to the terrorist groups Iran supports, such as Hezbollah , although remember that Iran is fighting against ISIL.
But here’s the dirty little secret. That money is Iran’s money. The world has frozen it because of Iran’s illegal pursuit of a nuclear weapon. If, in fact, Iran complies with the terms of this deal, stops pursuing a weapon and completely dismantles its nuclear supply chain, then it is entitled to recover the funds. As much as we might hate the idea of a richer Iran supporting terrorism, both American political parties and the world at large decided long ago that a nuclear Iran supporting terrorism would be worse.
Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities is the only alternative to the deal that is on the table if we want to stop the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard from producing nuclear weapons, as North Korea has done over the past decade. The op-ed pages and congressional hearing rooms are filled with proposals for a better deal: one that stops the Iranians from ever enriching uranium again, even for peaceful purposes; one that would deny them conventional arms for decades; one that would completely destroy their nuclear infrastructure and allow nuclear inspectors to roam the country at will.
Lots of better deals can be imagined. But none can be struck. All the fulminating about how we should have done better is just that: woulda, coulda, shoulda. George W. Bush ’s administration spent eight years just trying to get Iran to come to the table to negotiate, without success. In 2010, during my first year working as director of Policy Planning under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , we thought we had a deal with the Iranians to ship most of their highly enriched uranium to Russia, but it promptly collapsed when the Iranian negotiators took it back to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei . And all the while, the Iranians moved from hundreds of centrifuges to about 20,000, of ever more sophisticated design. Their supply of highly enriched uranium, just one step away from the fuel needed for a bomb, went up and up.
Watchdog: Two National Security Laws Appear Broken in Clinton Email Scandal
Hillary aides refused judge’s order on returning documents
Hillary Clinton and two aides appear to have violated two national security laws by sending classified information on a private email server, according to a former Army counterintelligence agent and investigator for a public interest law group.
Additionally, the two Clinton aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, disregarded a federal judge’s order this month requiring both to make sworn statements to the court that all government documents in their possession will be returned to federal officials, said Chris Farrell, director of investigations for Judicial Watch, the law group.
“What we have is a secretary of state, the only cabinet official in our history, who established her own private email server … in an effort to avoid the normal protocols for unclassified and classified communications. It’s an end run,” he said.
Farrell, in a briefing on the Clinton email affair at the Judicial Watch offices, said supporters of Clinton have sought to portray the use of the private email system to send classified information as a minor administrative matter.
“It is not,” he said. “It is a national security crime, and should be a national security crime investigation,” he said, noting that Clinton created the private email server a week before she took up her duties at Foggy Bottom, indicating that she planned to avoid using official email that must be stored under federal rules.
Two laws apply to the mishandling of classified data on unsecure networks, Farrell said.
The first is 18 USC Sec. 1924, which outlaws the unauthorized removal and storage of classified information. Penalties can include fines and imprisonment for up to one year.
That statute was used to prosecute retired Army General David Petraeus, a former CIA director who provided classified documents to his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell. Petraeus was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $40,000 fine as part of a plea deal in March.
A second federal statute that prosecutors could use to charge Clinton and her aides is 18 USC Sec. 793, a more serious felony statute Farrell described as a “hammer.”
That law covers national defense information and people who misuse it to injure the United States or benefit a foreign power.
Those convicted of violating that law face fines and up to 10 years in prison.
Farrell said he that as an Army counterintelligence officer, he has conducted investigations in the past that are similar to the Clinton email probe. He also worked at a special security officer who was in charge of SCIFs—special facilities used for handling sensitive intelligence.
“When it comes the law on these, intent doesn’t matter,” Farrell said. Mishandling top-secret information should bring down the full weight of the law on violators, he said.
The Clinton email matter is a “serious national security crime issue,” Farrell said. “It’s not two agencies fighting over classification after the fact.”
