Tag Archives: Secretary of State

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Breaking: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Ousted; CIA Director Pompeo Nominated

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President Donald Trump announced via Twitter on March 13 that CIA Director Mike Pompeo would be nominated to serve as the new Secretary of State, replacing Rex Tillerson.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/973540316656623616

According to Foreign Policy, “Rank and file in the State Department were stunned by the announcement,” and Tillerson himself was reportedly surprised as well. Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein communicated to FP that “The Secretary had every intention of remaining because of the tangible progress made on critical national security issues,” and that “The Secretary did not speak to the President this morning and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve.”

However, FP reported that it received an email from a European diplomat stating: “There were rumors about Pompeo heading [State] for some time. So, no surprise in the decision. What surprised was the timing: right after Tillerson went more vocal about Russia’s threat, and on the day when he just arrived from Africa. (Was there an urgent need to announce it today? Why not wait several days?)”

“Rex and I have been talking about this for a long time …we got along quite well, but we disagreed on things,” Trump said, according to NPR. “We were not really thinking the same … with Mike, we have a very similar thought process.”

Trump issued the following statement on Pompeo’s nomination:

I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State. Mike graduated first in his class at West Point, served with distinction in the U.S. army, and graduated with Honors from Harvard Law School. He went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives with a proven record of working across the aisle.

As Director of the CIA, Mike has earned the praise of members in both parties by strengthening our intelligence gathering, modernizing our defensive and offensive capabilities, and building close ties with our friends and allies in the international intelligence community. I have gotten to know Mike very well over the past 14 months, and I am confident he is the right person for the job at this critical juncture. He will continue our program of restoring America’s standing in the world, strengthening our alliances, confronting our adversaries, and seeking the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

His experience in the military, Congress, and as leader of the CIA have prepared him well for his new role and I urge his swift confirmation.

Gina Haspel, the Deputy Director of the CIA, will be nominated to replace Director Pompeo and she will be the CIA’s first-ever female director, a historic milestone. Mike and Gina have worked together for more than a year, and have developed a great mutual respect.

Finally, I want to thank Rex Tillerson for his service. A great deal has been accomplished over the last fourteen months, and I wish him and his family well.

Just before receiving Trump’s nomination, Pompeo appeared on Fox News Sunday where he discussed updates regarding relations with North Korea. While discussing details of the potential meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-Un, Pompeo said:

“This first meeting I think is between the president and the leader of North Korea, the two people who are the decision-makers, who will ultimately decide what arrangements are acceptable.

But make no mistake about it: while these negotiations are going on, there will be no concessions made. The activity of this administration to disrupt the North Korean economy, to put pressure on North Korea, to galvanize the world in a way that you have countries from the Middle East to Europe and Asia, placing sanctions on the North Korean regime— those will continue and we will see how the talks and the negotiations proceed.”

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FBI Formally Confirms Its ‘Ongoing’ Investigation Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is under an “ongoing” investigation for her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

The investigation was confirmed in a letter from FBI general counsel James Baker, released Monday to the State Department. He noted that he is writing to update a response he gave the department on Sept. 21, 2015, when asked if Clinton was formally under investigation.

“At the time, I informed you that that the FBI could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation,” Baker wrote. “Since that time, in public statements and testimony, the Bureau has acknowledged generally that it is working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.”

Baker also said that while he cannot give any details on the “ongoing investigation,” the FBI’s response regarding the case has “changed to some degree” because it is now admitting that the investigation exists.

“The FBI has not, however, publicly acknowledged the specific focus, scope, or potential targets of any such proceedings,” Baker wrote. “Thus while the FBI’s response to you has changed to some degree due to these intervening events, we remain unable [to] provide the requested information without adversely affecting on-going law enforcement efforts.”

As previously reported, the FBI insisted that it could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation” when Judge Emmet G. Sullivan sent a court-ordered inquiry to the State Department in September 2015, instructing it to reach out to the FBI to find out if any information could be recovered from Clinton’s server.

