Newly Released Hillary Emails Reveal Destruction of Evidence and Tampering with a Senate Oversight Investigation into the Benghazi Attack

Fox News reports that Donald Trump’s campaign and congressional Republicans are "pushing to re-open the Hillary Clinton email case -- at the Justice Department, as well as with the public -- in the wake of newly released FBI documents which are fueling claims that her team may have destroyed evidence" -- a separate criminal act. Their demand came Tuesday from former New York City mayor and top Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, who urged the FBI to review its own findings and the DOJ to appoint a special prosecutor to take over the case : “She acted with criminal intent. I don’t trust the Justice Department to review the pay-to-play Foundation scandal or the national security [email] scandal. This is [the kind] of case in which attorneys general have appointed a special prosecutor.” On a conference call with reporters, Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor himself, said a special prosecutor should also investigate allegations that Clinton Foundation donors got special access to the State Department during and after Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Giuliani also cited FBI revelations that Clinton server emails were deleted using special software [BleachBit] -- Representative Trey Gowdy said "even God can't read" BleachBit-erased emails -- and that at least a couple mobile devices were destroyed by being broken in half or hit with a hammer. ~~~~~~ Meanwhile, Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigating Clinton's email practices, asked a federal prosecutor Tuesday to determine whether Clinton and others working with her played a role in the deletion of thousands of her emails by a Colorado technology firm -- Platte River Networks -- that was overseeing her private computer server in 2015. The written request by Chaffetz asked the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Channing Phillips, to look at whether Hillary Clinton or her aides illegally destroyed records or covered up evidence. Fox News reported that in a separate letter, Chaffetz warned Platte River Networks that one of its engineers who deleted Clinton's electronic files last year could face federal charges of obstructing evidence for erasing the material -- because the congressional inquiry into the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, in which four Americans were killed, had issued a formal order to preserve such records. ~~~~~~ Clinton and her chief of staff, lawyer Cheryl Mills, told FBI investigators during questioning they had no knowledge of the deletions. Speaking on Tuesday to reporters traveling with her on her campaign plane en route to Tampa, Florida, Hillary Clinton also argued : “the FBI resolved all of this. Their report answered all the questions. I believe I have created so many jobs in the sort of conspiracy theory machine factory because honestly they never quit. They keep coming back and here's another one.” Clinton's campaign dismissed Chaffetz's outline of the email deletions as a "conspiracy theory" rejected by the FBI investigation. Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Tuesday : "This is yet another example of the congressman abusing his office by wasting further taxpayer resources on partisan attacks." ~~~~~~ Despite Hillary's standard defense of her actions by calling them part of "a vast right-wing conspiracy," the actions by the GOP led-House committee and Trump campaign add up to new political trouble for Clinton's presidential campaign, which was spared a legal prosecution in July when FBI Director James Comey berated Clinton for extremely careless email practices but declined to seek criminal charges after the FBI's investigation. The FBI notes from its investigation and interview with Clinton -- released Friday before the long holiday weekend, in the usual Obama administration patttern of releasing bad news late Friday before a weekend or holiday -- have fueled Republicans’ criticism of her and her team’s conduct. ~~~~~~ It is hard to ignore a section in the FBI files showing that a Platte River Networks engineer told agents "he believed he had an `oh, sh-t' moment," and deleted archived emails sometime during the last week of March 2015. The FBI report said the engineer used the program BleachBit to delete the files in ways thought to make them unrecoverable. According to the FBI, Cheryl Mills had instructed the engineer in December 2014 to delete all emails from the server more than 60 days old. But the engineer apparently forgot to delete the files and didn't realize his mistake until March 2015, the FBI said. That was three weeks after Clinton email revelations began and after Trey Gowdy's House Benghazi committee's order that Clinton and her technical consultants retain all of her email records. The FBI report said the engineer "was aware of the existence of the [Benghazi committee] preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton's email data on the PRN server." On the Tuesday conference call, Giuliani said the new details from the FBI lay out “probably the strongest case I’ve ever seen for criminal intent.” He said the FBI should review its conclusion not to seek criminal charges “for its own good and the sake of its reputation.” Separately, on Monday, the Trump campaign called on the FBI to make public "all of the relevant information surrounding the wiping of Clinton’s server, including witness accounts from employees of Platte River Networks, which carried out the deletions.” ~~~~~~ Yet more Hillary email revelations surfaced on Tuesday. Fox News published newly released emails suggesting that a senior Hillary Clinton aide stage-managed her first hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attack