Patterico's Pontifications

3/13/2015

More From Hillaryland

Filed under: General — Dana @ 5:00 pm



[guest post by Dana]

In spite of Hillary’s unprecedented efforts, this scandal just won’t go away.

When Clinton finally addressed the email scandal earlier this week, she said she believed her “work” emails (on private email account and private server) were preserved because they included other officials with the “state.gov” email addresses.

Today the State Dept. undercut Clinton’s claim:

[S]tate Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters Friday that archiving of the work email boxes of senior State Department officials besides the secretary did not begin until “February of this year.”

(Reminder: the public and President Obama found out about Hillary’s exclusive use of personal email for government business on March 3, 2015.)

Further:

Psaki said that since 2013, after Clinton had left, the secretary’s emails have been automatically archived. She said this same system has only been in place for dozens of other senior officials since last month.

When asked directly whether emailing another official would have automatically created a permanent record, back when Clinton was secretary, Psaki indicated that this is a bad assumption.

“It depends on whether the employee archived their documents, doesn’t it?” she said.

This latest blow to Clinton comes on the heels of the revelation that her team used a purposely limited method of determining which emails would be saved:

“For more than a year after she left office in 2013, she did not transfer work-related email from her private account to the State Department. She commissioned a review of the 62,320 messages in her account only after the department–spurred by the congressional investigation–asked her to do so. And this review did not involve opening and reading each email; instead, Clinton’s lawyers created a list of names and keywords related to her work and searched for those. Slightly more than half the total cache–31,830 emails–did not contain any of the search terms, according to Clinton’s staff, so they were deemed to be ‘private, personal records.’”

Clearly, intentionally using such an insufficient query to search and select emails – and one in which no staffer carefully reviewed the individual email to ensure no errors were made as to “personal” and “work” – suggests that a limited, narrow response was the planned outcome.

As it were, though, Clinton may very well have reason to be concerned:

Storing classified information in a personal, nongovernmental email account on a private computer server, like the one at Mrs. Clinton’s home, would be a violation of secrecy laws.

Of course, if she were truly interested in full disclosure, she would have kept it as simple and clean as possible and turned over all the emails from the get-go instead of going through the painfully obvious machinations to avoid sunlight. (On a side note, as far as Trey Gowdy is concerned, the Select Committee on Benghazi is not the least bit interested in her personal emails – only those which “he’s legitimately entitled to with respect to Libya and Benghazi.”)

Where it stands:

1) Clinton said all her work emails were cc’ed to others at State, but it’s now not clear that all of these were archived or kept by those officials.

2) Clinton said about 30,000 of emails she deemed to be “personal” were destroyed, and that she won’t give anyone access to her serve. However, Time Magazine has reported that emails were designated as “personal” only if they weren’t flagged by a keyword search, a process some have said is not very thorough.

3) The State Department has said it would release portions of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton did send in hard copy form to the department. However, State has said many of these documents will include redactions, and that some may not be released at all.

4) Despite her claims of compliance, House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has said there are gaps in the emails they have from Clinton. Gowdy has subpoenaed Clinton for her emails, and has said Clinton should testify twice before his committee.

Finally, one more potentially damaging issue is that of whether Clinton signed the requisite OF-109 form declaring that she turned over all relevant classified records and materials upon her departure from the State Dept. For its part, the State Dept. is declining to provide a direct answer:

QUESTION: Right, but did Secretary Clinton – a former DOJ attorney has asked if – under department policy, asked if Secretary Clinton, like all officials here in this building when they depart or separate from office, has to sign something called a form OF-109. It’s a separation statement declaring that when you leave office, you’re turning in – turn over not just classified materials, but any documents for official purposes. Did she sign —

JEN PSAKI, STATE DEPARTMENT: Sure. I think this was asked – it was more than two years ago. I don’t have an update on that specific question at this point.

