The Tale of Hillary's Emails : Told by the FBI, Donald Trump, and the latest Polls

Last Friday afternoon -- in what is called a 'dump' by the media because it was an effort to hide bad news in the rush to get away for a long holiday weekend -- the FBI released its internal notes on, among other things, the Hillary Clinton interview. The bad news the FBI released was a detailed report on its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, including the summary of its three-hour interview with the former Secretary of State. The 58-page report, with large sections redacted, is the FBI's response to the GOP and public demand to know why, in July, FBI Director James Comey announced that he did not recommend charging Clinton with willfully mishandling classified information. While Comey called the former Secretary of State “extremely careless” for using the server, he has repeatedly said that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” GOP lawmakers have pushed Comey for more information about the classified messages that passed through the secret unsecured email system Clinton used when she was Secretary of State. The FBI had already sent lawmakers documents relating to the investigation earlier this month, including summaries of the agency’s interviews with Clinton and her senior aides. The decision not to recommend an indictment was “unanimous” within the FBI, according to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. ~~~~~~ What did Hillary tell the FBI? Enough to show that based on Hillary's self-described level of ignorance, she probably could not get a real job at the State Department as a file clerk. She repeatedly professed ignorance of the circumstances surrounding her use of a private email server, according to the FBI interview notes : (1) Hillary told the FBI she could not remember being trained by the State Department on handling or retaining classified information and could not recall key details and events related to classified information procedures. (2) She said she did not recall receiving emails she thought should not have been on an unclassified system, relying instead on State Department officials to use their judgment when emailing her. (3) She said did not to know that a small parenthetical “C” marked at the top of a paragraph meant the information below was considered classified, saying that she thought it was a way to organize topics alphabetically. (4) FBI investigators also found that the State Department issued a guidance to employees not to use their personal emails for work during Clinton’s tenure as Secretary. Clinton stated she did not recall this specific notice. (5) She also said she received no direction from State on preserving her records when she left the department in early 2013 -- but claimed she could not recall every briefing she received at that time because of a concussion she suffered in late 2012. In the fall of 2014, when Clinton’s lawyers were preparing her work-related emails to be provided to the State Department, Clinton said she was not consulted on specific emails. (6) Nor, according to the FBI’s notes, did she “have any conversations regarding procedures if any potentially classified information was discovered during the review of her emails because she had no reason to believe classified information would be found in her email account.” The Clinton campaign said it was “pleased” the documents had been released -- probably just about as pleased as finding out that you need a root canal. ~~~~~~ The general outrage over “Clinton’s answers continues. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement that her answsers : "either show she is completely incompetent or blatantly lied to the FBI or the public. Either way it’s clear that, through her own actions, she has disqualified herself from the presidency.” The 11-page report of the FBI’s three-hour interview is the most complete record of the conversation -- which was neither under oath nor recorded in accordance with FBI policy -- is not a transcript, it is a set of notes made by the official who conducted the July 2 interview. That even woke up the normally placid Chuck Todd of NBC, who said it bothers him “as an American citizen" that the FBI did not record its interview with Hillary Clinton on the handling of her emails : "It bothers me as an American citizen. It's insane. We're relying on notes on this! The Trump campaign wants to show [Clinton] lied to the FBI. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. We have no proof. And never will." ~~~~~~ In addition, the FBI learned that Clinton used up to 13 mobile devices while Secretary of State, none of which can be found because, seemingly, all were destroyed. Clinton right-hand aide Huma Abedin told the FBI Hillary often replaced her BlackBerry : "It wasn't uncommon for Clinton to use a new BlackBerry for a few days before switching it out for an older version with which she was more familiar." The sim cards to old devices were disposed of by aides, but the whereabouts of the devices in question would "frequently become unknown" once she transitioned to a different device. An aide told the FBI he recalled two instances where he destroyed Clinton's old mobile devices by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer. The investigation revealed Clinton used 11 email-capable BlackBerry cellphones associated with one of her known phone numbers, and eight of those devices were used while she served as Secretary of State. Clinton used two other email-capable devices associated with another of her known phone numbers after her tenure, the report said. When the Department of Justice requested 13 devices as part of the investigation, they were unable to be located. "As a result, the FBI