Email felony

Email scandal 

13 questions for Hillary Clinton [Plus one more]

Posted: 06 Mar 2015 06:19 AM PST

(Paul Mirengoff)

The mainstream media won’t let up on Hillary Clinton (nor should it). Ruth Marcus poses 13 questions about Clinton’s use of private email at the State Department:

1. Why did you make the decision to use a personal email account rather than government email upon becoming secretary of state?

2. Why did you believe this approach was necessary and/or preferable to using an official email account?

3. Did others working for you at the State Department use personal email for government business? If so, please identify them and explain whether their correspondence has been transferred to the State Department.

4. Would it have been appropriate for others working for you at the State Department to use personal email for official purposes? If not, why does a different standard apply to the secretary?

5. What steps did you or others working on your behalf take before making this decision to determine whether it complied with applicable laws and regulations, and whether your communications would be adequately secured?

6. Specifically, did you consult with officials at the State Department, the White House, or other government agencies to determine whether this approach was permissible?

7. If not, why not, given the obvious questions about compliance with federal disclosure laws and concerns about cybersecurity?

8. If you did consult with officials, what were you advised? Please provide copies of any email or other correspondence/documentation reflecting these consultations.

9. If you were advised that applicable laws and regulations did not permit and/or counseled against the use of private email, why did you decide to proceed with that plan?

10. Please explain how the decision to rely on personal email and not to provide the records until after your departure and after being requested complies with, as your spokesman has said, “the letter and spirit of the rules.”

11. Specifically, C.F.R. 1236.22, which dates from 2009, provides that “agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.” What steps did you take to comply with this requirement?

12. When emails were turned over to the State Department last year, who in your office determined what emails constituted official business and what standards did they use to make that determination? Did anyone from the State Department oversee or vet this process to ensure that all relevant emails were supplied?

13. In 2007, criticizing the George W. Bush White House during the controversy over fired U.S. attorneys, you decried the use of “secret White House email accounts” to conduct government business. Please explain how your use of personal email differed.

If I recall correctly, Marcus is a law school graduate. Her questions read like well-framed interrogatories. Tweets will not suffice to answer most of them.

ONE MORE: A reader with extensive service in the government proposes the following question, given that Clinton would routinely have transmitted classified information via email:

How did you and your staff pass classified information via e mail in light of your exclusive use of private/personal accounts?

Document theft and destruction nothing new for Hillary Clinton

Document theft and destruction nothing new for Hillary Clinton

Posted: 16 Mar 2015 08:34 AM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

Those who say that Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is the 1990s all over again may not know how right they are. We’re not just witnessing a replay of Hillary’s “rules don’t apply to me,” hunker down mentality. We’re witnessing a replay of document expropriation and destruction by Ms. Clinton.

This time, the documents in question are records, in the form of emails, that document her conduct as Secretary of State. In the 1990s, the documents Clinton stole and/or caused to be destroyed established her role as the attorney for participants in a fraudulent scheme called Castle Grande.

Clinton, working with Webster Hubbell and Vince Foster, stole hard copies of the billing records of the Rose law firm where they were partners. They erased the electronic version of these records. One set of these documents was later found in the White House, just outside Hillary’s private office, by an employee. Another set was found in Foster’s attic by his widow, some years after he committed suicide. Clinton’s time sheets (handwritten, as was the practice back in the day) were never found.

To understand why Clinton stole and destroyed the documents, it’s necessary to understand the Castle Grande back story. Here are the basics.

Bill Sweats the Small Stuff

In the 1980s, Hillary Clinton was a partner at the Rose law firm. Because she was also the state’s first lady, and because she liked to serve on various commissions and to escape from Arkansas whenever possible, she didn’t bill a lot of hours.

Like most big law firms, Rose didn’t mind as long as she brought in business for other lawyers to work on. But Clinton wasn’t bringing in a quantity of business commensurate with her status as the governor’s wife.

Under pressure to bring in more business, Hillary nagged her husband. Philandering Bill had more than even the normal incentive to accommodate his wife.

Accordingly, one day during his jog, he stopped by the office of Jim McDougal, the principal stock holder of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association and a partner in Whitewater Development Company. The purpose of the visit was to urge McDougal to send some work Hillary’s way.

Years later, McDougal recalled how Bill, still sweating from his run, plopped himself down in an expensive leather chair — a gift to McDougal from his wife. McDougal’s main concern was how to get the governor out of the chair before he ruined it. (Bill denies the story — I did not have sweat in that chair — but this is the kind of thing that’s hard to make up.)

As a result of the meeting, McDougal retained the Rose law firm to do the legal work associated with a venture called Castle Grande. The firm performed this work in 1985 and 1986.

In addition to Madison Guaranty, Rose represented Seth Ward, an employee of Madison and the father-in-law of Webster Hubbell. Hubbell was Hillary’s law partner and friend, and later the associate attorney general of the United States in the Clinton administration. Hubbell worked with Clinton on the Castle Grande matter.