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

On Jan. 25, former U.S. House Majority leader Tom DeLay said that according to his sources within the FBI, the Bureau is “ready to recommend an indictment and they also say that if the attorney general does not indict, they’re going public.”

Read more about Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal Here

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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Criminal Investigation Requested In Hillary Clinton’s Use Of Personal Email

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The U.S. Department of Justice has been asked to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Clinton abused classified government information during her tenure as Secretary of State when she used her personal email to conduct government business.

The New York Times reported that two inspectors general asked for the investigation after a memo from June 29 to Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, stated that Clinton’s private email account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.”

Clinton, who is currently a democratic presidential candidate, served as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. Her use of a personal email account on a private server for government business was revealed in March.

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

As Truth In Media previously reported, Clinton insisted that she “opted for convenience” when choosing to use her personal email, and she has denied that the account contains any classified information.

“I fully complied with every rule I was governed by,” Clinton said. “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.”

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

 The New York Times noted that the Justice Department has not announced whether it will open a criminal investigation into Clinton’s actions, and that her campaign is claiming that “any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted.”

The State Department is now reviewing 55,000 pages of emails, looking for classified information. The New York Times reported that in the 3,000 pages of emails released on June 30, two dozen emails were redacted and labeled as “classified,” after being reviewed by the State Department.

[RELATED: Benghazi Chairman: There Are “Huge Gaps” In Hillary Clinton’s Email Records]

In a statement from Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, he said that the State Department has “used every excuse to avoid complying with fundamental requests for documents.”

“Our Committee has tried asking personally. Our Committee has tried letter requests. Our Committee has tried public hearings with other agency employees. Our Committee has tried subpoenas,” Gowdy said. “While the tactics tried have varied, the results have not. Our Committee is not in possession of all documents needed to do the work assigned to us.”

In response, some State Department officials have said they “do not have the resources or infrastructure to properly comply with all the requests,” while others have said that they “believe that many senior officials did not initially take the House committee seriously, which slowed document production and created an appearance of stonewalling.”

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

Clinton was criticized in April when, after Gowdy claimed that she had been issued several subpoenas related to releasing her emails to the Benghazi Committee, she deleted all emails and wiped her server clean.

During an interview with CNN on July 7, Clinton accused Brianna Keilar of “making assumptions” regarding the subpoenas. “I’ve never had a subpoena, there’s nothing,” Clinton said.

Gowdy responded by releasing a copy of a subpoena sent to Clinton in March, and a statement where he claimed that while the Committee has “issued several subpoenas,” he had not intended to make them public.

“I would not make this one public now, but after Secretary Clinton falsely claimed the committee did not subpoena her, I have no choice in order to correct the inaccuracy,” Gowdy said.

Election, Politics

E-Mails Reveal CNN Analyst Asked State Department For Talking Points On Hillary Clinton

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The State Department released nearly 3,000 emails from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s first year as Secretary of State in 2009, and included in those emails were messages from CNN Analyst Paul Begala, who requested talking points on Clinton’s accomplishments for what he called a “dopey CNN report card” segment.

The New York Times reported that “while an ostensibly nonpartisan figure” as Secretary of State, Clinton “clearly still worried about retiring her $23 million campaign debt from 2008,” judging by an email her chief of protocol, Capricia Marshall, sent to Begala in April 2009.

“Thank you so very much!!!” Marshall wrote. “We raised 500K from the email contest!! You are all amazing — the world adores you! You put a serious hole in HRC debt!”

In response, Begala, who was an advisor to former President Bill Clinton, asked for talking points on what “HRC has accomplished in the first hundred days” as Secretary.

“I gave Sec. Clinton an A+ in our dopey CNN report card last night,” Begala wrote after the segment. “So did Donna Brazile. The only two A+’s all night.”