Either way, it appears to be a no-win for Clinton:

If she signed it and was not honest, she is in a heap of trouble. If she did not have to sign it, it is further evidence that the rules don’t apply to her and that she is deliberately evasive enough to avoid perjuring herself.

Why, it’s almost as if Clinton, whose historical imperiousness and past behaviors evidence she sees herself as above the law, is exercising a full-blown strategy to exhaust and confuse the public and lawmakers with layers upon layers of lies, obfuscations and distractions. IOW, it’s business as usual.

–Dana

68 Responses to “More From Hillaryland”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (86e864)

  2. feeling better?

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  3. anyway, back to the subject, anyone know who would be held responsible for the deletion of the emails?
    just the person who actually did it?
    also the supervisor?
    also who ever is in charge of the email server?
    the lawyers of the firm?
    the person who came up with the criteria?

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  4. The vast right wing conspiracy, seeRpea.

    nk (dbc370)

  5. This is a no-win for Clinton but it’s increasingly shaping up as a bigger no-win for the State Dept. as well. It’s a two way street. If they were as casual about government property and national security and maintenance of classified information during the Clinton SOS years as it appears, and they don’t have “updates” for what’s been happening in the last two years, that’s pretty damn indicting. Forget the deadly policy screw ups. There is apparently not a single part of this Obama/Valerie administration that is worthy of our trust on even the most basic of professional administrative duties.

    elissa (7d886e)

  6. Don’t you wish that you could conduct YOUR business like the Government conducts
    theirs?

    Without all those pesky laws and regulations and stiff penalties for failure to
    comply?

    And without vast organizations devoted to ferreting out those who aren’t conducting
    their business in a lawful manner and who then will seize and arrest anyone involved
    in said misconduct?

    Yeah. Me too.

    jakee308 (49ccc6)

  7. Kinda makes the Time Magazine “devil” cover seem quite appropriate, doesn’t it?

    Bill M (906260)

  8. if she were truly interested in full disclosure, everything would be on government servers, there would be no private server and this whole foo-fa would not exist.

    Of course, a Clinton who was interested in full disclosure exists only in Cloudcuckooland.

    kishnevi (91d5c6)

  9. seeRpea,

    I am feeling a bit better now that fever has broken. Thanks for asking.

    kishnevi,

    Oh please, let’s not go full-on crazy here and suggest she should have played by the rules in the first place – after all, she is a Clinton!

    Dana (86e864)

  10. Not mentioned in post is the fact that Hillary declined a State Dept. issued cell phone:

    Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Clinton was “not issued a State Department BlackBerry, and that wasn’t a requirement — no one is required to be issued a State Department BlackBerry.”

    Dana (86e864)

  11. 2 more things:
    they didn’t keep backups for their own use

    even back in 2008 it would have been trivial to setup a copying of all email messages to a gov’t email server. and at the very least they could have setup a bulk copying each night.

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  12. The Clinton “emails” were part of SNL last Saturday, were featured on Sunday morning’s political shows, and there have been additional not good for Hilary appearances and revelations which have dominated the news sites and blogs on an almost daily basis again this week. It’s developing into an even bigger and more riveting mystery and scandal that will have to be discussed this coming Sunday and next week. The media is more engaged than usual. What remains to be seen is whether enough of the American people give a rip to keep it going. Hilary and the Dems are definitely off-balance right now

    elissa (7d886e)

  13. In a Gallup poll taken before Hillary’s press conference, out of 1,522 adults, 50 percent of respondents had a favorable view of her compared to 39 percent with a negative impression. However, every day we’ve had a new revelation, so I wonder where she would poll now. And that with no real competitor. Yet.

    Dana (86e864)

  14. re #12: surprisingly, the Obama Team seems to be bouncing a bit on this too.

