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DoJ Grants Immunity to Clinton Staffer Behind Private Email Setup

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A Hillary Clinton staffer, who set up the private email account Clinton used for government business during her tenure as Secretary of State, has reportedly been granted immunity by the United States Department of Justice in exchange for his testimony.

Bryan Pagliano, a staff member of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who set up the private email server at Clinton’s home in New York in 2009, agreed to testify after months of reported negotiations with the FBI.

When asked to testify in front of the Benghazi committee, Pagliano initially said in September that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right due to the fact that what he said could incriminate him in the ongoing federal investigation into Clinton’s email setup.

Following the announcement about Pagliano’s testimony, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said the campaign is “pleased” Pagliano has agreed to testify before prosecutors.

[RELATED: Former House Majority Leader Claims FBI is ‘Ready to Indict’ Hillary Clinton]

FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee that while he can’t provide specific details about the investigation, he can confirm that he is “very close personally to that investigation to ensure that we have the resources we need.”

“As you know we don’t talk about our investigations,” Comey said. “What I can assure you is that I am very close personally to that investigation to ensure that we have the resources we need, including people and technology, and that it’s done the way the FBI tries to do all of it’s work: independently, competently and promptly.”

The Washington Post noted that there is “no indication that prosecutors have convened a grand jury in the email investigation to subpoena testimony or documents, which would require the participation of a U.S. attorney’s office.”

[RELATED: FBI Formally Confirms Its ‘Ongoing’ Investigation into Hillary Clinton’s Email Server]

It was not until February that the FBI acknowledged the fact that it was conducting a criminal investigation into Clinton’s email setup to determine if she compromised national security by sending and receiving classified information on an unsecured network.

Election, Featured, Government Accountability, Politics

Former House Majority Leader Claims FBI is ‘Ready to Indict’ Hillary Clinton

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been under investigation by the FBI for several months, and former U.S. House Majority leader Tom DeLay said Monday that the FBI is “ready to indict” her for using a private email server to conduct government business.

During an interview on “The Steve Malzberg Show,” DeLay, a Republican from Texas, said he has friends in the FBI who tell him “they’re ready to indict” the former Secretary of State.

“They’re ready to recommend an indictment and they also say that if the attorney general does not indict, they’re going public,” DeLay said.

[RELATED: FBI Refuses to Release Information in Hillary Clinton Email Investigation]

Clinton’s use of personal email on a private server during her tenure as Secretary of State was revealed in March 2015, and while she has maintained that she never sent or received any classified information on the server, her claims have been contradicted by the Intelligence Community.

Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III sent a letter to Congress on Jan. 14, revealing that not only did “several dozen” of Clinton’s emails contain classified information, but some of the information was classified as SAP or “special access programs,” which is beyond top secret.

“To date, I have received two sworn declarations from one [intelligence community] element,” McCullough wrote. “These declarations cover several dozen emails containing classified information determined by the IC element to be at the confidential, secret, and top secret/sap levels. According to the declarant, these documents contain information derived from classified IC element sources.” 

[RELATED: Report: Dozens of Hillary Clinton Emails were Classified from The Beginning]

DeLay said he believes Clinton is “going to have to face these charges” eventually, whether it’s through an FBI indictment or through the “public eye.”

“One way or another either she’s going to be indicted and that process begins, or we try her in the public eye with her campaign,” DeLay said. “One way or another she’s going to have to face these charges.”

Election, Politics

FBI Refuses To Release Information In Hillary Clinton Email Investigation

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Following a court-ordered inquiry, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has refused to give the State Department any kind of update regarding information that has been recovered from the private email server used by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State, and has gone as far as to refuse to confirm whether an ongoing investigation is taking place.

Washington Times reported that the court-ordered inquiry came from Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who told the State Department to reach out to the FBI to find out if any information could be recovered from Clinton’s server.

[RELATED: Will Hillary Clinton Face Legal Trouble For Deleting Subpoenaed Emails?]

One week after the deadline set by the Justice Department to respond to the inquiry, FBI General Counsel James A. Baker replied with a brief letter on Monday.