Following the release of the email, Begala addressed it on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper on Wednesday, and he claimed that he did disclose his personal bias when he gave Clinton an “A+” and that the audience didn’t need “a congressional subpoena to know that I love Hillary Clinton.”

“The first 100 days of the Obama administration were consumed with the economic crisis,” Begala said. “Plus it’s not my beat. It seemed to me the world was doing just fine with Hillary as secretary of state, but I didn’t know the specifics. I knew I was going to be asked about them. Who am I supposed to ask? The Koch brothers?”

Referring to Begala’s comment about CNN being “dopey,” Tapper asked Begala if he felt the same way about Tapper’s segments.

“No,” Begala replied. “Let me say, I was dopey to put that in an email. I was feeling grumpy. I was on the set I think with (former presidential adviser David) Gergen, these very tall people and I’m short. So I was feeling like a dwarf. I picked the wrong dwarf. Sometimes I say things that are dopey. That’s part of the gig, I guess.”

In March, when it was revealed that Clinton had used her personal email for government business during her tenure as Secretary of State, Politico reported that Begala was among the Clinton allies “who believe the all-but-certain nominee is enough of a defined quantity in voters’ eyes that Republican attacks on her email policies cannot sway them.”

In a statement regarding Clinton’s emails, Begala said, “Voters do not give a shit. They do not even give a fart. Find me one persuadable voter who agrees with HRC on the issues but will vote against her because she has a non-archival-compliant email system and I’ll kiss your ass in Macy’s window and say it smells like roses.”

Election, Foreign Policy, Government Corruption, Politics, US

New Book Questions How Foreign Donations Impacted Hillary Clinton’s State Dept.

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A new book titled, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer, will be released on May 5, and is expected to provide insight into the influence of foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation had on US foreign policy during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

After obtaining a copy, the New York Times hailed the book, which “asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return” as the “most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.”

Peter Schweizer, a conservative author and the President of the Government Accountability Institute, has written books such as Architects of Ruin: How a Gang of Radical Activists and Liberal Politicians Destroyed Trillions of Dollars in Wealth in the Pursuit of Social Justice (2009), Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison (2011), and Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets (2013).

According to the New York Times, Clinton Cash includes examples of a free-trade agreement in Columbia that benefitted the head of an oil company who had personally donated millions to the foundation, development projects in Haiti following an earthquake in 2010, and more than $1 million in payments to Bill Clinton by a major Canadian shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the same time the State Department was debating the project.

As previously reported, a recent report from International Business Times detailed the Clintons’ involvement with the free-trade agreement between Columbia and the US, which included the fact that while then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was condemning human rights violations in Colombia, the Clinton family was also “forging a financial relationship” with the extensive petroleum company Pacific Rubiales, which is “at the center of Colombia’s labor strife.”

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Schweizer wrote.

The New York Times noted that Schweizer’s book “largely focuses on payments made to Mr. Clinton for speeches, which increased while his wife served as secretary of state,” as shown by the fact that out of the “13 Clinton speeches that fetched $500,000 or more,” only two occurred during the years that Hillary Clinton was not secretary of state.

“During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions,” wrote Schweizer, who highlighted that fact that “some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets.”

Presidential candidate and Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who has highlighted the phrase “Liberty, Not Hillary” in his campaign, also has a page on his website asking for any “additional information about the Clinton Foundation accepting foreign contributions.”

Business Insider called Clinton Cash the “blockbuster exposé” Paul has been waiting for to derail Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, told the Times that Schweizer’s book is “twisting previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories.”

While Hillary Clinton’s aides have worked to label critical books as “conservative propaganda,” the New York Times predicted that Clinton Cash will do more damage than other books such as Edward Klein’s Blood Feud, which looks at the relationship between the Clintons and the Obamas, and Daniel Halper’s Clinton Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine, due to the fact that “major news organizations including The Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have exclusive agreements with the author  to pursue the story lines found in the book.”

