Posts

Free Beacon: Abedin New Focus of Clinton Email Investigation

FBI report reveals she forwarded classified data to her private email

By Bill Gertz

Documents made public from the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server provide clues about the current review of more than half a million emails linked to Clinton presidential campaign vice chair Huma Abedin.

Abedin was questioned by FBI agents and Justice Department officials, including those involved with counterintelligence matters, on April 5.

During those discussions, Abedin revealed that she used four different email accounts while she was deputy chief of staff for operations in Clinton’s seventh floor office at the State Department.

The email accounts included her official State Department account, abedinh@state.gov, the private server account, huma@clintonemail.com, and her private email, humamabedin@yahoo.com. Abedin’s fourth email account was associated with the campaign activities of her estranged husband, former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner.

The FBI reopened its Clinton email investigation after agents recovered a laptop computer from Wiener that reportedly contains some 650,000 emails now being reviewed by FBI agents.  Weiner’s laptop was obtained during an investigation into allegations the former congressman exchanged illicit messages with a 15-year-old girl.

The FBI began reviewing the emails after receiving a search warrant on Monday.

FBI Director James Comey revealed to Congress last week that he ordered the email investigation to be reopened after “pertinent” information was uncovered in the separate investigation of Weiner.

The Wall Street Journal, quoting people close to the FBI and Justice Department, reported last weekend that FBI and Justice Department officials disagreed with the decision to renew the email probe.

Word of the FBI’s renewed email investigation was a political bombshell for Clinton, coming 11 days before Election Day and again raising questions about her character.

Clinton and her campaign spokespeople have called for the FBI to release further details about the new email cache.

On Monday, Assistant Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik wrote to congressional Democrats who sought additional details of the new probe. “We assure you that the Department will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible,” Kadzik stated in a three-paragraph letter.

Abedin’s lawyer, Karen Dunn, said in a statement on Monday that Abedin was unaware that her emails were on Weiner’s laptop. “Ms. Abedin will continue to be, as she always has been, forthcoming and cooperative,” she said.

The original FBI investigation was prompted by the discovery of secret intelligence information in Clinton’s emails. The probe, thought to have been finished in July, seeks to find out how classified information was placed on the unsecure server and whether foreign intelligence services or other hackers were able to steal it through cyber intrusions.

The classified information included some of the most sensitive secrets kept in what are called Special Access Programs, including information on how drone strikes are conducted.

Abedin told agents she was not aware of any attempts to hack her email accounts, according to the FBI report of her interview.

“Abedin recalled that some people at DoS had issues with their Gmail accounts but she never had a Gmail account,” the report said.

While working for Clinton, Abedin held a top-secret security clearance. She had a classified computer system, along with a separate unclassified computer, at her desk in Clinton’s office.

“Abedin could access her clintonemail.com account and her Yahoo account via the internet on the unclassified [Department of State] computer system,” the FBI report states.

Abedin told the FBI that printing difficulties on the State Department network led her to routinely forward emails to her non-State Department accounts for printing.

During questioning by the FBI, Abedin was shown several emails that revealed lines of inquiry being pursued by investigators.

For example, one email with the subject line “Fwd: U.S. interest in Pak Paper 10-04” appeared to contain a classified document that was forwarded by Abedin to her personal Yahoo account in October 2009. The document had come from an aide to Richard Holbrooke, who was special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time.

“Abedin was unaware of the classification of the document and stated that she did not make judgments on the classification of material that she received,” the report states, adding that she relied on senders to properly mark and transmit sensitive material.

Another email chain dated August 16, 2010 shown to Abedin contained the subject line, “Re: your yahoo acct.” It appeared to warn Abedin that her Yahoo account had been hacked.

“Abedin did not recall the email and provided that despite the content of the email she was not sure that her email account had ever been compromised,” the report said.

Another email from October 2009 shown to Abedin involved communications security procedures for use during travel in Moscow. Abedin told investigators the email contained instructions to be followed by Clinton and “all the traveling team.”

