Who’s who in Clinton’s email saga (2015)

On Monday, Hillary Clinton's friends, aides, interrogators and anyone else wrapped up in the ongoing drama surrounding her email practices as secretary of state will be poring over the largest release yet of messages from the first four years of the Obama administration.

Her decision to use a private server, and whether that decision violated any State Department rules, has become the most intricate Clinton controversy since the long-running 1990s Whitewater land scandal, and the cast of characters in the drama continues to proliferate. Fueled by political rivals on the campaign trail and Republicans in Congress, the dispute has led to lawsuits, inspectors general investigations and an FBI inquiry, and now has federal judges and committee chairs on Capitol Hill demanding answers about who knew what, when.

That clamor is expected only to grow with more than 6,000 pages of emails set to be posted on the agency's website Monday, in accordance with a judge's order requiring monthly releases under the Freedom of Information Act.

The list of those drawn into the saga includes some of Clinton’s top aides at the State Department, now playing roles in her Democratic campaign for the presidency. They were among the ones who forwarded sensitive messages to Clinton that have raised national security questions. A few bit players merely helped her set up or store material from the private email system, operated out of her New York home. Fanning the flames are a growing list of officials questioning Clinton’s conduct and demanding more information.

In recent months, Clinton dismissed the email controversy as politically spawned and aimed at hurting her reputation. Last Wednesday, she seemed to shift her tone, saying that she took responsibility for her use of a private account and that "it clearly wasn't the best choice." On Friday, she called the situation "complicated."

Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff at State, now vice chairwoman of Hillary for America,was pinned ina Wall Street Journal report as the person who approached former President Bill Clinton’s staff in 2009 to explore using his personal home-based email server for Clinton’s new State Department gig. Through her attorneys, she has denied the claim.

Abedin also had her own email account on Clinton’s server, as a trusted top aide who has worked for Clinton since interning in the first lady’s office. Although State employees are supposed to use government email accounts for “day-to-day” official communication, Clinton stated in a recent court filing that Abedin used the Clinton account for work purposes in addition to personal use.

Abedin routinely forwarded emails to Clinton’s server, including at least one from April 2011 that the intelligence community argues should have been classified because it contained the whereabouts and an escape plan for the now-deceased U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

On Friday, Abedin becamethe first Clinton aide publicly attacked by a Republican presidential candidateover the email mess. At a campaign rally in Massachusetts, GOP hopeful Donald Trump invoked Abedin's marriage to former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who resigned from Congress in a sexting scandal in 2011.

"Huma is one of the people it all went through. ... So now — think of it — Huma is getting classified secrets. She is married to Anthony Weiner, who is a perv," Trump said during a campaign rally in Norwood, Massachusetts. “Now these are confidential documents, and guess what happens to Anthony Weiner. A month ago he went to work for a public relations firm. ... Do you think there is even a 5 percent chance she is not telling Anthony Weiner — now of a public relations firm — what the hell is coming across?"

A Clinton spokesman dismissed Trump's claims, which he repeated in Tennessee on Saturday, as "disgraceful."

"Lots of married men worked at State, why is Huma the one who would pass on secrets to spouse?" Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri wrote on Twitter.

Abedin is also under scrutiny by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has questioned her former status as a special government employee who did private sector consulting jobs while working for the State Department. Abedin worked for the Clinton Foundation, which has been criticized for taking gifts from foreign donors while Clinton served as lead diplomat, and another consulting firm called Teneo headed by a former Bill Clinton aide.

Abedin’s attorneys have said her dual role was approved by supervisors, she worked during a period the State inspector general contends she was on leave, and she has cooperated with State’s efforts to reconstruct its records.

Sullivan, another former State deputy, now working as the Clinton campaign policy director, forwarded Clinton emails that some now argue were or should have been classified. He sent to Clinton’s unsecured server, for example, an email chain about arrests possibly linked to the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, raising concerns at the FBI and within the intelligence community.

Classified intelligence is considered at risk on an unsecured email account, although State and the intelligence community appear to disagree about whether or not the message was or should have been classified.

