Patterico's Pontifications

3/8/2015

Hillary And The White House: Getting Lost In The Tangled Web

Filed under: General — Dana @ 10:03 pm



[guest post by Dana]

(Hillary’s email scandal is getting messier by the day. With each new revelation, it gets that much harder to keep things straight.)

It’s always tough to keep the thread of a “story” simple and tight. The more people involved, the more complicated it becomes. One loose thread, and the whole thing threatens to unravel. Ari Fleischer points out the difficult position the White House now finds itself in with regard to Hillary’s brewing email scandal:

“It’s an extraordinarily delicate dance they have to do to not throw someone overboard, but not get anyone in the White House in deeper trouble.”

On Friday, Josh Earnest attempted to address when the White House learned about Hillary’s private email account and server:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, when asked about what the White House knew, said senior officials were emailing Clinton while she was secretary of state and a few noticed she wasn’t using a .gov email address. However, he did not say when they noticed it and whether red flags were raised.

He also said he had no idea when President Obama first found out and claimed he wouldn’t be surprised if Obama only learned about it from “newspapers.”

Par for the course and surprising no one, President Obama confirmed Earnest’s suggestion and claimed that he learned of this scandal – as he has with so many other scandals involving his administration – via the news:

President Obama only learned of Hillary Clinton’s private email address use for official State Department business after a New York Times report, he told CBS News in an interview.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante asked Mr. Obama when he learned about her private email system after his Saturday appearance in Selma, Alabama.

“The same time everybody else learned it through news reports,” the president told Plante.

It’s interesting that the president, Josh Earnest and Valerie Jarrett all denied knowing Hillary used a private account maintained by servers at her residence.

How is that possible?

“The White House, State Department and Hillary Clinton’s personal office knew in August that House Republicans had received information showing that the former secretary of state conducted official government business through her private email account — and Clinton’s staff made the decision to keep quiet.”

Further, if one of them knew, do you think that individual would sit on the information?

John Cook, the executive editor for investigations at Gawker Media, said in 2013, after emails from Clinton to Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, leaked, he “alerted” White House press secretary Josh Earnest that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was using a private email account.

Cook said it was “strange,” President Obama said Saturday he learned about Hillary Clinton exclusively emailing all official State Department business using her private email account when she was serving in his administration from the news, because Cook explained, “I alerted his spokesperson in 2013. I saw it coming from the White House. It’s not like we published a story and they missed it. I emailed Josh Earnest, who is now his spokesperson, and said this email address exists. Does it comport with the presidential records act and freedom of information act. I got no response.”

–Dana

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: “On the news,” eh? That’s also how he found out about the IRS scandal. (Obama said: “I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.”)

And the VA scandal. (Jay Carney said: “I believe, we learned about them through reports.”)

Also Fast and Furious, DOJ wiretapping of reporters, and Air Force One being used for a photo op in lower Manhattan.

This video is an oldie but a goodie, and still relevant today:

133 Responses to “Hillary And The White House: Getting Lost In The Tangled Web”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (86e864)

  2. Remember when it was a big scandal that political people in the Bush White House had separate email accounts, government run ones for government business and Republican National Committee run ones for politics, which it would have been illegal to use the government email accounts for?

    max (4fdf98)

  3. If I were just a regular Joe on the street, at some point I might start to question why the President of the United States of America only knows what he reads in the papers.

    Seriously, the leader of the free world depends on the New York Times to tell him what is going on in his administration?

    Can someone from the left explain to me exactly why that makes him the greatest President of all time? Really?

    Ag80 (eb6ffa)

  4. Can someone from the left explain to me exactly why that makes him the greatest President of all time? Really?

    your racism is disgusting… i denounce you.

    nest question?

    redc1c4 (269d8e)

  5. #4 should read “next question, you bigot?” at the end.

    😎

    redc1c4 (269d8e)

  6. I read elsewhere that the Clinton server was hacked by some Romanian hacker. I would have to guess that whatever was on that server is now known to that hacker and his/her friends. I do not see that as a good thing since all indications are that Hillary! was conducting State Department business, AKA US foreign policy, via that server. All the back and forth of that is now out there someplace.

    Those who are charged with securing our nation have no idea what cats are out of what bags at this point. Hillary! has apparently released some of the emails to State and allowing their release. I would be more interested in those she is not releasing.

    Every email I receive has the address it was sent from in the header; I would guess that is the same for her. We are supposed to believe that for 4 years people all over the government received email messages from her and no one raised up to the fact that it did not have a “dot-gov” address. Oh, please…

    Bill Plant of CBS asked about when Obama learned of this “issue” and the response was that he got if from the news just like the rest of us, and added something about transparent administrations. Plant tossed back a softball… when he had Obama belt-high in the center of the plate, and he took a called strike. Very disappointing, but not unexpected.

    Gramps, the original (9e1415)

  7. Well, at least employees of the IRS aren’t so wacky with their emails, and it deserves to be said that brave, heroic Hillary as First Lady was almost gunned down when ducking a blaze of gunfire on an airport tarmac in Serbia. So, sheesh, people, give this current administration and all its minions some slack.

    Mark (c160ec)

  8. Patterico,

    Remember when you went after Alberto Gonzales for some underhanded removal of US Attorneys? Seems quaint now.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  9. As for the President learning this from the news, either he is the biggest liar every to sit in the Oval Office or the least attentive. When Reagan, whom the Left thought to be dumber than a lamppost, said they same kind of thing about Iran/Contra, they wanted to impeach him. Obama says this weekly and the Left and the press (BIRM) accept it without comment.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  10. Petraeus just pled guilty to, among other things, sending classified email to a personal account. In the announcement of Hillary’s private mail account, the State Department said “don’t worry, it’s all backed up and we’ll release those emails that are not classified. Exhibit 1, your Honor.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  11. Yes (10), any and all classified docs on that server after Clinton left State were literally in the hands of a private individual.

    bob (8a11b2)

  12. The voters who will make hillary the next president don’t care about e-mails. they want to know can they get a job filling up the lime pit conservatives are swimming in.

    truther (ea49df)

  13. What kind of world do we have when John Cook can believe the laws were meant for Hillary to obey and believe that all this evil would stop if only the King/Stalin/Obama knew? Truly, can anyone be this naive?

    ErisGuy (76f8a7)

  14. As someone pointed out over at AoS, this statement from the White House means that Hillary never sent an email to the President or his staff in the entire 4 years she was Secretary of State.

    Xmas (bfaacb)

  15. Cue for team republican to step in and delay the investigation.

    mg (31009b)

  16. The much better looking Dana wrote:

    It’s always tough to keep the thread of a “story” simple and tight. The more people involved, the more complicated it becomes. One loose thread, and the whole thing threatens to unravel.

    Well, it’s easy enough to keep the thread of a story simple and tight, when it’s the truth; it’s only when the story is a lie that it becomes a problem.

    The brutally honest Dana (f6a568)

  17. Mr M wrote:

    As for the President learning this from the news, either he is the biggest liar every to sit in the Oval Office or the least attentive.

    What makes you think that it can’t be both?

    The Dana noting a third possibility (f6a568)

  18. Perry’s lust for genocide is insatiable.

    JD (86a5eb)

  19. 14. As someone pointed out over at AoS, this statement from the White House means that Hillary never sent an email to the President or his staff in the entire 4 years she was Secretary of State.

    Xmas (bfaacb) — 3/9/2015 @ 2:54 am

    Maybe she used her email just to solicit donations for her slush fund/foundation from foreign entities? Apparently that’s how she used her position as SecState.

    It’s been fun watching liberals twist in the wind when Hillary! critics ask them to name one, just one, thing she accomplished as SecState. Now it’s becoming apparent why she didn’t get a single thing done. She was using her position entirely for her own personal benefit.