[pull_quote_center]At this time, consistent with long-standing Department of Justice and FBI policy, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation, nor are we in a position to provide additional information at this time.[/pull_quote_center]

Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm, is pursuing 16 open records cases seeking emails from Clinton and her top aides including Huma Abedin. Judicial Watch is questioning whether the FBI actually has possession of the server used by Clinton.

“We still do not know whether the FBI — or any other government agency for that matter — has possession of the email server that was used by Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Abedin to conduct official government business during their four years of employment at the State Department,” Judicial Watch said.

[RELATED: Report: Dozens of Hillary Clinton Emails Were Classified From The Beginning]

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, whose panel oversees the FBI, criticized the agency for refusing to cooperate with Judge Sullivan’s request and accused the FBI of “behaving like it’s above the law.”

[pull_quote_center]The FBI is behaving like it’s above the law. Simply refusing to cooperate with a court-ordered request is not an appropriate course of action. This entire case, from Secretary Clinton’s ill-advised decision to use a non-government email server, to the FBI’s investigation about classified information, needs some transparency in order to assure the American people that getting to the bottom of this controversy is a priority.[/pull_quote_center]

Clinton turned a “blank” server over the FBI in August, containing around 30,000 emails she deemed “work-related” from her tenure as Secretary of State. These did not include about 32,000 emails she’d claimed she deleted because they contained personal information, and Sullivan ordered the Justice Department and the FBI to gain access to the missing emails.

[RELATED: Judge Orders Access To 32,000 ‘Personal’ Emails After Hillary Turns In Blank Server]

For more election coverage, click here.

Election, Government Accountability, Videos

Report: Dozens Of Hillary Clinton Emails Were Classified From The Beginning

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While Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has claimed that she did not send or receive any classified information on the private email server she used for government business during her tenure as Secretary of State, the FBI has upgraded over 300 of the 30,000 emails it has access to, and reports suggest that those emails were in fact “born classified.”

A report from Reuters found that the “classified” stamps on the emails, which include dates, letters and numbers describing the classification, show that some of Clinton’s emails are “filled with a type of information both the U.S. government and the [state] department’s own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not.”

The report also claimed that out of the small number of emails that have been made public so far, at least 30 message chains from 2009 “include what the State Department’s own ‘Classified’ stamps now identify as so-called ‘foreign government information,'” which is the only kind of information that “must be presumed classified” to protect national security.

[RELATED: Criminal Investigation Requested In Hillary Clinton’s Use Of Personal Email]

Although Clinton has said multiple times that she did not send or receive any classified information on her private email server, the report found that in the 30 classified emails it flagged, 17 of the message chains had “foreign government information” that was sent and received on an unsecured network between Clinton and her senior staff.

In a court filing, State department Executive Secretary Joseph Macmanus wrote that the BlackBerry devices issued to Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin while she was Security of State, have likely been “destroyed or excessed,” when they became “outdated models.”

[RELATED: Fact Check: Holes In Hillary’s Email Story]

J. William Leonard, the director of the U.S. government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) from 2002-2008, told Reuters that the now “classified” information on Clinton’s server was actually born classified, and that for the State Department to argue would be “blowing smoke.”

“It’s born classified,” Leonard said. “If a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it’s in U.S. channels and U.S. possession.”

[RELATED: Federal Judge Orders Access To 32,000 Personal Emails After Hillary Turns In Blank Server]

While Clinton turned 30,000 emails over to the State Department and the FBI, she revealed that she deleted approximately 32,000 emails from her server, because they contained “personal information.”

I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the intelligence community, marked two of the emails Clinton “top-secret,” containing the highest form of classified information, and in response, federal judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the FBI to gain access to the trove of “personal” emails Clinton claimed she deleted.

[RELATED: Will Hillary Clinton Face Legal Trouble For Deleting Subpoenaed Emails?]

For more election coverage, click here.

Election, Government Accountability, Politics, Videos

FBI Upgrades 60 Hillary Clinton Emails To ‘Classified’ Status

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As the FBI and the State Department conduct an investigation into the 30,000 emails released from the private server used by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State, 60 emails have been upgraded to “classified” status.