was unable to acquire or forensically examine any of these 13 mobile devices," says the report. On average, using 13 devices in 4 years means a new device every 3.5 months -- a mobile phone change rate worthy of a petty gangster. ~~~~~~ The FBI report released last Friday also contained information about the BleachBit erasure of Hillary's email archive by Platte River Networks in March 2015, after the DOJ had told anyone holding documents related to Hillary's email server and its contents not to erase them. The PRN had been told, several weeks after The New York Times first reported on the existence of the server and her use of it while in office, by Clinton chief of Staff Cheryl Mills to erase all emails older than 60 days. The PRN employee forgot and erased them in March 2105, telling the FBI his BleachBit erasure took place after he knew about the DOJ order. ~~~~~~ The report also shows Clinton consulted former Secretary of State Colin Powell on his use of a BlackBerry while in office under President George W. Bush. A subsequently released email chain shows Powell giving Hillary instructions about how he used hotel phone lines to connect to his email. Anyone who was traveling internationally for business in the 1990s remembers Powell's technique -- and the computer case full of plugs and transformers to fit every international design and voltage of electric outlet and phone jacks to fit every foreign phone system -- we all carried them and used his technique because the age of mobile phones with email hadn't arrived. But, Clinton told the FBI she understood Powell’s advice to mean that "any of her work-related communications would become government record.” My question to Hillary is less technical -- why would Hillary ask a Black Republican Secretary of State when she could have asked her white fellow Democrat Madeleine Allbright -- was it to be ready to trap and blame him, if ever she got caught using her illegal unsecure private system, something Powell never did??? ~~~~~~ In announcing that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case based on the agency’s findings, FBI Director James B. Comey defied legal standards and infuriated Republicans. Far from calming that anger, the report released last Friday only intensified calls from the GOP that Clinton should have faced charges. House Speaker Paul Ryan said : “These documents...cast further doubt on the Justice Department’s decision to avoid prosecuting what is a clear violation of the law.” The Friday dump could also increase demands by congressional Republicans that Clinton be denied access to classified information and investigated for perjury. The FBI probe did not look at whether Clinton violated federal record-keeping laws, and a number of ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the State Department over her emails remain underway. The FBI has not answered the deluge of questions about the details revealed in its Friday release, but noted that “it is not appropriate to consider pieces of evidence outside of the broader context.” BROADER CONTEXT?? Are the FBI and Departments of Justice and State still hiding critical information? ~~~~~~ And, while there is still no hard evidence that Hillary’s private email server or any of her accounts were hacked, the FBI report indicates that one of Bill Clinton’s staffers' email accounts on the Clinton family server may have been hacked. The newly released FBI report notes “scanning attempts over the course...of [Bryan] Pagliano’s administration of the server, though only one appears to have resulted in a successful compromise of an e-mail account on the server.” TheHill reports that it is extremely common for all servers connected to the internet to be scanned for vulnerabilities and does not imply any foreign actor or foreign knowledge of the server. But, the FBI report notes that, on January 5, 2013, server logs show a computer or computers using the "Tor" network accessing the staffer’s account. The staffer, whose name is redacted but is referred to as “her,” claimed in her FBI interview not to have been familiar with the Tor network, which is a free software system developed by the US military and now maintained by an MIT-affiliated group for enabling anonymous communication. The name is derived from an acronym for the original software project name "The Onion Router." TheHill explains that Tor routes internet traffic through a series of internet addresses to make internet traffic anonymous. Since the internet addresses that connect to the actual website -- or in this case email server -- are known, it's easy to tell if Tor traffic reaches a server even if it is hard to know who was behind it. On January 5, 2013, three addresses matching Tor internet addresses accessed the server. The identity of the person or persons who accessed the staffer’s email is not known. For the server and not just a single account to be hacked, an attacker needs to have the ability to monitor more than a single account. The would mean administrator or administrator like access. ~~~~~~ A recent American Thinker study concludes that China is more likely to have hacked Hillary’s emails than Russia, as some media is reporting. American Thinker says Clinton's clintonemail.com e-mail traffic was potentially most vulnerable to compromise when she first began using her personal account in January 2009. It was not until late March 2009, when the Pagliano Server was set up and an SSL certificate was acquired for the clintonemail.com domain -- providing encryption of login credentials, but not e-mail content stored on the server, which remained unsecured -- that the server got a layer of security. So, in early 2009, when she traveled abroad, anytime her Blackberry was turned on, it