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Free Beacon: Complaint Filed Against Clinton’s Campaign Following O’Keefe Videos

Watchdog calls for investigation into whether Clinton campaign, Dem groups violated campaign finance laws

By Joe Schoffstall

An election integrity group has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission following the release of undercover videos from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an Indiana-based group that litigates to protect election integrity, submitted the complaint Tuesday to the Office of the General Counsel at the FEC claiming that Hillary Clinton’s campaign committee and other left-wing groups may have violated campaign finance laws.

“This complaint is based on information and belief that respondents have engaged in public communications, campaign activity, targeted voter registration drives, and other targeted GOTV [get out the vote] activity under 11 C.F.R. 100.26 and 11 C.F.R. 114.4 at the request, direction, and approval of the Hillary for America campaign committee and the Democratic National Committee in violation of 11 C.F.R. 109.20 and 11 C.F.R. 114.4(d)(2) and (3),” the complaint states.

“Complainant’s information and belief is based on findings from an investigation conducted by Project Veritas Action and their published reports regarding the same, as well as on news sources.”

“‘If the Commission, upon receiving a complaint … has reason to believe that a person has committed, or is about to commit, a violation of [the FECA] … [t]he Commission shall make an investigation of such alleged violation … ‘ 52 U.S.C. § 30109(a)(2); see also 11 C.F.R. § 111.4(a).”

PILF argues that the groups within the videos–which were caught on tape discussing possible voter fraud scenarios–have organized voter registration drives and other GOTV activities that could have potentially registered people who are not United States citizens.

“On the same information and belief, these voter registration drives and other GOTV activity were coordinated with DNC and HFA by express communication through agents of Democracy Partners and The Foval Group,” the complaint reads. “These communications resulted in coordination of voter registration activity in violation of 11 C.F.R. 114.4(c)(2) and (d)(2)-(4) by all parties involved.”

The complaint also mentions the “paid protesters” referenced by Democratic operatives within the videos who were allegedly paid to incite violence at Donald Trump rallies.

“Upon information and belief, and based upon the facts set forth above, Respondents Hillary for America, the Democratic National Committee, Democracy Partners, Americans United for Change, and their agents, named and unnamed above, have, each of them, individually and collectively, violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended, and must be held accountable and liable for their unlawful actions,” the complaint concludes.

Clinton campaign treasurer Jose H. Villarreal, the Democratic National Committee, Democracy Partners, Americans United for Change, Scott Foval, and Voces de la Frontera Action are additionally listed as respondents on the complaint alongside Hillary for America.

Continue reading, Free Beacon.

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Free Beacon: Memo: Google’s Eric Schmidt Working Directly With the Clinton Campaign

‘Discreet conversations’ also started with Facebook, Apple in 2014

By Joe Schoffstall

Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is working directly with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to a memo contained within an email released by WikiLeaks.

“Discreet conversations” of forming “working relationships” with companies such as Facebook and Apple were also facilitated as early as October 2014, the memo stated. This is at least six months prior to when Clinton announced her candidacy for president.

The document was attached to an Oct. 26, 2014 email sent from Robby Mook, now Clinton’s campaign manager, to Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton aide; David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s previous campaign manager; and John Podesta, Clinton’s current campaign chairman whose email account was compromised.

The email was posted to Wikileaks after hackers believed to be working with the Russian government breached Podesta’s email account.

Teddy Goff, now a digital strategist for the Clinton campaign who is the former digital director for Obama’s reelection campaign, wrote the memo, which was addressed to Clinton. It touched base on “Technology and digital priorities.”

Goff began by listing “priorities” for the Clinton digital team to undertake. In his estimation—in order of importance—these included: “Raising lots of money,” “Creating and distributing excellent content, for both supportive and persuadable audiences, on social and paid media and in videos,” and “Recruiting, engaging, and organizing volunteers and prospective volunteers.”

Goff then provided an update on these developments. Within this section, he repeatedly referenced the work “Eric Schmidt’s group” and “team” is performing. The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that John Podesta emailed Schmidt in April 2014 to set up meetings with Cheryl Mills and Robby Mook.

“I have been kept apprised of the work being done by Eric Schmidt’s group and others working directly and indirectly with your team. On the whole, I am comfortable with where we stand and confident in our roadmap to launch day and beyond,” Goff wrote.

