Judge Napolitano DETAILS hitlery's gross criminal conspiracy and contempt re: Benghazi

[Apollonian]

Hillary’s Secret War​

By Andrew P. Napolitano

July 2, 2015

Link: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/07/andrew-p-napolitano/the-secret-war-of-mrs-lenin/

In the course of my work at Fox News, I am often asked by colleagues to review and explain documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge, our chief intelligence correspondent, and Pamela Browne, our senior executive producer, I read the transcripts of an interview Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.

What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.

Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011, he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always will do what American government officials ask of it.

In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that might harm Americans and American interests, Congress has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or facilitating the sale of arms to them is a felony. They also can license dealers to sell.

Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of American government officials, were sold, bartered or given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list. Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that licensed the sales also prohibited them.

How could that be?

That’s where Clinton’s secret State Department and her secret war come in. Because Clinton used her husband’s computer server for all of her email traffic while she was the secretary of state, a violation of three federal laws, few in the State Department outside her inner circle knew what she was up to.

Now we know.

She obtained permission from President Obama and consent from congressional leaders in both houses of Congress and in both parties to arm rebels in Syria and Libya in an effort to overthrow the governments of those countries.

Many of the rebels Clinton armed, using the weapons lawfully sold to Qatar by Turi and others, were terrorist groups who are our sworn enemies. There was no congressional declaration of war, no congressional vote, no congressional knowledge beyond fewer than a dozen members, and no federal statute that authorized this.

When Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked Clinton at a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 23, 2013, whether she knew about American arms shipped to the Middle East, to Turkey or to any other country, she denied any knowledge. It is unclear whether she was under oath at the time, but that is legally irrelevant. The obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Congress pertains to all witnesses who testify before congressional committees, whether an oath has been administered or not. (Just ask Roger Clemens, who was twice prosecuted for misleading Congress about the contents of his urine while not under oath. He was acquitted.)

Here is her relevant testimony.

Paul: My question is … is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons … buying, selling … anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey … out of Libya?

Clinton: To Turkey? … I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody’s ever raised that with me. I, I…

Paul: It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons … and what I’d like to know is … the (Benghazi) annex that was close by… Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons … and were any of these weapons transferred to other countries … any countries, Turkey included?

Clinton: Senator, you will have to direct that question to the agency that ran the (Benghazi) annex. And I will see what information is available and … ahhhh…

Paul: You are saying you don’t know…

Clinton: I do not know. I don’t have any information on that.

At the time that Clinton denied knowledge of the arms shipments, she and her State Department political designee Andrew Shapiro had authorized thousands of shipments of billions of dollars’ worth of arms to U.S. enemies to fight her secret war. Among the casualties of her war were U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three colleagues, who were assassinated at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, by rebels Clinton armed with American military hardware in violation of American law.

This secret war and the criminal behavior that animated it was the product of conspirators in the White House, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and a tight-knit group of members of Congress. Their conspiracy has now unraveled. Where is the outrage among the balance of Congress?

Hillary Clinton lied to Congress, gave arms to terrorists and destroyed her emails. How much longer can she hide the truth? How much longer can her lawlessness go unchallenged and unprosecuted? Does she really think the American voters will overlook her criminal behavior and put her in the White House where she can pardon herself?

 

[Apollonian]

Exclusive: The Arming of Benghazi​

Link: http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy-policy/2015/06/27/exclusive-arming-benghazi/

[good vid at site link, above]

By Catherine Herridge, Pamela Browne
·Published June 27, 2015
·FOXBusiness

The United States supported the secret supply of weapons to Libyan rebels while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State according to federal court documents obtained by Fox News.

In a sworn declaration to the District Court of Arizona May 5th 2015, a career CIA officer David Manners said, "It was then, and remains now, my opinion that the United States did participate, directly or indirectly, in the supply of weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Council." The timing matters because in the Spring of 2011 the Libyan opposition was not formally recognized, and the direct supply of arms was not authorized. At that time, the CIA Director was David Petraeus. (DAVID MANNERS DOCUMENT HERE)

Manners testified before a grand jury investigating American defense contractor Marc Turi who faces trial this September on two counts that he allegedly violated the arms control export act by making false statements.

Turi and his company Turi Defense Group are at the center of an ongoing federal investigation over the source and user of weapons defined in court documents as "end user" or "end use" flowing into Libya as Moammar Qaddafi's regime was collapsing in 2011.


"It was then, and remains now, my opinion that the United States did participate, directly or indirectly, in the supply of weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Council."

- Sworn Federal Court Declaration by CIA Veteran David Manners

In "United States of America v. Marc Turi and Turi Defense Group," Manners identifies himself as having 18 years experience as an intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA, with foreign postings as Chief of Station in Prague, Czechoslovakia and in Amman, Jordan. Manners also stated he was “the executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the National Security Agency."


Manners’ declaration supports statements made exclusively to FOX News by Turi about what President Obama's team and members of Congress knew about weapons flowing into the region during the chaotic Arab Spring of 2011.