Judicial Watch currently has 18 lawsuits pending against the State Department seeking access to records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Union Official Charged With Illegal Clinton Donations Indicted for Mail Fraud
Former Broward Teachers Union president allegedly steered illegal contributions to Clinton’s 2008 campaign
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.
Hillary Clinton: prison cell, not Oval Office
As orange is the new black, Mrs. Clinton belongs in the big house not the White House in 2016
Delusional, morally bankrupt, self-obsessed Hillary Clinton—a metaphorical modern day power-obsessed Lady Macbeth (with the same self-destructive [political] behavior) is the poster child of the dictionary definition of treason: a violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state and the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery. (Indeed, staffers should have known something was amiss when the Clinton’s movers snatched everything not nailed down when the Clintons left the White House—the people’s house—the first time.) Yes, people of Hillary’s ilk live by a single axiom: numero uno first, last, and always.
Clearly, Mrs. Clinton exists in the rarefied air of ruling class elitists: millionaires and billionaires, and former and future U.S. Presidents. Therefore, the rule of law (and not the fickle dictates of distant kings and emperors for which the American Revolution was fought) is not for her. It is something only to penalize the rest of us—the “little people” laboring in the hamster wheels of part-time jobs (sans health insurance due to Obamacare regulations)—to pay the 18 trillion dollar tab (and counting) of their largesse. We should be grateful for she who would stoop to rule us.
Under Congressional questioning, recall her petulant knee-jerk response to four murdered Americans (including one U.S. Ambassador) in Benghazi when she raged “what difference, at this point, does it make?” Therefore, her callous, blasé attitude (and her recent smarmy joke about using the Snapchat app and automatically deleting emails) is just par for the course. Mrs. Clinton sent and received top secret material (of the 20% currently sampled, 305 are classified) across a non-governmental, unsecured, private server (in clear violation of law) that has likely exposed the nation’s vulnerabilities to our enemies. That obliviousness—and the intentional lies of cover-up—are treasonous.
Of this, Watergate reporter Bob Woodward said: “Follow the trail here. There are all these emails. Well, they were sent to someone or someone sent them to her. So, if things have been erased here, there’s a way to go back to these emails or who received them from Hillary Clinton. So, you’ve got a massive amount of data in a way, reminds me of the Nixon tapes: Thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations that Nixon thought were exclusively his.” Lesser politicians not abetted by a minimizing hard-left MSM would be doomed.
In any case, ignorance of the law is no defense. A far less dire example; former CIA director and retired general David H. Petraeus who shared classified material with his biographer mistress (who incidentally had a security clearance) got prosecuted for his lack of good judgment. As orange is the new black, Mrs. Clinton belongs in the big house not the White House in 2016.
[VIDEO] Yarmuth: E-mail issue could 'upend' Hillary Clinton campaign
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS 11) -- Kentucky's only Democratic representative in Congress is expressing concern about Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's e-mail controversy, calling it "very confusing," and potentially a disqualifying scandal for her candidacy.
"I just never feel I have a grasp of what the facts are," US Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky. Third District) told WHAS11 on Wednesday. "Clearly, she has handled it poorly from the first day. And, there's the appearance of dishonesty, if it's not dishonest."
Clinton has been dogged by questions about her use of a private e-mail server while she served as U.S. Secretary of State, denying that the unsecure server was ever used to send or receive classified information.
"We have turned over the server," Clinton said to reporters on Tuesday. "They can do whatever they want to, with the server to figure out what's there or what's not there."
"But we turned over everything that was work-related. Every single thing," Clinton said.
Yarmuth said the controversy is happening early enough in the campaign, that as long as Clinton is being truthful and did not use her personal e-mail server for classified materials, the issue can "boil over."
"But, I still think there is a chance this could upend her campaign," Yarmuth cautioned.
In her Tuesday news conference, Clinton said the only people talking about the e-mail controversy are the media -- which is not letting up.
"I think if she intentionally misled or lied to the American people and did something that was clearly against rules, and knowingly did it against rules, if that is the ultimate conclusion, then I think she has disqualified herself," Yarmuth said.