According to a report from the Washington Times, officials involved in the investigation have said that there are nearly 60 emails that “contained classified secrets at the lowest level of ‘confidential'” with one email containing “information at the intermediate level of ‘secret.'” The 60 emails are in addition to two emails recently flagged as “top-secret” by Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III.

Officials also told the Times that the number of classified emails is expected to grow as the FBI continues its investigation, and that sorting through the 30,000 emails Clinton deemed “work-related” is a process that is “expected to take months.”

[RELATED: Federal Judge Orders Access To 32,000 Personal Emails After Hillary Turns In Blank Server]

After the revelation that two of the emails Clinton released contained “top-secret” information, federal judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the FBI to gain access to the trove of “personal” emails Clinton claimed she deleted.

Clinton claimed she deleted around 32,000 emails that she deemed “personal,” even though Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said that Clinton deleted the messages after she was made aware that they had been subpoenaed by the Committee.

[RELATED: Hillary Clinton Deletes All Emails, Wipes Server Clean]

Gowdy criticized Clinton on Sunday for using a “nonexistent right-wing conspiracy” to justify the federal investigation into her practice of using a personal email address on a private server to conduct government business.

“She need not blame House Republicans for having her own personal server, for exclusively using private e-mail for telling us the Sydney Blumenthal e-mails were unsolicited and then we later find out they were not,” Gowdy said. “For telling us there was no classified information, then we later find out that there was. For telling us the public rec was complete and then we found 15 e-mails she never turned over to the State Department.”

The New York Times noted that while “nearly all investigations are assigned to one of the bureau’s 56 field offices,” the investigation into Clinton’s email is being conducted at the FBI’s headquarters in Washington D.C. in an “unusual move” motivated by the inquiry’s level of importance.

Despite the ongoing investigation, Clinton told reporters at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday that her voters aren’t concerned about the federal investigation into her email practices.

“I never sent classified material on my email and I never received any that was marked classified. I’m gonna let whatever this inquiry is go forward and we’ll await the outcome of it,” Clinton said. “It’s not anything people talk to me about as I travel around the country. It is never raised in my town halls, it is never raised in my other meetings with people.”

Clinton also joked about the smartphone app Snapchat’s feature that automatically deletes pictures and videos sent between users. “I love it, I love it,” she said. “Those messages disappear all by themselves.”

For more election coverage, click here.

Election, Politics

Judge Orders Access To 32,000 ‘Personal’ Emails After Hillary Turns In Blank Server

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After Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cleaned the server she used during her tenure as Secretary of State and handed it over to the FBI, a federal judge made an order that the Justice Department and the FBI gain access to the 32,000 emails Clinton did not turn over because she classified them as “personal.”

Before releasing the server, along with three thumb drives containing a redacted list of emails, Clinton released 55,000 pages comprised of 30,000 emails that she deemed “work-related” to the State Department last year, and then claimed that she deleted over 30,000 emails that she had deemed “personal.”

[RELATED: Hillary Clinton Deletes All Emails, Wipes Server Clean]

Out of the 30,000 emails the State Department has access to, it has released 40 to I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the intelligence community. On Tuesday, he classified two of those emails as “top secret,” containing the highest classification of government intelligence information.

After it was revealed that at least two messages had been upgraded to classified, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the Justice Department work with the FBI to gain access to the trove of “personal” emails Clinton claimed she deleted.

[RELATED: Breaking The Law? Hillary Clinton Used Private Email As Secretary of State]

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said that the Committee is now aware that they “didn’t get all the relevant documents from that server and the American people are entitled to them.”

The Washington Times noted that while one judge is “trying to decide how the government is going about determining what classified information is included” in Clinton’s emails, another judge is “exploring the email practices” of Clinton’s top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

Although Clinton insisted that her server did not contain any classified information, McCullough’s “top secret” findings add to the list of false claims she has made about her email use as Secretary of State.

