Obama-Appointed Federal Inspector Threatened By Clinton Campaign Over Email Investigation

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com,

An Obama appointed government watchdog central to the Hillary Clinton email investigation says that he, his family and his office faced an ‘intense backlash‘ from Clinton allies, who threatened him over findings that Clinton mishandled classified information.

Former Inspector General Charles McCullough III told Fox News Chief Intel correspondent Catherine Herridge that he was under intense pressure from senior officials on the left – with one Clinton campaign official threatening that he and another government investigator would be immediately fired under a Hillary Clinton presidency:

“It was told in no uncertain terms, by a source directly from the campaign, that we would be the first two to be fired - with [Clinton’s] administration. That that was definitely going to happen.” –Charles McCullough III

As a refresher, over 2,100 classified emails were sent over Clinton’s personal server, which was used exclusively for government business. Despite this, former FBI Director James Comey – who had drafted Clinton’s exoneration letter months before reviewing evidence in the case – recommended that the DOJ not prosecute the case.

McCullough was recommended to Obama by then-Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who told McCullough that Clinton’s conduct was “extremely reckless,” adding “the campaign … will have heartburn about that.”

Via Fox News: 

He [McCullough] said Clapper’s Clinton email comments came during an in-person meeting about a year before the presidential election – in late December 2015 or early 2016. “[Clapper] was as off-put as the rest of us were.”

 

After the Clapper meeting, McCullough said his team was marginalized. “I was told by senior officials to keep [Clapper] out of it,” he said, while acknowledging he tried to keep his boss in the loop.

Egregious violations

In January 2016, McCullough told Republicans on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees that emails classified above “Top Secret” had been passed through the former secretary of state’s private, unsecure server – such as an email about Benghazi she sent to daughter Chelsea Clinton (using pseudonym Diane Reynolds) on the night of September 11th, 2012 from ‘@clintonemail.com’ which not only divulged highly classified military intel over a non-government server vulnerable to foreign surveillance – it also revealed that the Obama administration knew that an “Al Queda-like group” was responsible for the attack.

One wonders what Chelsea’s security clearance was at the time?

Instead of informing the American public that radical Islam was responsible for the attack, the Obama administration fabricated a story – peddling the lie that anger over an anti-Islamic YouTube video resulted in the attack, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of an innocent man.

Hillary knew it was an "Al Qeda-like group" hours after it happened when she told Chelsea ("Diane Reynolds") top secret information. pic.twitter.com/LiOJj3jck1

— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) July 15, 2017

As one of a handful of people who reviewed the 22 Top Secret Clinton emails deemed too classified to ever see the light of day, McCullough says “There was a very good reason to withhold those emails … there would have been harm to national security,” adding “sources and methods, lives and operations” could be put at risk. According to Fox, some of those email exchanges were considered Special Access Privelage (SAP), or “above top secret.”

What’s interesting about that, is an anonymous 4chan poster known as “FBI Anon” - whose breadcrumbs of information have been largely correct, posted on July 2, 2016 that Clinton had “SAP level programs on her server, which if made public, would literally cause an uprising and possibly foreign declarations of war.”

Then, on October 16, 2016 - three weeks before former FBI Director Comey cleared Clintin, "FBI Anon" elaborated on SAP programs and made an unverified claim about Clinton:

A Special Access Program is an intelligence program classified above top-secret. They are held on closed servers at secret locations. The only way to get one is if you are specifically read on to a program, have a need to know, then you must physically go to a location and pass through several layers of security to even look at the program. A good example in non-classified terms would be the locations and operations of our intelligence operatives around the glove, or our missile silo locations. SAP is granted on a need to know basis, and Hillary did not have any need to know any of the programs on her server. All I can tell you about the SAPs is that Hillary had them, and she did not have proper authority to have any of them. They were leaked to her by someone, and she did sell them to overseas donors. Possessing them alone makes her guilty of treason." -FBI Anon

Turncoat?

In response to McCullough’s findings, Democrats turned their backs on the Obama-appointed Inspector General for doing his job.

“All of a sudden I became a shill of the right,” McCullough said, adding “And I was told by members of Congress, ‘Be careful. You’re losing your credibility. You need to be careful. There are people out to get you.’”