The five-term Democratic congressman from Louisville said he expects Clinton to be the Democratic nominee, but has not yet endorsed her.
Email Scandal Deepens: Surprise: State Department Can't Find BlackBerrys of Clinton's Closest Aides, Say They Were Probably Destroyed
Do old phone models get turned in, replaced and ultimately destroyed? Yes. Does it make a bad situation surrounding Hillary Clinton's wiped out personal email server look worse? Absolutely.
According to a report published in The Hill late yesterday, BlackBerry devices belonging to Clinton's closest aides were likely destroyed.
And here's this little nugget:
You know what that means? That Clinton was using an unsecure device, which contained top secret classified information, with an unsecure personal email system and server.
Last week we learned the personal server Hillary Clinton was forced to turn over the the FBI was wiped clean of data beforehand. The good news is, the FBI can recover at least some of what was erased.
Meanwhile, Clinton Press Secretary Brian Fallon is trying to argue that any classified information the former Secretary of State was in possession of was given to her as a "passive recipient of unwitting information."
Hillary Clinton: The long goodbye
The Clintons survived the scandals and wars of the ‘90s because in the '90s there was a lot less cable TV and Internet and no Twitter or social media. (AP Photo)
Which Democrat will be the one to play Barry Goldwater to the Richard M. Nixon of Hillary Clinton? Who will step up to tell the self-wounded one-time colossus that the time has arrived to go home?
On August 7, 1974, Goldwater and the Republican leaders of the House and the Senate called on the president and told him he had lost the support of his party in Congress. The next day, Nixon told the country that he would be leaving his office, and the day after that, he resigned.
Coming on top of the pay-to-play scandals surrounding the Clinton Foundation and the embarrassing, extravagant sums she demands for her speeches, the criminal investigation into the scrubbed secret server maintained and surrendered by the former first lady may make her a burden too great for her party to carry. In a recent poll of registered voters, 58 percent say Hillary lied about the emails and 54 percent believe that she weakened the country's security. Since the main task of the president is securing the country, this doesn't bode well.
But worse than the cost of what already happened is the prospect of what still may come. "Until a month ago, one of the arguments I frequently heard ... was that that she'd been vetted like nobody's ever been vetted," wrote Frank Bruni in March. "All the skeletons had been tugged from the Clintons' labyrinthine closets. All the mud had been dug up and flung."
Then came "Clinton Cash" and the conflicts of interest, and when that had sunk in, the unsecured server. Who can swear there's not even more fresh new mud where that came from, ready to start fresh new media frenzies? With the server now in the hands of the government, there's the continuing prospect of fresh new developments from now through November of 2016. News could break during the primaries, after the primaries, during the conventions or shortly before the opening of the polls. Can one run a campaign while under indictment? We may be about to get an answer.
"Dems will put up with a scoundrel, but not a loser," the editors of this paper wrote earlier this year. They cited the undying support of Bill Clinton, who, to be fair, while he was in office never did anything like this. But the problem is that Hillary is becoming a loser because she's a scoundrel, as her lies and the continued exposure of them seem to come more and more to the fore.
Her ratings took a predictable dip in 2013 when she left her old role as diplomat for the tumult of politics. Another dip came in 2014 when her book launch fizzled and she claimed to have been "dead broke" after the White House. But the holes in the hull were punched by the Clinton Foundation and then the emails, which made her approval ratings slide underwater and saw her fall behind many GOP rivals in many important swing states.
The Clintons survived the scandals and wars of the '90s because in the '90s there was a lot less cable TV and Internet and no Twitter or social media. In the '90s, they controlled the White House and party and now they do not. In the '90s, they were in office, not merely seeking it; and Bill was a skilled and adroit politician, which Hillary is not.
For all of these reasons the time may soon come when their party will find that it cannot afford the Clintons. And some solon with indisputable party credentials will take that long walk to their door.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
[VIDEO] Is Hillary Above the Law?