[RELATED: Fact Check: Holes In Hillary’s Email Story]

Judge Andrew Napolitano, the Senior Judicial Analyst for Fox News, noted that while Clinton’s server contained “top secret,” or the highest level of information that could potentially cause “grave harm” to national security, General David Petraeus had access to classified information, which is at the lowest level, and he was “indicted, prosecuted and convicted” for having the materials “in a desk drawer in his house.”

Prior to the revelation that Clinton’s email account contained “top secret” information, two inspectors general requested that the State Department conduct a criminal investigation into Clinton’s email practices after a memo was released, which stated that Clinton’s private email account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.”

[RELATED: Criminal Investigation Requested In Hillary Clinton’s Use Of Personal Email]

For more election coverage, click here.

Government Accountability, Government Corruption, Politics, Technology, US

Will Hillary Clinton Face Legal Trouble For Deleting Subpoenaed Emails?

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On Tuesday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, formally requested that Hillary Clinton appear before the Committee for a transcribed interview regarding her use of private email on a private server during her tenure as Secretary of State, and her decision to delete the emails and wipe her server clean, after she was aware that the emails had been subpoenaed by the Committee.

“On March 19, 2015, the Committee asked former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to provide her personal email server to the Inspector General for the State Department to ensure the full record of her tenure as Secretary was preserved,” wrote Gowdy.

Gowdy explained that Clinton’s refusal to allow the Inspector General to ensure that the public record was complete is “not only disappointing but portends to delay the ability of our Committee to complete its work as expeditiously as possible.”

“Toward that end and because of the Secretary’s unique arrangement with herself as it relates to public records during and after her tenure as Secretary of State, this Committee is left with no alternative but to request Secretary Clinton appear before this Committee for a transcribed interview to better understand decisions the Secretary made relevant to the creation, maintenance, retention, and ultimately deletion of public records,” wrote Gowdy. “The Committee is willing to schedule the interview at a time convenient for Secretary Clinton, but no later than May 1, 2015.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano, the Senior Judicial Analyst for Fox News, said that Clinton will only be in legal trouble for deleting the emails, if there is a federal prosecutor who has the courage to pursue a case against her.

Napolitano pointed out that not only has Clinton admitted she diverted government records from the government, she has also admitted that she put classified information in a non-classified venue, which is the same crime General David Petraeus committed.

“She was so good at this, she could have taught Richard Nixon some lessons,” Napolitano said. “First, she diverted all of her emails to her husband’s server, and then when she found out they all were subpoenaed, she destroyed the ones, by cleaning the server, that she didn’t want everyone else to see.”

Looking at whether or not, Clinton will be prosecuted for “obstruction of justice,” Napolitano said that it all depends on whether there is a prosecutor with the courage to pursue a case against her.

“She now has admitted to destroying subpoenaed evidence after she was on notice of the existence of the subpoena,” Napolitano said. “That’s known as obstruction of justice as well of the destruction of the documents, but none of her crimes will get to first base in terms of prosecution, without a prosecutor to pursue them.”

Napolitano said that if the Republicans continue to emphasize the now “20-year-long perception that the Clintons believe they’re above the law,” it could become a serious problems for Clinton if she runs for President in 2016.

Posing the question to President Obama, Napolitano said, “Why aren’t you having your prosecutors prosecute her? You went after General Petraeus for having some documents in a desk drawer. She destroyed evidence after it was subpoenaed!”

In his letter requesting a transcribed interview with Clinton, Gowdy said that while she has provided some answers for why she did what she did, there are still many questions that remain unanswered, such as why she decided to bypass an official government email account, why she chose to retain email records upon separation from the Department of State, and why she decided to delete the emails.

“We continue to believe Secretary Clinton’s email arrangement with herself is highly unusual, if not unprecedented,” Gowdy wrote. “The decision to delete these records during the pendency of a congressional investigation only exacerbates our need to better understand what the Secretary did, when she did it, and why she did it.  While she has cited a variety of justifications for this arrangement, many questions and details about the arrangement remain unanswered.”

Featured, Government Accountability, Government Corruption, Politics, Technology, US

Hillary Clinton Deletes All Emails, Wipes Server Clean

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On Friday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, revealed that rumored 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deleted all of the emails that were on the personal server she used to conduct government business during her tenure as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

Gowdy released a statement saying that after the Committee granted Clinton a two-week extension, her attorney, David Kendall, informed them that Clinton “unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server.”