"When this equipment landed in Libya, half went one way, and the half went the other way," Turi said, emphasizing that poor oversight, allowed individuals hostile to the United States to get arms. "The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria."

As part of Fox's ongoing investigation of the 2012 terrorist attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, as well as former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, Turi spoke exclusively to FOX Senior Executive Producer Pamela Browne. The investigation premiered on "FOX Files" on the FOX BUSINESS NETWORK.

Turi was one of several thousand US arms contractors licensed by the State Department to sell and move weapons around the world. He's been a go to guy for the US government, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I got involved in this business in the 1990s," Turi explained. "I've been involved in all type of operations, regarding transportation, logistics, and liaising with those foreign governments."

Turi admits to a criminal history. He told Fox that in the late 1980's, he stole a computer, his roommate's car, and wrote bad checks including one for $100,000 dollars. Through court records, Fox News verified he was arrested, convicted, and served time in an Arizona jail.

"In my youth, I made some very very bad mistakes...I was discharged from the United States Navy other under than honorable conditions...and I've been fighting ever since to get that honor back." (TURI DISCHARGE DOCUMENT HERE)

Licensed arms contractors require painstaking compliance in order to obtain the necessary approvals set by strict US government regulations. While Hillary Clinton served as President Obama's Secretary of State, American arms dealers were awarded a record number of export licenses to sell sophisticated weapons, military parts and technology internationally.

"That's actually been a huge, policy position, of the Obama Administration," Celina Realuyo, a professor of national security at the Perry Center at the National Defense University explained to FOX. Realuyo has served two presidents with expertise in tracking down money and weaponry used in what are called "dark networks" that can channel weapons to criminal and designated foreign terrorist organizations.

More than 86-thousand licenses with a value of $44.3 billion dollars were granted in 2011... a surge of more than $10 billion dollars from the previous year.

In the spring of 2011, Turi says his high level contacts both inside and outside of the US government, encouraged him to explore options to arm the Libyan opposition as they tried to overthrow then Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi. He says his associates included David Manners, a former intelligence officer with the CIA who stated his expertise to the court as an expert with knowledge of "authorized covert arms transfers."

Turi provided documents and email exchanges with high level members of Congress as well as military, and State Department employees which are currently being reviewed by Fox News.


"The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria."

Turi said, "That's where I came up with this "zero footprint" Arab supply chain whereby, our foreign ally supplies another, Arab country." In this case, the US would supply conventional weapons to a US ally-Qatar, who would inturn supply them to Libya, as a kind of workaround.

"If you want to limit the exposure to the US government, what you simply do is outsource it to your allies," Turi said, describing the practice. "The partners-the Qataris, and the Emiratis did exactly what they were contracted to do." Turi told Fox he never supplied any weapons to Qatar, and it was in the hands of the US government and the State Department's Bureau of Political and Military Affairs which was headed by a key Clinton aide, Andrew Shapiro. Mr. Shapiro was responsible to oversee the export control process at the State Department.

March 2011 was a busy time for Hillary Clinton. Even today, congressional investigators doubt they have all of the emails from her personal server when she was Secretary of State. On the 14th, along with Chris Stevens, who was then the number two man in Libya serving as the embassy's Deputy Chief of Mission, Clinton met with Libya's Mustafa Jibril in Paris-- a senior member of the TNC. The next day, Secretary Clinton met with Egypt's new foreign minister Nabil el Arabi in Cairo and walked through Tahrir Square with her senior adviser Huma Abedin. At the same time, Turi's proposal, a 267-million dollar contract, was working its way through US government channels.

"My application was submitted on the 12th," Turi said his contacts gave the proposal to the then Secretary of State. "...through their relationship with the TNC, then provided that application information to Mrs. Clinton via the TNC council when she was in Cairo. That's what was told to me...and emailed. "

Turi provided Fox News with emails he exchanged - in early April 2011 - with Chris Stevens to alert him to the proposed weapons deal. The emails were previously cited by the New York Times, but Fox News is now making the message traffic public. (CHRIS STEVENS EMAIL DOCUMENT HERE)

Stevens replied with a "thank you " and wrote "I'll keep it in mind and share it with my colleagues in Washington."

As FOX Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge first reported, it was a heavily redacted email released to the Benghazi Committee last month that clearly states that on April 8, 2011, a day after the Turi/Stevens exchange, Secretary Clinton was interested in arming the rebels using contractors:

"FYI. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered," Clinton wrote. Significantly, the State Department released emails blacked out this line, but the version given to the Benghazi Select Committee was complete. (CLINTON EMAIL DOCUMENT HERE)

In May 2011, Turi got a brokering approval from the State Department for Qatar. In July, his Arizona home was raided by federal agents.

"They came in the full body armor, and weapons and, they take my computers and my cell phones and that was it. That was the last time I saw them. And they've been chasing me all over the world for the past three years, speaking to associates of mine all over the United States and looking into my records and my past."

