Secretary of State

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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Kevin McCarthy catches Benghazi! Fever

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On Monday I saw this headline: Benghazi panel now longest congressional investigation — longer than even Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the GOP’s previous witch hunt into Whitewater.

BenghaziThis is despite the fact that, prior to Rep. Trey Gowdy taking the reins of  the House Select Committee on Benghazi, there had already been seven Previous Investigations: the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on Armed Services, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on the Judiciary, and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  These committees, in addition to the independent Accountability Review Board, have issued nine reports on the attacks.

On Wednesday the Beltway media exploded with an unforced error admission against interest by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who hopes to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House next week, on Sean Hannity’s show that the House Select Committee on Benghazi is just what we always knew it was, a partisan political device to attack Hillary Clinton and to attempt to undermine her campaign with a never ending investigation into something that has already been investigated to death:

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy asked. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.” “I give you credit for that,” said Hannity. “I’ll give you credit where credit is due.”

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Justice Department: Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails

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The editors of the New York Times, who have long engaged in the Clinton Rules of  “scandal” mongering reporting, somehow missed this highly relevant piece of information to report this week. The Times was more interested in exacting an act of contrition and apology from Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton’s Long Road to ‘Sorry’ Over Email Use.

Ruby Cramer at BuzzFeed News reports, Justice Department Lawyers: Clinton Had Authority To Delete Personal Emails:

Hillary-Clinton-textingIn a little noticed brief, filed on Wednesday to a federal court, Department of Justice lawyers outlined a comprehensive defense of the contentious decision by Hillary Clinton to wipe the private email server she used as secretary of state: The attorneys assert that, regardless of whether she used a personal or government account, Clinton was within her legal right to handpick the emails that qualified as federal records — and to delete the ones she deemed personal.

“There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision — she appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server,” write the Justice Department attorneys, representing the State Department in the brief.

The lawyers add that under policies issued by the State Department and by NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration, government employees “are permitted and expected to exercise judgment to determine what constitutes a federal record.”

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