    I’d love to be on one of those panel discussions, because that would be my smart @$$ comment every time liberals struggled to praise her tenure.

    Liberal: She traveled hundreds of thousands of miles.

    Me: To solicit money.

    Liberal: She knows every important head of state.

    Me: And asked them for money.

    Liberal: She focused on women’s issues.

    Me: It was a cash cow for her foundation.

    You get the drift.

    http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/02/the-u-s-constitution-actually-bans-hillarys-foreign-government-payola/

    …The official Team Clinton defense is that this whole thing is no big deal because the Clinton Foundation uses all that money to save lives, and who doesn’t want to save lives?

    …When anyone contributes to the Clinton Foundation, it actually goes toward fat salaries, administrative bloat, and lavish travel.

    Between 2009 and 2012, the Clinton Foundation raised over $500 million dollars according to a review of IRS documents by The Federalist (2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008). A measly 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went towards programmatic grants. More than $25 million went to fund travel expenses. Nearly $110 million went toward employee salaries and benefits. And a whopping $290 million during that period — nearly 60 percent of all money raised — was classified merely as “other expenses.”

    When I was in the Navy we had this annual charity drive called the Combined Federal Campaign. You could donate or designate part of your salary to go to the charity of your choice. As long as your charity was listed in the catalog. It had to meet certain legitimacy requirements. Only so much money could go to overhead. The major percentage of donations would have to go to the causes the charity purported to support. If memory serves those percentages were listed in the catalog, because some charities went beyond the minimum requirements and cut overhead to the bone. If an entity existed primarily for the benefit of the people administering it then it didn’t qualify as a legitimate charity and couldn’t be included in the CFC.

    The Clinton Foundation would not qualify as a legitimate charity.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  20. At what point does the MFM, and the Dems, get tired of standing out in front of this nonsense making arses of themselves. I know, right? Nevermind

    JD (86a5eb)

  21. wanna see some of those emails?

    they are apparently available here and here.

    redc1c4 (dab236)

  22. Did Obama learn of this from the news or from his consigliere?

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  23. Cheryl Attkinson has a good article President Present learning about scandals only when they are reported on in the media – he has to be the most out-of-the-loop President ever.
    http://sharylattkisson.com/8-times-obama-says-he-was-way-out-of-the-loop/

    She also has one on Obama Administration officials using private e-mails.
    http://dailysignal.com/2015/03/08/high-ranking-federal-officials-history-using-personal-email-government-business/

    Walter Cronanty (f48cd5)

  24. ==At what point does the MFM, and the Dems, get tired of standing out in front of this nonsense…==

    They won’t, JD. They think of themselves as noble– almost like the secret service. Willing to take a bullet for their team.

    elissa (d23274)

  25. They will never tire of it as long as it works.

    Dana (65f87f)

  26. Noble, yes. Theit lies in the service of the narrative are noble. That’s exactly how the elitists in politics and the LHMFM desccribe their lies about Islam being a religion of peace describe their lies. Many of them know better. But no matter how bad ISIS is, they think we are worse.

    Steve57 (7aca94)

  27. Gramps raises an excellent point that many in the media are overlooking. Keeping official emails on a private server creates two problems: (1) it allows the user to withhold damaging emails from legitimate public oversight, responses to subpoenas, FOIA requests, etc. and (2) a private email server is generally less secure, making it easier for hackers to access sensitive information.

    Everyone is focused on No. 1, but No. 2 is potentially even more damaging.

    Original Bored Lawyer (d869b1)

  28. The email story had to wait on the back burner while the President decided what color the dress was.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  29. Just like us. 🙂

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  30. Liberalism is a mental illness, and the way people of the left (particularly in the media) do ridiculous, absurd contortionist routines to rationalize away the cruddy aspects of Hillary Clinton, much less her former boss, illustrates that. But the fact a good percentage of people in the US consider Hillary a viable candidate for the presidency says what about this nation’s populace?

    Straitjackets and rubber rooms required for many Americans!

    Mark (c160ec)

  31. UPDATE BY PATTERICO: “On the news,” eh? That’s also how he found out about the IRS scandal. (Obama said: “I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this.”)

    And the VA scandal. (Jay Carney said: “I believe, we learned about them through reports.”)

    Also Fast and Furious, DOJ wiretapping of reporters, and Air Force One being used for a photo op in lower Manhattan.

    This video is an oldie but a goodie, and still relevant today:

    Patterico (9c670f)

  32. IRS scandal – President was busy learning to dance Gangnam style.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  33. The Clinton Foundation would not qualify as a legitimate charity.

    I believe the Salvation Army is one of the few major, well-known charities not guilty of giving a large portion of its donations to overhead, particularly to executives. By contrast, organizations like the Red Cross are notorious for having highly paid, overpaid administrators. That’s why, when it comes to the work of entities supposedly looking out for the welfare of the common man, I stopped donating to what I previously believed were deserving charitable causes.

    Cultural or educational causes are a different matter, although the fat-cat salaries common at most universities — whose budgets have been growing well above the rate of inflation for years — should make alumni pause when considering the parameters of gifts to their alma mater.

    Mark (c160ec)

  34. Question: Would you vote Hillary Clinton for President in 2016? (asked of California Democrats 4 months ago)
    43% – YES, 57% – NO

    Online poll. Just those from California.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  35. that’s because Shrillery isn’t far enough left for voters here in #Failifornia

    redc1c4 (a6e73d)

  36. Re: # 35 It just looks wrong to me no matter which way I flip it.
    Could that include GOP voters?
    Someone check. I could be full of the fecal matter on that. Unintentionally of course 😉

    Guess who skipped the hug fest/righteous condemnation of whitie at Selma the other day?

    hint: they were tending to the Clinton Foundation and there was a pussy rioteer on hand.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  37. Mark @33
    I have found this site to be useful
    http://www.charitynavigator.org/

    They do not seem to have the Clinton Foundation in their database.

    kishnevi (9c4b9c)

  38. Too bad Clinton missed the boat. If there’s a time and place on Earth desperately crying out for a Sister Souljah moment it was Selma Alabama Saturday.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  39. 1: it was not ‘ipso facto’ illegal at the time. Against WH policy – yes , but not illegal.
    2: Happens all the time that people do not realize that who the email is from is not quite where it should be “From”. It is one of the major phishing vectors of attack. And I do it when I email work from my home pc.
    3: would email go straight from SecState to the PotUS, whith out involvement of underlings?
    4: the rules regarding gov’t emails were setup by Progressives, why do you think they would care about following their own rules when it is far more important to defeat and keep down the evil Conservatives and Libertarians.

    If the Gawker’s Cook story is true, well then the WH has to look for a new spokesman.
    a spokesman is easy to toss.

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  40. Yes, papertiger, Hillary entirely missed the Selma commemoration. George W. Bush didn’t miss it. He was there in the front row crossing the Pettus bridge. But you’d never know it because the NYT cropped him out of the picture to put President Obama front and center.

    elissa (d23274)

  41. i didn’t go to Selma

    after something becomes an Oprah thing I just can’t get excited

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  42. re #40: about cropping the Bush’es out of the photo. I can’t believe this, but I am about to defend the NYTimes about the photo. elissa’s line of ‘put President Obama front and center’ is actually not far off the mark. given the space and wanting to keep the people recognizable , the cropping delivered one of the better results. No good way to keep all the Bushes in the photo with PotUS. Mrs Bush could have been put in without damaging the needs of the photo but the former Pres was too far away. I can’t complain about the photo used.

    Did they fail to mention the Bush’es in the story?

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  43. Remember: when it comes to the Clintons — we don’t know about Chelsea yet — if it’s a choice between telling a truth that won’t hurt them, and a lie that won’t help them, they’ll always tell the lie.

    The truthful Dana (f6a568)

  44. @Selma – did any of the MSM mention that the ‘Powers in Charge’ at the time were Democrats?