Goff wrote that they have selected a team of developers unaffiliated with Schmidt to build the front end of Clinton’s website.

“They are apprised of what Eric is building but not dependent on it, having identified commercially available products for all mission-critical functions in the event Eric’s group is delayed or otherwise derailed,” he wrote.

“We have instructed Eric’s team to build the most important products in their portfolio—specifically, the back-end of the website, the ability to accept donations (along with associated features, most importantly the ability to store credit card information), and the ability to acquire email addresses—first,” Goff says. “Given how much time remains between now and launch—and, again, the availability of alternative solutions—I believe there is effectively no chance that these core functionalities will not be in place in time for launch.”

Goff continued by saying that he is confident that the digital infrastructure they are building will be far more advanced than those of any challengers in either political party:

Eric’s team is also developing products that are not, strictly speaking, critical for launch, but would be extremely useful to have as early in the cycle as possible. Chief among these is the system that consolidates data from disparate sources to allow you to develop more complete user profiles and therefore more effective programs. I shared the concern, voiced by many, that the initial scope for these products was overly ambitious and unrealistic; they have since been cut down to a much more manageable size, without sacrificing core functionalities. (Of note, many of the problems that stifled us in 2012 have since been tackled by private companies with whom we have relationships and whose tools we can license rather than attempt to replicate.) I am cautiously optimistic that the most important of these will be completed in time for launch; if they are delayed, I have no reason to believe they will not be ready shortly thereafter, long before potential challengers in either party will have been able to build anything similar.

Goff concluded by speaking of the importance of the campaign forming “working relationships” with the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook, and other technology companies.

“We have begun having discreet conversations with some of these companies to get a sense of their priorities for the coming cycle, but would encourage you, as soon as your technology leadership is in place, to initiate more formal discussions,” he wrote.

While the exact Schmidt-backed group is not named within the memo, Schmidt has provided funding to a tech startup called The Groundwork, which is paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Michael Slaby, the former chief integration and innovation officer for the Obama campaign, developed The Groundwork through a company he co-founded called Timshel. Slaby has been tight-lipped about details of its partnership with the Clinton campaign. The group has been paid nearly $600,000 from Hillary for America since its inception.

Continue reading, Free Beacon.

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New Republic: The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn’t About Hillary Clinton

What John Podesta’s emails from 2008 reveal about the way power works in the Democratic Party.

By David Dayen

The most important revelation in the WikiLeaks dump of John Podesta’s emails has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. The messages go all the way back to 2008, when Podesta served as co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. And a month before the election, the key staffing for that future administration was almost entirely in place, revealing that some of the most crucial decisions an administration can make occur well before a vote has been cast.

Michael Froman, who is now U.S. trade representative but at the time was an executive at Citigroup, wrote an email to Podesta on October 6, 2008, with the subject “Lists.” Froman used a Citigroup email address. He attached three documents: a list of women for top administration jobs, a list of non-white candidates, and a sample outline of 31 cabinet-level positions and who would fill them. “The lists will continue to grow,” Froman wrote to Podesta, “but these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by various sources for senior level jobs.”

The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.

This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that.

Many already suspected that Froman, a longtime Obama consigliere, did the key economic policy hiring while part of the transition team. We didn’t know he had so much influence that he could lock in key staff that early, without fanfare, while everyone was busy trying to get Obama elected. The WikiLeaks emails show even earlier planning; by September the transition was getting pre-clearance to assist nominees with financial disclosure forms.

We certainly want an incoming administration to be well-prepared and ready to go when power is transferred. For Obama, coming into office while the economy was melting down, this was particularly true. But the revelations also reinforce the need for critical scrutiny of Hillary Clinton, and for advocacy to ensure the next transition doesn’t go like the last, at least with respect to the same old Democrats scooping up all the positions of power well in advance.

Many liberal pundits have talked about the need to focus exclusively on Donald Trump, and the existential threat he presents, in the critical period before Election Day. And there is a logic to that idea: Trump would legitimately be a terrifying leader of the free world. But there are consequences to the kind of home-team political atmosphere that rejects any critical thought about your own side. If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors. And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.