McCullough told Fox of “an effort… certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here.”

Damage Control

As the Clinton campaign geared up for the 2016 election, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Hillary’s inner circle was already starting to spin the investigation – writing in an August 2015 email that “Clinton only used her account for unclassified email. When information is reviewed for public release, it is common for information previously unclassified to be upgraded to classified.”

McCullough was critical of this response, telling Fox “There was an effort … certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here.”

In response to the Inspector General’s pushback, seven senior Democrats sent a letter to McCullough and his counterpart at the State Department, raising concerns over the impartiality of the Clinton email investigation. McCullough, however, was not arriving at any conclusions himself – he was simply passing along the findings of individual government agencies on appropriate classifications assigned to the emails.

Fox News reports:

McCullough described one confrontation with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office just six weeks before the election, amid pressure to respond to the letter – which Feinstein had co-signed.

 

“I thought that any response to that letter would just hyper-politicize the situation,” McCullough said. “I recall even offering to resign, to the staff director. I said, ‘Tell [Feinstein] I’ll resign tonight. I’d be happy to go. I’m not going to respond to that letter. It’s just that simple.”

 

As Election Day approached, McCullough said the threats went further, singling out him and another senior government investigator on the email case.

Inquiries sent by Fox to both Feinstein and Clapper were not returned at the time of publication.

Watch:  

Herridge: "Was there an effort to deliberately mislead the public about [@HillaryClinton] classified emails?"
McCullough: "Absolutely." pic.twitter.com/UOwC5BoJ41

— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 28, 2017

Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow § Subscribe to our YouTube channel

 

Report: Obama-Appointed Federal Inspector Threatened By Clinton Campaign Over Email Investigation

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

An Obama appointed government watchdog central to the Hillary Clinton email investigation says that he, his family and his office faced an ‘intense backlash‘ from Clinton allies, who threatened him over findings that Clinton mishandled classified information.

Former Inspector General Charles McCullough III told Fox News Chief Intel correspondent Catherine Herridge that he was under intense pressure from senior officials on the left – with one Clinton campaign official threatening that he and another government investigator would be immediately fired under a Hillary Clinton presidency:

“It was told in no uncertain terms, by a source directly from the campaign, that we would be the first two to be fired — with [Clinton’s] administration. That that was definitely going to happen.” –Charles McCullough III

As a refresher, over 2,100 classified emails were sent over Clinton’s personal server, which was used exclusively for government business. Despite this, former FBI Director James Comey – who had drafted Clinton’s exoneration letter months before reviewing evidence in the case – recommended that the DOJ not prosecute the case.

McCullough was recommended to Obama by then-Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who told McCullough that Clinton’s conduct was “extremely reckless,” adding “the campaign … will have heartburn about that.”

Via Fox News: 

He [McCullough] said Clapper’s Clinton email comments came during an in-person meeting about a year before the presidential election – in late December 2015 or early 2016. “[Clapper] was as off-put as the rest of us were.”

After the Clapper meeting, McCullough said his team was marginalized. “I was told by senior officials to keep [Clapper] out of it,” he said, while acknowledging he tried to keep his boss in the loop.

Egregious violations

In January 2016, McCullough told Republicans on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees that emails classified above “Top Secret” had been passed through the former secretary of state’s private, unsecure server – such as an email about Benghazi she sent to daughter Chelsea Clinton (using pseudonym Diane Reynolds) on the night of September 11th, 2012 from ‘@clintonemail.com’ which not only divulged highly classified military intel over a non-government server vulnerable to foreign surveillance – it also revealed that the Obama administration knew that an “Al Queda-like group” was responsible for the attack.

One wonders what Chelsea’s security clearance was at the time?

Instead of informing the American public that radical Islam was responsible for the attack, the Obama administration fabricated a story – peddling the lie that anger over an anti-Islamic YouTube video resulted in the attack, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of an innocent man.