 

Election, Government Accountability, Government Corruption, Politics, Technology, US

Trey Gowdy: Benghazi Committee Lacks Authority To Subpoena Hillary’s Private Server

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On Wednesday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said that while the House has the authority to subpoena Hillary Clinton’s private server, his committee has a “more limited jurisdiction.”

In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Gowdy explained that although the Benghazi Committee lacks the authority under House rules, “most experts believe” that the House as an entity could issue a subpoena for the server.

“I would think if you’re interested in national security breaches, and also the completeness of the public record, that you would want a neutral, detached arbiter as opposed to her own lawyer,” Gowdy said. “The lawyer’s obligation is to the client. I want someone with an obligation to my fellow citizens to say the public record is complete. I can’t just take her lawyer’s word for it.”

Clinton’s personal email on a private server, which she used to conduct government business during her tenure as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, was revealed in a report from the New York Times on March 2.

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

On March 27, Gowdy released a statement revealing that Clinton deleted all of her emails, and wiped her server clean. Gowdy explained that while it is not clear exactly when Clinton chose to delete the emails, he believes it was after the State Department first requested that she make her emails public in October 2014.

On March 31, the Benghazi Committee formally requested a transcribed interview with Clinton. The interview would include questions over Clinton’s use of private email for government business, along with questions on why Clinton chose to delete all of the emails on her server, after she was aware that they had been subpoenaed by the Committee.

While Gowdy’s request said that the Committee was willing to schedule the interview at a time that was convenient for Clinton, it gave a deadline of May 1.

Politico reported that a spokesperson for the Committee said that Clinton has yet to answer the request for either the interview about the emails, or a public hearing on the 2012 attack in Benghazi.

Gowdy told Hewitt that including Clinton, he plans to interview several others, regarding the Benghazi attack, such as former  CIA deputy director Michael Morell, Clinton’s chief-of-staff Cheryl Mills and Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin. The interview list will also include Sidney Blumenthal, who according to Politico, is a “longtime confidant of the Clintons whose hacked emails to Hillary Clinton first revealed the existence of her private account.”

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that it obtained letters, which revealed that congressional investigators wrote to Clinton in Dec. 2012, asking about her use of private email for government business.

The Times noted that it was not until March 2013, two months after Clinton left office, that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the author of the letter, received an answer from the State Department, which “ignored the question and provided no response.”

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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.

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Benghazi Chairman: There are “Huge Gaps” in Hillary Clinton’s Email Records

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Last week, it was revealed that rumored 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used her private email for government business during her four years as Secretary of State. The House Committee investigating the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, issued subpoenas on Wednesday for all of Clinton’s emails related to Libya.

On Sunday, the chairman of the Benghazi Committee, Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, said that although Clinton provided 50,000 pages of emails, documentation from her trip to Libya following the terrorist attacks was not included.

Gowdy appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer on Sunday, and he confirmed that there were “huge gaps” in the email records that were given to the Benghazi Committee.

Gowdy said that while Clinton’s emails are still under investigation, there would be no “selective releases” of the messages. “If she wants to release all of them, with the emphasis being on the word all, she’s welcome to do that. I can’t stop her from doing it,” Gowdy said. “But serious investigations don’t make selective releases.”

When asked about any significant gaps in the emails Clinton turned over to the Committee, Gowdy said that there were several “huge gaps” that raise questions about Clinton’s credibility.

“There are gaps of months and months and months,” Gowdy said. “And if you think to that iconic picture of her on a C-17 flying to Libya, she has sunglasses on and she has her handheld device in her hand, we have no e-mails from that day. In fact, we have no e-mails from that trip.”

Gowdy said that it shouldn’t be up to Clinton to decide “what is a public record and what’s not.” He explained that he ultimately blames the State Department for allowing the arrangement, and for not doing anything about it until they received a request from the House Committee on Benghazi.