Hillary Clinton decided when she took the office of Secretary of State that she was above the law.
Hillary knew that she was supposed to use a secure government controlled server for email and other communications, but she believed that she was part of an elite class of people who are not subject to the same laws as average Americans.
The Clintons are the political equivalent of royalty and Bill proved that he was above the law.
The Daily Mail put together an excellent time line of events in this developing scandal. A Romanian hacker named ‘Guccifer’ exposed screen shots of Clinton’s longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL email account in March of 2013 that contained emails from the Secretary of State.
Since that date, evidence is mounting of a Clinton cover up.
According to the Daily Mail time line, in June of 2013, Hillary shifted control of email domain to IT contractor and sent her original server hardware to a data center facility in New Jersey where it was erased. Erasing, or wiping, the hard drive shows that Hillary did not want anybody to second-guessing the way she handled her email that likely contained, what most people would consider, classified information.
The Associated Press reported on June 30, 2015, “senior Obama administration officials knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private email address for her government correspondence.” This implicates others like former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama confidant David Axelrod.
According to the AP “the newly released emails show Clinton sent or received at least 12 messages in 2009 on her private email server that were later classified ‘confidential’ by the U.S. government. Those emails were censored because officials said they contained activities relating to the intelligence community, or had discussed the production and dissemination of U.S. intelligence information. At least two dozen emails were also marked ‘sensitive but unclassified’ at the time they were written, including a December 2009 message from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin about an explosion in Baghdad that killed 90.” This is strong evidence that Hillary is lying about her emailing of sensitive information.
Unsecured Hillary Emails, Hackers Worry Senate Homeland Security Chairman
Federal officials and Hillary Clinton’s lawyers may not be the only ones with copies of the former secretary of state’s official emails, according to Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson.
Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, told FBI Director James Comey in an August 17 letter that he is “deeply concerned by recent reports that classified information in Secretary Clinton’s email may exist outside of the federal government’s possession.”
The homeland committee chairman wants Comey to explain “whether additional unsecured copies of classified information currently exists.”
Johnson also said he is worried that hackers, foreign governments or other unauthorized persons may have hacked Clinton’s emails. He asked Comey for answers by Aug. 31.
Fox News' Ed Henry Rattles Hillary at Shaky Press Conference: 'Did You Wipe the Server Clean?'
In a contentious exchange with reporters after a Las Vegas Town Hall event Tuesday, Hillary Clinton insisted anything she did with her email server was "legally permitted" and said the media were the only ones asking about it.
Asked if she had wiped her private email server clean before turning it over to investigators last week, she jokingly told Fox News' Ed Henry, “What, with like with a cloth or something? I don’t know how it works at all.”
Henry pressed the Democratic presidential candidate by pointing out that leadership is about taking responsibility.
“Look, Ed, I take responsibility,” Clinton replied. “In retrospect, this didn't turn out to be convenient at all and I regret that this has become such a cause celebre. But that does not change the facts. The facts are stubborn – what I did was legally permitted.”
Clinton last week handed over to the FBI her private server, which she used to send, receive and store emails during her four years as secretary of state. The bureau is holding the machine in protective custody after the intelligence community's inspector general raised concerns recently that classified information had traversed the system.
[VIDEO] #BlackLivesMatter Activist to CNN: ‘All Lives Matter’ Is a ‘Violent Statement’
A #BlackLivesMatter activist appearing on CNN told host Wolf Blitzer that saying “all lives matter” is actually a “violent statement.”
Activist Julius Jones was invited on to discuss the protest movement’s contentious meeting with Hillary Clinton. “Black lives are actively under attack, and we are in a terrible war with our own country. African-Americans are Americans and we’re not treated like that, we’re not treated as if black lives matter.”
“And when people say ‘all lives matter,’ it’s a violent statement, because the only time that people say ‘all lives matter’ is in opposition to ‘black lives matter,’ and it’s the most violent statement of love that you can do,” he said. “It’s like, ‘all lives matter!’ Yes, we understand that, it’s true, but in this country for the longest time, the United States acts like black lives don’t matter.”