by feeding specific topics Clinton wanted to address to Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who at the time was acting chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Clinton media gatekeeper Philippe Reines wrote to Chelsea Clinton the morning of the January 23, 2013 hearing : "We wired it that Menendez would provide an opportunity to address two topics we needed to debunk (her actions/whereabouts on 9/11, and these email from Chris Stevens about moving locations,)." It is not surprising, therefore, that the first hearing question from Menendez that same day covered both topics referenced by Reines. Menendez asked for Clinton’s “insights on the decision-making process regarding the location of the Mission.” The Senator added, “can you also in your response, you touched upon it in your opening statement, but what actions were you and your staff taking the night of September 11 and into September 12?" The then-Secretary of State was ready with an answer to both questions. She told the committee that "[Ambassador] Chris [Stevens] was committed to not only being in Benghazi but to the location," and that on the night of the attack, "I was notified of the attack shortly after 4:00 p.m. Over the following hours, we were in continuous meetings and conversations both within the department with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally." Ambassador Chris Stevens was among four Americans killed in the attack. The emails were obtained by the group Citizens United as part of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department for emails from Chelsea Clinton and Hillary Clinton's closest aides. Citizens United said : “This email chain provides a rare behind-the-scenes look at which Benghazi-related issues the Clinton camp had concerns about going into Secretary Clinton’s January 2013 testimony on Capitol Hill, and what they had apparently plotted out beforehand with a Democrat committee member to deal with those concerns. Citizens United will continue to release all new Benghazi emails we receive through our FOIA lawsuits as they come in -- the American people have a right to know the full picture.” Fox News says it asked the Clinton campaign as well as Menendez's office if they coordinated before the 2013 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing; what was meant by the term "wired;" and how the email exchange was consistent with the principle of independent congressional oversight. There was no immediate response from either Clinton or Menendez. In 2013, the New Jersey Senator was about to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, replacing John Kerry who was going to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Senator Menendez is now facing federal public corruption charges -- despite his cooperation with Hillary & Hacks -- but he has denied any wrongdoing. ~~~~~~ Dear readers, previously released emails from a separate FOIA action show that on the night of the Benghazi attack, Clinton told her daughter, Chelsea, who used the email pseudonym Diane Reynolds on clintonemail.com, that the attacks were the work of an "Al Queda-like group" -- with no mention of an obscure anti-Islam video that Clinton publicly linked to the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack. Chelsea Clinton uses the same pseudonym in the Menendez email chain before the Benghazi hearing. In addition, according to Fox News, Hillary gatekeeper Philippe Reines is a founding member of the Clinton-aligned consulting group called Beacon Global Strategies. The online biographies for its founders and managing director indicate that no group knows more about the Benghazi terrorist attack and the Obama administration's response. AND, one of its senior counselors is none other than former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell, who heavily edited the controversial Benghazi talking points, which helped establish the administration’s initial false narrative about the attack. Morell, who recently endorsed Clinton in the New York Times, is being criticized for not fully disclosing his relationship to Beacon. In a follow-up series of written questions with the NYT, Morell wrote : "Among the many things I do in my post-government life -- teaching and writing, serving on corporate boards, speaking publicly on national security issues -- is work with Beacon Global Strategies, a firm that has prioritized nonpartisanship. The firm’s advisory board -- composed of appointees of both Republican and Democratic presidents, as well as career military officers -- make that priority clear. It all stems from a strong and shared belief that our national security is paramount and needs to be devoid of partisan politics." Mike Morell's sickeningly self-serving answers ring very hollow when we consider that he helped draft the set of lies that Hillary and the Obama White House told to the American people and to the families of the fallen American diplomats -- Hillary even said the families were lying when they revealed her own lies to them -- the same Mike Morell who then helped Hillary with her false congressional testimony and defended her in his own congressional appearance. Only the painstaking investigation and FOIA lawsuits by Citizens United, Judicial Watch, and Republicans in the House and Senate have brought any of these corrupt and possibly criminal acts by Hillary Clinton and her followers to light. The Clinton machine intended that their acts and evidence of them would be forever hidden or destroyed. The FBI had the bullets to end Hillary Clinton's corrupt public-trust career but refused to use them. Tomorrow -- what the FBI actually found out before whitewashing Hillary Clinton's indictable actions. A "vast right-wing conspiracy"?? You must be joking, Hillary.