In an interview with CBS News on Saturday, President Obama said he learned of Clinton’s use of private email at “the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.”

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that while Obama was aware that Clinton conducted business using a private email account, he was not aware that she was using a private server to send those emails.

Josh Earnest, a spokesman for the White House, confirmed that Obama exchanged emails with Clinton using her private email address. “The president — as I think many people expected — did over the course of his first several years in office trade emails with the secretary of state,” Earnest said.

March 12, 2015: UPDATE: Fact Check: Holes in Hillary’s Email Story

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SCANDAL: Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff Fired Ambassador for Using Private Email

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Following the revelation last week that rumored 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton insisted on using her private email to conduct government business during her tenure as Secretary of State from 2009-2013, a former U.S. ambassador, who was fired in 2012 for similar practices, spoke out about his experience.

On Friday, former U.S. ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration told The Daily Caller that in 2012, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills fired him “based on an inspector general’s report which found, among other things, that he routinely used an unauthorized email account to conduct official government business.”

Gration told CNN that Mills “obviously knew Secretary Clinton was using commercial email,” and said that he was “very surprised to learn of the double standard.”

“I make no apology for ‘rocking the boat’ in the State Department to improve physical security, to enhance cyber policy, and to conduct several other initiatives that the State Department Inspector General misrepresented to build the case that Secretary Clinton’s Chief of Staff used to terminate my tenure as the US Ambassador in 2012,” Gration said.

The August 2012 report from the Office of the Inspector General stated that Gration had been found conducting official business on non-Department automated information systems, which is a practice that should be “limited to only maintaining communications during emergencies.”

Gration’s “requirements for use of commercial email in the office” and his “flouting of direct instructions to adhere to Department policy have placed the information management staff in a conundrum,” according to the Inspector General.

The report went on to say that Gration’s use of private email to conduct government business left the State Department balancing the “desire to be responsive to their mission leader” with the “need to adhere to Department regulations and government information security standards.”

“The use of unauthorized information systems increases the risk for data loss, phishing, and spoofing of email accounts, as well as inadequate protections for personally identifiable information,” the report stated. “The use of unauthorized information systems can also result in the loss of official public records as these systems do not have approved record preservation or backup functions.”

The State Department told CNN that in addition to the private emails, there were  “several concerns with management and leadership” regarding Gration’s position. According to CNN, the State Department’s “continued referencing of the other allegations against Gration came amidst fruitless attempts by CNN to ask the department spokespeople to explain why it was acceptable for Secretary Clinton to use private email to conduct official business given that the 2012 Inspector General’s report against Gration repeatedly hammered him for the use of ‘commercial email for official government business.'”

In April 2014, the Washington Times reported that the Office of the Inspector General released a report which revealed that between 2008 and 2014, the State Department “misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts,” mainly during Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

The report stated that State Department contracts worth “more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located at all,” and that these unaccounted funds posed a “significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.”

March 9, 2015, 3:30 p.m. Eastern: UPDATE: In a statement to us from Scott Gration, he maintained that he was fired for the “use of Gmail in the US Embassy,” and claimed that the Inspector General’s report, “Contains many egregious lies, falsehoods, and distortions on a variety of subjects.”

“I hope the following details help to set the record straight on my use of a commercial email account during my tenure as the US Ambassador to Kenya,” Gration said. “My experience was somewhat different than Secretary Clinton’s use of her commercial account, yet I was ‘fired’ for the use of Gmail in the US Embassy, my insistence on improving our physical security posture, and other twisted and false allegations.”

While the report from the Office of the Inspector General claimed that Gration ignored State Department instructions and “willfully disregarded regulations concerning the use of commercial email for official government business,” he tells us that he made an effort to have his “unclassified State Department emails” and his “Gmail messages displayed as separate accounts on the same State Department Blackberry.”