Mr. Ponzi, call your office

The Castle Grande project was a scheme to commit fraud through real estate loans. It was basically a pyramid scheme that used a series of loans to enrich Madison insiders. Madison was, in effect, McDougal’s personal piggy-bank.

The land in question was a scrub pine forest that previously had failed as an industrial development project. The sales price of the property was $1.75 million.

State regulations prohibited McDougal from investing more than 6 percent of Madison’s S&L assets. McDougal therefore put up $600,000 of Madison’s money. Seth Ward put up the remaining $1.15 million.

Ward borrowed the money from Madison on non-recourse, no personal obligation to repay basis. If federal regulators found out about this circumvention, Madison could be shut down.

The land appraiser for the property inflated his appraisals to support loans to purchasers, including future Arkansas governor Jim Guy Tucker who bought a water and sewer system for the Castle Grande project. The appraiser later pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges.

David Hale, head of an outfit licensed to provide lending to minorities and the economically disadvantaged, conspired with McDougal and Tucker to use his operation as a pass-through to generate additional loans from Madison. A friend and business associate of Hale’s borrowed $825,000 from Madison to buy three properties from Hale. But he never used the money. Instead, it went to Hale, who used it to recapitalize his company with matching funds from the Small Business Administration.

Hale loaned a $150,000 down payment to Tucker who bought out a portion of Ward’s Castle Grande holdings for $1.2 million. Tucker borrowed the additional $1.05 million from Madison.

McDougal loaned former Senator William Fulbright, a long-time friend, $700,000 to buy out the bulk of Ward’s remaining holdings. The net effect was to remove Ward’s non-recourse loan from the Madison books and generate substantial sales profits and commissions for Madison.

Through various “cross-loans,” McDougal hoped to prevent regulators from discovering Ward’s true role, and thus Madison’s full investment, in Castle Grande. But federal regulators weren’t deceived. In 1986, they removed McDougal from Madison Guaranty.

Eventually, the FBI was called. Federal prosecutors ultimately convicted 14 individuals, including McDougal and Tucker (by then the sitting governor of Arkansas). But this occurred years later, after Bill Clinton had been elected president.

Will the Bloom Come Off the Rose?

By 1991, Bill Clinton was running for president. Like his other Democratic rivals, he campaigned against the “decade of greed” that had brought us the S&L scandals.

Fortunately for his campaign, Hillary’s involvement in the Madison scandal had remained obscure. In fact, when the Resolution Trust Corporation, a temporary federal agency created to resolve the S&L crisis, wanted to sue the accounting firm that had handled Castle Grande, it hired Rose (in the person of Hubbell) to bring the lawsuit. Hubbell never disclosed the obvious conflict that stemmed from his firm’s work on Castle Grande; nor did he reveal the fact that Rose performed work on this matter in 1985 and 1986.

Castle Grande seemed to be behind Hillary and Hubbell when a New York Times reporter named Jeff Gerth arrived in Little Rock and started asking questions. Some of his questions pertained to Hillary’s involvement with McDougal.

The Lady’s Records Vanish

By this time, the Clinton campaign already believed it had two strikes against it: Gennifer Flowers/”bimbo eruptions” and Bill’s draft dodging/disrespect for the military. Clinton involvement in the S&L scandal felt like strike three.

Hillary contacted Vince Foster. Foster had not been involved in the Castle Grande representation, but he was Hillary’ mentor and trusted adviser — so trusted that he would eventually come with the Clintons to Washington, where he served as second in command in the Office of White Counsel the unit that, among other things, tries to put out fires involving the president.

Foster and Hubbell sprung into action. They printed out all billing records pertaining to Castle Grande and removed them from the Rose law firm, whose property they were. Foster and Hubbell also collected all files pertaining to the representation — sweeping from office to office to demand the files — and removed them from the premises. And Hillary Clinton’s time sheets disappeared.

As for the electronic version of the billing records, they were erased. The FBI’s forensic team was unable to reconstruct them.

Hillary told Gerth that an Rose associate, Rick Massey, had done all of the work on the McDougal project. With the billing records and time sheets gone, she could feel comfortable telling this lie, which she would repeat to others in the media.

It sufficed. Castle Grande/Whitewater was a non-issue in the 1992 presidential campaign.

Guess What I Found

Federal prosecutors remained on the trail, however. Eventually, over Hillary’s objections, the administration agreed to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate “Whitewater.”

In 1994, the Castle Grande billing records were subpoenaed. They were not produced at that time.

A year and a half later, Carolyn Huber, a White House employee, found the billing records in the private quarters of the first family, right outside Mrs. Clinton’s private office. Huber said that, not knowing what they were, she packed them up and took them to her own office. Only later, in early 1996, did she realize that these were the famous billing records that prosecutors were after.

The billing records were then produced, two years late. Hillary’s fingerprints were on them.

The records show that Clinton billed time for work on Castle Grande, and was the billing partner for this representation. More than that, they show that she and/or Hubbell performed legal services — described, for example, as “conference with Seth Ward” or just “Seth Ward” — on every day in which federal prosecutors had found that McDougal and/or his cronies had committed an act in furtherance of their unlawful conspiracy e.g., backdating documents and making phony loans.