As Clinton’s top policy man, Sullivan — as well as Abedin and Cheryl Mills — are also key points of interest for House Republicans on the Benghazi panel, who are examining whether Clinton’s broader actions at the State Department, and broader U.S. Libya policy, could have in some way led to Islamic radicals overrunning the compound and killing Stevens and three other Americans.

Because of the probe, State has requested that Sullivan, Abedin, Mills and a handful of other top brass turn over any official records they have in their inboxes at home. Sullivan and several of the others are in the process of doing so, or recently finished their productions, according to letters submitted to the court by their lawyers.

Clinton’s former chief of staff has come up in federal court cases questioning Clinton’s email use. Mills, like Abedin,also hada special government employee status at two stages while working at State.

A judge recently asked Mills and Abedin to certify under penalty of perjury that they had turned over all their documents to the State Department. Neither, however, did so, although Mills' attorney said in a letter several weeks ago that Mills has produced all federal records to State, and Abedin's lawyers said their client was on track to complete that process by last Friday.

Mills — who in the 1990s served as Bill Clinton’s deputy White House counsel — said through her lawyer in early August that she planned to erase all her emails after turning over copies of work messages to the State Department. A federal judge, however, ordered her not to — and her legal team rescinded that plan.

Mills, who also served on the Clinton Foundation board,was reportedto have urged Clinton not to run for president. She thought Clinton would be plagued by scandal-related allegations that would be too painful to endure and not worth the fight.

A former special assistant to Secretary Clinton, Davis happened to be the person who sent Clinton one of the first emails that raised red flags at the FBI, according toa Fox News report.

Davis on April 10, 2011, sent Sullivan, Abedin and other top State officials the “Stevens Update” about a security crisis in Libya. It detailed how Stevens was hiding out in a hotel due to security concerns — and the plans to help him escape. (Abedin then forwarded the email to Clinton.)

“The situation in Ajdabiyah has worsened to the point where Stevens is considering departure from Benghazi,” the email read. “The envoy’s delegation is currently doing a phased checkout (paying the hotel bills, moving some comms to the boat, etc.) … He will wait 2-3 more hours, then revisit the decision on departure.”

The email also discussed snipers and forces of Muammar Qadhafi on the move toward the city.

While Davis labeled the information SBU, “sensitive but unclassified,” others in the intelligence community argue it was — or should have been — classified. Questions remain about how the classification came about and why sensitive information about safety precautions would be shared over email.

Davis still works as a State Department counsel. He declined to comment through an agency spokesman.

As under secretary for management, Patrick Kennedy oversees building operations and human resources as well as budget and administration issues. Several Hill sources want to know if he approved Clinton’s plan to use private email and why he did not step in to stop it. The State Department has refused to say who, if anyone, gave a green light to Clinton’s use of a private email account for work, which went against State’s own directive to use official, not personal, email to ensure security of information and record keeping.

Kennedy has been criticized by Hill Republicans forrefusing to give the intelligence communityinspector general, whose letters to Congress first publicized the concerns about classified information on Clinton’s emails, full rights to examine the former secretary’s communications.

Kennedy — who also heads up diplomatic security and is a career bureaucrat, not a political appointee —cameunder scrutiny in 2013during the first Benghazi hearings. Republicans in part blamed him for failing to recognize the deteriorating security situation in Libya. He declined to comment through an agency spokesman.

Clinton’s former communications adviser at State, who has also come under scrutiny for using personal emails like his boss, recently handed over 20 boxes of email printouts to his former agency.

Reines turned over the emails at the request of State, which has come under fire from Republicans and the courts for not keeping a complete record of official emails.

Gawker filed a Freedom of Information Act request for some of Reines’ communications with a wide array of news outlets, but the the agency said it had no responsive records. Now, the courts are getting involved, forcing both Reines’ and State’s hands.

Reines’ legal team said his boxes contain mostly newspaper clippings, since he received Clinton- and foreign policy-related clips every day.

Reines has said that he rarely used private email for work and that when he received work-related messages on his private account, he forwarded them to his official one.

A partner at the prominent D.C. law firm Williams & Connolly, Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, is coming under fire from Hill Republicans who question his security clearance and how he stored Clinton’s server and a thumb drive backup of all her work-related emails.

Although Kendall’s thumb drive has been turned over to the FBI, Grassley has asked him for proof that he safeguarded the information that is now found to include classified documents.