“Abedin stated that they used computers that were set up and controlled by the Mobile Communications Team to access their DoS and personal email accounts when they were in Russia,” the report said.

The questioning indicates investigators were trying to determine if Russian intelligence may have compromised the emails and cell phones of Clinton and her team of aides during a visit to Russia.

Another email involved Clinton requesting that Abedin schedule a conference call with Jacob Sullivan, a senior State Department official. The message discussed whether the call should be conducted on secure lines or unclassified telephone.

The email contained classified information that was redacted from public release involving Sullivan’s meeting with Hamid bin Jassim, the former prime minister of Qatar.

Abedin said she could not recall the email exchange or the context but noted that generally she would be told by Clinton whether conference calls should be held on secure lines or not. Abedin said it would be unusual for her to read the content and decide whether the call should be secure or unclassified.

Another email shown to Abedin appeared to indicate that the private email server had been hacked.

According to the FBI report, Abedin told investigators she “lost most of her old emails” when the clintonemail.com server was transitioned to a post-State Department server with the address hrcoffice.com.

“Abdein did not know if the system administrator had archived the mailboxes before the system was taken down,” the report said.

Abedin’s claim that she lost most of her emails during the server transition will likely be checked in the FBI review of the new emails found on the Weiner laptop.

The renewed FBI investigation also may be able to resolve questions about missing boxes of emails that disappeared between the time Clinton turned them over to lawyers for review and the time they were ultimately delivered to the State Department.

An identified State Department witness told the FBI that 14 boxes of emails were supplied to Clinton’s lawyers at Williams & Connelly for review prior to being turned over to the State Department. Only 12 boxes were retrieved in December 2015.

Continue reading at the Washington Free Beacon.

/0 Comments/by

CNN: Justice Department, Abedin lawyers in talks to permit email search

Hillary & Huma Email perjury

By Evan Perez, Justice Department Correspondent

(CNN) The Justice Department and the FBI are in discussions with lawyers for Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin to secure approval that would allow the FBI to conduct a full search of her newly discovered emails, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

Authorities have not yet sought a search warrant for the emails, law enforcement sources told CNN. Government lawyers hope to secure a search warrant to permit investigators to review thousands of emails on a computer Abedin shared with her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, officials said.

The new search warrant is needed because the existing authorization, covered by a subpoena, related only to the ongoing investigation of Weiner, who is accused of having sexually explicit communications with an underage girl.

Investigators from the FBI’s New York field office who are conducting the Weiner investigation stumbled on the Abedin emails while they were reviewing emails and other communications on the computer, which was considered to belong to Weiner, the officials said. They stopped their work and called in the team of investigators from FBI headquarters who conducted the probe of Clinton’s private email server.

Abedin’s lawyers didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The investigators saw enough of the emails to determine that they appeared pertinent to the previously completed investigation and that they may be emails not previously reviewed.

Because they don’t have a warrant specific to Abedin’s emails, officials have not been able to further examine them. Justice Department and FBI officials view Abedin as cooperative with the investigation.

Continue reading at CNN.

/0 Comments/by

Free Beacon: Attorney General Lynch ‘Pleads Fifth’ on Secret Iran ‘Ransom’ Payments

Obama admin blocking congressional probe into cash payments to Iran

By Adam Kredo

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.

In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.

The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her] role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon.

The inquiry launched by the lawmakers is just one of several concurrent ongoing congressional probes aimed at unearthing a full accounting of the administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.

“It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people’s elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.”

“As the United States’ chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,” they stated. “The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.”

The lawmakers included a copy of their previous 13 questions and are requesting that Lynch provide answers by Nov. 4.

When asked about Lynch’s efforts to avoid answering questions about the cash payment, Pompeo told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration has blocked Congress at every turn as lawmakers attempt to investigate the payments to Iran.

“Who knew that simple questions regarding Attorney General Lynch’s approval of billions of dollars in payments to Iran could be so controversial that she would refuse to answer them?” Pompeo said. “This has become the Obama administration’s coping mechanism for anything related to the Islamic Republic of Iran—hide information, obfuscate details, and deny answers to Congress and the American people.”