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  45. seeRpea asked:

    would email go straight from SecState to the PotUS, whith out involvement of underlings?

    One assumes that an e-mail from the Secretary of State for the President wouldn’t be LOLCats, and that it would only contain information that the Secretary saw as important for the President to have; with e-mail, the “need” for Rosemary Woods to screen that stuff is diminished, and even if one of the President’s minions saw it first, if it was deemed important enough for the President to see, he’d either be told it was on his screen to see, or printed out, which normally includes the sender’s address.

    The e-mail savvy Dana (f6a568)

  46. The ghost of Democrat Nationasl Committee member Bull Conner haunted the proceedings… and those of the KKK, another Democrat bulwark…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  47. ake that “National”.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  48. my work here are dun…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  49. The crowd is overlooking the weasel words. ValJar and Obama say “solely” and “exclusively.” Earnest says he didn’t receive one, etc. Their web of deceit is so thoroughly ingrained the weasel words flow effortlessly.

    crazy (cde091)

  50. seeRpea–I am sure there is a composition case that can be made. But the pic they showed just has Obama and a few marchers with the long view of marchers behind him. The “real” picture includes the upper nameplate of the “Pettus Bridge” (which is kind of important to place the location and date), and the entire front row of marchers. The pictures to compare are are at a link I saw, I think at Althouse. I am not as charitable as you about this. Yes, I believe somewhere down in the article the NYT mentioned GWB was there.

    elissa (d23274)

  51. I didn’t go to Selma, but I have participated in Civil War reenactments.
    About the same thing isn’t it?

    Actually I think CWR trumps make believe civil rights marches. We shed fake blood, for their fake photo op.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  52. one time i went to the zoo and saw a polar bear with green fur

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  53. Did Attorney General Eric Holder Use Personal Email Address? http://sharylattkisson.com/did-attorney-general-eric-holder-use-personal-email-address/ … via @SharylAttkisson

    Good question! Who is this girl? A REAL journalist. As rare as a green polar bear.

    Lisa Jackson – Presinit Obam’s appointed head of the EPA – used fake email accounts to avoid FOIA.
    Hillary Clinton – used out of the dot gov system personal servers to avoid FOIA.

    Extent of my knowledge.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  54. re #50: there are plenty of photos/freezeframes of the parade out on the web. Take a couple of them and crop the photo so that it would fit in a newspaper layout with the condition that as much as it cringes, the PotUS needs to be a focal point. Then post the result where we can see it.
    Then we can see how viable the criticism is.

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  55. Actually I think CWR trumps make believe civil rights marches.

    Depends on which side you’re on.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  56. Greetings:

    What continues to amaze me some is the absolute absence of the infamous “Richard Windsor” e-mails of Lisa Jackson former Aministratress, and paragon of virtue, of the illustrious Environmental Protection Agency from all the media and otherwise analyses that are being produced and/or bandied about.

    Am I to assume that that previous bit of malfeasance produced no corrective action within or by the executive branch ???

    11B40 (844d04)

  57. Only in your and NYT’s mind did Obama “need” to be focal point. 🙂 The Pettus Bridge, which was principal to the event in 1965, was and is the focal point of Bloody Sunday. Not President Selfie.

    elissa (d23274)

  58. re #56: because no one in the MSM can raise the spectre of ‘National Security’ about fake EPA emails.
    Didn’t she also send to the EPA emails under a fake name?

    seeRpea (181740)

  59. Shebus, guys, the email thing is pure distraction. Let’s pay attention to the multi-billion dollar legalized bribery scandal instead, what say?

    mojo (a3d457)

  60. papertiger @53, you missed at least one.

    http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2014/10/yes-there-is-worse-than-eric-holder-meet-tom-perez-2920816.html

    …Perez has a record of duplicity and dishonesty, sometimes even under oath. As Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under Holder, Perez famously set up a parallel email system so he could conduct his most controversial business using email accounts unreachable by federal law, or even a Justice Department Inspector General. On these private email accounts, he conducted some his dirtiest dealings, like shaking down St. Paul Minnesota to ensure that the Supreme Court wouldn’t get to hear an appeal that might invalidate some of the prized racial set asides this administration cherishes…

    The House Republicans were suing Perez to gain access to those emails. Perez was fighting to keep those emails private.

    Those emails, needless to say, are government property. He’s a salaried employee of the USG. His emails are a work product, and belong to his employer. Which is ultimately us. Naturally the criminal conspiracy called the Obama administration couldn’t care less about this theft.

    The Senate Republicans were supposed to care, and vowed to make his conduct as Assistant AG an issue when Obama nominated Thomas Perez to be his labor secretary.

    Naturally he was approved with strong Republican support.

    But the bottom line is that it’s standard practice in the Obama administration to use alternate email and messaging systems to evade record keeping and accountability laws.

    That’s why Obama can smugly assert no one will ever uncover even a smidgen of corruption. He figures they’re all too slick for anyone to dig up the evidence of the dump truck loads of corruption his administration produces every day.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  61. “We shall overwhelm… with Bullsh*t.”

    – Brarack Hussein Obama

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  62. Mollie Hemmingway has a nice piece on this at The Federalist today.

    http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/09/bribes-disguised-as-charitable-gifts-hillary-clintons-possible-legal-trouble/

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  63. Plus Josh Earnest admitted today that Hillary and Barky did email each other. Wait until Barky reads about that!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  64. This is rich. Obama corresponded with Hillary on her private account, but really didn’t know….and of course, never asked.“The president, as I think many people expected, did over the course of his first several years in office trade emails with his secretary of state,” Earnest said. “I would not describe the number of emails as large, but they did have the occasion to email each other.”

    Earnest’s admission comes after Obama said on CBS on Saturday that he learned about Clinton’s use of a private email and server “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.” According to Earnest, this comment should not be assumed to mean that Obama and Clinton never emailed back and forth.
    “The point that the president was making is not that he didn’t know Secretary Clinton’s email address, he did,” Earnest said. “But he was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act.”

    http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/obama-hillary-clinton-personal-email-115899.html

    Walter Cronanty (f48cd5)

  65. Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 3/8/2015 @ 10:38 pm

    Seriously, the leader of the free world depends on the New York Times to tell him what is going on in his administration?

    I think John F. Kennedy said that.

    And I think it is accepted wisdom in Washington that sometimes people leak things to get the attention of their superiors.

    Sammy Finkelman (a551ff)

  66. …I assume that he recognized the email address that he was emailing back to,” before saying that the important issue is whether she complied with the Federal Records Act.

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/obama-hillary-clinton-personal-email-115899.html#ixzz3Tv6ZFRa8

    She didn’t comply with the FRA. That isn’t even open to question. Setting up one’s own email server in one’s own home thus placing government documents in private hands and outside government control is the very definition of not complying with the FRA.

    Had she complied with the FRA those government documents would have been stored on government servers. The whole purpose of the FRA is to take the bureaucrat out of the loop. If the government apparetchik is in the loop, so that their decisions and actions effect compliance with the FRA, then they have violated the FRA.

    Using the government system equals compliance with the FRA. Doing an end run around the government system by setting up a private, alternate system equals non-compliance with the FRA. It’s that simple.

    The only question is how many other laws did Hillary! break.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  67. 11B40 wrote:

    What continues to amaze me some is the absolute absence of the infamous “Richard Windsor” e-mails of Lisa Jackson former Aministratress, and paragon of virtue, of the illustrious Environmental Protection Agency from all the media and otherwise analyses that are being produced and/or bandied about.

    I believe that the correct title would be Administratrix. Please make a note of it.