In effect, the billing records place Clinton and Hubbell at the scene of the crime.

Crime and Punishment, of some

The special counsel indicted Hubbell for fraud against federal regulators. You can read the indictment here. The fraud consisted, in essence, of concealing from federal agents and investigators the true role of Hubbell, the Rose law firm, and Hillary Clinton in Castle Grande.

Out of respect for the White House, the indictment refers to Hillary only as “Rose’s 1985-86 billing partner.” As such, Hillary appears throughout the indictment. She is referred to approximately three dozen times.

Hillary Clinton was slated to be called as a witness at Hubbell’s trial. Her attorney met with lawyers from the special counsel’s office to try to persuade them that the charges had nothing to do with Hillary. This absurd claim was rejected. The very next morning, Hubbell’s lawyer informed the special counsel that he would plead guilty.

Basic Instinct

Throughout the Whitewater/Castle Grande scandal, Hillary Clinton’s instinct was to stonewall and deceive. She lied about her role, removed and destroyed documents, and opposed the appointment of a special counsel.

From Hillary’s perspectives, her instincts were spot on. Absent the special counsel, much unpleasantness, including the Monica Lewinsky matter and the impeachment, might well have been avoided. And had Clinton been forthcoming about her role in Castle Grande, her husband’s 1992 campaign might have been derailed.

The current email scandal isn’t just a replay of the Castle Grande document theft and destruction. It is a logical outgrowth of it. Her basic instinct having been reinforced in the 1990s, it’s natural that they carry the day now.

What scandal and criminality will Hillary Clinton’s instincts produce is if she is elected president?

Hillary leaked intel to hurt Israel

Hillary leaked intel to hurt Israel
March 4, 2015 9:54 PM MST

The computer server that sent and received Hillary Clinton's emails when she was secretary of state was traced back to an Internet service registered to her family's home in Chappaqua.
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The computer server that sent and received Hillary Clinton's emails when she was secretary of state was traced back to an Internet service registered to her family's home in Chappaqua.
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The media feeding frenzy over the alleged unlawful use by Hillary Clinton of a non-government email system is having an impact on other allegations against the presidential wannabe. On Tuesday, a former Department of Justice prosecuting attorney said that he believes then-Secretary of State Clinton -- probably using her unofficial and illegal email system -- was complicit in the leaking of classified intelligence regarding military operation plans formulated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Perhaps more troubling than the email scandal, there are allegations that Hillary Clinton leaked information on Israeli war plans to her leftist friends at the New York Times.
Getty Images/Alex Wong

In a Washington Post front page news story on March 2, 2015, reporter Anne Gearan intimated that the likely reason for the release of Israel's plans to a New York Times reporter was intended to hurt the Israeli's war plans, since President Barack Obama and his staff -- including his top advisor Valerie Jarrett, herself born in Iran -- believed Israel was willing and had the technical and strategic expertise to launch a preemptive sneak attack on Iran in order to eliminate their nuclear threat.

Ms. Gearan wrote: "Hillary Rodham Clinton used a private e-mail account for her official government business when she was secretary of state and did not routinely preserve and turn over those e-mails for government records collection, the State Department said Monday." She also wrote: "It was not clear why Clinton, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, created the private account. But the practice appears to bolster long-standing criticism that Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton,  have not been transparent."

According to documents obtained by Larry Klayman, the top executive at the nonpartisan Freedom Watch, as a result of his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, Secretary Clinton and her closest staff members were the likely sources of the leaks to New York Times reporter David Sanger. Klayman also said the FOIA documents show that those leaks were coordinated with the Obama White House's national security team, which included Susan "Benghazi" Rice and Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett.

Sanger, the New York Times's chief Washington correspondent, has complained that the Obama administration is the "most closed, control-freak administration" he's ever covered. This despite Obama and his minions telling the American people that they are the most transparent White House in modern history. Sanger claims that a memo was sent out by the White House chief of staff to White House employees and the intelligence agencies that ordered them to freeze and retain any email, and presumably phone logs, of communications with him.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of State, now under the leadership of John Kerry, continues to stonewall the release of many other documents, but Freedom Watch is currently arguing its case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to force further release. Oral arguments are expected to occur in early April (case no. 14-5174).

On Tuesday, Klayman issued a biting statement regarding the deteriorating Israeli-American relations thanks to Barack Obama and the Democrats this week: "It seems that President Obama and would-be president Hillary Clinton have done much to try to put a chink in the side of both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel so they could reach an under-the-table nuclear deal with Iran. This would include disclosing Israeli war plans and cyberwarfare sources and methods to prevent a preemptory strike. Both the President and former Secretary of State Clinton should be forced to legally come clean about his serious breach of national security. While whistleblowers like Edward Snowden are held out to dry and prosecuted, higher ups are left alone to release classified national security information when it suits their political purposes."