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  15. If a pardon is a cure I’m sure it will be prescribed.

    mg (31009b)

  16. If she signed dishonestly, she’s in no trouble at all — Democrat, Clinton, Woman.

    I really want to know what the search terms were. Did they include things like
    “country L”, “Person 3”, “Bingasi”, …? Were the searched conducted with matching or unmatched case? Did they span embedded blanks, NSB, tabs, hyphens, underscores, slashes, …?

    But yes, if she had intended to be honest, she would have sent them all and let the system sort them out. Doesn’t trust the process.

    htom (4ca1fa)

  17. It was mentioned elsewhere that GEN Petraeus will be pleading guilty to keeping notebooks containing classified information in a desk in his home.

    The same law applies to Bill, Hilary, and their minions keeping classified information on the clinton.com server.

    slp (347e33)

  18. IOW, it’s business as usual.

    I BEG to differ.

    This is Hillary

    It’s government as usual…

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  19. Hmmm.

    I wonder how this is going to affect the TV ratings for “Madame Secretary“…???

    IGotBupkis, "Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses." (225d0d)

  20. Time to remove expired product from your shelves, Donks.

    Boosh will not make the ticket.

    DNF (0ed5fc)

  21. “Don’t you wish that you could conduct YOUR business like the Government conducts
    theirs?

    Without all those pesky laws and regulations and stiff penalties for failure to
    comply?

    And without vast organizations devoted to ferreting out those who aren’t conducting
    their business in a lawful manner and who then will seize and arrest anyone involved
    in said misconduct?”

    Actually, no. Because if I could do it, so could everybody else. That would be anarchy, and I have no doubts about where that would lead, at least for me. I’m in my 50’s, prone to gout, with high blood pressure, and bad teeth. I’d end up on the bottom of the heap, whimpering.

    What I wish is that the Political Class would STOP doing it. Mostly the Left, though we have plenty of evidence of would-be Royal behavior on the Right too.

    C. S. P. Schofield (a196fd)

  22. I don’t know why everyone is picking on hillary. It is not as though she has not been through enough for this country. I mean like lying for bjc so she could continue her service as first lady.

    It is probably that she just doesn’t remember anything pertinent.

    Jim (defd88)

  23. In a Gallup poll taken before Hillary’s press conference, out of 1,522 adults, 50 percent of respondents had a favorable view of her compared to 39 percent with a negative impression.

    And what does that say about us, about we the American public? The 50 percent must contain at least some non-liberal, non-leftist people, and certainly more than a handful who are fairly well-informed. Yet there it is, there they are.

    The story of Hillary (or Obama too) really is a story of the USA in the 21st century — of its populace and all the trappings around them — and the phrase “bread and circuses” comes to mind.

    I’m not sure if the phrase “this will not end well” should also come to mind, or the theory that great nations have a shelf life of around 200 years.

    Mark (c160ec)

  24. Don’t you think she looks tired?

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  25. Peggy Noonan thins she looks tired.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  26. Hillary’s ‘in no ways tired’ she’s showing her contempt

    narciso (ee1f88)

  27. at this time, though, she hasn’t staked a strong opposition to any of his policies, this is why it seems odd, they would take her out now,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  28. they have to take her out now cause Team R tipped its hand about how we’ve got Tim Cotton’s Giant Brain on our side and we’re not afraid to use it

    Hillary’s in no way prepared to fend against an assault of this level of hyper-genius and Obama knows it

    the entire game board is in disarray

    happyfeet (831175)

  29. is it like completely obvious now that the obama administration or its benefactors dont want to pass the torch to a clinton because maybe shes not hard left enough…

    who the FUCK is william t. santiago (beb21b)

  30. seeRpea (b6bbec) — 3/13/2015 @ 5:12 pm

    the person who came up with the criteria?

    That was negotiated by Hillary Clinton’s lawyers with the state Department.

    It would be hard to prove that any government records were deleted with the mail deleted after the State Department had pronounced itself (at leats temporarily) satisfied.