    The English major Dana (f6a568)

  68. Steve57 (71fc09) — 3/9/2015 @ 1:00 pm
    I find Earnest’s contention, undoubtedly at the behest of Obama, that Obama was really in the dark about Hillary using a private server, while e-mailing her at hdr22@clintonemail.com, or one of her other e-mail accountants [hdr@clintonemail.com; hdr18@clintonemail.com; hdr19@clintonemail.com; hdr20@clintonemail.com; hdr21@clintonemail.com; h.clinton@clintonemail.com; •Hillary@clintonemail.com; contact@clintonemail.com; mau_suit@clintonemail.com] to be laughable. If you were President and were e-mailing something important to your Secretary of State, wouldn’t you be the least bit curious about an e-mail address ending in “clintonemail.com?”
    But, I guess being a laughingstock hasn’t bothered Earnest or Obama in the past – why should it now?

    Walter Cronanty (f48cd5)

  69. josh-earnest-actually-obama-did-trade-emails-with-hillary

    Which means subsequent to Obama’s last lie, the one on CBS where he “heard about it from news reports” Obama figured out he had hung himself out to dry if Hillary suddenly produced one of the copious amounts of discourse between the two she has squirreled away.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  70. During the wikileaks affair some of Snowden’s disclosure of confidential documents contained Hillary Clinton either email or transcribed phone conversations. I can’t remember which.
    It struck me at the time because in a secure forum, away from public or private eavesdroppers, Hillary was giving the same angle of perspective, style of delivery, and content, as she did in public.

    It shocked me. I never figured Hillary could do honesty.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  71. odd how the Huntress was given no deference back then:

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/03/09/gov-palin-faced-tough-questions-over-email-so-should-hillary-clinton/

    of course they weren’t really interested in the contents of her email,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  72. quel surprise… Present-snit Obola lied…

    redc1c4 (269d8e)

  73. meanwhile, in other news, HRH doesn’t need approval from the Senate for any deal with Iran

    redc1c4 (269d8e)

  74. 70. The behaviorists tell us our pet canines have memories lasting but a few minutes.

    Give them the vote, its wasted on us.

    DNF (73e8af)

  75. Have Rubio or Rand Paul made a statement about ethanol subsidies? I don’t think they were in Iowa, DNF.

    elissa (bd542b)

  76. 76. Watched Rubes on FNC today and he’s definitely agin’ oppressive regulation but no specific proscriptions.

    Yesterday RaPaul on media torturors.

    Glad to have ’em .. in the Senate.

    DNF (73e8af)

  77. Today the regional Austrian government of Carinthia defaults. Friday Greece with Portugal on the tee.

    DNF (73e8af)

  78. the e-mail story just got better

    Shrillery had her staff print out emails, rather than forward the electronic document.

    not that anyone there would think of editing anything in the process, or worry that the metadata might be important too.

    they aren’t even *trying* to look honest.

    redc1c4 (2b3c9e)

  79. re #79: hmm, lets see if they crowd source the OCR scanning of the pages 🙂

    Seriously: it wouldn’t be that hard to scan the documents. But H.C. should be charged the costs of the computer, scanner and temp employee .

    seeRpea (181740)

  80. not that i’m that keen on giving the guy business but this is a pretty straightforward article re #78 .

    seeRpea (181740)

  81. This is what is so bizarre. If Hillary! had complied with the FRA then she would not be in a position to give anyone instructions about what to release. The only way her administrative staff or lawyers could have access to these emails in order to carry out these instructions is if Hillary! violated the FRA in the first place.

    So while the WH spokesman acts as if there’s a possibility Hillary! may have complied with the FRA we are watching Hillary!’s ongoing violation of the FRA continue in front of our eyes.

    The next stage of the farce will involve the WH pretending there’s a possibility that Hillary! didn’t compromise classified or sensitive for official use only information. When the mere fact that even needs to be looked into is all the evidence you need to know she didn’t.

    Is that a government server? No. Is Hillary!s house in Chappaqua a government site approved for the storage of such information? No. Was Hillary! authorized to remove that information from government servers and store it in an unsecured private home? No.

    Therefore it’s been compromised. You don’t even need to prove that anyone who wasn’t cleared for the information ever saw it. The fact that is even a question, an open question that no one can answer with any certainty, is proof of the compromise.

    Although Guccifer’s hacking into Hillary!’s emails sort of removes all doubt about whether someone who shouldn’t have seen that stuff did in fact see it.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  82. The only reason you build a server that can permanently erase emails is to permanently erase emails. Subpoena the server.

    Dana (86e864)

  83. Yes, subpoena Hillary!’s email server. Which is the obvious answer. So obvious, Andrew McCarthy at NRO is compelled to bring up a few other obvious points that very few are discussing.

    The Benghazi Committee’s Belated Interest in Hillary’s Hidden E-mails

    Chairman Trey Gowdy knew about Clinton’s secret server six months ago, and that too is a scandal.

    In assessing the Benghazi select committee headed up by Chairman Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), there are two possibilities, and they are not mutually exclusive: (1) The committee is just a Potemkin probe erected by the Republican establishment to get restive conservatives to pipe down, and (2) the committee is incompetent…

    …Just the fiery outrage we’ve come to expect from Congressman Gowdy. But for all the big wind, there never seems to be much rain.

    Speaking of which, Gowdy let something else slip while unburdening himself to Politico: he and his committee have known since last summer that Mrs. Clinton conducted business by private e-mail. So what you’re just finding out now, Gowdy has known for at least six months. So what did he do about it? According to Politico, “He said the committee has worked with Clinton advisers and the department to gain access to documents relating to the Benghazi attacks.”

    Fabulous! Gowdy just got finished railing about how Clinton used private e-mail precisely to avoid the government-mandated paper trail. So what’s he been doing about it for six months? Discussing the matter with Clinton’s loyal staffers — i.e., people who helped her carry out the scheme — and with the State Department — i.e., the people he just got done telling you have neither the relevant e-mails nor access to them.

    That’s it: no subpoenas, no hearings, no nothing. Just as Mrs. Clinton did not turn over any of her private e-mails until the State Department finally asked for them, Gowdy, by his own account, did not issue a subpoena to address a scandal he has long known about until the scandal became public.

    That in itself is a scandal…

    Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415046/benghazi-committees-belated-interest-hillarys-hidden-e-mails-andrew-c-mccarthy

    Gowdy was on the Sunday talk shows saying that these recent revelations (i.e. his claim that the DoS only recently told his committee that Hillary! exclusively used the private email account(s) he was aware of six months ago) had caused him to lose trust in the DoS.

    Huh?!?! Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

    http://investmentwatchblog.com/hillary-clinton-bombshell-whistle-blower-tells-investigators-that-state-department-shredded-benghazi-records/

    …Maxwell was one of four State Department officials disciplined in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, in which four Americans were killed. He was put on administrative leave, and has spoken out before about how he felt he was scapegoated.

    Maxwell was eventually cleared, but retired last year.

    According to The Daily Signal report, Maxwell walked in on the weekend session on a Sunday afternoon after hearing about it. He reportedly claims he saw stacks of documents when he arrived as well as an office director who worked for him — but who hadn’t told him about the assignment.

    Maxwell reportedly claimed she told him they were instructed to go through the stacks and pull out items that could put anybody in the NEA “front office” or seventh floor — where the secretary’s office is — in a “bad light.”

    …“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”

    …“What they were looking for is anything that made them look bad. That’s the way it was described to us,” Chaffetz said.

    According to Chaffetz’ account of his interview with Maxwell, as well as the Daily Signal report by Sharyl Attkisson, Maxwell said those scrubbing the documents were looking for information that would cast Clinton and senior leaders in a “bad light.”

    Chaffetz said that he was told then-Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan were there and overseeing the operation.

    “For Hillary Clinton’s personal chief of staff and deputy chief of staff to be making a concerted effort to hide documents, make sure that the Accountability Review Board and Congress did not see those documents is unbelievable and absolutely wrong,” Chaffetz said.

    This is the State Department Trey Gowdy said he just recently lost trust in.

