Saturday Politics : Hillary Is Drowning in the Tzunami of the Email Scandal She Created

Saturday Politics is often about the ongoing delays and discoveries in Hillary Clinton's email scandal. ~~~~~~ Newsmax reported on Tuesday that the State Department said it has found among the 14,900 additional emails revealed by the FBI last week -- but not turned over to the State Department by Hillary Clinton -- are about 30 emails that may be related to the 2012 attack on US diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya. Government lawyers told US District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta Tuesday that some of the emails among the 30 were not included in the 55,000 pages provided by Clinton in her original transmission of paper copies of what she called "her work-related" emails. The State Department's lawyer said it would need until the end of September to review the emails and redact potentially classified information before they are released. Mehta was skeptical about it taking so long to release so few documents, and urged government lawyers to do better. He ordered the State Department to report to him in a week with more details about why the review process would take a full month. The hearing was held in one of several lawsuits filed by Judicial Watch, which has sued over access to government records involving the Democrat Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The State Department has said the FBI provided it with about 14,900 new emails characterized by the FBI as not being among those previously released by Clinton, who has repeatedly said she withheld and deleted only personal emails not related to her duties as Secretary of State. With the November election coming in two months, and early voting beginning in less than one month, Republicans are pressing for the release of as many Clinton-related documents as possible. ~~~~~~ In a separate Judicial Watch lawsuit, on Tuesday, JW submitted 25 questions to Clinton about her 2009 decision to rely on a private server in the basement of her New York home rather than a government email account. Clinton was ordered earlier this month by US District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan to answer the group's questions under oath, instead of answering in person under oath, as requested by JW. It was not clear from the wording of Sullivan's order whether Clinton must answer the questions before or after the November election. Judicial Watch contends the deadline is September 29. ~~~~~~ The FBI also released on Friday documents related to its investigation, which focused on whether Clinton and her aides mishandled government secrets. The documents in the case were made public as the FBI responds to Freedom of Information Act requests. The documents released include notes from the FBI interview of Hillary Clinton -- not under oath or taped -- just before FBI Director James Comey in July described Clinton's actions as "extremely careless," but said his agents found no evidence that anyone intended to break the law and said "no reasonable prosecutor" would have brought a criminal case. The FBI recently provided Congress portions of its file from the agency's year-long investigation. ~~~~~~ As we noted in our August 27 blog, the release of the 14,900 additional documents occurred on the same day that the release of another set of emails exposed very close ties between Clinton’s staff and the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as Secretary of State -- just the latest development in a long controversy Hillary & Hacks have tried to ignore. That release from Judicial Watch, concerning the Clinton Foundation, led to stronger allegations that she ran a “pay-for-play” operation while in office. GOP nominee Donald Trump pounded Clinton over the emails last week during an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper saying : "She should be in jail. You know it. The FBI knows it. We all do." The Justice Department cleared Clinton of illegally mishandling classified information, but Comey still condemned her use of the server as “extremely careless.” Trump called for the Justice Department to appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate her. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has also repeatedly demanded the emails be released prior to the election. Last week when the news of the 14,900 previously unknown emails broke, Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in open records laws, told TheHill : "What everyone wants to know is, will any of the information [in the new emails] be deemed classified? Because that would be just one more nail in the proverbial coffin for Hillary.” Clinton’s campaign has claimed not to know what’s in the newly uncovered emails. Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said : "As we have always said, Hillary Clinton provided the State Department with all the work-related emails she had in her possession in 2014. We are not sure what additional materials the Justice Department may have located, but if the State Department determines any of them to be work-related, then obviously we support those documents being released publicly as well." ~~~~~~ The point of all this is that FBI Director Comey famously said he could find no intent by Hillary to break the law by her use of a secret unsecured server that transmitted classified information. The new Foundation-related batch of emails may actually provide that intent, if they show that the emails were deliberately concealed as part of a Hillary-and-Bill scam using the Clinton Foundation as the conduit in a pay-to-play scheme with Secretary of State Hillary. That would make the setting up of her private server and lying to Congress and the FBI part of a cover-up of criminal activities. ~~~~~~ Another possible basis for prosecuting Huma Abedin, if not Hillary herself, for mishandling of classified information is a newly revealed email communication between Abedin, Hillary Clinton's top aide, and Clinton Foundation officials showing she was fully aware that the private email server and address her boss Hillary was using was not secure, and also showing the close connection between the State Department and the Foundation. Citizens United Chairman David Bossie said Tuesday morning : "We don't know where the State Department ended and the Foundation began, and that's really what our investigation is truly uncovering here." Bossie was speaking to Fox News, after sharing the email Citizens United uncovered during its extensive investigation into Clinton's communications. In the email, dated October 12, 2009, Abedin explains to a long list of people, including Clinton's then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills, that during a trip to Russia, the staff was to be required to leave all BlackBerry phones on the airplane and would be using locally-supplied cell phones because of security concerns. Earlier in August, CNN reported that Mills had done some work for the Clinton Foundation, including interviewing job candidates for a top job within the Foundation, while serving as Hillary's State Department chief of staff. Her attorney said the trip was voluntary and no government funds were used. Justin Cooper, another person receiving the Abedin email about the Russia trip, had been an aide to former President Bill Clinton, and advises and assists in operating the Clinton Foundation, Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Family Foundation. Justin Cooper responded to Abedin's message that the email operated through Clinton's private server should still work. Abedin replied : "It's for security reasons. I don't want to use that one, either." Bossie told Fox News : "This is an email about their State Department travel on an official trip to Russia that Abedin is sending to the Foundation, so they understood they would be off the grid. 'If you need anything, call us.' This is just part and parcel of what was going on," according to Bossie, who said : "Clearly Hillary Clinton's staff understood proper security protocols. They were being told by the State Department to leave your BlackBerry phone on the plane, clear, plain and simple because they knew that the Russians would be hacking them. They knew the Russians would be trying to read them. The devices, though, could not be hacked if they were turned off and left on the plane." Bossie also told Fox News that Citizens United is still analyzing the emails that have been released, but at the same time, it has been able to "systematically go through and look for the closeness of the Foundation and [its] staff and their donors to the State Department and the top staff of Hillary Clinton." Citizens United is also looking into whether there were any policy changes resulting from the use of quid pro quo in the connections between the Foundation and Clinton's State Department, Bossie said, adding it's taken over two years for Citizens United to "uncover the State Department acting as an arm of the Clinton campaign," and part of the reason the work is going so slowly is because it's being stalled getting the materials : "They don't want to put it out before Election Day. That's why we're trying to force these issues." The Clinton camp has accused Citizens United of being a "right-wing group that's been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s and once again is trying to make something out of nothing." [Does this sound a lot like Hillary's famously paranoic comment during the Clinton presidency that all attacks on them were "part of a vast right-wing conspiracy"? Political paranoia dies hard.] Bossie said he is proud of Citizens United's track records against the Clintons, both back in the 1990s and again this year : "Trying to uncover what the Clintons do is a full-time job, I'll be honest with you. We have full-time staff trying to keep up with them. Let me say this, the Clintons want to attack and it's their modus operandi to attack whoever is raising questions about them, whoever is shining the light on their activities, so it's not a surprise that they would do this." Bossie himself goes back a long way investigating the Clintons : "I was the chief investigators for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight in the '90s, and led all of the investigations from the Whitewater Committee through to when he [Bill Clinton] was impeached," Bossie told Fox News. "We know each other all too well." ~~~~~~ AND, as if all Hillary's sloppy, self-serving misuse of classified information and her lies and blustering about how and why she used her secret unsecured server exclusively as Secretary of State were not enough -- now we find out that she used her unsecured email server to transmit classified information even after she left the State Department...!!! TheHill revealed