March 10, 2015: UPDATE: Benghazi Chairman: There are “Huge Gaps” in Hillary Clinton’s Email Records

March 12, 2015: UPDATE: Fact Check: Holes in Hillary’s Email Story

Politics, US

Breaking the Law? Hillary Clinton Used Private Email as Secretary of State

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On Monday, the New York Times revealed that during her four years as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton did not have a government email address, and used her private email account to conduct government business, possibly violating the Federal Records Act.

Vox reported that while Clinton’s use of her personal email looks bad now, it looked even worse in 2009, when she “initially refused to use a governmental account,” due to the fact that she was entering just as a Congressional oversight committee was investigating allegations that the Bush Administration fired several U.S. Attorneys for political reasons, and denied access to “millions of internal messages that might have incriminated the White House.”

The New York Times reported that it wasn’t until two months ago, when the State Department made a new effort to observe the Federal Records Act, that Clinton’s advisors “reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department.”

On Tuesday, Clinton’s spokesperson Nick Merrill released a statement, claiming that Clinton’s behavior was not out of the ordinary, and that previous Secretaries of State had also used their personal emails:

“Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials. For government business, she emailed them on their Department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained. When the Department asked former Secretaries last year for help ensuring their emails were in fact retained, we immediately said yes.”

The statement went on to say that Clinton’s practice of using her personal email was a way of updating old policies:

“Both the letter and spirit of the rules permitted State Department officials to use non-government email, as long as appropriate records were preserved. As a result of State’s request for our help to make sure they in fact were, that is what happened here. As the Department stated, it is in the process of updating its record preservation policies to bring them in line with its retention responsibilities.”

In a statement from Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, he defended Clinton and said that her use of private email has been public knowledge for several years.

“It has been public for several years that Secretary Clinton used her personal account, apparently following the pattern of previous Secretaries of States,” said Cummings. “Although Secretary Clinton has produced her emails to the State Department, it is unclear from press reports whether previous Secretaries have done the same.”

According to Vox, the fact that Clinton chose to use her private email for conducting government business shows a “stunning disregard for governmental transparency requirements.”

Jason Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration told the New York Times that Clinton’s use her private email is not a common practice and should not have been allowed.

“It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario – short of nuclear winter – where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business,” Baron said.

March 5, 2015: UPDATE: Benghazi Committee Subpoenas Hillary Clinton’s Private Emails for Investigation

March 9, 2015: UPDATE: Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff Fired Ambassador for Using Private Email

March 10, 2015: UPDATE: Benghazi Chairman: There are “Huge Gaps” in Hillary Clinton’s Email Records

March 12, 2015: UPDATE: Fact Check: Holes in Hillary’s Email Story

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U.S. Officials Fear Sanitized, Heavily Redacted Release of Senate Torture Report

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The United States Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to release a condensed, redacted version of the report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture methods that were used on al-Qaida hostages following the terror attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

CBS News reported that the findings from the documents show that the CIA “routinely went beyond what was legally allowable in using techniques, including waterboarding, to get information from terrorism suspects,” which were not effective, and that the agency “systematically lied to itself, to the White House, the Department of Justice, and to Congress about how well it worked to keep it going.”

According to The Guardian, the report will be “in the form of a 480-page executive summary,” which is just a portion of the 6,200-page report compiled by Democrats on the committee, who spent six years “reviewing millions of secret CIA documents.”

VICE News reported that on Thursday, the Department of Justice “provided the first official confirmation” that the redacted report might be released as early as Tuesday.

According to The Atlantic, the report was “only approved by the committee’s Democrats,” while Republicans on the committee “plan to release their own report.”

On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry reached out to Dianne Feinstein, a Senator from California, and the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, and asked her to delay the release of the report. During the phone call, Kerry expressed concern about the release causing complications in the U.S.’s relationship with foreign countries.

An anonymous administration official told Bloomberg View that in Kerry’s conversation with Feinstein, his main concern was the timing of the release.