    So, what are we to make of Trey Gowdy and this select committee?

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  84. Upthread @19 I speculated that Hillary! used her time and her email account as SecState to line her pockets via her foundation as she sold access to the future preezy of the United States of Liberal Pay-to-Play.

    Surfing around I see that’s sort of a widespread conclusion to say the least. With that in mind, here are a few dots that shouldn’t be hard to connect.

    http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/21/clinton.china.asia/index.html?_s=PM:POLITICS

    Clinton: Chinese human rights can’t interfere with other crises

    So, right out of the gate Secretary of Family Foundation Hillary! announced that human rights were going to be placed on the back burner. If the price was right.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clinton-defends-foreign-contributions-to-foundation/

    …Mr. Clinton cited Saudi Arabia as an example of a country that contributed money for the foundation’s endowments. Though the former president did not agree with Saudi Arabia’s foreign policies, he appreciated their support for the foundation and work to expand educational opportunities.

    “Do I agree with all the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia? No,” he said. “But I think it’s impressive that the recent king that just died built the first co-educational institution in Saudi Arabia and that they have more women than men in colleges.”…

    Ahh, Billy Jeff, nice try. It isn’t their foreign policy that’s the issue.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  85. It was Hillary!’s foreign policy. And her foreign policy was the best foreign policy money could buy. If you’re a Saudi king who wants this sort of domestic policy to go unnoticed by the USG.

    http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Gang-raped-Saudi-woman-sentenced-to-200-lashes-6-months-in-jail-393193

    A 28 year old Saudi woman has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail for indecency and speaking out to media about her subjection to a gang rape in 2006, Iranian PressTV reported Saturday.

    The woman was, back in 2006, driven to a secluded area after entering the car of a student friend when she was 19 years old. There, she was raped by seven men, according to the report…

    See, that’s what passes for indecency in the kingdom. And of course Hillary! wants to run as a woman. With a vagina. A powerful feminist vagina that spoke up for women’s and LGBT rights when her vagina was SecState.

    Except neither Hillary! nor her feminist vagina said a word.

    …The sentence was appealed by the victim’s lawyer. Yet instead of mitigating her sentence, the courts worsened it whilst banning her lawyer from the case and stripping him of his license under the claims that the woman committed the offense of speaking to media in addition to the indecency she was originally sentenced for, PressTV reported…

    She kind of had to. Hillary! wasn’t speaking up for her.

    Maybe the Saudis should just pay gang rape victims to shut up, like they paid Hillary! to shut up.

    I really do hope Hillary! runs on her record as an international SJW.

    Not that I expect the GOP to do anything about it. Like pull on any one of the multitudinous loose threads that would cause the whole edifice to unravel.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  86. 23. Referring to my little black book under the tab, “Blistering” it’s Sharyl Attkisson.

    DNF (73e8af)

  87. 84. This is not a good warm fuzzy i’m feeling.

    DNF (73e8af)

  88. 1: it was not ‘ipso facto’ illegal at the time. Against WH policy – yes , but not illegal.

    Hi Hillary, nice you could come by.

    Mrs. Clinton’s exclusive use of personal email for her government business is unusual for a high-level official, archive experts have said. Federal regulations, since 2009, have required that all emails be preserved as part of an agency’s record-keeping system. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, her emails were kept on her personal account and her staff took no steps to have them preserved as part of State Department record.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-email-hillary-clinton-thwarted-record-requests.html?_r=0

    red (f49804)

  89. Clinton didn’t send emails to Trey Gowdy, and she doesn’t want the public to read them. That’s all bullshit from a contemptuous bitch. Trey Gowdy should be holding her in a cell.

    What she did do is send 55,000 pages of printouts to the State Department. Paper copies.

    Per James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: Paper Tigress

    The decision to ask Mrs. Clinton for her emails went all the way to Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff, who, along with officials working on the response to the Benghazi requests, signed off on it.

    Beginning in August, senior State Department officials held negotiations with Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers and advisers to gain access to her personal email records. At one point, her advisers met face-to-face with department officials in Washington.

    In October, the State Department sent a letter to Mrs. Clinton and all former secretaries of state back to Madeleine K. Albright, seeking emails and other documents in their possession that related to their government work.

    Finally, in December, dozens of boxes filled with 50,000 pages of printed emails from Mrs. Clinton’s personal account were delivered to the State Department. Those documents were then examined by department lawyers, who found roughly 900 pages pertaining to the Benghazi attacks.

    Three weeks ago, the State Department handed over the Benghazi emails to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is led by Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina.

    Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman, Mr. Merrill, did not respond to an email seeking comment. A senior State Department official said, “It would be oversimplified and inaccurate to draw the conclusion that the preservation of her records was done for one purpose.”

    Late Wednesday night, two days after The New York Times first reported that she had exclusively used a personal email account as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton announced that she had asked the State Department to release those communications.

    “I want the public to see my email,” Mrs. Clinton wrote in a Twitter post shortly before midnight, addressing the issue publicly for the first time. “I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”

    That’s why Trey just resently lost trust in the State Dept.
    They’re still farking him around and stonewalling, even as Clinton syncophants pop up on the networks singing how Hillary only wants to show people her emails.

    It’s everyone elses fault you see?

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  90. I have a post stuck in moderation. #90 posted at 8:16 pm

    Before I was of a mind to allow Hillary to quietly back away from the race, keeping her dignity somewhat intact.

    Now I want her in irons. I want her to be put in stocks, so we can pelt her with rocks and garbage.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  91. Speaking of tangled webs…

    http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Life-under-the-US-umbrella-393103

    …Last Friday, US Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman scolded South Koreans for being too nationalist. In her words, “Nationalist feelings can still be exploited, and it’s not hard for a political leader anywhere to earn cheap applause by vilifying a former enemy.”

    The South Koreans interpreted her remarks as criticism of their President Park Geun-hye for her refusal to reinstate reunification talks with North Korea due to Pyongyang’s refusal to discuss the dismantlement of its nuclear program…

    This really has to be read to be believed. Except it can only be “believed” in the sense that anyone could be stupid enough to say what this Wendy Sherman said.

    The Obama administration has repeatedly undermined ROK national security, beginning with (or rather becoming glaringly obvious with) when Prom Queen and Secretary of Conflict of Interest Hillary! went supine in the face of Chinese resistance after their clients the NORKs sank the Cheonan.

    Naturally the Obama administration blames dark forces, in this case the abuse of “nationalist feelings” instead of “faith” (two things they clearly know nothing about lacking both faith and patriotism) instead of the fact that they have destroyed any reason for anybody except the world’s worst dictators to trust them.

    Former enemies? There is no peace treaty between North and South. They are in law and in fact present enemies. Hello! Cheonan again? Their bombardment of the South’s Yeonpyeong island?

    That was during Obama’s presidency. But dude, that was like five years ago, I can hear them say.

    Well, the South Koreans haven’t forgotten. Nor have they forgotten who this Wendy Sherman is.

    …Sherman negotiated the US’s nuclear pact with North Korea in the 1990s. The North Koreans used the deal as a smokescreen behind which they developed nuclear weapons while receiving financial assistance from the US which paid off the regime for signing the deal…

    She is a walking, breathing insult to sane human beings everywhere. Which makes her a fit representative for the Obama administration.

    This is the same playbook they intend to follow with Iran.

    And they’ll blame everyone else for noticing their incompetence and malicious intent.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  92. re #84: It was unclear what the Gowdy team on the committee knew and what they told the other committee members. My impression was that they knew a private email server was being used but did not realize it was being exclusively used. Still unclear, and also unclear is why he didn’t say anything after the elections.

    re #89: you provided backup to my point.
    btw: there was a law passed a couple of years ago that would make it illegal just to use a non-gov’t email server for gov’t communications. Not so sure how I feel about that, I’m a bit with those who say you need to be able to vent without it being part of the public record. ie: call a king an idiot when writing to a prime minister.

    re #91: how did i miss that Sherman was back making a mess in Asia? She was the no-goodnick from the Clinton fake treaty days, no?

