Secretary of State

State Department’s inspector general criticizes Clinton for private emails, but does not allege any breach of national security

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The media villagers were all in a lather yesterday over the Inspector General report regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails while she was Secretary of State. The New York Times reports, Hillary Clinton Is Criticized for Private Emails in State Dept. Review:

Hillary-Clinton-textingThe State Department’s inspector general on Wednesday sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying that she had not sought permission to use it and would not have received it if she had.

The report, delivered to members of Congress, undermined some of Mrs. Clinton’s previous statements defending her use of the server[.]

The inspector general found that Mrs. Clinton “had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business” with department officials but that, contrary to her claims that the department “allowed” the arrangement, there was “no evidence” she had requested or received approval for it.

And while other senior officials had used personal email accounts for official business, including Colin Powell when he was secretary, the rules made clear by the time she became the nation’s top diplomat that using a private server for official business was neither allowed nor encouraged because of “significant security risks.”

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Clinton, Trump, and Stein in early leads in Arizona PPE

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Unofficial results from the Arizona Presidential Preference Election (PPE) from Secretary of State Michele Reagan’s website: http://apps.azsos.gov/election/2016/PPE/Results/PPE2016Results.htm. Only top two vote getters are being reported. Democratic Party:         Hillary Clinton  58%      Bernie Sanders  40% Republican Party:   Donald Trump  47%    Ted Cruz  25% Green Party:   Jill Stein  81%      Kent Mesplay  19% … Read more

The Clinton email nonscandal — all hype, no scandal

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A couple of important reports on the so-called Clinton email scandal this week. This blows the right-wing outrage scandal machine out of the water: Security Logs of Hillary Clinton’s Email Server Are Said to Show No Evidence of Hacking:

Hillary-Clinton-textingA former aide to Hillary Clinton has turned over to the F.B.I. computer security logs from Mrs. Clinton’s private server, records that showed no evidence of foreign hacking, according to people close to a federal investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
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The security logs bolster Mrs. Clinton’s assertion that her use of a personal email account to conduct State Department business while she was the secretary of state did not put American secrets into the hands of hackers or foreign governments.

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Democrats go on offense against the ‘Beat Hillary Fight Club’ ahead of hearing

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SalemIn advance of the House Select Committee on Benghazi! “Beat Hillary Fight Club” hearing witch dunking tomorrow, Democrats on the committee released the full transcript of nine hours of closed-door testimony from Cheryl Mills, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton. Dems release Benghazi transcript on eve of Clinton’s testimony:

The 307-page transcript from Cheryl Mills’s September testimony contains no evidence that Clinton mishandled the U.S.’s response to the 2012 terror attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, according to Democrats on the select committee investigating the incident.

Instead, Clinton was “very engaged” in responding to the crisis, Mills said, according to the new transcript.

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Another fabricated ‘scandal’ from the ‘Beat Hillary Fight Club’

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Cartoon_31Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi! “Beat Hillary Fight Club,” leaking information to the conservative media entertainment complex, has been ginning up a “scandal” that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “outed” a CIA source in one of her e-mails that his committee is looking into. Gowdy says new emails show Clinton confidant naming CIA CIA source, pushing Libya interests (FAUX News). So when Scooter Libby and Karl Rove out an actual CIA spy,well that’s just fine because IOKIYAR.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), the ranking member of the Benghazi! committee, made a startling charge against chairman Gowdy:

To further inflate your claim, you placed your own redactions over the name of the individual with the words, “redacted due to sources and methods.”  To be clear, these redactions were not made, and these words were not added, by any agency of the federal government responsible for enforcing classification guidelines.

Predictably, commentators began repeating your accusations in even more extreme terms, suggesting in headlines for example that “Clinton Burns CIA Libya Contact.”

Contrary to your claims, the CIA yesterday informed both the Republican and Democratic staffs of the Select Committee that they do not consider the information you highlighted in your letter to be classified.  Specifically, the CIA confirmed that “the State Department consulted with the CIA on this production, the CIA reviewed these documents, and the CIA made no redactions to protect classified information.”

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