    Sammy Finkelman (a551ff)

  31. The amusing thing about your comment @31, Mr. feets, is that you think you were being satirical.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  32. how’s the wetlands problem, Steve?

    narciso (ee1f88)

  33. Minor compared to the problems I’m having with the US Fish & Wildlife service over the Endangered Species Act. Apparently a rare subspecies of salamander has laid eggs in that puddle the feds declared a wetland and now my dogs can’t go to the bathroom in my back yard any more.

    I may have to move out of the house entirely because my very existence is causing a disturbance, they say.

    Their claims would be more believable if they didn’t insist on including on their list of conditions I have to comply with unlimited access to my blender so they can make Margaritas and that they get to pick the music.

    I think they’re with the Secret Service.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  34. yikes, and I’m pretty sure, you’re not exaggerating considering the folks that “Richard Windsor’ sneaked into the department,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  35. 31. they have to take her out now cause Team R tipped its hand about how we’ve got Tim Cotton’s Giant Brain on our side and we’re not afraid to use it

    Hillary’s in no way prepared to fend against an assault of this level of hyper-genius and Obama knows it

    the entire game board is in disarray

    happyfeet (831175) — 3/14/2015 @ 10:06 am

    Obama knows Hillary! is in no way prepared to fend of an assault launched from the hyper-genius of Tom Cotton’s brain because neither is Obama and his Freshman Dorm presidency.

    And yes, the entire game board is in disarray.

    http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/03/cotton-letter-smokes-out-dangerous-concession-to-iran/

    …Shouldn’t the Constitution be the standard by which the Republican claims are judged? Finally, there’s Kerry’s famous declaration at the time the Joint Plan of Action was signed in November 2013 that the agreement was not based on trust. So if the agreement is not based on trust and it’s non-binding what “mechanism” will there to be verify that Iran isn’t overtly or covertly pursuing an illicit nuclear program?

    More and more I’m convinced that Cotton’s reason for writing the letter was to smoke out the administration on this point.

    …Corker pointed out that various senior administration officials had promised to take any deal to Congress, so in addition to the “affront to the American people,” the administration is going back on its word.

    …Corker wasn’t the only Republican to object to administration’s plan of bringing the agreement to the U.N. Security Council, and, at first the National Security Council (NSC) pushed back against these reports, as Jennifer Rubin observed.

    …But then over the weekend Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, in a letter to Corker, no longer pretended that Security Council would not be involved.

    …The administration’s incoherent response to the Cotton letter suggests that it wasn’t ready for the Security Council gambit to be revealed. It looks like Kerry and other administration sources, hoping to evade the issue, used the “non-binding” defense to say that the administration is not negotiating a treaty.

    …Intentionally or not I think that McDonough gave away the game when he wrote, “We agree that Congress will have a role to play…”

    The administration doesn’t see Congress as a partner in these negotiations. Tom Cotton’s letter forced that out. That is why they still haven’t forgiven him. Meanwhile, those who aren’t distracted by the administration’s feigned outrage, are starting to figure out the scope of the administration’s capitulation to Iran.

    So, yes, Tom Cotton was playing three dimensional chess while the Resident-Assistant-in-Chief thought he was playing a slick game of checkers. And Tom Cotton messed up his game board.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  36. Cockroaches just hate it when you shine light on them.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  37. I really don’t have an issue with the WH doing this, but the timing?
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/16/white-house-foia-regulations-deleted/24844253/

    (the regulations were not real, the Bush WH for sure didn’t follow them so it is not Barak thing. plus the courts have held the regulation were without merit)

    seeRpea (181740)

  38. re #34: I can’t find it now, but a while back there was a story about a family that killed some animals that had encroached on their land due to the animals being on the protected list. So they killed them before the Feds would see the animals.

    iirc, loggers in Oregon were killing owls for much the same reason. this was before a law was passed making it illegal to kill animals that you knew were endangered.

    seeRpea (181740)

  39. re #36: hmm, any reason to believe that Cotton is conniving enough to have that as his plan?

    seeRpea (181740)

  40. @38, especially given this news.