Wednesday that the New York Post has reported that Hillary Clinton sent an email to a group of diplomats and aides on May 28, 2013, about the "123 Deal" -- a 2009 agreement between the United Arab Emirates and the US regarding nuclear energy production -- according to the Post. The email, which was sent months after she left the State Department, went to people including Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, diplomat Jeffrey Feltman, policy aide Jake Sullivan, diplomat Kurt Campbell, State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills and top aide Huma Abedin. The NY Post It was sent from the address hrod17@clintonemail.com -- which is associated with Clinton's private email server -- and has been heavily redacted before release because it includes classified information. The message will be declassified on May 28, 2033, according to markings on the email obtained by the Republican National Committee through a Freedom of Information Act request. The NY Post says the email's heavily redacted portions include "information regarding foreign governors" and "foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources." Republican National Committee research director Raj Shah told the NY Post : “Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information was so pervasive it continued after she left government. She clearly can’t be trusted with our nation’s security.” ~~~~~~ Well, it all comes out, not in the wash, but in the polls, doesn't it? Donald Trump has moved ahead of Hillary Clinton nationally, according to a new Rasmussen poll released on Thursday. TheHill, rather than reporting the facts, calls Rasmussen "right-leaning" because it took its poll and published the result -- Trump has 40% support and Clinton has 39%. The findings are very tight, but the trendline is the news -- Clinton's support is down to 39% from a high of 44% in the Rasmussen poll taken in early August, shortly after the Democratic National Convention. Clinton was leading in nearly all recent polls. But the race has tightened in recent days, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, which shows Clinton leading Trump by 4.6 points nationally. Trump has a 15% lead over Hillary in Utah, 39% to 24%, according to a Public Policy Polling (PPP) poll released last week. Pollsters also found that Trump’s lead grows to 20 points, 53% to 33%, when he faces Clinton one-on-one. And, while 61% view Trump unfavorably while 31% see him favorably, that beats Hillary Clinton's unfavorability rating of 72% compared to the 23% who view her favorably. ~~~~~~ And what is the Google Trends top search on Hillary Clinton? The anti-Hillary Clinton movie titled "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party" is dominating Google searches about the Democratic presidential nominee. “Where is 'Hillary's America' playing?” was No. 1, followed by “When does 'Hillary's America' come out on DVD?” The remaining searches asked about the number of days since Clinton's last press conference, whether she should be the next President, and if she is actually a Democrat. The 2016 film "Hillary's America," directed by conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, takes a critical look at the Democratic Party and its ties to slavery, as well as the scandals that have plagued Clinton's campaign. ~~~~~~ Dear readers, Hillary Clinton flouted federal laws simply by having a secret server. She compounded the crime by sending classified information over her secret -- and importantly -- unsecured server. Her staff knew the server was unsecured but they let her use it and joined in passing classified information through it. They did this for four years without ever informing the State Department Inspector General. In addition, Hillary and her State Department aides were in daily communication with the Clinton Foundation that was continuing to take large donations from foreign governments and/or foreign interests in violation of Hillary and Bill Clinton's signed promise to President Obama not to do any such thing. They seem clearly to have used those donations as a kind of 'ticket' for access to Hillary while she was Secretary of State, using Huma Abedin as the liaison. Hillary met these donors when the Foundation asked her to. We await the final irrefutable 'smoking gun' that will show definitively that there was a quid pro quo. It is surely out there somewhere, probably among the 33,000 emails Hillary and her lawyers labeled 'personal' after they destroyed them. And, still Hillary Clinton stands -- asking America to elect her to the highest office -- the greatest trust -- America can bestow. That the Clintons would try this is not surprising. What is astonishing is that the Democrat Party is in bed with Hillary and Bill even after all the undeniable scum has surfaced. And, the reason for true despair is that many in the Republican establishment are either endorsing Hillary, saying that they will vote for her, or urging Republican voters to vote for a third party candidate, making Hillary's election inevitable. I leave the Democrat Party to the Gods of Politics. But, the Republicans who find Hillary Clinton preferable to Donald Trump will answer to the God Who guided the Founders, Who inspired the Constitution, Who has protected America for 240 years. America's Judas they are. They will bear the mark of Hillary and Bill Clinton's betrayal of America forever.