His attorney Jean-Jacques Cabou told Fox in a series of emails that his client had a track record working for the "US government through the Central Intelligence Agency" and the government case is an “epic fishing expedition." Adding his client"...neither lied on any application nor did he do anything other than support U.S. foreign policy and interests in the Middle East."

Turi believes his "zero footprint" idea was stolen out from under him, and now he is being blamed for a program that went off the rails.

Such are the stakes in this case, that the Justice Department National Security Division is involved, and recently requested that some proceedings remain secret under CIPA, the Classified Information Procedures Act. The Federal Judge wrote on June 16 "the government can seek protection under CIPA 4 in this case only by complying with Ninth Circuit law by making a formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has actual control over the discoverable information."

In his sworn declaration to the court, Manners said his grand jury testimony on covert arms transfers was cut off by the government lawyer. "As a result of the Assistant United States Attorney's actions, I believe that (a) the grand jury never received a full and complete picture of authorized covert arms transfers and their relevance to the present case. "

"At some point, I may be that internet video excuse," Turi said, referring to statements where then Secretary of Clinton and members of the Obama Administration wrongly blamed an obscure anti-Islam video for the 2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans. "I don't know. But, it's really strange that the US government would invest three years, a multi-year investigation, fly all over the world interviewing people, for an application."

In her only congressional testimony to date on Benghazi in January 2013, Mrs. Clinton was asked by Republican Senator Rand Paul about the flow of weapons.

"I will see what information is available," then Secretary Clinton ‎responded. "I don't have any information on that."

Two weeks after her testimony, a letter from the State Department was sent to Senator Paul skirting his question and stated that the US government “is not involved in any transfer of weapons from Libya to Turkey.” (SENATOR PAUL LETTER)


Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

 

[Apollonian]

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary’s Email Server Had A Webmail Portal That Allowed UNRESTRICTED ACCESS To Hackers​

Link: http://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...-that-allowed-unrestricted-access-to-hackers/

by Patrick Howley3 Sep 2015694

Hillary Clinton’s private email server had a webmail subdomain that made it highly vulnerable to hackers, Breitbart News has learned.

clintonemail.com had a subdomain called webmail.clintonemail.com, according to the account’s GoDaddy.com encryption certificate. That subdomain is a web-based email portal that considerably weakened the server’s defenses and invited attack.

A webmail portal allows web traffic to bypass hardware and software firewalls to easily access the server’s mail “interface.”

If a user accesses emails through a web portal on an unsecure network like Clinton’s, then the emails can be read without any encryption whatsoever for safety.

The webmail portal vastly increased the chances that Clinton’s server was hacked, a computer expert tells Breitbart News. Some hacking engines specifically target webmail portals like the one Clinton had, looking for access to email accounts.

And since hers was a web-based portal, Clinton’s few lines of defense for her server – including a spam-filtering system called MXLogic and a company in Florida that kept perfunctory tabs on the account – probably would not have even known if a hack occurred.

Additionally, Clinton’s server’s encryption was a Sha1 encryption combined with an RSA encryption. That encryption is very weak. Sha1 without an RSA encryption to compliment it is so weak and prone to hacks that it has been getting phased out of use for about a decade. Even the added RSA encryption does not negate the vulnerability to hacks of Clinton’s Sha1 encryption.

Sha1 is about 64,000 times less secure than the encryption for the extramarital dating website Ashley Madison, which was recently hacked, exposing the personal information of all of the site’s users.

“Due to [Ashley Madison] employing these methods one of the specialists attempting to reveal the true passwords was limited to 156 guesses per second instead of the 7m-11m that would be possible with more common, weaker methods of hashing such as MD5 or SHA1,” according to a posting on a tech forum.

 

[Apollonian]

Ex-Hillary Clinton Staffer Who Set Up Email Server Plans to Plead the Fifth ​

by Alex Seitz-Wald, Frank Thorp V and Kristen Welker

Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/hil...-staffer-subpoenaed-plans-plead-fifth-n420711

A former Hillary Clinton staffer who helped set up the former secretary of state's private email server has vowed to invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions after a congressional committee subpoenaed him, MSNBC confirmed late Wednesday.

Bryan Pagliano, who worked for Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign and at the State Department, has been identified in digital records as the person who set up her email server in 2009.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is investigating Clinton's emails, subpoenaed Pagliano last month to testify. But his lawyer said Monday that the IT specialist would refuse to answer questions, asserting his constitutional right against self-incrimination, The Washington Post first reported Wednesday.

"While we understand that Mr. Pagliano's response to this subpoena may be controversial in the current political environment, we hope that the members of the Select Committee will respect our client's right," attorney Mark MacDougall wrote in a letter obtained by MSNBC to Benghazi Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy.

The letter cites the fact the FBI is already investigating the security of Clinton's email server, and notes that Pagliano had been contacted in the past week by two separate Senate committees also looking into the matter.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican representing Iowa, said in a statement that "Mr. Pagliano's legal counsel told the committee yesterday that he would plead the 5th to any and all questions if he were compelled to testify."