“What he raised was timing of report release, because a lot is going on in the world,” said the official, who went on to explain that Kerry wanted “to make sure foreign policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing.”

On Sunday, Michael Hayden, the Director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009, appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with a similar warning. Hayden said that the torture report contained false information, and if released, it could be used against U.S. citizens in foreign countries.

“First of all, the CIA workforce will feel as if it has been tried and convicted in absentia since the Senate Democrats and their staff didn’t talk to anyone actively involved in the program,” said Hayden. “Second, this will be used by our enemies to motivate people to attack Americans and American facilities overseas.”

Hayden also claimed that there were “countries out there” who have cooperated with the U.S. thus far on its “war on terror,” and who are “relying on American discretion.”

At a news conference in August, President Obama acknowledged that the U.S. had crossed the line following the terror attacks on 9/11.

“We tortured some folks,” said Obama. “When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line.”

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Lawsuit Responds To Argument That Voters Have No Rights in Primaries, But Must Pay For Them

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On Thursday, New Jersey voters responded in court to a motion to dismiss a lawsuit, filed by New Jersey Secretary of State, Kim Guadagno.

Investigative Journalist, Ben Swann, first placed a spotlight on the lawsuit in March, when he discussed “End Partisanship” on an episode of Truth in Media. “New Jersey requires that a voter affiliate with a political party approved by the State as a precondition to participating in the primary process,” explained Swann.

This requirement has created major problems for the 47.6% of voters in New Jersey who don’t fall into the State’s approved category of either Democrat or Republican, yet are still required to fund the primary elections through tax dollars. Those who weren’t being properly represented in New Jersey chose to fight back with a lawsuit, using the organization End Partisanship.

End Partisanship is a coalition formed by leaders from different political organizations who seek to to break the two-party system’s hold on primary elections by making their candidates stronger, and by giving a voice to those who either have a third party affiliation, or none at all. A legal advisor from the Independent Voter Project, Chad Peace, described End Partisanship as having developed a “state by state legal strategy defending the rights of individual independent voters in the courtroom.”

The lawsuit End Partisanship filed in New Jersey was a first from the organization, and its leaders plan to use it as a blueprint they can eventually apply to all states. Ben Swann explained that the suit “seeks to protect the fundamental right to vote under the New Jersey and United States Constitutions, which have no requirement that a voter forfeit their First Amendment right not to associate with a political party.”

In May, General John J. Hoffman, an Attorney for the secretary of state’s office, filed a motion to dismiss the challenge on the constitutionality of New Jersey’s primary election system. New Jersey Secretary of State, Kim Guadagno, responded to the constituents by arguing that while American citizens in New Jersey do not have a right to vote in primary elections, political parties do have a right to use taxpayer dollars to fund them.

The supporters of End Partisanship took to court on July 3, to respond to the motion to dismiss the lawsuit. They stated that they had simply asked the State to ensure that the publicly funded primary election system not function as a private enterprise that deprives them of their ability to cast a meaningful vote. They pointed out that by keeping their votes from having equal representation, the state “confers on those private political parties a gratuitous advantage.”

The lawsuit acknowledged the fact that giving the State, “the veil of state sovereignty would de facto immunize private interests from constitutional scrutiny whenever the State, or an actor of the State, is so influenced by those private interests that they become one and the same.”

The lawsuit went on to say that while the State looks to extend its holding by arguing that voters have no fundamental right to participate in the primary stage of an electoral process, the Plaintiff contends that “the State’s primary election system, taken as a whole, confers a special benefit to the dominant private political parties and their members to the complete exclusion of nearly half of all registered voters.”

“Plaintiffs assert the necessity of an electoral system that provides all voters an equally meaningful opportunity to participate at all integral stages of the election process, including the primary,” stated the lawsuit.

“At a time when unaffiliated voters make up 47 percent of the State’s electorate, the need for judicial intervention is compelling.”