Who gets these cabinet-level and West Wing advisory jobs matters as much as policy papers or legislative initiatives. It will inform executive branch priorities and responses to crises. It will dictate the level of enforcement of existing laws. It will establish the point of view of an administration and the advice Hillary Clinton will receive. Its importance cannot be stressed enough, and the process has already begun.

The wing of the Democratic Party concerned about personnel decisions made its opinion known almost two years ago. Dan Geldon, now chief of staff to Senator Elizabeth Warren, met with Dan Schwerin, a top adviser to Clinton’s campaign, in January 2015. According to an email follow-up with Podesta and others, Geldon “was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers.” He was also “very critical of the Obama administration’s choices.”

The “Bob Rubin school” is named for the former top executive at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and first Clinton administration Treasury secretary. It is composed precisely of the kinds of Democrats that the Warren wing opposes on domestic policy, particularly on financial matters. In the Obama administration, that school won out. Froman, chief of staff to Rubin at Treasury, gave options for Treasury secretary that ranged from Rubin himself to Summers and Geithner, two of his key protégés. In another 2008 email Rubin imagined for himself a “Harry Hopkins” position in the Obama administration, referring to Franklin Roosevelt’s top adviser.

The Rubin school dictated the Obama administration’s light-touch policy on bank misconduct (which resulted in no serious legal or fiduciary consequences for the major players) and its first-term approach to the financial crisis (which was defined by a stimulus package that even at the time was criticized for being woefully inadequate, as well as a premature turn to budget-cutting). These are exactly the flaws that Geldon, Warren’s emissary, stressed. According to Schwerin, he “spoke repeatedly about the need to have in place people with ambition and urgency who recognize how much the middle class is hurting and are willing to challenge the financial industry.”

Around the same time as that meeting with Geldon, the Clinton campaign wassetting up a dinner meeting with its economic policy team, Geithner, Summers, and members of the investment firm Blackstone (along with Teresa Ghilarducci, a retirement security researcher).

This is a fight over who dominates the Democratic Party’s policy thinking in the short and long term. In 2008 the fight was invisible and one-sided, and the fix was in. In 2016 both sides are angling to get Clinton to adopt their framework. Those predisposed to consider Clinton some neoliberal sap might not agree, but this is actually a live ball. Presidents lead coalitions, and they have to understand where their coalition is and how things change over time. Peter Orszag this week suggested a trade-off: Give the Warren wing its choices on personnel, in exchange for more leeway to negotiate an infrastructure package with Republicans that gives big tax breaks to corporations with money stashed overseas. While that deal needs more detail, it reveals the power the Warren wing has, relative to the Obama era, to make significant strides on appointments.

Continue Reading, New Republic.

 

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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.

 

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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.

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Fox News: Emails reveal Clinton camp’s scramble to craft, defend server story

By Cody Derespina

Hillary Clinton’s top aides privately debated whether to joke about her emerging email scandal, if they should shift some blame to former secretaries of state and how to frame, explain and defend her use of a homebrewed server in a series of purported March 2015 emails revealed by WikiLeaks this week.

The emails, which originated on the Gmail account of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, paint a portrait of a political team alternately worried and defiant in the face of their boss’ mushrooming email disclosure. Through the early days of the email revelations, and even throughout the summer as further discoveries turned up the heat, Clinton’s group sweated the minutiae of her carefully crafted responses in an attempt to keep the campaign’s preferred narrative on track.

As the scandal evolved during the summer of 2015, aides suddenly had to combat reports that classified information may have been emailed, leading Clinton to eventually modify her original denials to say she had never “sent nor received any email that was marked classified.” On Aug. 21, her team was debating a new statement addressing the issue. Press secretary Brian Fallon emailed communications director Jennifer Palmieri to flag a potential issue.

“This line – ‘‎This process of looking backwards to see if something should have been classified at the time is fine’ – is problematic,” Fallon wrote. “We should not think it is fine to find something that ‘should have been classified at the time.’ Our position is that no such material exists, else it could be said she mishandled classified info.”

It’s unclear if anyone responded to Fallon’s concerns.

Worries such as Fallon’s, however, were not as commonplace during the early days of the scandal. Emails reveal that Clinton’s staff’s first instinct was to use humor to blunt the force of the March 2 New York Times article on the personal account.