A Clinton campaign aide said in a statement to NBC News Wednesday the candidate has encouraged aides to answer any questions.

"We have been confident from the beginning that Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email was allowed and that she did not send or receive anything marked classified, facts confirmed by the State Department and the Inspector General," the statement said. "She has made every effort to answer questions and be as helpful as possible, and has encouraged her aides, current and former, to do the same, including Bryan Pagliano."

Clinton is scheduled to testify before the House committee in October, her campaign said. The Republican-led committee is investigating the deaths of four Americans killed in the 2012 attacks in Libya.

Pagliano was IT director for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign before serving as special advisor to the Department of State under Clinton from May 2009 through February 2013, according to his LinkedIn page.

"Bryan is an utter professional and a wonderful young man who does not live in the public eye and understandably may not wish to be drawn into a political spectacle," the Clinton campaign aide went on.

"So his decision is both understandable and yet also disappointing to us, because we believe he has every reason to be transparent about his IT assistance," the aide said.

 

[Apollonian]

BEX ALERT - “Hillary panic” is spreading: Can she fend off Bernie, those stupid emails and that deepening sense of doom? ​

Tags: CORPORATE MEDIA
COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS/PROPAGANDA
POLITICS/ELECTIONS/CORRUPTION
WHITE HOUSE

link: http://www.salon.com/2015/09/05/hil...upid_emails_and_that_deepening_sense_of_doom/

It’s not entirely fair to say that Clinton’s current moment of crisis is self-inflicted, and indeed the situation is so murky that it’s not entirely clear this is a crisis, in political terms, rather than a somewhat predictable if angsty hiccup near the beginning of a long campaign. I seem to recall that she is related to someone whose political death knell was sounded repeatedly, and who displayed a Dracula-like aptitude for clawing his way out of the tomb. But one aspect of the distorting effect that both Hillary Clinton and her husband have on the political environment is the way they attract all kinds of bad stuff, which then sticks to them and cannot easily be scraped off. They’re like human magnets for evil thoughts and evil deeds, covered with Velcro and coated in molasses.

This is the start of a campaign by Hillary's supporters to declare the email scandal a non-crisis and consign it to the dim and murky history of ... last week. Hillary's protectors said the same thing about the Cattle Futures trades that started her fortune. "It's ancient history; let us focus on the future!" They said the same thing about the murder of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster. They said the same thing about the Clinton links to the Iran/Contra gun and drug-running operation from Arkansas to Nicaragua. They said the same thing about Whitewater, Flowerwood, Castle Grande, Madison Guarantee, and the Arkansas Development Finance Authority being used to launder the CIA's proceeds from that operation (while trying to keep the focus on a stained blue dress). They said the same thing about the travel office firings, China-gate, Blood-gate, Hillary's vicious attacks on Bill Clinton's sexual victims, and Benghazi. Always it is, "That was yesterday. Forget it. Nothing to see. Stop living in the past!"

But our present was built in the past. And if that past was corrupt then so is the present.

The Hillary email scandal is not going away, in part because there may be larger scandals lurking behind it! The first is the now-documented fact that even as the US Governent insists that Al Qaeda and ISIS are our enemies in the War on Terror, the US was sending weapons from Libya to Syria to arm Al Qaeda and ISIS against Syria's legitimate government, using the consulate in Benghazi as the hub of the operation. The second scandal lurking behind Hillary's server might even be worse!

Back in 1996, when Bill Clinton was running for re-election, he authorized the transfer of highly sensitive technology to China. This technology had military applications and allowed China to close the gap in missile performance with the United States. The transfers were opposed and severely criticized by the Defense Department.

At the same time Bill Clinton was transferring this technology to China, huge donations began to pour into his re-election campaign from the US companies allowed to sell the technology to China, and from American citizens of Chinese descent. The fact that they were US citizens allowed them to donate to political campaigns, but it later emerged that they were acting as conduits for cash coming in from Asian sources, including Chinese Intelligence Agencies! The scandal became known as China-gate!

This establishes a history of the Clintons treating US secrets as their own personal property, selling them to raise money for campaigns.

Now then, let us consider a private email server with weak security, at least one known totally open access point, no encryption, and outside the control and monitoring systems of the US government, on which are parked many of the nation's most closely guarded secrets! It is already established that Hillary's email was hacked. One hacker named Guccifer provided copies of emails to Russia Today, which published them. Another hacker is reported to be offering 32,000 of Hillary's emails for the sum of $500,000. Security experts agree that Hillary's server had worse security than the Ashley Madison website!

Now, consider a charitable foundation owned by the Clintons (which actually does very little charitable work). Being a charitable foundation, it is allowed to accept "donations" from foreign sources, and roughly 40% of the cash that has poured into the Clinton Foundation has come from foreign sources. Many of those foreign sources received preferential treatment from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sufficient for attorney Larry Klayman to file a RICO lawsuit against the foundation (which as of last report was thrown out of court by a Clinton-appointed judge who refused to recuse himself over the obvious conflict of interest)!