“After seeking and receiving a two week extension from the Committee, Secretary Clinton failed to provide a single new document to the subpoena issued by the Committee and refused to provide her private server to the Inspector General for the State Department or any other independent arbiter for analysis,” Gowdy said.

While Gowdy said that it is not clear exactly when Clinton deleted the emails, he believes it was after the State Department first requested that she make her emails public in October 2014.

“While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department,” Gowdy said. “Not only was the Secretary the sole arbiter of what was a public record, she also summarily decided to delete all emails from her server ensuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest.”

Gowdy concluded his statement by saying that given Clinton’s “unprecedented email arrangement,” the Committee intends to question her about her decision to delete all of her emails nearly two years after leaving office.

“We will work with the leadership of the House of Representatives as the Committee considers next steps,” Gowdy said. “But it is clear Congress will need to speak with the former Secretary about her email arrangement and the decision to permanently delete those emails.”

On March 2, The New York Times released a report which revealed that during her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton did not have a government email address and insisted on conducting business through a private email account on a private server, which has been traced back to her home in Chappaqua, New York.

On March 4, the Benghazi Committee issued subpoenas for all emails related to the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, from both Clinton and her staff members’ personal accounts.

On March 8, Gowdy revealed that although Clinton provided 50,000 pages of emails, there were “huge gaps” in her records and documentation from her trip to Libya following the terrorist attacks was not included.

On March 12, Clinton addressed her use of private email to conduct government business at a press conference. She claimed that it was done “for convenience,” so that she could carry only one device. However, on Feb. 24, Clinton had said that she was “like two steps short of a hoarder,” because she carried “an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and a Blackberry.”

A poll conducted by CBS News found that in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, while 65 percent of Americans say that their opinion of her has not changed, 29 percent say their opinion of her has grown worse, which includes 49 percent of Republicans and 28 percent of Independents.

The poll also found that 47 percent of Americans do not see Clinton as trustworthy, and more than 6 in 10 Americans do not think Clinton’s use of a private email and server for government business was appropriate.

Government Accountability, Politics, US

Fact Check: Holes in Hillary’s Email Story

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Hillary Clinton addressed her use of private email to conduct government business during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, from 2009 to 2013, at a press conference at the United Nations on Tuesday. 

“When I got to work as secretary of state, I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two,” Clinton said.

While Clinton said that she used her private email for “convenience,” in order to carry just one device, she made a comment about using two different devices in an interview two weeks before.

At the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women on Feb. 24, Clinton was asked if she preferred an iPhone or an Android. “iPhone,” Clinton responded. She then added, “Okay – in full disclosure – and a Blackberry.”

“There are reasons when you start out in Washington on a Blackberry you stay on it in many instances,” Clinton said. “I don’t know, I don’t throw anything away. I’m like two steps short of a hoarder. So I have an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and a Blackberry.”

While Clinton claimed at her press conference that she did not want to deal with the hassle of carrying two devices to keep up with her emails, she also revealed that she did go through the hassle of deleting about half, or 30,000 of her emails, which she categorized as personal and “chose not to keep.”

“In going through the emails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. About half were work-related and went to State Department, and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work,” Clinton said.

Clinton also made a comment about her the fact that while she did not use proper protocol, and her own emails were not saved onto the government system, the government employees she corresponded with were using the correct addresses, and their overall correspondence was recorded.

“The vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department,” Clinton said.

During the question-and-answer portion of the press conference, Clinton made a comment about deciphering between which emails were “work-related” and which ones were personal.

“The process produced over 30,000 you know, work emails, and I think that we have more than met the requests from the State Department,” Clinton said. “The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private and I think that the State Department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that were provided.“

Clinton claimed that the server contains “personal communications” between her and her husband, and she added that the private server, which has been traced back to her home in Chappaqua, New York, was “set up for President Clinton’s office.”

However, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Bill Clinton “still doesn’t use email,” and “has sent a grand total of two emails during his entire life,” both while he was president.