Palmieri floated the “idea of HRC making a joke about the email situation” during an event for Emily’s List, a pro-choice PAC. A few staffers chimed in that this approach could work, but adviser Mandy Grunwald disagreed.

“We don’t know what’s in the emails, so we are nervous about this,” Grunwald wrote after a conversation with consultant Jim Margolis. “Might get a big laugh tonight and regret it when content of emails is disclosed.”

Nick Merrill, another press aide, pitched a comedy segment on March 7, noting that Clinton could appear with her husband and daughter at an already-scheduled event being hosted by comedian Larry Wilmore. Merrill mused that Wilmore could cue Clinton to join him on stage with the line, “I should tell you, I just emailed HRC (I hear she’s a big emailer), and asked if she’d join as well.”

“Goal would be to cauterize this just enough so it plays out over the weekend and dies in the short term,” Merrill writes, adding: “It might be crazy, but it might also be the one-two punch we need right now.”

The comedy route was ultimately scrapped.

Clinton’s advisers also discussed how much – if any – blame should be assigned to her predecessors at the State Department. Palmieri’s first response to being emailed The New York Times story on March 2 was: “Didn’t Condi [Rice] also use a non-government account?”

The following day, Merrill circulated a list of talking points to top campaign staffers. Among the notes, Colin Powell’s memoir was cited to show he worked in a similar fashion. On March 6, an initial draft of a Clinton email statement included an anecdote about Powell telling her during a dinner party about his email usage. The next day, however, campaign manager Robby Mook wanted that portion gone.

“The one thing in here I feel strongly about is that she NOT include the part about meeting with other former secretaries and that they told her she should do this,” Mook wrote. “I recognize that the boss will have to approve, but if she wants to include that, I’d say we should discuss with her. I worry it opens a major can of worms and deflects the heat in a potentially unhelpful way.”

Every sentence of Clinton’s eventual March 10 statement was carefully written, re-written and massaged by her core campaign group, and the statement went through nearly a week of edits before Clinton finally delivered it.

An early version included the sentence, “I knew that others in government used their personal email accounts,” but was then struck out. A March 6 draft also included the line, “I am amused (and bemused) to be caught up in a controversy about technology, since I have a well-earned reputation for not being especially tech-savvy.”

Palmieri forwarded a copy to Podesta and wrote “Not so sure myself,,,”

On March 7, Grunwald and Margolis suggested cutting the description of Clinton as a bumbling technophobe.

“Our big suggestion is to cut the ‘bemused’ paragraph about HRC’s relationship to technology,” Grunwald wrote. “This seems more appropriate for HRC to say in person than on paper. Additionally, we worry that the word ‘bemused’ will drive ‘this is no laughing matter’ reactions.”

Top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills also removed the word “deleted” from one draft to instead read that the emails were “discarded,” according to document track changes.

With the statement squared away, the team went on the offensive. Palmieri wrote on March 8 that “we are going to need Dems to come out in force to support her” both nationally and in New Hampshire and Iowa, the first two states participating in the upcoming Democratic primaries. To help, Palmieri released a press and surrogate plan, and longtime aide Philippe Reines suggested using Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy because he had advocated for Congress to be subjected to Freedom of Information Act requirements.

“He could jam Rand [Paul], [Marco] Rubio and [Ted] Cruz to release their WORK email, let alone personal,” wrote Reines, referencing several senators who were then among the Republican presidential contenders. “Could explain why Rand Paul in particular has been unusually quiet during this whole thing.”

Reines also proposed going on background to one or two “VERY friendly and malleable reporters” to say Clinton’s strong handling of the scandal was due in part to the new team surrounding her. He followed up by noting that he brought the plan up to Clinton. “It’s fair to say she appreciates the utility of doing this,” Reines wrote.

Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden, who frequently emailed thoughts and advice to Podesta, emailed on March 9 to express displeasure with a Wall Street Journal story that had some unflattering quotes from White House staffers.

“But the WH crapping on her is going to send this into orbit,” Tanden wrote.

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White House Watch: Trump Takes the Lead

White House Watch: Trump Takes the Lead

By: Rasmussen Reports

The full results from Sunday night’s debate are in, and Donald Trump has come from behind to take the lead over Hillary Clinton.