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/03/at-the-national-archives-living-in-fear.php

    The Free Beacon reports on the news buried in an op-column by AP president Gary Pruitt on the undermining of the Freedom of Information Act by “authorities” (to use Pruitt’s anodyne term) responsible for compliance with it.

    …In any event, this is news:

    In government emails that AP obtained in reporting about who pays for Michelle Obama’s expensive dresses, the National Archives and Records Administration blacked out one sentence repeatedly, citing a part of the law intended to shield personal information such as Social Security numbers or home addresses.

    The blacked-out sentence? The government slipped and let it through on one page of the redacted documents: “We live in constant fear of upsetting the WH (White House).”

    …Daniel Greenfield concisely comments at FrontPage: “This is what life under tyranny looks like.”

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  41. 40. re #36: hmm, any reason to believe that Cotton is conniving enough to have that as his plan?
    seeRpea (181740) — 3/16/2015 @ 4:04 pm

    Conniving? Let me put it this way; all indications are that Cotton actually is as smart if not smarter then Obama’s circle of sycophants have led Obama to meritlessly believe he is. And of course as a combat leader in the sandbox he would have learned to see through the conniving of his enemies.

    Muhammad said all war is deception. Obama sees politics the same way. While Cotton doesn’t strike me as a conniver, he has plenty of experience screwing up other people’s conniving.

    Obama isn’t nearly as slick as he thinks he is. He’s a B-list intellect and that’s why he has C-list people like Kerry working for him; so they won’t show him up.

    Cotton showed him up before the fait was accompli, which is why they’re PO’d.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  42. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/03/good-news-irans-negotiators-raise-cotton-letter.php

    …If the Iranians did “confront” John Kerry over the letter, no doubt they wanted to know how Kerry can guarantee that any agreement will survive past 2016.

    There is one, and only one, answer to that question: submit the agreement to the Senate for ratification as a treaty by a two-thirds vote. Absent such action, the agreement will be, as John Kerry has said repeatedly, non-binding. Clarifying that fact with the Iranian regime can only be a good thing.

    Or, clarifying the fact that Prom Queen wants a really bad deal that gives Iran everything it wants and harms America’s national security interests (which is what President Mean Girl wants, since he thinks the US is the font of all evil in the world and must be punished) can only be a good thing, too.

    Whatever Senator Menendez’s faults, he was right about one thing. The administration’s selling points for the “Grand Bargain” unconditional surrender that let’s the Iranians have nukes and cedes the region to their hegemony were written for them in Tehran.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  43. they should’ve had hearings

    the letter was no good

    happyfeet (cba186)

  44. They have had hearings; it was in those hearings that Menendez called out the administration about the fact they were acting as the domestic agents of the Mullahs. It was during those hearings, when a state department official said the administration would consult with the Senate Foreign Relations committee, that Rubio called out that official for lying to him when that official said the same thing about any change in Cuba policy. But the administration gave away the farm to Cuba first, then told the Senate about the done deal after it was too late to do anything about it. And the letter was just fine. And it upset Obama’s plans to use the same play with Iran against the Senate that it used when it made its deal with Cuba.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/democrats-prepared-to-buck-white-house-on-iran-nuclear-deal-116088.html

    Spare me the fake outrage. Cotton wrote an open letter, and 47 GOP Senators signed onto it, that publicly gave a grade school level civics lesson to anyone who read it. When you cut through the BS not even the Senate Democrats can maintain with a straight face that they’re actually upset over it.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  45. you love this letter

    i do not

    i have no affection for this letter`

    America elected a fascist whore

    the fascist whore foreign policies that come with it are just a bonus

    let the cowardly Team R senate trash tend their own garden

    happyfeet (831175)

  46. The letter is here.

    http://www.cotton.senate.gov/sites/default/files/signature.pdf

    Do I love this letter? It’s a short, boring letter. There’s nothing about the letter to love. There is nothing about the letter to hate. It’s about as exciting as a letter from the Senate parliamentarian explaining arcane points of parliamentary procedure. They didn’t even send the letter anywhere. It’s an open letter to nowhere. They just wrote it and let everyone read it and explained that the sun still rises in the East and sets in the West even if King Putt is our preezy.