Easy means of delivering secrets. Easy means of accepting payment!

This is a perfect setup to repeat the 1996 selling of secrets for cash. In other words, a perfect espionage operation, running out the US State Department, with the weak email server providing the secrets and a charitable foundation to accept and launder the payments! Hillary doesn't have to physically steal the files, the way Jonathan Pollard did. Hillary doesn't have to scratch an X on a mailbox, the way Aldrich Ames did. Hillary doesn't have to tape bundles of stolen documents underneath a park bridge, like Robert Hannsen did!

It is time to look past the small scandal of the private email server at what may be a far larger scandal hidden behind it!


Read more: whatreallyhappened.com http://whatreallyhappened.com/node?page=2#ixzz3lClojcoa

 

[Apollonian]

Fresh evidence keeps sinking Hillary Clinton’s e-mail defense​

By Post Editorial Board

Link: http://nypost.com/2015/10/11/fresh-evidence-keeps-sinking-hillary-clintons-e-mail-defense/

October 11, 2015 | 8:27pm
Modal Trigger

Hillary Clinton’s “there’s no evidence of that” line of defense over her e-mail mess continues to crumble in the face of . . . new evidence.

For all her talk of how using a private e-mail account for her work running the State Department was just fine, it’s now plain she left top-secret information vulnerable to hackers.

More evidence is likely to come out. The FBI’s probe has now expanded to include another private server she used, a backup service with Connecticut-based Datto Inc.

And now The Associated Press has confirmed that her main server was the target of repeated cyberattacks from China, South Korea and Germany. And those came after she left office, when her team belatedly agreed to use some threat-monitoring software.

In other news, a FOIA request from the watchdog group Citizens United has uncovered the fact that Hill’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, was forwarding classified info to the Clinton Foundation — so staff there could support Bill Clinton’s work in Africa.

Add to this new details about Hillary’s e-mails with longtime aide Sidney Blumenthal — e-mails that somehow didn’t make it into the data she finally handed over once word broke that she’d failed to share her work product with the government.

Her extensive communications with him include the naming of a CIA source (obviously classified) as he pushed for action in Libya — action that would benefit his clients.

“It is curious Secretary Clinton took so much of her advice from someone who had never been to Libya, professed no independent knowledge of the country and who the White House blocked her from hiring,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who heads the select committee trying to finally get to the full facts on the deadly Benghazi attack.

Curious? Hey, in Clintonworld, blending policy with pocket-lining is routine — national security be damned.

 

[Apollonian]

Bernie Sanders Gave a Helluva Defense of Hillary’s Email Scandals at the Debate. There Are 32 Problems With It.​

Link: http://www.motherjones.com/politics...il-server-fbi-bernie-sanders-doesnt-give-damn

At least.

—By AJ Vicens
| Thu Oct. 15 2015 6:00 AM EDT
Josh Haner/NYT/Zuma

Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered one of the most enthusiastic applause lines of the first Democratic presidential debate when he came to Hillary Clinton's defense over her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. After CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Clinton about her upcoming testimony in front of Congress related to her emails, she offered the same answer she has repeatedly given in response.

"I've taken responsibility for it," she said. "I did say it was a mistake." She then employed her recent campaign strategy of linking the criticism of her email setup to the heavily politicized House Select Committee on Benghazi, which she described as "basically an arm of the Republican National Committee."

But before everybody moved on, Sanders weighed in. "I think the secretary is right," he said. "And that is, I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails." Clinton smiled and thanked him, and the crowd roared its approval.

But some Americans are not sick and tired of her damn emails, and they want to hear more. The Republican members of the Benghazi committee and FBI investigators, who are currently looking into how classified material ended up on the server, are well-known examples. But there are also 32 separate lawsuits related to public-records requests for the disputed emails from Clinton and some top staffers during her time as secretary of state.

These requesters range from media outlets to Republican activists. Many of the suits are focused on specific foreign policy issues that she was likely to have addressed while secretary of state. Just last week, a federal judge denied a State Department request to assign a judge to coordinate all the cases. The State Department argued that because the cases are at various stages in front of 17 different judges, the situation was rife with "confusion, inefficiencies, and advantages given to some requesters at the expense of others."

In denying the State Department's request, the judge said there was already informal coordination to try to limit conflicting orders and search requirements, and also expressed doubt that the records would continue to be produced on schedule if a coordinating judge were to be assigned.

So, for now, the State Department and other government agencies will continue to manage each case individually. Below is a table of the 32 lawsuits. Several of them were brought by journalists or media organizations: The Associated Press has one, and Jason Leopold, a Vice News reporter who's been instrumental in getting the emails released to the public, has two. Gawker Media's suit is on the list, along with one brought by Shane Bauer, a Mother Jones reporter, who is suing the CIA, the FBI, and the State Department for records related to each agency's handling of his imprisonment in Iran.