The latest Rasmussen Reports White House Watch national telephone and online survey shows Trump with 43% support among Likely U.S. Voters to Clinton’s 41%. Yesterday, Clinton still held a four-point 43% to 39% lead over Trump, but  that was down from five points on Tuesday and her biggest lead ever of seven points on Monday.

Rasmussen Reports updates its White House Watch survey daily Monday through Friday at 8:30 am Eastern based on a three-day rolling average of 1,500 Likely U.S. Voters. Monday’s survey was the first following the release of an 11-year-old video showing Trump discussing women in graphic sexual detail but did not include any polling results taken after the debate. All three nights of the latest survey follow Sunday’s debate.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has dropped slightly to six percent (6%) support, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein holds steady at two percent (2%). Four percent (4%) still like some other candidate in the race, and another four percent (4%) remain undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Eighty-four percent (84%) now say they are certain how they will vote in this year’s presidential election, and among these voters, Trump posts a 49% to 46% lead over Clinton. Among voters who say they still could change their minds between now and Election Day, it’s Clinton 40%, Trump 37%, Johnson 19% and Stein four percent (4%).

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WIKILEAKS BOMB=> Clinton Camp Discussed Deleting Emails Despite Knowing It Was Against the Law

WIKILEAKS BOMB=> Clinton Camp Discussed Deleting Emails Despite Knowing It Was Against the Law

By: Jim Hoft

A new Wikileaks email revealed Hillary Clinton confidant Phillipe Reines discussed deleting emails despite knowing it was against the law.
Clinton later deleted over 33,000 subpoenaed emails.

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Washington Examiner: Trump scores high in Luntz focus group

By Gabby Morrongiello

A focus group conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz consistently agreed that Donald Trump delivered better answers on a host of issues during Sunday’s presidential debate and outperformed his Democratic opponent overall.

Luntz hosted a group of 30 undecided voters at the debate in St. Louis, Missouri, where Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off for a highly-anticipated debate in which both were forced to respond to the latest scandals plaguing their campaigns.

Many of the undecided voters were turned off when Trump brought up Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions, but the Republican nominee’s sharp criticism of Hillary Clinton’s private email practices and his case against Obamacare earned him immediate praise.

When participants were asked to choose who had delivered a better performance halfway through the 90-minute debate, 17 of the voters chose Trump while only four chose Clinton. Nine more participants said the two candidates were running about even in their responses and overall performance.

Trump’s highest moment during the first half the debate was when he vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton if he is elected president, and told the former secretary of state she should be “ashamed of herself” for misleading the American public on the email issue.

“I think what you should be apologizing for are the 33,000 emails that you deleted and that you acid-washed and then the two boxes of emails and other things that were taken from an office … and now are missing,” Trump had said to Clinton.

Voters were impressed by Trump’s responses when the billionaire was asked about Obamacare and they felt his apology for the lewd language he used in leaked audio tapes from 2005 was sincere. More participants were concerned with Clinton’s email practices than they were with the audio tapes that have caused numerous Republican lawmakers to rescind their endorsement of Trump.

Continue reading, Washington Examiner.

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Free Beacon: Clinton Sought Pentagon, State Department Contracts for Chelsea’s Friend

By Bill Gertz

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought to arrange Pentagon and State Department consulting contracts for her daughter’s friend, prompting concerns of federal ethics rules violations.

Clinton in 2009 arranged meetings between Jacqueline Newmyer Deal, a friend of Chelsea Clinton and head of the defense consulting group Long Term Strategy Group, with Pentagon officials that involved contracting discussions, according to emails from Clinton’s private server made public recently by the State Department. Clinton also tried to help Deal win a contract for consulting work with the State Department’s director of policy planning, according to the emails.

Deal is a close friend of Chelsea Clinton, who is vice chair of the Clinton Foundation. Emails between the two were included among the thousands recovered from a private email server used by the secretary of state between 2009 and 2013. Chelsea Clinton has described Deal as her best friend. Both Clintons attended Deal’s 2011 wedding.

Government cronyism, or the use of senior positions to help family friends, is not illegal. However, the practice appears to violate federal ethics rules that prohibit partiality, or creating the appearance of conflicts of interest.

Specifically, the Code of Federal Ethics states that government employees “shall act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual.” Pentagon ethics guidelines also call for avoiding actions that would create even the appearance of improper behavior or conflicts of interest.