Hillary knew it was an "Al Qeda-like group" hours after it happened when she told Chelsea ("Diane Reynolds") top secret information. pic.twitter.com/LiOJj3jck1

— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) July 15, 2017

As one of a handful of people who reviewed the 22 Top Secret Clinton emails deemed too classified to ever see the light of day, McCullough says “There was a very good reason to withhold those emails … there would have been harm to national security,” adding “sources and methods, lives and operations” could be put at risk. According to Fox, some of those email exchanges were considered Special Access Privelage (SAP), or “above top secret.”

What’s interesting about that, is an anonymous 4chan poster known as “FBI Anon” - whose breadcrumbs of information have been largely correct, posted on July 2, 2016 that Clinton had “SAP level programs on her server, which if made public, would literally cause an uprising and possibly foreign declarations of war.”

Then, on October 16, 2016 - three weeks before former FBI Director Comey cleared Clintin, "FBI Anon" elaborated on SAP programs and made an unverified claim about Clinton:

A Special Access Program is an intelligence program classified above top-secret. They are held on closed servers at secret locations. The only way to get one is if you are specifically read on to a program, have a need to know, then you must physically go to a location and pass through several layers of security to even look at the program. A good example in non-classified terms would be the locations and operations of our intelligence operatives around the glove, or our missile silo locations. SAP is granted on a need to know basis, and Hillary did not have any need to know any of the programs on her server. All I can tell you about the SAPs is that Hillary had them, and she did not have proper authority to have any of them. They were leaked to her by someone, and she did sell them to overseas donors. Possessing them alone makes her guilty of treason." -FBI Anon

Turncoat?

In response to McCullough’s findings, Democrats turned their backs on the Obama-appointed Inspector General for doing his job.

“All of a sudden I became a shill of the right,” McCullough said, adding “And I was told by members of Congress, ‘Be careful. You’re losing your credibility. You need to be careful. There are people out to get you.’”

McCullough told Fox of “an effort… certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here.”

Damage Control

As the Clinton campaign geared up for the 2016 election, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Hillary’s inner circle was already starting to spin the investigation – writing in an August 2015 email that “Clinton only used her account for unclassified email. When information is reviewed for public release, it is common for information previously unclassified to be upgraded to classified.”

McCullough was critical of this response, telling Fox “There was an effort … certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here.”

In response to the Inspector General’s pushback, seven senior Democrats sent a letter to McCullough and his counterpart at the State Department, raising concerns over the impartiality of the Clinton email investigation. McCullough, however, was not arriving at any conclusions himself – he was simply passing along the findings of individual government agencies on appropriate classifications assigned to the emails.

Fox News reports:

McCullough described one confrontation with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office just six weeks before the election, amid pressure to respond to the letter – which Feinstein had co-signed.

“I thought that any response to that letter would just hyper-politicize the situation,” McCullough said. “I recall even offering to resign, to the staff director. I said, ‘Tell [Feinstein] I’ll resign tonight. I’d be happy to go. I’m not going to respond to that letter. It’s just that simple.”

As Election Day approached, McCullough said the threats went further, singling out him and another senior government investigator on the email case.

Inquiries sent by Fox to both Feinstein and Clapper were not returned at the time of publication.

Watch:  

Herridge: "Was there an effort to deliberately mislead the public about [@HillaryClinton] classified emails?"
McCullough: "Absolutely." pic.twitter.com/UOwC5BoJ41

— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 28, 2017

Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow § Subscribe to our YouTube channel

Maryland Judge Demands Bar Investigation Of Hillary Aides Who Helped Destroy Private Emails

Last week the FBI denied Ty Clevenger"s FOIA request for Hillary Clinton"s emails due a supposed "lack of public interest."  No really...once you"ve manage to stop laughing, you can read our prior post on the topic here:  FBI Denies FOIA Request For Hillary Documents Due To "Lack Of Public Interest".

Alas, Clevenger isn"t the type to give up so easily and managed to find a judge in Maryland who seemingly agrees that the willful destruction of evidence subject to a Congressional subpoena might not be just a "frivolous" issue that suffers from an overwhelming "lack of public interest."  As the Washington Times points out today, Maryland judge Paul Harris Jr. has ordered the Maryland state bar to investigate former Hillary aides David Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson for their efforts in allegedly helping Hillary "destroy evidence."