“It appears the FBI has determined that your clearance is not sufficient to allow you to maintain custody of the emails,” the Iowa Republican wrote in a letter sent to Kendall recently. “It appears that in addition to not having an adequate security clearance, you did not have the appropriate tools in place to secure the thumb drives. It is imperative to confirm when, how, and why you, and any of your associates, received a security clearance in connection with your representation of Ms. Clinton and whether it was active while you had custody of Secretary Clinton’s emails.”

Kendall confirmed last week that he and one of his law partners had clearances to help Clinton prepare to testify before the House Benghazi committee. Kendall said the issuance of those clearances was unrelated to the Clinton emails stored in his office. He said that none of those were determined to be classified until May and that he has followed the State Department’s instructions about their handling. He turned over the thumb drive to the Justice Department earlier this month.

Gowdy, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, heads the House Select Committee on Benghazi, whose probe triggered the email controversy. Committee investigators spotted references to Clinton’s private account in Benghazi-related emails the State Department produced earlier this year. However, the panel’s jurisdiction is limited to the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks and security-related decisions before them. Gowdy, a former prosecutor, has said numerous times he’s not interested in expanding his charter to probe the emails scandal.

Still, Gowdy and other Benghazi committee members will have the chance to ask Clinton about her email arrangements when she appears before the panel on Oct. 22.

Democrats and the Clinton campaign are already charging that the panel is on a political witch hunt and shifted its focus to the email issue because Gowdy has found nothing of significance to tar Clinton with responsibility for the Benghazi attack.

A veteran federal prosecutor appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as State Department inspector general, Linick began a review in April of “the use of personal communications hardware and software by five Secretaries of State and their immediate staffs.” In June, his office expanded that review to look at the process State is using to release Clinton’s emails under FOIA. Secretary of State John Kerry has also asked Linick to look more broadly at how State meets its “preservation and transparency obligations.”

Linick’s staff also investigated an alleged salary overpayment made to Abedin, an issue referred back to the State Department for action.

McCullough, a former FBI agent and Treasury investigator, came into the Clinton email matter at Linick’s request and initiated the so-called security referral to the FBI. McCullough said that at least one email from Clinton's account already released by the State Department had classified information and that a sampling of 40 emails turned up four that should have been classified. Two of those should have been marked top secret, McCullough said.

McCullough’s office said it sought to do a broader review, but Kennedy determined it did not have jurisdiction. State Department officials have said Linick’s office has full access to all State records and McCullough is free to oversee the intelligence agency screeners that State is now involving in the FOIA review process.

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman has written letters to pursue a slew of email-related issues: possible political interference in State’s FOIA process, what clearances Kendall had, how copies of Clinton’s emails were secured at Kendall’s office and Abedin’s work arrangements.

The Iowa Republican has complained that he got few answers. Earlier this month, he announced plans to place holds on 21 State Department nominations until the agency responded to his questions.

The Wisconsin Republican joined the fray as Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman. He has asked questions about whether Kendall had proper clearances to handle classified materials and the security of Clinton’s emails. He’s also focused on Platte River Network, a Denver-based tech company that managed Clinton’s server for a time.

The U.S. District Court judge caused a stir earlier this month withhis comment that the email mess was of Clinton’s making. “We wouldn’t be here if the employee had followed government policy,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, is overseeing a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit seeking records about Abedin’s employment arrangements.

This U.S. District Court judge, who oversees a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by Vice News, has essentially guaranteed that the painful email story will drag out for Clinton. The State Department initially proposed to release all the Clinton emails next January in a single batch. After lawyers for Vice objected and asked for releases every two weeks, Contreras — an appointee of Obama — ordered monthly releases and set goals for the percentage to be released each month.

........one of the most controversial of Ms. Clinton’s emails........released by the State Department under judicial order....... was one sent on June 8, 2011, to the then-Secy of State by Sidney Blumenthal, Ms. Clinton’s unsavory friend and confidant who was running a private intelligence service for Ms. Clinton.

This email contains an amazingly detailed assessment of events in Sudan, specifically a coup being plotted by top generals in that war-torn country. Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24 hours before.