The Clinton email exchanges with Deal between 2009 and 2011 were among tens of thousands of private emails made public by the State Department under pressure from Congress and the public interest law firm Judicial Watch.

An FBI investigation concluded in July that Clinton and her aides discussed highly classified information on an unsecure private email server while secretary of state. Investigators also concluded that foreign hostile actors likely hacked the emails. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Clinton based on advice from FBI Director James Comey, who argued that no reasonable prosecutor would try the case.

According to one 2009 email, Clinton said she recommended Deal to Michele Flournoy, the newly installed undersecretary of defense for policy, who was seeking young women to mentor.

Deal, a specialist in China affairs who worked at the White House as a press aide for First Lady Clinton in the 1990s, wrote back to Clinton saying she would meet Flournoy on May 5, 2009, and stated “thank you very much for making this happen.”

Later that month, Deal thanked Clinton for “all your encouragement and help with DoD, ” shorthand for the Defense Department.

“I met with Michele’s other deputy yesterday, and we had a productive discussion about Iran and developments in maritime Asia,” Deal stated. “We also discussed contract vehicles and mapped out what we need to do so that we can go to work! I am very grateful for everything you have done.”

The emails indicate Deal was seeking to advance her company’s contracts with two powerful policy-making offices, the Defense Department’s main policymaking shop and the State Department policy planning office. Both offices are key players in developing U.S. defense and foreign policy.

The Long Term Strategy Group, set up in 2007 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now based in Washington, D.C., has been producing reports and holding workshops for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment for years.

A series of Clinton emails beginning on May 21, 2009 reveal that the State Department’s director of policy planning, Anne-Marie Slaughter, turned down a proposal from Deal for a contract with the Long Term Strategy Group to do work for her office. No reason was given.

“Happily, Michele Flournoy’s office is reaching out and has asked me to participate in a wargame next week for the [Quadrennial Defense Review], which I hope will build the foundation for a contract between her office and LTSG,” Deal stated in the email. “I am extremely grateful to you for helping me find opportunities to serve our government,” she added.

Chelsea Clinton also forwarded an email from Deal to Hillary Clinton in December 2011 that included a link to a Huffington Post article by Deal and signed “xoxoxoxoxoxo j”

Deal, in a statement, said that none of the awards LTSG received from the Pentagon “resulted directly or indirectly from the actions or influence of Secretary Clinton.”

She added: “Jacqueline Deal and the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG) are justifiably proud of their collaboration with the US Department of Defense across multiple administrations over the last two decades, beginning under the administration of President George W. Bush. LTSG’s work has consistently earned the highest respect and confidence of its clientele in government and has won LTSG a reputation for producing research and analysis of exceptional quality.”

Clinton campaign spokesmen did not return emails seeking comment.

Slaughter, through a spokesman, said she had no recollection of contacts with Deal.

Flournoy also said she did not remember discussions with Deal, but stated through a spokesman that in her government career she met with hundreds of young women seeking to advance their careers in the national security field.

“I have and will continue to work with young men and women, including those recommended to me by people whose opinion and judgment I respect, such as Secretary Clinton,” she said.

“Whether any of the people I have met with went on to win contracts with the Office of Net Assessment or other Department of Defense entities was outside my purview as undersecretary of defense for policy,” Flournoy said.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook declined to comment on the emails.

The Office of Net Assessment defended contract work done by Deal and the Long Term Strategy Group since 2007, and said the group has not worked for the undersecretary of defense for policy, nor has that office been involved in the contract award process for ONA contracts.

Long Term Strategy Group “competes for proposed work in the same fashion as any potential contractor, which requires a rigorous, formalized process, including built-in external review by acquisition professionals within the Department of Defense to ensure strict compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and ethics,” ONA said in a statement to the Free Beacon.

The statement said the Office of Net Assessment conducts “robust and innovative research” to support defense leaders.

“LTSG’s work has consistently informed ONA’s internal analysis and they continue to be a responsive vendor,” the statement said. “The firm, however, is just one of 90 sources that ONA has commissioned work from over the past decade.

Good government advocates say the emails indicating Clinton sought to steer contracts to her daughter’s friend are troubling and appear to violate ethics rules.