A Maryland judge ordered the state bar to open an investigation Monday into the three lawyers who helped former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to delete her private emails.

Circuit Judge Paul F. Harris Jr. said the complaints lodged against David E. Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were “egregious” and said the state bar couldn’t brush them aside by calling them “frivolous.”

“There are allegations of destroying evidence,” Judge Harris said at a hearing Monday morning, where he said the state’s rules require the bar to conduct investigations no matter who raises the complaint, and can’t brush accusations aside.

“I just think this is a rather easy decision at this point,” he said. “The court is ordering bar counsel to investigate.”

As we"ve noted before, this latest success for Clevenger comes after failures with judges in both Arkansas and the District of Columbia.

Bars in Arkansas and the District of Columbia, as well as federal courts, had brushed aside requests from Mr. Clevenger, who is seeking to have the lawyers suspended or disbarred.

But Judge Harris said Mr. Clevenger’s request “appears to have merit,” and Maryland will now have to at least launch an investigation and demand a response from the lawyers, Mr. Clevenger said.

Meanwhile, who can forget the emailed response that Clevenger received from the FBI alleging that they couldn"t comply with his FOIA request because he had failed to demonstrate a "public interest in the disclosure" of Hillary"s emails.

“You have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject,” FBI records management section chief David M. Hardy told Mr. Clevenger in a letter Monday.

“It is incumbent upon the requester to provide documentation regarding the public’s interest in the operations and activities of the government before records can be processed pursuant to the FOIA,” Mr. Hardy wrote.

Apparently the FBI never saw this map...

* * *

For those who may have missed it, we published a rather detailed report on how Hillary"s emails suddenly "disappeared", with the help of a few loyal aides of course, just over a year ago.

The story of how Hillary"s "personal" emails came to be deleted using, the now infamous, BleachBit is quite the tale.  Below we attempt to piece together how the story unfolded per the recent FBI disclosures.

Here is a quick summary of the timeline of events:

• February 2013 – Hillary resigns from State Department


• Spring 2013 – Hillary aide Monica Hanley backs up Pagliano Server to Apple MacBook and a thumb drive


• February 2014 – Monica Hanley attempts to upload Hillary email archives to new Platte River Networks (PRN) server but encounters technical issues


• Early 2014 – Monica Hanley mails Apple MacBook to Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to upload Hillary email archives to new PRN server.  Undisclosed PRN Staff Member then uploads Hillary’s emails to a gmail account and then transfers them over to the new PRN server.  The Undisclosed PRN Staff Member deletes most of the emails from gmail but indvertently leaves 940.


• Early 2014 – Monica Hanley advises Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to wipe the Apple MacBook clean after uploading Hillary’s emails to the new PRN server but he forgets to do it


• Early 2014 - Undisclosed PRN Staff Member mails Apple MacBook back to Clinton and it is promptly lost


• December 2014 – Hillary delivers 55,000 emails to State Department


• December 2014 / January 2015 – Heather Samuelson and Cheryl Mills request emails be deleted from their computer using BleachBit


• December 2014 / January 2015 – “Unknown Clinton staff member” instructs PRN to remove archives of Clinton emails from PRN server


• March 2, 2015 - NYT releases an article showing that Hillary used a personal email server in violation of State Department rules


• March 4, 2015 – Hillary receives subpoena from House Select Committee on Benghazi instructing her to preserve and deliver all emails from her personal servers


• March 25, 2015 – Undisclosed PRN Staff Member has a conference call with “President Clinton’s Staff”


• March 25 – 31, 2015 – Undisclosed PRN Staff Member has “oh shit” moment and realizes he forgot to wipe Hillary’s email archive from the PRN server back in December…which he promptly does using BleachBit despite later admitting he "was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton"s e-mail data on the PRN server."


• June 2016 – FBI discovers that Undisclosed PRN Staff Member forgot to erase 940 emails from the gmail account he created to help with the PRN server upload

And now the details...

Hillary resigned from the State Department in February 2013.  Shortly thereafter, in "spring 2013", Hillary"s close aide, Monica Hanley, worked with Bill Clinton"s aide, Justin Cooper, to archive all of Hillary"s emails from the "Pagliano Server" that Clinton used to house her State Department emails while serving as Secretary of State.  With Cooper"s assistance, Hanley was successful transferring all of Hillary"s emails from the "Pagliano Server" to an Apple MacBook with a duplicate copy saved to a "Thumb Drive".