To anybody familiar with intelligence reporting, this unmistakably signals intelligence, termed SIGINT in the trade. In other words, Mr. Blumenthal, a private citizen who had enjoyed no access to U.S. intelligence for over a decade when he sent that email, somehow got hold of SIGINT about the Sudanese leadership and managed to send it, via open, unclassified email, to his friend Ms. Clinton only one day later.

NSA officials were appalled by the State Department’s release of this email, since it bore all the hallmarks of Agency reporting. Back in early January when I reported this, I was confident that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from highly classified NSA sources, based on my years of reading and writing such reports myself, and one veteran agency official told me it was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”

We can confirm that the contents of Sid Blumenthal’s June 8, 2011, email to Hillary Clinton, sent to her personal, unclassified account, were indeed based on highly sensitive NSA information. The agency investigated this compromise and determined that Mr. Blumenthal’s highly detailed account of Sudanese goings-on, including the retelling of high-level conversations in that country, was indeed derived from NSA intelligence.

Specifically, this information was illegally lifted from four different NSA reports, all of them classified “Top Secret / Special Intelligence.” Worse, at least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program, or SAP, several of which from the CIA Ms. Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.

Currently serving NSA officials have told me they have no doubt that Mr. Blumenthal’s information came from their reports. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” one of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence.

How Mr. Blumenthal got his hands on this information is the key question, and there’s no firm answer yet. The fact that he was able to take four separate highly classified NSA reports—none of which he was supposed to have any access to—and pass the details of them to Hillary Clinton via email only hours after NSA released them in Top Secret / Special Intelligence channels indicates something highly unusual, as well as illegal, was going on.

Suspicion naturally falls on Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA senior official who was Mr. Blumenthal’s intelligence fixer, his supplier of juicy spy gossip, who conveniently died last August before email-gate became front-page news. However, he, too, had left federal service years before and should not have had any access to current NSA reports. There are many questions here about what Hillary Clinton and her staff at Foggy Bottom were up to, including Sidney Blumenthal, an integral member of the Clinton organization, despite his lack of any government position.

<><> How Mr. Blumenthal got hold of this Top Secret-plus reporting is only the first question.
<><> Why he chose to email it to Ms. Clinton in open channels is another question.
<><> So is: How did not one aide to Secy Clinton notice the highly detailed reporting looked exactly like SIGINT from the NSA?
<><> Last, why did Hillary's State Department see fit to release this email, unredacted, to the public?

Hillary Aide Huma Abedin Forwarded State Dept Passwords to
Yahoo Before It Was Hacked by Russian and Foreign Agents
By Luke Rosiak, The Daily Caller / January 02, 2018 /

Huma Abedin, a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, routed sensitive information through Yahoo multiple times.

Huma Abedin forwarded sensitive State Department emails, including passwords to government systems, to her personal Yahoo email account before every single Yahoo account was hacked, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of emails released as part of a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch shows. Abedin, the top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, used her insecure personal email provider to conduct sensitive work.

This guarantees that an account with high-level correspondence in Clinton’s State Department was affected by one or more of a series of breaches—at least one of which was perpetrated by a “state-sponsored actor.”

The U.S. later charged Russian intelligence agent Igor Sushchin with hacking 500 million Yahoo email accounts. The initial hack occurred in 2014 and allowed his associates to access accounts into 2015 and 2016 by using forged cookies. Sushchin also worked for the Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital, which paid former President Bill Clinton $500,000 for a June 2010 speech in Moscow.

A separate hack in 2013 compromised 3 billion accounts across multiple Yahoo properties, and the culprit is still unclear. “All Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft,” the company said in a statement. Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, regularly forwarded work emails to her personal humamabedin@yahoo.com address. “She would use these accounts if her [State] account was down or if she needed to print an email or document. Abedin further explained that it was difficult to print from the DoS system so she routinely forwarded emails to her non-DoS accounts so she could more easily print,” an FBI report says.

Abedin sent passwords for her government laptop to her Yahoo account on Aug. 24, 2009, an email released by the State Department in September shows. Long-time Clinton confidante Sid Blumenthal sent Clinton an email in July 2009 with the subject line: “Important. Not for circulation. You only. Sid.” The email began “CONFIDENTIAL … Re: Moscow Summit.” Abedin forwarded the email to her Yahoo address, potentially making it visible to hackers.