    What I love is the hysterical administration overreaction. They chose sides, and they’re not on our side. Which is why President Justin Beiber and his in-house fan club have to tell ridiculous lies about it. They think we’re too stupid to read a letter (can you read the letter, Mr. feets?). But ultimately they have to admit the letter is 100% correct. As Kerry was forced to admit several times between lies to the Senate Foreign Relations committee, any deal between Obama and the Mullahs is not legally binding unless it’s ratified by the Senate or enacted by Congress.

    Which is all the letter says.

    Nobody who reads the letter can possibly be upset over it. Which is why the Senate Dems aren’t upset over it.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  47. i would like to take this opportunity to endorse Mr. benjamin netanyahu for prime minister

    he’s a good guy he’ll do a way better job than chuy for sure

    happyfeet (831175)

  48. @48, yes this administration has to lie about that, too.

    Steve57 (d68bce)

  49. well that’s a given, but the wurlitzer’s echoing the claim, as if the last 26 years haven’t happened, this is the term of that fatwa,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  50. There is nothing about the letter to hate.

    the letter is a precedent

    and i fear you do not understand how this works because you do not understand how stupid vile and dishonorable failmericans are

    you are too honorable and too nice and you make tasty stews with beer

    so i will give you a clue

    what did shitmerica vote to do after attaining victory in iraq at great great cost of monies and lives?

    they elected a fascist whore! (he said something about building firehouses)

    and then he spent a goddamn ruinous amount of money predicated on the amount of money that the stupid vainglorious bushtards had spent on their fancy lil wars

    (and handed Iraq to ISIS)

    but the key thing is: the silly iraq war became a cited precedent for even more egregious spending follies

    what follies will you ameritards rationalize through the invocation of hyper-genius Tom Cotton’s letter?

    oh my goodness i can’t wait to find out

    happyfeet (831175)

  51. i need my comment de-moderatered

    i am being oppressed and filtrated

    this is rank injustice

    happyfeet (831175)

  52. now mind the committee chairman won’t even sign his name to a letter, but this is Top Men at work

    narciso (ee1f88)

  53. the way i see it if we’re gonna let saudi royal pervert trash have the bomb

    we might as well let their hoochies drive cars

    happyfeet (831175)

  54. And so it begins, happyfeet. Patterico did warn us.

    nk (dbc370)

  55. yes.

    but it’s different when it happens to you

    i feel so violated

    happyfeet (831175)

  56. what is the problem with Cotton’s letter? I mean, what is to dislike?
    As for Netenyahu’s party coming out ahead in the vote – i highly doubt it. There is quite a deal of Netenyahu Fatigue in Israel. The “anyone but Bibi” vote is quite potent. Doesn’t mean his policies are not approved of, but the person does wear out.
    (why i doubt the current PotUS would get away with serving as PotUS for any time past 1/20/2016 ,
    and why i don’t think H.C. is such a given)

    seeRpea (181740)

  57. there’s nothing wrong with it, yes it’s possible, for the Israeli’s to ‘choose poorly’
    c

    narciso (ee1f88)

  58. “it’s possible, for the Israeli’s to ‘choose poorly’”

    I think this could be their equivalent of our 2012 election but they have more to lose and much less of a margin.

    “I told you so” is not much good when the situation is rubble. Churchill came as close to being able to do so as anyone this millennium but refrained from saying it.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  59. Churchill’s part lost in the 1944 election

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  60. oh for crying out loud, https://mail.clintonemail.com/ is still taking logins.

    seeRpea (b6bbec)


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