At that point, Hanley "forgot" to provide the archived emails to Clinton"s staff.  So apparently the Apple MacBook and Thumb Drive just stayed around Hanley"s house for a year.  

Then in February 2014, Hanley decided it wasn"t the best idea to leave the email records of the former U.S. Secretary of State in her sock drawer forever.  As such, she decided it was time to backup the archived emails to Clinton"s new server hosted by Platte River Networks (PRN) in Denver, Colorado.  Unfortunately, she was not successful with the remote backup and mailed the computer to an Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to help with the task.

Apparently, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member also had difficulty uploading the emails to the new PRN server because the "Apple MacMail" format was incompatible with Microsoft Exchange.  So, he/she came up with a workaround that involved transferring all of Clinton"s emails to a new gmail account and then exporting them to the PRN server.

Gmail is pretty safe, right?

Monica Hanley then advised the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member to "wipe the Archive Laptop" after the emails had been transferred to the new PRN server.  But apparently he forgot to "wipe" and laptop and instead just deleted the old emails.  But wouldn"t you know it..."Neither Hanely nor [Undisclosed PRN Staff Member] could identify the current whereabouts of the Archive Laptop or thumb drive containing the archive, and the FBI does not have either item in its possession."

So the two pieces of physical hardware that could provide all the missing links in the Hillary email investigation have mysteriously gone missing.  Anyone else find that odd?

Unfortunately, the "Undisclosed PRN Staff Member" was apparently not an "attention to detail" kind of guy as the FBI later discovered that he/she had left 940 of Clinton"s emails on gmail.  Of the 940 emails, 56 were classified as confidential and 302 were not included in the 55,000 page data dump to the State Department in December 2014.

Now this brings us all the way up to December 2014 when Clinton sent the 55,000 pages to the State Department.  Recall, as Politico previously reported, Hillary brought in a former campaign staffer, Heather Samuelson (34 years old), to help determine which emails were "work related" and which "yoga related."

Shortly after providing that data dump to the State Department, in "December 2014 or January 2015," both Heather Samuelson and Cheryl Mills requested that all emails be removed from their computers using "a program called BleachBit to delete the e-mail-related files so they could not be recovered."

For her part, "Clinton stated she never deleted, nor did she instruct anyone to delete, her e-mails to avoid complying with FOIA, State or FBI requests for information."

Of course not.  Hillary knew it would be a little too obvious to specifically instruct her staff to permanently delete the emails but she also knew it might be "inconvenient" to have them around.    So, she simply "decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days."

See?  She never specifically said to delete anything she just made a simple administrative decision on document retention policies.

Then, on March 4, 2015, Hillary received a subpoena from the House for all of her emails on her personal servers.

Which brings us to the "Oh Shit" moment.

On March 25, 2015, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member had a "conference call with President Clinton"s staff."  Apparently, in the days following that call, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member had an ""oh shit" moment" when he realized he had forgotten to wipe the PRN server clean as he had been instructed to do back in December by Cheryl Mills. 

Therefore, sometime within the 6 days after a call with "President Clinton"s Staff," that PRN server was wiped clean using BleachBit despite the subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi received weeks earlier on March 4, 2016. 

And, of course, the Undisclosed PRN Staff Member is the only person responsible for the deletion as Mills, Hillary, President Clinton"s Office were all blissfully unaware of the actions of their rogue IT guy of Platte River Networks in Denver, Colorado.

Ironically, the rogue IT guy from PRN even admits to deleting the emails even though he "was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton"s e-mail data on the PRN server."

Something tells us this "Undisclosed PRN Staff Member" is not going to make out as well as Hillary when all the dust settles, which of course she can "wipe" with a cloth:

Chaffetz Seeks Charges Against Former Hillary IT Aide Bryan Pagliano

Back in September, at the height of the Hillary emailgate investigation, Clinton"s IT aid who helped setup her private email server, Bryan Pagliano, apparently decided that Congressional subpoenas, like federal record retention laws, were merely optional suggestions that did not require compliance.  As such, Pagliano elected to skip not one, but two, Congressional hearings in front of Jason Chaffetz" (R-Utah) House Oversight Committee despite his direct involvement in setting up he private servers.