Another suit seeks the release of materials related to "Presidential Study Directive 11," which some conservatives have argued revealed President Barack Obama's plans to aid Islamist takeovers of governments across the Middle East. Another asks for records related to a Cambodian NGO that assisted girls and women who have escaped or been rescued from sex traffickers.

More than half of the cases in the State Department's filing were brought by conservative groups. Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, was responsible for 16 of the cases, seeking emails that contain references to the dealings of the Clinton Foundation and potential conflicts of interest, among other things. Veterans for a Strong America has one, and another is filed by Freedom Watch against the National Security Agency. Freedom Watch was founded by conservative activist Larry Klayman, who's described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a pathologically litigious attorney and professional gadfly notorious for suing everyone from Iran's Supreme Leader to his own mother."

See the full list, along with case numbers, below: [see site link, above]

 

[Apollonian]

WH: On Second Thought, We Don't Know Whether Hillary's Emails Harmed National Security​

Link: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guyben...arys-emails-harmed-national-security-n2065664

Guy Benson | Oct 14, 2015

Sunday gave us the presidential assertion. Tuesday gave us the official walk-back. When President Obama stated that Hillary Clinton's improper, unsecure private email server didn't pose a national security problem, some observers wondered how he could comment so confidently on the unresolved subject of an ongoing federal investigation. As the head of the federal government's executive branch, which entails the (supposedly) apolitical Justice Department, a premature 'not guilty' verdict from the President of the United States might be seen as coloring or influencing what should be an impartial probe. It smacks of a sitting Democrat nudging his law enforcement bureaucracy to clear the legal decks for a woman who will likely claim his party's mantle in the next election. But that's not what's happening here, the White House assures us:

CNN’S Michelle Kosinki asked Earnest if the president was precluding the results of the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s server. “Absolutely not. The president has a healthy respect for the kinds of independent investigations that are conducted by inspectors general and, where necessary, by the FBI,” Earnest said. Kosinki asked Earnest why would he make a blanket statement on the issue if the president did respect the current investigation. Earnest stumbled around his answer by saying he did not have the exact transcript of the interview in front of him but said the president was answering the question based off the information that was currently available...“Based on what has been made public and based on the public pronouncements of Secretary Clinton herself, that’s how the president arrived at the conclusion that this has not and does not pose a threat to national security. But obviously the FBI will take their own independent look at this. And for questions about the status of that investigation, I’d refer you to them...”

Even if you take this spin at face value, it doesn't pass the laugh test. What "has been made public," among other things, is that Hillary Clinton used her unsecure private email server to send and receive reams of classified information -- some of it extremely sensitive -- over a period of years. These messages involved such topics as North Korean nuclear weapons, the identity of a CIA informant in Libya, and details of the administration's nuclear negotiations with Iran. We also know that her server was woefully under-protected, and was in fact uniquely vulnerable to hacking. Now consider those established facts alongside the revelations that (a) numerous hacking attempts have now been confirmed, (b) an unknown number of people without proper security clearances had access to the server, (c) Sidney Blumenthal's emails were hacked and leaked, (d) Hillary's server had zero encryption for a period of three months, and (e) foreign hackers have managed to penetrate better-protected government servers in recent years. One gets the sense that Obama was making a politically-motivated statement, entirely divorced from publicly-available information. Incidentally, in the very brief portion of last night's debate that focused on the email scandal, capped off by Bernie Sanders' massive assist to her nominal opponent, Hillary repeatedly claimed that she was the victim of the "partisan" Benghazi committee. When moderator Anderson Cooper pushed back, noting that the FBI was investigating the matter (after referrals from two separate nonpartisan Inspectors General), she ignored the point and returned to the 'partisan witch hunt' trope. This dishonest, base-rallying evasion highlighted one of her most glaring contradictions: She wants to "heal" our acrimonious political system, she claimed earlier in the debate, condemning Republicans' alleged knee-jerk partisanship on her emails. But at the end of the forum, she gave this answer:


Asked last night to name “enemies” of which she was “proud,” Hillary Clinton rattled off a list that included “Republicans.” I haven’t seen a great deal of discussion about this in the aftermath of the debate, and I must say that I’m slightly surprised about that. It’s one thing to say you’re proud that, say, the NRA is your enemy; you can always explain that you respect gun owners and the Second Amendment but oppose the “crazies.” But the other majority political party in the country? The party for which almost half of voters pull the lever? That’s not smart...Sure, the line may have endeared Hillary to the crowd last night. But if she’s going to run as an out and out partisan who regards the other side as a nuisance that needs destroying, she’s opening herself up to profitable attack.

Partisanship is bad. Except for hers. Hillary Clinton is an exceptionally ambitious career politician whose views are deeply polarizing, and whose personality and character are unpalatable to most voters. Obama has used the unseemly "enemies" formulation, too, but he has long been viewed as more likable than Hillary, and is much more skilled at posing (however fraudulently) as post-partisan pragmatist.