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  93. Hillary actually send 55,000 (paper) pages of UNSEARCHABLE emails to the state dept.
    http://www.wsj.com/articles/paper-tigress-1425931087
    @AceofSpadesHQ
    1:03 PM – 9 Mar 2015

    Trey Gowdy received 900 of them, deemed to be relivant to BenGhazi by the State Dept. 3 weeks ago.

    Kind of get a feel for the whys and whatfores when you have the whole picture.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  94. “So, what are we to make of Trey Gowdy and this select committee?”

    Steve57 – Do you think you know enough to throw doubt on what he’s doing? I certainly don’t.

    Strategy wise do I think it would have been wise to shout to the media that Hillary had a private email system when I first learned about it without knowing the complete extent of its use or whether I have access to it?

    Hell no, I would look like an idiot.

    I would issue a warning about spoliation of records and demand the records I wanted. Do we know what Gowdy actually did? I certainly don’t and have no read anybody opine with certainty so I’m not ready to jump to any conclusions like Andy McCarthy that he’s done anything wrong.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  95. So don’t let that bald mutant Jim Carville kid you for a minute that Hillary was forthcoming.

    She’s still dodging inquiry. I hope someday soon she gets a cummupance comensurate to her crime. Trey Gowdy should have Capital police holding her in a cell.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  96. “She’s still dodging inquiry.”

    papertiger – Can you name somebody in the Obama Administration who has not?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  97. Obama appointees, that is.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  98. “Trey Gowdy should have Capital police holding her in a cell.”

    papertiger – Like Eric Holder? Oh wait, he got covered by executive privelege for some of his stonewalling. How about Lois Lerner? Is she in a cage? John Koskinnen?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  99. She needs jailing. If she’ll ever get it is an open question.

    papertiger (c2d6da)

  100. Strategy wise do I think it would have been wise to shout to the media that Hillary had a private email system when I first learned about it without knowing the complete extent of its use or whether I have access to it?

    It isn’t Andrew McCarthy who claimed the select committee on Benghazi would be run like a prosecution. It was Trey Gowdy. And while he backed off of that characterization a bit last spring, no prosecutor depends upon a defendant’s willing cooperation to limit how much information he or she has access to:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/11/trey-gowdy-benghazi_n_5305134.html

    WASHINGTON — Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) backtracked on Sunday from an earlier description of the select committee he is leading to investigate the 2012 attack in Benghazi as “a trial.”

    “No sir,” Gowdy said, when “Fox News Sunday” asked if he sees himself as a prosecutor and the Obama administration as the defense. “For 16 years I spoke in trial metaphors, and perhaps I need to get out of that habit. What I simply meant is, when you ask me how long something is going to last, I need to know how cooperative the other side is going to be. So to the extent that I gave any indication to anyone that I view someone as the defense, what I meant by that is, if you can tell me how cooperative the other side is going to be, I can give you a better idea of how long something is going to last.”…

    He already knew how cooperative the other side would be. He had already learned that people at State were caught shredding documents after their Benghazi debacle. So the answer to the question of cooperation was, not at all.

    No sane person, let alone an experienced prosecutor, would have waited six months to issue a subpoena after learning these same document-shredders had set up an entirely separate email system in order to evade discovery. No sane person, if he truly wanted to get to the truth, would have depended upon these same document-shredders for information as to the extent they relied on this alternate, secret email system to deny him information that he had requested. That would be a job for his own investigators, not for the people who have already demonstrated that they were out to frustrate investigations into their activities.

    Yet that’s what Trey Gowdy is saying he did. He says he relied upon nothing more than discussions with known evidence-destroyers to produce evidence.

    You don’t need Andrew McCarthy to have a problem with that. And in order to defend Trey Gowdy, then you have to assume Gowdy isn’t being truthful in his public statements now.

    Steve57 (71fc09)

  101. “It isn’t Andrew McCarthy who claimed the select committee on Benghazi would be run like a prosecution. It was Trey Gowdy.”

    Steve57 – First, I did not claim Trey Gowdy run the investigation like a trial. I was referring to Andy McCarthy’s piece calling the committee’s work a scandal which Team Instant Gratification here jumped all over to trash Gowdy without the benefit of knowledge of what Gowdy has or has not been doing.

    No sane person would do that.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  102. maybe Gowdy never heard of Sidney Blumenthals socks?
    While i am not ready to “tar and feather” Gowdy, I do think your points need addressing by someone
    on the committee, and fairly soon. Failing that, well , I guess we would understand more how the
    current GOP hierarchy stayed in place.

    seeRpea (b6bbec)

  103. 94. “So, what are we to make of Trey Gowdy and this select committee?”

    Steve57 – Do you think you know enough to throw doubt on what he’s doing? I certainly don’t…

    …Do we know what Gowdy actually did? I certainly don’t and have no read anybody opine with certainty so I’m not ready to jump to any conclusions like Andy McCarthy that he’s done anything wrong.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/9/2015 @ 10:08 pm

    As I pointed out in my previous comment, it’s Gowdy himself whose own statements are sufficient to cast doubt on how Gowdy is running this investigation.

    Would you like to know who agrees with that assessment, besides Andy McCarthy and I?

    Trey Gowdy.

    http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/03/10/gowdy-on-clinton-emails-shame-on-me-if-trust-state-dept-to-be-neutral/

    This is a rush transcript from “The Kelly File,” March 9, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

    …KELLY: So all that time when people were seeking information about Benghazi and other subjects in the State Department, no one was getting any email record of Hillary’s that didn’t come from the desk of a different State Department employee?

    GOWDY: Yes. And we were being told the whole time, Megyn, you know, we need more resources, we need more time, can you please prioritize what you really need? I mean, we even had to have a public hearing with Joel Rubin because we weren’t getting anywhere.

    So the State Department had six months to have the conversation you and I are just having. Shame on me for it taking six months, but really shame on me if I trust the State Department to be that neutral detached arbiter of her records because they failed in the past to do so…

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  104. 101. “It isn’t Andrew McCarthy who claimed the select committee on Benghazi would be run like a prosecution. It was Trey Gowdy.”

    Steve57 – First, I did not claim Trey Gowdy run the investigation like a trial. I was referring to Andy McCarthy’s piece calling the committee’s work a scandal which Team Instant Gratification here jumped all over to trash Gowdy without the benefit of knowledge of what Gowdy has or has not been doing.

    No sane person would do that.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/10/2015 @ 10:17 am

    No sane person would rely on Trey Gowdy and his public statements about how he’s running his select committee to learn how he’s running his select committee?

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  105. “No sane person would rely on Trey Gowdy and his public statements about how he’s running his select committee to learn how he’s running his select committee?”

    Steve57 – Gowdy has publicly stated they do not make announcements about everything they do or learn.

    How long has he been running the committee?

    What makes you believe you have a complete timeline of everything that has transpired within the committee since last August?

    Please show your work.

    If you believe there is a grand conspiracy on the part of Republicans in congress to avoid finding out what happened in Benghazi as some here have posited, please explain your theory.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  106. Play the new, exciting Congressional Hindsight Heroism game. Second guess congressional leadership based on SWAGs and talk radio host boasting. Available on Amazon and in your local book stores.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  107. What makes you believe you have a complete timeline of everything that has transpired within the committee since last August?

    Please show your work.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/10/2015 @ 10:29 am

    I don’t have magical powers, and as far as I know neither does Andrew McCarthy. I can’t put words in Trey Gowdy’s mouth. And Trey Gowdy says I have that complete timeline. He did reveal one action he took, which he hadn’t made public before his appearance on the Kelly File last night.