Dems start to face reality: Hillary is a terrible candidate
We’ve been pointing that out for months, but Democrats can be forgiven for not taking our word for it. They may not be forgiven for putting all of their eggs in Hillary Clinton’s basket, though, after months of watching the presumed nominee proving that her fumble of a certain nomination in 2008 was no fluke. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza hears from Democratsthat they’ve begun to see Hillary as an albatross, but with no other options on the horizon, they’re lost as to how to handle it:
Increasingly, Democrats — privately, of course — have begun to wonder whether the problem is not the campaign but the candidate.“She has always been awkward and uninspiring on the stump,” said one senior Democratic consultant granted anonymity to candidly assess Clinton’s candidacy. “Hillary has Bill’s baggage and now her own as secretary of state — without Bill’s personality, eloquence or warmth.”That same consultant added that he expected Clinton to easily win the Democratic nomination despite her weaknesses. “None of her primary opponents this time are Obama,” the consultant said. “Each lacks the skills, message and charisma to derail this train unless she implodes.”But. “The general [election] is another question.”
The latest round of hand-wringing got an adrenaline-panic boost after Democrats watchedHillary’s attempt at stand-up comedy in Iowa. Making cracks about disappearing messages turned out not to be a winner, not even among the cheering sections:
That sentiment was echoed repeatedly in a series of conversations I had over the past few days with Democratic strategists and consultants not aligned with Clinton or her campaign. And it’s evident anecdotally as well. Clinton’s decision to make light of her e-mail problems — she joked that she liked Snapchat because the messages disappear automatically — during a speech at a Democratic event in Iowa over the weekend rubbed lots of people in the party the wrong way.“The combination of messy facts, messy campaign operation and an awkward candidate reading terrible lines or worse jokes from a prompter is very scary,” admitted one unaligned senior Democratic operative.
Apparently, none of the Democrats interviewed by Cillizza see Bernie Sanders as a viable option. Why not? He’s pulling massive crowds, not too dissimilar to Barack Obama eight years ago when Hillary tried this the first time. Presumably, they see the dangers of offering a declared socialist as the party’s standard-bearer without any of the mitigating rhetorical and demographic advantages that Obama brought to the party in 2007-8. Sanders might be drawing crowds now, but those crowds are not likely to change election outcomes — and Sanders’ hard-Left ideology will almost certainly lose voters in the middle.
That leaves Democrats with few options, but they’d better not look to Obama administration officials for a rescue. The latest developments from the State Department on Philippe Reines’ e-mails makes it clear that Hillary is not the alpha and omega of cover-ups in this administration,as I argue in my column today for The Week:
This is a really big deal. Until now, the transparency and honesty issue has focused solely on Hillary Clinton. However, by early 2013, Clinton had left the State Department. John Kerry had taken over as secretary of state. If the lack of transparency was limited to the State Department under Hillary Clinton’s direction, then why did it continue under Kerry — and in such an obviously clumsy way?It is entirely possible, and frankly likely, that the lack of transparency didn’t start and end with Hillary Clinton, although she may have pushed it to the point of damaging national security. Though liberals are loathe to admit it, the Obama administration has too often suppressed transparency, be it the Department of Justice in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal or the IRS or now the State Department.And because of that, Clinton’s scandal could stick to the two men getting the most mention as possible emergency replacements for her in the Democratic primary. John Kerry’s State Department seemed perfectly willing to hide Clinton’s potential issues from public oversight. How could he take the 2016 mantle from her? And if Joe Biden ran for president, the argument for his candidacy would explicitly rest on continuity from the Obama years — years in which those in power tried to manipulate courts and avoid legitimate oversight.If this scandal gets any worse, Democrats may have no one left to rescue them from a disaster of their own making.
After the release of the video from this exchange with Black Lives Matter activists, expect that panic to increase exponentially.
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