 

[Apollonian]

The Midwife to Chaos and Her Perjury​

Link: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/10/andrew-p-napolitano/hillary-perjurer/

By Andrew P. Napolitano
October 29, 2015

The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd captured the moment last weekend when she referred to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “the midwife to chaos” in Libya. Dowd apparently came to that conclusion after watching Clinton bobbing and weaving and admitting and denying as she was confronted with the partial record of her failures and obfuscations as secretary of state, particularly with respect to Libya.

The public record is fairly well-known. In March 2011, President Barack Obama declared war on Libya. He did this at the urging of Clinton, who wanted to overthrow Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi so she could boast of having brought “democracy” to the region.

She and Obama conspired to do this even though former President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had publicly praised Gadhafi as an ally in the war against terrorist groups and even though the U.S. was giving the Gadhafi government more than $100 million a year in foreign aid.

Obama did his best to avoid constitutional norms. He deployed American intelligence agents on the ground, not troops, so he could plausibly deny he had put “boots” on the ground. He did not seek an American national consensus for war because Libya presented no threat whatsoever to the U.S. He did not obtain a congressional declaration of war as the Constitution requires because he couldn’t get one. And he did not seek United Nations permission, which is required to attack a fellow U.N. member.

He did obtain a U.N. embargo of the shipment of weapons into Libya, and he secured a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over portions of Libya. In order to enforce the no-fly zone, NATO sent jet fighters over the skies of Libya. The jets were guided and directed by American intelligence agents on the ground to bomb Libyan planes on the ground, which had been paid for by American taxpayers.

To pursue her goal of a “democratic” government there, Clinton, along with Obama and a dozen or so members of Congress from both houses and both political parties, decided she should break the law by permitting U.S. arms dealers to violate the U.N. arms embargo and arm Libyan rebels whom she hoped would one day run the new government. So she exercised her authority as secretary of state to authorize the shipment of American-made arms to Qatar, a country beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood and friendly to the Libyan rebels and a country the U.S. had no business arming — unless the purpose of doing so was for the arms to be transferred to the rebels.

Once this plot was hatched, Clinton and her fellow conspirators realized that some of these rebel groups were manned by al-Qaida operatives; and selling or providing arms to them is a felony — hence the reason for months’ worth of missing and destroyed Clinton emails. How could someone running for president possibly justify providing material assistance to terrorist organizations in the present international climate?

Flash-forward to Clinton’s public testimony before the House Benghazi Committee last week. Clinton had three audiences to address. Her immediate audience was the committee, whose members generally did not know how to ask questions of a witness trying to hide the truth. Her second audience was the American people, who will recall little more than 15-second sound bites and general impressions of her testimony. Her third (unseen) audience consisted of the FBI agents and federal prosecutors who are investigating her.

That audience was looking for perjury, misleading statements and what federal law calls “bad acts.” Perjury is lying under oath. Misleading Congress is criminal and consists of testimony that employs deceptive language so as to create an untruthful impression. Bad acts constitute repeated behavior demonstrating moral turpitude — usually a pattern of deception.

The FBI agents surely heard Clinton mislead Congress when she answered a hard question about arms going to rebels by saying “I think the answer is no” and again when she answered a question about arming private militias by saying it may have been considered but wasn’t “seriously” considered. And they heard her directly commit perjury when she was asked whether she knew about our country’s supplying arms to Libyan rebels directly or indirectly and she answered, “No.”

How could she answer “no”? She not only knew about the sending of arms to rebels but also personally authored and authorized it. How could she answer “no”? The FBI and CIA advised her — in documents that are now public — that U.S. arms were making their way to known al-Qaida operatives. How could she answer “no”? This reached a crisis point when some of those operatives used their American-made weapons to murder U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

Then the cover-up began. At the same time Clinton was telling her daughter and the Egyptian prime minister within hours of Stevens’ death that al-Qaida killed him and after the CIA told her the plot to kill Stevens had been hatched 12 days earlier, she told the public that Stevens was killed by spontaneous demonstrators angered about a cheap anti-Islam video, the producer of which she vowed to “get.” She later angrily dismissed questions over this cover-up by arguing, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

The difference it makes goes to the heart of the American electoral process. Every four years, we entrust awesome power to a person who swears to protect the Constitution. How could we give that power to a consistent public liar who, for personal political gain, midwifed terror and chaos in a country that was our ally and whose words and behavior have continually demonstrated that she is utterly unworthy of belief?

 

[Apollonian]

‘Sufficient proof Clinton pushing false narrative on Benghazi’ – attack survivor​

Published time: 10 Jun, 2016 10:40

Link: https://www.rt.com/op-edge/346092-hillary-clinton-benghazi-attack/

U.S.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton adjjusts her glasses before testiffying on the September attack on U.S. diplomatic sites in Benghazi, Libya during a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington January 23, 2013 © Kevin Lamarque

U.S.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton adjjusts her glasses before testiffying on the September attack on U.S. diplomatic sites in Benghazi, Libya during a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington January 23, 2013 © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

The proof Hillary Clinton is pushing a “false narrative” trying to cover things up in Benghazi and skirt her responsibility is “out there”, attack survivor Kris Paronto told RT.

