Tuesday, August 23, 2016

FBI uncovers 14,900 more documents in Clinton email probe

By Spencer S. Hsu August 22 at 4:50 PM
The Washington Post

The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.

Justice Department lawyers said last week that the State Department would review and turn over Clinton’s work-related emails to a conservative legal group. The records are among “tens of thousands” of documents found by the FBI in its probe and turned over to the State Department, Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson said Monday in court.

The 14,900 Clinton documents are nearly 50 percent more than the roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton’s lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.
….
In announcing the FBI’s findings in July, Comey said investigators found no evidence that the emails it found “were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.” Like many users, Clinton periodically deleted emails, or they were purged when devices were changed.

Clinton’s lawyers also may have deleted some of the emails as “personal,” Comey said, noting their review relied on header information and search terms, not a line-by-line reading as the FBI conducted.

Also on Monday, a GOP lawmaker issued subpoenas to three private companies that helped run or protect Clinton’s email server. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, is demanding documents by Sept. 9 after the firms declined earlier this year to produce them voluntarily.

The demands are part of a joint probe by Smith and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), who heads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel. The lawmakers say that while the criminal investigation has ended, they have questions about the structure and security of Clinton’s email system and whether it met federally-recommended standards for cybersecurity and record preservation.

The subpoenas target Platte River Networks, which provided information technology services for Clinton’s server; Datto, Inc., which furnished immediate recovery of back-up data in the event the primary server failed; and SECNAP Network Security Corp., which carried out threat monitoring of the network connected to Clinton’s server. The firms’ services were retained in 2013.

A science committee aide said they are looking for information about breaches or potential breaches, and documents that detail the firms’ scope of work, for example.

Read more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/fbi-uncovered-at-least-14900-more-documents-in-clinton-email-investigation/2016/08/22/36745578-6643-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html






Friday, August 12, 2016

Hillary Clinton's emails haunting her again!

Once again, Hillary Clinton’s carefully laid campaign plans have been disrupted by old emails.
On a day in which Clinton was hoping to inflict considerable damage on Donald Trump — this time, by ripping into his economic agenda — her campaign was on the defensive, scurrying to clean up the latest damaging revelations in years-old messages that were sent by Clinton and her staff and released as the result of a lawsuit.

The ongoing email dispute undermined the potency of a speech for which Clinton’s campaign had been laying groundwork all week, one in which she presented her economic agenda in full and tried to brand her self-styled populist rival a fraud.
Clinton, speaking in Michigan, did manage to deliver a combative, policy-laden address that effectively rebutted the economic plan that Trump presented in the battleground state days before.  Both are reaching out to the so-called Reagan Democrats who will decide the race’s outcome in the Rust Belt.

But Clinton and Trump continue to be distracted by self-inflicted wounds. Trump’s economic address was overshadowed by his suggestion soon after that maybe gun rights proponents would find a way to stop Clinton from appointing certain judges, which earned him widespread rebuke for casually inciting violence. Then, in unrelated and repeated comments, the Republican bizarrely 
repeatedly accused President Obama and Clinton of founding the Islamic State terrorist group.
But Clinton, too, has had difficulty staying on task. The fresh batch of emails was pried from the State Department thanks to a lawsuit filed by the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch. It revealed what appeared to be seedy dealings by Clinton’s team at the agency.

In one message, a top Clinton aide appears to be trying to get a million-dollar donor from the family’s Clinton Foundation access to the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, after an executive at the foundation requested it. In another, the foundation executive appeared to request special help finding a job for an associate, and he was assured that the right people knew of the potential employee.   


The emails are not devastating, but they are damaging as Clinton struggles to boost her trustworthiness with voters. And such messages will continue to surface until the election. The State Department is being forced to release more documents as a result of government investigations and lawsuits like the one filed by Judicial Watch.


Hillary Clinton speaks Thursday in Warren, Mich., where she took on Donald Trump's economic agenda and what she called "outlandish Trumpian ideas." (Mandi Wright / Detroit Free Press)