“They know this isn’t a sustainable strategy, however, and I trust they will start to take their professional, and moral, obligations seriously,” the lawmaker added.

In the Oct. 24 letter to Rubio and Pompeo, Assistant Attorney General Kadzik warned the lawmakers against disclosing to the public any information about the cash payment.

Details about the deal are unclassified, but are being kept under lock and key in a secure facility on Capitol Hill, the Free Beacon first disclosed. Lawmakers and staffers who have clearance to view the documents are forced to relinquish their cellular devices and are barred from taking any notes about what they see.

“Please note that these documents contain sensitive information that is not appropriate for public release,” Kadzik wrote to the lawmakers. “Disclosure of this information beyond members of the House and Senate and staff who are able to view them could adversely affect the diplomatic relations of the United States, including with key allies, as well as the State Department’s ability to defend [legal] claims against the United States [by Iran] that are still being litigated at the Hague Tribunal.”

“The public release of any portion of these documents, or the information contained therein, is not authorized by the transmittal of these documents or by this communication,” Kadzik wrote.

Congressional sources have told the Free Beacon that this is another part of the effort to hide details about these secret negotiations with Iran from the American public.

One senior congressional source familiar with both the secret documents and the inquiry into them told the Free Beacon that the details of the negotiations are so damning that the administration’s best strategy is to ignore lawmakers’ requests for more information.

Continue reading at Washington Free Beacon.

/0 Comments/by

WSJ: The Press Buries Hillary Clinton’s Sins

As reporters focus on Trump, they miss new details on Clinton’s rotten record.

By Kimberley A. Strassel

If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.

But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.

It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.

 Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.” She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”

A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”

Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.

A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a pass was “a top-down decision.”

Continue Reading, The Wall Street Journal.

 

/0 Comments/by

Fox News: Clinton ‘does not recall’ ordering destruction of emails from personal server in testimony

By FoxNews.com

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said she “does not recall” ordering emails related to State Department business to be deleted or permanently erased from her personal server after she left her post in 2013, according to sworn testimony made public Thursday.

The testimony, obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch, marked the first time Clinton was forced to answer questions under oath about her private email system. A federal judge had ordered the former secretary of state’s legal team to turn over written responses to questions about the so-called “homebrew” server, which was kept in her New York home during her tenure as America’s top diplomat.

Clinton and her legal team objected to all or part of 18 of the 25 questions put to her by Judicial Watch. She also filed eight separate general objections to the process under which the questions were being asked.

In her responses, Clinton used some variation of “does not recall” at least 21 times.

In the testimony, Clinton says that it was her “expectation” that all her “work-related and potentially work-related e-mails [sic]” had been turned over to the State Department by her lawyers when she determined that she had “no reason to keep her personal e-mails [sic].”

That statement contradicts testimony by FBI Director James Comey this past July. Comey told the House oversight committee that “thousands” of work-related emails were not returned.

Clinton also denied sending a 2011 memo warning State Department employees not to conduct official business from personal email accounts.

Clinton said the memo, like all notices sent from the State Department, concluded with her last name as “a formality … it did not mean that she sent, authored, or reviewed the cable.”

Clinton also said she did not recall receiving a February 2011 memo warning her of increased attempts to hack into private email accounts belonging to senior State Department officials.

Clinton was also asked when she decided to use her private email account to conduct government business and whom she consulted in making that decision.

Clinton said she recalled making the decision in early 2009, but she “does not recall any specific consultations regarding the decision.”

Asked whether she was warned that using a private email account conflicted with federal record-keeping rules, Clinton responded that “she does not recall being advised, cautioned, or warned, she does not recall that it was ever suggested to her, and she does not recall participating in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed.”

Clinton noted in her testimony that her use of a personal email account for official business dated to her time as a Senator from New York, and insisted that she decided to use the server “for the purpose of convenience.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the group’s lawyers will closely review Clinton’s responses.

“Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to answer many of the questions in a clear and straightforward manner further reflects disdain for the rule of law,” Fitton said.

Continue reading Fox News.

/0 Comments/by