would periodically send her login and password over the internet to connect to the server. For example, Hillary traveled to Beijing, China, on February 20-21, 2009. The Chinese government controls the telephone service so it would have been relatively easy to obtain her login credentials if her phone were turned on and connected to the local telephone service at any time during the trip. According to American Thinker, the State Department's mobile security team warned Hillary and her staff about the risk of using mobile devices abroad : "Clinton and her immediate staff were notified of foreign travel risks and were warned that digital threats began immediately upon landing in a foreign country, since connection of a mobile device to a local network provides opportunities for foreign adversaries to intercept voice and e-mail transmissions. The State Mobile Communications (MC) Team was responsible for establishing secure mobile voice and data communications for Clinton and her team when they were traveling domestically and abroad. It is not clear to what extent the MC Team could have prevented intrusion by the Chinese since a REDACTED portion apparently covers the methods to secure communications. Given Hillary’s reckless disregard for security measures, it is possible that the MC Team was unable to shield Hillary’s email use from interception. If the Chinese did gain access, it is unlikely it would have been noticed, since there was only limited monitoring for attempted intrusions into the server by her server administrator Bryan Pagliano....When asked about the maintenance and security of the server system he administered, Pagliano stated there were no security breaches, but he was aware there were many failed login attempts, which he referred to as "brute force" attacks. He said the failed attempts increased over the life of the Pagliano Server, and he set up the server's logs to alert [Bill Clinton IT aide Justin] Cooper when they occurred. Pagliano knew the attempts were potential attackers because the credentials attempting to log in did not match legitimate users on the system. Pagliano could not recall if a high volume of failed login attempts emanated from any specific country. Therefore, if the Chinese had the correct ID and Password [hacked and stolen while Hillary was in China], they could have monitored the email server undetected since Pagliano, and Cooper were only looking for failed login attempts. Even after the server was upgraded to encrypt login credentials, if Hillary used the same password, the Chinese could still access her emails." And besides China, other governments would have had the opportunity to gain access to Hillary’s emails. During the vulnerable period from January 2009 to late March 2009, Hillary traveled to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Egypt, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Belgium, Switzerland (where she met with Russian Foreign Secretary Lavrov), Turkey and Mexico. Any of those countries could have gained access to her emails. So, American Thinker concluded that the FBI reports : "help to clarify the extent to which Hillary’s reckless use of an unsecured email server put our country’s secrets at risk of interception by foreign adversaries. It is also of concern that the FBI resorted to the time honored Washington practice of dumping damaging documents on Fridays ahead of national holidays where the damage can be minimized. This demonstrates the extent to which the FBI has been politicized, which is another reason to doubt the impartiality of Director James Comey’s decision to not refer Hillary’s email case to the Justice Department." ~~~~~~ Earlier this week, Donald Trump's campaign urged the FBI to release all its information concerning the hurried deletion of emails by the company in charge of Hillary Clinton's private email server. Trump's deputy campaign manager David Bossie said Monday : "According to the FBI’s notes, an intense round of deleting began weeks after lawmakers subpoenaed Clinton’s emails following the New York Times report exposing her secret server...the FBI should make all of the relevant information surrounding the wiping of Clinton’s server public, including witness accounts from employees of Platte River Networks, which carried out the deletions. The cover-up is always worse than the crime, and voters have a right to know if these records were illegally destroyed and what role Clinton’s aides may have played.” ~~~~~~ But, never slow to deny all wrongdoing, on Wednesday, Hillary defended her handling of classified information from her secret email server at a televised "commander-in-chief" forum that paired her with Republican Donald Trump in separate appearances. Moderator Matt Lauer pressed her about her handling of emails from her server as Secretary of State. The issue has raised questions about whether she can be trusted to serve as President. Clinton said none of the emails she sent or received were marked top secret, secret or classified, the usual way such material is identified. But, while FBI Director James Comey had said she was "extremely careless" in her handling of classified material, Hillary insists that the FBI report exonerated her : "I did exactly what I should have done and I take it very seriously, always have, always will." ~~~~~~ In the second half of the hour-long Forum, Trump said : "She's been there for 30 years. We need change, and we need it fast." Donald Trump Jr. on Thursday shared an article from the website Infowars that suggests a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton wore a secret earpiece during Wednesday night's presidential forum, tweeting : "Was Hillary Wearing An Earpiece During Last Night's Presidential Forum?" linking to