    He wrote Hillary!’s lawyer and asked him to produce her emails. And Hillary!’s attorney referred him back to the State Dept.

    Then Trey Gowdy went on to say “shame on me” for not doing a damn thing for six months.

    So, unless you have any evidence that Trey Gowdy is lying about Trey Gowdy and his committee, I’m going to have to go with Trey Gowdy and his public apologies for Trey Gowdy’s inaction in the face of six months of obvious stonewalling.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  108. @daleyrocks I don’t understand your position on the Gowdy committee. @Steve57 is not retroactively putting words in anyone’s mouth or quoting out of context. Just using Gowdy’s own words. I would like to hear from other committee members but for now the burden is on Gowdy based on what he said last night to prove he is not either incompetent or in cohorts.

    seeRpea (181740)

  109. At this critical moment the benefit of putting the hot spotlight on Trey Gowdy instead of on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is…exactly what? I have neither the time or the patience for talk radio which I gather is stirring the pot on this so I am not fully informed on their theories. But I.do.not.understand this open hostility to Gowdy or what is the intended outcome or result it is intended to achieve.

    elissa (e0ae16)

  110. 106. Play the new, exciting Congressional Hindsight Heroism game. Second guess congressional leadership based on SWAGs and talk radio host boasting. Available on Amazon and in your local book stores.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/10/2015 @ 10:33 am

    You really ought to try and pay attention to what the spokesmen for Team R actually say. Because then there’s no hindsight involved. They give you plenty of reason to doubt them in real time.

    I’ll go back to Marco Rubio and his former enthusiasm for the gang of eight immigration bill. That bill, if you haven’t noticed, never became law because Rubio’s selling points were absurd and an insult to people’s intelligence.

    One of the biggest insults to our intelligence, and relevant here, came when Rubio abandoned his support for the gang of eight bill. He said he couldn’t trust the Obama administration to enforce the border security elements if the bill became law.

    The universal reaction then, at that time was, WTFO?!?! You are just now learning you can’t trust this President to enforce immigration law?

    Prom Queen had already stopped enforcing immigration law. That was what lent the immigration issue a sense of urgency in the first place. It was part of the ultimatum President Mean Girl gave to Congress; he demanded new laws that would make his prior lawlessness legal.

    And now here’s Trey Gowdy saying that he lost confidence in the State Department because of their stonewalling over Hillary!’s emails over past six months? Again, WTFO?!?!

    Sorry if you need radio talk show hosts and writers like Andy McCarthy to lead you by the hand to the obvious, but I don’t. Gowdy’s committee wouldn’t even exist if the State Dept., indeed any department that had a role in the Benghazi debacle, can be trusted. Because if you could rely on them to cooperate with Congressional oversight committees, they wouldn’t have successfully stonewalled all those other committees that previously tried to investigate the assault on a US diplomatic facility.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  111. “You really ought to try and pay attention to what the spokesmen for Team R actually say. Because then there’s no hindsight involved.”

    Steve57 – I’m paying attention to what you say because the hindsight is coming from you and other Team Instant Gratification members here. It’s just that simple.

    Don’t change the subject and don’t put words in my mouth.

    You don’t know what Gowdy has done. Stonewalling is SOP for this administration. What would you have done differently and is that a reason to trash Gowdy? My answer is no, you’re just impotently bloviating.

    Game it out from Hillary’s perspective. What would she do any differently than obfuscate and delay. How would anything Gowdy did that you do or do not know about cut through that process.

    Please enlighten me or is it a conspiracy?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  112. You have to be like NCIS with this administration, they will not admit the sky is blue, unless they have to,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  113. 109. At this critical moment the benefit of putting the hot spotlight on Trey Gowdy instead of on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is…exactly what? I have neither the time or the patience for talk radio which I gather is stirring the pot on this so I am not fully informed on their theories. But I.do.not.understand this open hostility to Gowdy or what is the intended outcome or result it is intended to achieve.

    elissa (e0ae16) — 3/10/2015 @ 11:13 am

    Putting the spotlight on Hillary! and Barack Obama is exactly the point. Ignore what you hear about talk radio “stirring the pot” and just focus on what Trey Gowdy himself is saying.

    http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/03/10/gowdy-on-clinton-emails-shame-on-me-if-trust-state-dept-to-be-neutral/

    Watch the video; read the transcript.

    At about the 50 second mark Gowdy says “you would think that would come up in all the conversations we had with the state department” when referencing the fact that the State Department never mentioned that not only did Hillary! use personal emails to conduct official business, but those emails weren’t archived on any government server. Those records were in Hillary!’s sole, personal possession.

    As I’m watching the interview my reaction is, “No, I wouldn’t think that would come up. You’re dealing with document-shredders and evidence-destroyers. Your committee only exists because Obama’s people throughout the executive branch obstructed other committees and their investigations.”

    I’m all for putting a spotlight on Hillary! and Mean Girl. I hope Gowdy would demonstrate he thinks that’s his job. But if you watch the interview, it keeps going downhill if that’s your hope. Gowdy’s approach was to take the people at State at their word, and rely on private conversations to uncover the truth, when if these people whose word was good Gowdy’s committee never would have been formed. Trey Gowdy @ the 2:00 mark:

    And, again, we were having private conversations with the State Department in part because they told us they wanted a different kind of relationship. They didn’t want an adversarial relationship with our committee.

    Right, Trey. Let’s just go with that.

    Trey Gowdy says he only learned that Hillary! exclusively use private emails the day before the State Dept. went public with that information. Only then did Gowdy’s committee issue a subpoena. That’s only a small side-step away from President’s Beiber’s constant refrain that he only learns what his administration is up to when he sees it on TV.

    And why did the State Dept. have to go public with the information about Hillary! and her homebrew email server? Not thanks to Trey Gowdy and his uncurious, non-investigative investigation, which apparently would have engaged in six more years of private conversations as long as nobody at state volunteered any incriminating information. It was due to a lawsuit.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-email-legal-115737.html

    The first public sign of the email imbroglio now enveloping former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have come more than a month ago in an obscure court filing in a lawsuit demanding details of Clinton’s response to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

    Last year, government lawyers handling the case brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch told a federal judge that the agency had searched its files and had no more records to produce.

    They changed their tune on Feb. 2.

    ”In the course of preparing additional information to provide to Plaintiff for purposes of settlement discussions, Defendant has discovered that additional searches for documents potentially responsive to the FOIA must be conducted,” the attorneys wrote.

    The legal filing was one of the first indications that Clinton’s use of a personal email account to conduct business as secretary of state might complicate matters for parties wanting to know more about her official actions…

    Assuming one can walk and chew gum at the same time, there’s no conflict between wanting to put Hillary! and Presdident Selfie under a microscope and at the same time wondering what this select committee of Gowdy’s thinks its doing. Because they certainly aren’t putting Hillary! and King Putt under any microscopes. Judicial Watch is, but they aren’t. That should be of concern to anyone who thinks the administration’s actions pre, post, and during the Benghazi assault should be scrutinized. It should be a concern that the head of the committee purportedly created to scrutinize those actions hasn’t been scrutinizing the people who acted or failed to act, but instead is just taking what the miscreants now have to say for themselves at face value.

    So the point is if you want to put a hot spotlight on this administration then thank God for lawsuits. Because that’s the only way it’s going to happen. That’s the only way it has happened.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  114. 111. You don’t know what Gowdy has done. Stonewalling is SOP for this administration. What would you have done differently and is that a reason to trash Gowdy? My answer is no, you’re just impotently bloviating.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/10/2015 @ 11:22 am

    Right, daley. I’m impotently bloviating by quoting what Trey Gowdy had to say last night about what he didn’t do. Right before Trey Gowdy said, “Shame on me for it taking six months, but really shame on me if I trust the State Department to be that neutral detached arbiter of her records because they failed in the past to do so.”