The move did not sit well with Chaffetz, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, who blasted Pagliano"s move saying that "subpoenas are not optional” and subsequently voted to hold Pagliano in contempt of Congress. 

As it turns out, after all these months, Chaffetz is still not over Pagliano"s aloof response to his committee"s subpoena and has sent a letter to Trump"s new Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking him to convene a grand jury or bring charges against Pagliano for his failure to appear before Congress.  According to Fox News, Chaffetz said in a statement that allowing Pagliano"s conduct "to go unaddressed would gravely harm Congress" ability to conduct oversight."

To our complete shock, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, blasted Chaffetz" call for charges saying that pursuing charges against Pagliano would be a waste of time and money.

"Apparently, Chairman Chaffetz and President Trump are the only two people in Washington today who think we should still be investigating Secretary Clinton," Cumming said in a statement. He added: "The Oversight Committee can"t afford to be distracted by political vendettas against Hillary Clinton while our constituents are begging us to conduct responsible oversight of President Trump."

Of course, Pagliano"s attorneys defended his actions back in September saying that he had already "asserted his Fifth Amendment rights" and refused to answer any questions.  Therefore, they argued that additional appearances before Congress served no "valid legislative purpose."

“You and the committee have been told from the beginning that Mr. Pagliano will continue to assert his Fifth Amendment rights and will decline to answer any questions put to him by your committee,” according to the letter.

“A subpoena issued by a Congressional committee is required by law to serve a valid legislative purpose and there is none here,” reads the letter, which refers to the committee’s efforts to force Pagliano to testify as a “naked political agenda” with “no valid legislative aim.”

Of course, as our readers are already aware, Pagliano, like Paul Combetta (the infamous "Oh Shit" guy) and a host of other Clinton aides, was granted an immunity deal by the Department of Justice in return for his FBI testimony regarding the Clinton private email servers.  Unfortunately, that immunity deal won"t help him with these new charges.

Finally, we"ll end with the same warning that we offered Pagliano back in September:

"We would caution Pagliano that, as suggested by the pic above, he would probably be well served to tread lightly...not many people share the Clintons" particular talent for escaping scandal after scandal without repercussions."

Hillary for Prison: Jason Chaffetz Promises to Continue and Expand His Investigation into Her Email Scandal

Trump ran on the promise to "lock her up," regarding Hillary"s activities with her insecure email server and subsequent activities in destroying evidence that might"ve paved the way for her landing on her head in prison. No one could say for sure, since upwards of 30,000 emails were destroyed by the Clinton camp -- in a feverish ploy to evade investigation.
 
Rep. Chaffetz, along with Trey Gowdy, have been leading the way in Congress in pursuit of the truth, regarding the Clinton email scandal. Many on the left have lobbied for Trump to "let go" of the Hillary investigation in order to "heal the country" after a bitter and tumultuous campaign. However, nothing has been graceful about Hillary since her loss and it shouldn"t surprise anyone if Trump, along with incoming AG Sessions, decided to pursue a case against her with energetic fervor -- draining the swamp of those implicated in the biggest political corruption cabal since Tammany Hall circa mid 19th century.
 
Source: Washington Examiner

"This was never a political targeting in the beginning and just because there was a political election doesn"t mean it goes away," House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told reporters Monday. "There were a lot of other characters that were involved in this that we have to look at."
 
"This was potentially one of the largest breaches of security in the history of the State Department," he said. "It cannot and should never be repeated again. How is it that so much information was able to migrate out into the world? These are still open questions that we need to finish up so that they don"t happen again."
 
Chaffetz wants to review the security clearances of Clinton aides who helped manage the "extremely careless" email process described by FBI Director James Comey. Chaffetz said he is inclined to hold Bryan Pagliano, a key Clinton IT aide, in contempt of Congress for flouting subpoenas last year. "You can"t just get a subpoena from Congress to testify and not show up," he said.
 