RT: You were part of the security team that got involved in the fighting. First of all, what do you remember about that night?

Kris Paronto: I remember the firefights, there were multiple firefights. I remember calling multiple times for air support. I remember being told to stand down. I remember being told to wait on two other occasions, I remember there being a delay. And then you also remember the dead: I remember seeing Sean’s body being pulled out of the window. And then I also remember seeing Tyrone and Glen from meters away getting obliterated by mortars at five o’clock, roughly about 4:35 in the morning.

RT: So much controversy about that night. You said you were told to stand down, and you guys went in there anyway and tried to save lives. How do you feel about that?

KP: Well, from the standpoint of military personnel we did the right thing. From the civilian side and from the leadership that was telling us to stand down, they made a huge mistake and it cost lives, and it cost Ambassador Chris Stevens and it cost Sean Smith their lives. It was a tragic mistake, but I’m very proud of the team because we bucked orders and we did what SEALs, Rangers and Marines are trying to do, and that’s go and try to put our lives on the line to protect others.

RT: Why do you think you were told to stand down? What was the rationale behind that?

KP: I think initially… it was just a mistake. You had a civilian that was overwhelmed in a very volatile combat situation that didn’t have the experience and pride got in the way and he didn’t want to turn it over to contractors. This is what we were looked at even though we were all former Spec Ops guys. So I do think initially it was just a mistake, he made a bad call and the bad call cost lives.

RT: You said a number of times mistakes were made. Hillary Clinton said nobody did anything wrong in the handling of the Benghazi attack. What do you make of her statement?

KP: First of all, those seven investigations she was talking about at the time… One had only interviewed the team that was on the ground. And there has only been one committee that actually interviewed everybody that was on the ground and that’s the Benghazi select committee run by Trey Gowdy.

So, honestly, that’s a false narrative she’s trying to push that things were done and nothing wrong was found. Well, of course, nothing wrong was found because the investigations weren’t complete.
Also whether there, mistakes were made or whether there were failures or not they fall on the highest level of the chain of command and that is the State Department and that was her. Whether she knew about it or not, that makes no difference to me. Your success of failure falls on the highest chain of command and if the first subordinates didn’t tell her what was going on, well, then they weren’t trained correctly and that makes her to me unqualified to be president of the United States.

RT: Obviously, you think people have lied, mistakes were made. What’s important for the public to find out?

KP: First of all, listen to the guys that are on the ground. Listen to the team that was there. Listen to the guys that sacrificed their lives. Listen to the guys that bled there. Listen to the family members who on multiple occasions said that Hillary did lie to them and that she went on TV and called them liars. I think that’s a travesty. I think you’ve got a very bad person, and it’s my opinion, that’s running for president that’s got the democratic nomination. I think she is trying to cover this up because it could have a very negative and it still is having a very negative effect on her becoming the president of the US, which I’m against. I would say that with honesty, I’m against her becoming the president of the US. Failures were made and there is no reason to think that those failures or some more failures won’t be made if she becomes president of the US and people’s lives will be lost again they are going to get covered up.

RT: It’s very hard to prove things, isn’t it? Nobody can prove that she lied after Benghazi but there an awful lot of evidence, isn’t there, that she was telling the public one thing what turned out to be the truth to people close to her and to top ranking politicians at the same time. How to prove but there is a lot of evidence?

KP: Well, I don’t know if it’s hard. Isn’t it proof right there? You’ve got the emails. A lot of those emails have been scrubbed but you still have found some emails. You’ve got the family members saying that they were lied to. Why on Earth would Pat Smith and Shirl, Tyrone’s mom, (I don’t want to give her last name), Katy Quigley, Glen’s sister, why on Earth would they come forward and say: “Yes, we were told by Hilary Clinton that was due to a video.” I’d be honest; I don’t even know what party side they’re on. I just don’t see there not being enough proof.
The proof is out there. People just don’t want to see it, especially her supporters.

RT: Why should people be particularly worried? You know, politicians lie to us all the time.

KP: You know, why do we have to accept it? And you’re exactly right. I’ve worked in several countries over my ten year span of deploying. Politics and politicians for the most part… it’s a dirty world. But why on Earth do we have to accept it that Yes, our politicians lie, so you know what its okay if she does?
I think it’s come to a point that we need to stop that because of what’s happened and because of Benghazi. It’s shone the light that there are mistakes made and politicians try to cover them up. And also sometimes nefarious actions are taken and people’s lives are lost. I think it’s time to put a stop to that. And that’s why the team and myself are being more outspoken now. Now that the story is vivid and we can be a little more candid because we’re out on our own and we’re out talking about ‘13 Hours’ and we’re honoring the guys that died that night, which should be honored and not to cover up. These cover-ups need to be exposed… Would they all be exposed I don’t know. But I’m doing my best to try to get the truth out there and have people wake up.