The email was deemed too sensitive by the government to release to the public and was redacted before being published pursuant to the Judicial Watch lawsuit. The released copy says: “Classified by DAS/ A/GIS, DoS on 10/30/2015 Class: Confidential.” The unredacted portion reads: “I have heard authoritatively from Bill Drozdiak, who is in Berlin. … We should expect that the Germans and Russians will now cut their own separate deals on energy, regional security, etc.” —SNIP—

Sen Charles Grassley has been pressing the State Department to answer questions over Huma Abedin’s lucrative
govt job arrangement facilitated by then-SoS Hillary.

Sen Grassley wrote: “It appears that one of Abedin’s clients, the Clinton-connected Teneo Strategies founded by Doug Band-—said to be the toll booth to pay up to get access to the Clintons. Doug Band is the one that facilitated the Clintons’ big buck speaking engagements as part of the access deals.

KEEP IN MIND: L/E found Bill Clinton, and his buddy Doug Band, flew to Pedi Island on numerous occasions. They were listed with over 20 phone numbers and email addresses on convicted pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein’s, books......”evidence pointing to money laundering.”

Grassley conjectured that Huma was being compensated for gathering information for Doug Band’s outfit, Teneo, from US government sources for the purpose of informing investment decisions of her consulting clients - or in other words, political intelligence.

GRASSLEY: “This raises important questions about whether Abedin’s dual job role was adequately disclosed to US government officials who may have provided her information without realizing that she was being paid by private investors to gather information.”—SNIP—

NOTE WELL: As a (a) US govt employee (b) consulting for Teneo, Huma also had her own money-maker-—(c) Zaine Endeavors named after her son——which has never been fully investigated.

AS OF LATE Huma doesnt seem to have a job. She is seen with Hillary on world tours. Who pays Huma’s $12,000 monthly rent?

CONCLUSION: The Clinton criminal cabal left a long, very long electronic/paper trail.

Just wondering.....
<><> Who transported SOS Hillary’s server from NY to NJ’s Platte River Networks?
<><>Did the Secret Service (who Hillary insists had been guarding it since it was really Bill’s Library/Foundation asset) accompany and supervise the transport of the server?
<><> Per the interview with Platte River Networks, did they just take it, lock it up, not power it up, connect it to the internet, or not have it functioning as an active email server?
<><> Was there continuity of server activity between May 2013 to August 2015, or did the server go off-line starting in June 2013?
<><> Who received actual server in NJ - the name of the Platte River Networks employee/technician? What WAS it - make/model/form factor, etc.?
<><> Did the Clinton Foundation (or issuer of the RFP on Hillary’s behalf) indicate that the company that would provide data services qualified to handle national-security-level data?
<><> In various interviews and reports, Platte River Networks repeatedly stated they were to “upgrade, manage, and secure” the server. What - specifically - does that mean?
<><> What did Hillary’s RFP/contract order the data center to do specifically?
<><> Does Platte River Networks have sufficient security clearance to handle this type of contract?
<><> What were the firewall protocols in place at the time?
<><> Who - by name - had access to the server, and the administrative authorization to wipe and cleanse the server? When was that done?
<><> Does “upgrade, manage, and secure” the server mean that they PRN was given the task to remove all data from the server when it received it in June 2013?
<><> Was malware or antivirus also on the server?
<><> Was the inherent firewall, virus protection, or operating system “upgraded, managed, and secured”?
<><> Any incidents reported such as DOS attack, hacking, etc.? What were they? How were they resolved?
<><> Other than arranging for the server to be moved from NY to NJ, what was the Denver company contracted to do in relation to maintaining the server?
<><> What tangible evidence is there that the server arrived in functioning condition, was being used as an email server, was “upgraded, managed, and secured”, then wiped just prior to seizure by the FBI?
<><> Were normal and regular backup procedures executed on the server, and where would the back ups be kept?
<><> If no backups were taken, was there a disaster recovery location?
<><> Where was that? If no backups and no disaster recovery, what was the plan if the equipment failed or found to have been wiped of any functionality?
<><> Were any foreign nationals employed at Platte River Networks, or at Datto, that had access to the Clinton server?

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