    It seems to me I’m potently bloviating if I have the power to hypnotize Trey Gowdy and have him say those words.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  115. I think you should run for office Steve57. Were you to be elected I’m pretty sure you’d be both fascinated and challenged by the politics that goes on behind the scenes, in the staff back rooms and then in front of the cameras. I am sincere. I think you should run for office.

    elissa (e0ae16)

  116. …Stonewalling is SOP for this administration. What would you have done differently…

    I would have subpoenaed Hillary!’s private emails immediately rather than wait six months for the State Department to volunteer any incriminating facts.

    You know who else would have have subpoenaed Hillary!’s private emails rather than wait six months?

    Trey Gowdy.

    Now. Now that somebody who wasn’t gullible enough to depend upon the State Department’s empty words got to the facts they were hiding from Trey Gowdy.

    A situation Gowdy apparently was perfectly happy with, judging by what he says for himself.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  117. 115. I think you should run for office Steve57. Were you to be elected I’m pretty sure you’d be both fascinated and challenged by the politics that goes on behind the scenes, in the staff back rooms and then in front of the cameras. I am sincere. I think you should run for office.

    elissa (e0ae16) — 3/10/2015 @ 12:01 pm

    Yes, I’m sure I’d learn a great deal about how the “real world” works and I’d gain greater understanding of the constraints Trey Gowdy has to operate within and all that.

    But there is such a thing as publicly overpromising and then underperforming. I would be very careful to avoid that trap. Especially if my committee, or my chamber, was continually being outperformed by private groups suing in court the very agencies we were supposed to be investigating.

    Did you watch the interview, and if you did you have absolutely no problem with how Gowdy says he and his committee have been operating?

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  118. ==But there is such a thing as publicly overpromising and then underperforming. I would be very careful to avoid that trap. ==

    Again, I think you should run for office, Steve57.

    elissa (e0ae16)

  119. Of course, it isn’t just Gowdy’s statements last night that I have an issue with. That’s why I went back to the Huffpo article from May of 2014, in which Gowdy talked about how the length of his investigation would be determined to a great extent by how cooperative people at agencies and departments like State were with his committee.

    If you listened to Gowdy as he was speaking, in May of 2014 and on other occasions as well, he gave an impression that he was a hard-nosed realist who knew he couldn’t just take the word of anyone working for this administration.

    This is from his Benghazi select committee opening statement in January.

    http://benghazi.house.gov/news/press-releases/gowdy-opening-statement-at-benghazi-select-committee-hearing

    This committee exists because the House of Representatives voted for it to exist and in the process made it very clear what is expected. If you have not read the House resolution authorizing this committee, I would encourage you to do so. For those asking for a roadmap, or the scope of the investigation, or asking what the committee intends to look into, the resolution passed by the House of Representatives, including seven Democrats, answers all of those questions.

    The Resolution asks this committee to investigate: “all policies, decisions and activities” related to the attacks, the preparation before the attacks, the response during the attacks, efforts to repel the attacks, the administration’s response after the attacks and Executive branch efforts to comply with congressional inquiries. The operative word in the resolution is the word “all” and the word “all” is about as comprehensive a word as you could use.

    So it stands to reason if you are asked to conduct a full and complete investigation into all policies, decisions and activities, you need access to all witnesses, all relevant documents, and all information. Our final task is to write a comprehensive report with recommendations on how to prevent future attacks. To write a comprehensive report, you need access to all witnesses and all relevant documents.

    …And time is of the essence…

    The purpose of today’s hearing is to hear from some agencies and entities about the state of compliance with requests for documents and access to witnesses. We have had some success…

    These new documents are a reminder no previous standing committee compiled or had access to a complete record of the events, and is precisely why the Speaker constituted a Select Committee to produce a complete, definitive record for the American public.

    …So, let me be as clear, we intend to access all of the information necessary to do the job the House instructed us to do. And we need to access that information now. Talking to only some of the witnesses will not work. Accessing only some of the documents will not work. If you want all of the truth, you need all of the information. That is what this committee is going to do.

    I have a hard time squaring the Trey Gowdy I’m used to seeing and listening to with the Trey Gowdy who was on the Kelly File last night saying “shame on me for waiting for six months,” but he decided to trust the same officials who stonewalled other committees when they promised they weren’t going to do that to him.

    What happened to the “time is of the essence, we need that information now” Trey Gowdy? The previous Trey Gowdy didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d wait until the State Department was about to publicly admit they didn’t have Hillary!’s emails before issuing a subpoena.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  120. 118. ==But there is such a thing as publicly overpromising and then underperforming. I would be very careful to avoid that trap. ==

    Again, I think you should run for office, Steve57.

    elissa (e0ae16) — 3/10/2015 @ 12:23 pm

    Somebody would just dredge up that dust-up I had with the Hondurans over a dead hooker they supposedly found in my hotel room in Tegucigalpa.

    In my defense, they only cooked this up after I had checked out and left the country. But the Democrats would still run with it.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  121. you forgot to put that in ‘quotes’ Steve.

    narciso (ee1f88)

  122. Yeah, narcisso. Forgot.

    Anyhoo, this is amusing, watching Jen Psaki twist in the wind:

    http://dailycaller.com/2015/03/09/ap-reporter-grills-state-department-why-have-hackers-from-russia-seen-more-emails-than-american-public-video/

    Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee grilled State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki during Monday’s press briefing, asking why Russian hackers had more access to State Department records than the American public and Congress…

    …“It’s only the State Department, the state.gov emails that get hacked right?” Lee said, to some chortles. “So they might have actually been safer in a private server…”

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  123. well at least Drudge is having fun with this.
    Top of the page:

    DISASTER: Hillary said she emailed with Bill, but spokesman claims he only has sent two in his life — both while president…
    SHE ‘DID IT FOR CONVENIENCE’…
    ‘NEVER EMAILED CLASSIFIED MATERIAL’…
    DEFIANT: ‘SERVER WILL REMAIN PRIVATE’…
    Staff ‘Handpicked’ Questions At Press Conference…
    The circus is back in town…

    seeRpea (181740)

  124. following up on myself in #126:
    wrong way to go. She obviously is no where the politician her husband is.
    I think she is toast now.

    seeRpea (181740)

  125. 126. So, basically she’s publicly and officially blowing off both the spirit and the letter of FOIA, etc.? Good to know. (I had a feeling her press conference would not go well, and had been hoping for another “what difference at this point does it make!!!” outburst from her.

    elissa (f32ba2)

  126. As a politician, Hillary! reminds me of John Edwards. He also used to lie about so much so often that he forgot who he lied to.

    SIOUX CITY, Iowa — Sen. John Edwards has been defined by two experiences. He talks about one all the time: growing up the son of a mill worker in a small textile town in North Carolina. The other, the death of his 16-year-old son in a car accident seven years ago, he never mentions…

    Edwards mentioned it to everybody! And he’d start off by saying, “I’ve never told anybody about this before…” and then proceed to say how he lay down on the morticians (or coroners, I forget which) and curled up next to his dead son.

    Apparently Kerry was creeped out because Edwards started telling Kerry that story, beginning with the “I’ve never told anyone about this before” part. Forgetting that he had already told that exact same story to Kerry years ago.

    He was peddling the same lie over and over to so many people he forgot who he had previously lied to.

    So now the Lioness of Tuzla is telling lies about her email. Forgetting that she’s already shot her mouth off so many times that we know she’s lying before she even finishes a sentence.

    I guess we should all be grateful she can’t keep her pie hole shut.

    But I doubt her lies in defense of her obvious law breaking will hurt her chances with today’s Democrats. Not that even though Kerry was creeped out that Edwards would prostitute a lie about his own dead son, that didn’t stop him from picking Edwards as his running mate.

    Steve57 (b8061a)

  127. * …he lay down on the mortician’s table

    Steve57 (b8061a)


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