The Utah Republican wants to target more senior officials, such as State Department Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy, in light of FBI suggestions that he tried to set up a "quid pro quo" with the FBI to suppress revelations that Clinton"s email server held classified information.
 
FBI leadership could also be a live target of the review, as Republicans are troubled that Va. Gov Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clintons, made campaign donations to the wife of Andrew McCabe, the agency"s second-in-command. "I"m very concerned about the straight-up conflict of interest that Mr. McCabe had," Chaffetz said. "That"s something we"ll continue to spend resources on."

 
Hillary for prison, 2017.

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

Clinton Attorney Blasts James Comey's "Extraordinary Impropriety" In Seeking Warrant

At first, James Comey was nothing more than an incompetent stooge, working within a hyper-partisan Department of Justice, who botched the Hillary email investigation by missing simple, publicly available signs of intent like Paul Combetta"s now infamous Reddit thread.  Then, after reopening the email investigation just days before the election based on new evidence discovered on Anthony Weiner"s computer, Comey immediately became a "Republican Operative" and most likely a "Russian Puppet" as well.

As we predicted yesterday (see "FBI Warrant For Clinton Emails Released As Democrats Slam Decision: "I Am Appalled""), angry democrats, after first pursuing a failed recount effort and then a failed effort to flip the Electoral College, are now setting their sites on James Comey in a renewed effort to, at best, delegitimize a Trump presidency and, at worst, nullify an election. 

Yesterday, we noted commentary from lawyer Randol Schoenberg who sued for the Hillary warrant to be released and has since expressed that he is "appalled" by its contents which failed to present "probable cause."  Now long-time Clinton lawyer, David Kendall, is weighing on the warrant which he says showed "extraordinary impropriety."  Of course, most of you will recognize Kendall as the lawyer that has defended the Clintons on everything from Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky in the early days until now.  Per Reuters:

The FBI acted inappropriately when it announced the revival of its investigation into Hillary Clinton"s private email setup days before the Nov. 8 presidential election, Clinton"s lawyer said, citing search warrant documents made public on Tuesday.

The pointed criticism from Clinton attorney David Kendall followed the release in federal court in Manhattan of documents related to an October search warrant targeting emails involving the Democratic presidential nominee.

Kendall said the documents showed the "extraordinary impropriety" of Comey"s letter, which "produced devastating but predictable damage politically and which was both legally unauthorized and factually unnecessary."

Of course Harry Reid has used his Senate position to constantly bash Comey in recent days referring to him as "Republican Operative" while Bill Clinton recently told the press definitively that "James Comey cost her the election." Per The Hill, there is no shortage of leftists eager to throw the blame on anyone other than their failed candidate. 

Democrats, appalled by the fallout from his letter to Congress, have argued that Comey’s unprecedented disclosure in the final days leading up to the election was a massive break from bureau policy that blunted Clinton’s path to the White House. They say that although the FBI announced two days before the election that the new emails would not change its conclusions in Clinton’s case, the damage was done.

Critics hammered Comey’s vague letter for igniting a firestorm of speculation that the new emails contained a “smoking gun” — without providing any substantive information for voters to judge.

“Today"s disclosure might be worst abuse yet. DOJ goes out of its way to avoid publicly discussing investigations close to election," former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a Twitter storm at the time. “This might be totally benign & not even involve Clinton. But no way for press or voters to know that. Easy for opponent to make hay over.”

Of course, Comey himself highlighted the risk of being "misunderstood" but went forward based on the thought that it "would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record."

Comey himself was aware of the risks associated with the late October missive. In an internal memo to FBI employees, he acknowledged that “there is significant risk of being misunderstood.”

"We don"t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed," Comey wrote. "I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”

But throughout, Comey has been strident in his defense of probe.

“You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels. We are not weasels,” Comey declared during a House Judiciary Committee hearing during which Republicans suggested he had caved to political pressure from above.

“We are honest people and … whether or not you agree with the result, this was done the way you want it to be done.”

We wonder where all these angry democrats were when this happened?

We think it"s time to let this one go Hillary...perhaps a dose of your own advice would help: "Look, some people are sore losers you know.  And we just gotta keep goin..."