the article from Infowars that shows a picture zoomed in on Hillary's ear during the military-themed Forum on Wednesday night on NBC, questioning whether Clinton was wearing an earpiece during the Forum, calling it "the latest question swirling around the Internet after pictures appeared to show Hillary with some kind of flesh-colored device embedded inside her ear." Conservative actor James Woods tweeted the image early Thursday morning with the caption : "Earpiece? #CrookedHillary....She can't even #lie without help from a gaggle of other #liars through an earpiece." ~~~~~~ Finally flushed out of hiding from the press, Hillary appeared before the press at the Westchester NY airport in a long-statement-short-Q&A "press conference" on Thursday. AND, are we surprised that after 272 days withour taking even one question from the press, Hillary was nevertheless protected by her loyal media lap dogs and took only SIX questions over 15 minutes about the tightening polls in the presidential race and whether she believed she was being treated differently in the race because she is a woman. She was also asked about Donald Trump’s comments the night before on foreign policy during the Forum, where Clinton was asked about the private email server she used as Secretary of State. Since Clinton last gave a full press conference a lot has happened : the FBI decided not to bring charges against her for her handling of classified information over her private email setup; and, new stories have also emerged about the Clinton Foundation and its donors and whether they won special access to the Secretary of State in exchange for sizable donations. But, at the truncated Westchester press conference, not one question was asked about any of that...NOT ONE QUESTION. ~~~~~~ Always ready to forget political correctness to get to the meat of any issue, last week Trump speculated on Fox News that the National Security Agency has the ability to access to Hillary Clinton's deleted emails but is protecting her. : "I hear the NSA maybe has the emails. A lot of people say the NSA would have the emails if they really wanted to get them." Hillary deleted more than 30,000 emails from the personal email server she used while Secretary of State. The FBI has recovered 14,900 of them and a federal judge on Friday ordered the State Department to begin releasing by September 13 any relevant emails found among the 14,900 emails recovered. Trump said she deleted the emails because she knew they contained "very, very bad" evidence against her : "She knows what was on those emails and it was very, very bad. And maybe somebody should, in fact, ask the NSA whether or not they have the emails." ~~~~~~ Dear readers, no matter how much Hillary Clinton sneers at Donald Trump, touting herself as God's Gift to America, the polls are telling another story. Trump has bounced back from an 8-point deficit to take a 2-point national lead over Clinton in the latest CNN/ORC poll. The results : Trump: 45% -- Clinton: 43%. Trump leads among independents, 49% to 29% for Clinton. While Clinton leads with women, 53% to 38%; Trump leads with men, 54% to 32% for Clinton. Clinton leads with voters 45 and under, 54% to 29%. Trump leads with voters 45 and older, 54% to 39%. Of the top four issues voters were asked about, Trump is more trusted on two of them. Economy : 56% trust Trump more than Clinton (41%). Terrorism : 51% trust Trump more than Clinton (45%). Foreign policy : Clinton more trusted, 56% to 40%. Immigration: 49% favor Clinton's policy to 47% for Trump. AND, in a key turnaround, voters see Trump as the more trustworthy and honest candidate, at 50%, compared to 35% for Clinton. During the Forum on Wednesday, Clinton pledged that the US was “not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we are not putting ground troops into Syria.” Two-thirds of Americans disagree with Hillary on this, seeing Obama's withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 as the beginning of the rise of ISIS. Almost 2/3 of US military support Trump when polled. Trump disagreed with Hillary on Wednesday, saying : “We would leave a certain group behind and they would take the various sections where they have the oil.” Earlier in the day, Trump laid into Clinton as “trigger happy.” During an address on defense spending in Philadelphia, he suggested there wasn’t a country in the Middle East that Clinton did not want to invade – an assertion he repeated on Wednesday evening. The United States currently has an acknowledged 5,000 troops deployed in Iraq, mostly as official non-combat advisors for the Iraqi military, along with special operations forces who conduct and assist in raids against ISIS. Navy and Air Force pilots also participate daily in air attacks on ISIS. How many US troops are actually deployed in Iraq is unknown. But, one thing is sure -- Hillary Clinton will not win in November by promising to repeat Barack Obama's defeatist policy of clearing the Middle East of all US troops, only to have to re-deploy them as ISIS, Iran and Russia take over the areas deserted. The current use of chlorine gas by the al-Assad military -- rampant in World War I -- can only remind every American of that infamous redline on al-Assad's use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians that Obama drew, erased, and then denied he had ever drawn. The civilians of Aleppo are now choking and dying on the chlorine gas Obama refused to stop. Hillary will be no better. Her "trigger happy" tendencies in Syria and Libya risk to mire the US in a Middle East land war with no exit in sight. Trump wants to go in, destroy ISIS, and then leave a holding force while Arab qnd other regional military take over. The choice is pretty straightforward, isn't it??