“By now there is a strong pattern of Hillary Clinton showing bias in the dispensing of government funds and favors to a long list of friends, political supporters, and Clinton Foundation donors,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center.

“It looks like she was single-handedly trying to revive the corrupt spoils system,” Boehm added. “As the old saying goes, sometimes things are what they look like.”

Joseph E. Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general, said if he were the current IG, “I would definitely want to shed some light on the underlying facts” surrounding Clinton’s intervention on behalf of a family friend.

“When I was serving as the inspector general, I investigated at least one senior official who allegedly had violated the standard for ‘misuse of position’ prescribed in the Joint Ethics Regulation,” said Schmitz, currently a lawyer and adviser to the Donald Trump presidential campaign.

Both federal government and Pentagon ethics regulations state that “an employee shall not use or permit the use of his government position or title or any authority associated with his public office in a manner that is intended to coerce or induce another person, including a subordinate, to provide any benefit, financial or otherwise, to himself or to friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity.”

Schmitz also said Pentagon regulations prohibit actions that give “an appearance of use of public office for private gain or of giving preferential treatment.” He noted that the standard is something “any inspector general should be capable of investigating.”

Internal Pentagon documents reveal that the Long Term Strategy Group produced scores of monographs and held numerous workshops under contracts with the Office of Net Assessment from the early 2000s to as recently as July. The office is a small think tank whose director reports directly to Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

The strategy group charged the Pentagon around $60,000 each for unclassified monographs averaging 20 to 40 pages in length and around $40,000 each for workshops with defense officials and think tank experts. Estimates of the total value of contracts for the group are around $6 million since 2009.

One Pentagon document from May 2013 recommended awarding a contract of up to $442,788 to the Long Term Strategy Group over eight other bidders. The contract was for a two-year Office of Net Assessment study on changing demographics and family structures in China.

The strategy group described itself in a contract proposal as a “woman-owned small business” that is “not partisan or policy prescriptive.”

One Pentagon-sponsored report by the Long Term Strategy Group was titled “On the Nature of Americans as a Warlike People,” which argued “the United States will continue to use war as an instrument of state policy.” The conclusion was based on a demographic and cultural analysis that said the United States is governed by many Americans descended from the Scots-Irish, who are belligerent.

Another report done for Net Assessment, “War and the Intellectuals,” stated that educated American elites are anti-war compared to “the rest of America.” The divide between the pacifist intellectuals and uneducated Americans “could be ended if the educated elite again devote themselves to national service in return for a leading position in the conduct of American foreign policy.”

A third contract potentially worth $1.9 million over several years involved U.S.-Japan relations and included meetings with Japanese defense and intelligence officials regarding Japan’s development of strategic nuclear weapons and forces. The contract was controversial because both the U.S. and Japanese government have stated they do not want Japan to develop nuclear arms. Japan currently is under the U.S. nuclear “umbrella.” Japanese officials, however, have said Tokyo’s pacifist constitution does not prohibit nuclear arms.

Other reports and workshops by the Long Term Strategy Group concerned strategies for the Middle East, U.S. extended deterrence to American allies, Egyptian security concerns, Soviet-era radio electronic warfare doctrine, Russian nuclear developments, and Israeli relations with a nuclear-armed Iran.

The Office of Net Assessment has come under fire in recent months from critics in Congress and on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff who say the office is not doing an adequate job of producing major assessments of key threats to the United States.

Net Assessment Director James H. Baker in June opposed a Joint Staff proposal to create a separate net assessment office for the military. Baker explained his opposition by saying that of the “dozens” of military officers who had worked in ONA, “perhaps five could think and could write well enough that they would produce a military balance or net assessment worthy of the Secretary or the Chairman.”

The Office of Net Assessment has an annual budget of around $20 million and in 2013 Republicans in Congress fought off a reform effort that would have closed the office or diminished its independence.

The office was led for 40 years by Andrew Marshall, who had a reputation as a strategic guru dubbed the Pentagon’s “Yoda,” after the fictional Jedi leader in Star Wars. Marshall retired in 2015.

However, over the past year, Baker, the current office leader and a retired Air Force colonel, has functioned more as an absentee landlord, attending conferences around the world while his deputy, Andrew N. May, has run things, according to a defense official.

Last year, Carter ordered a shift in the office’s focus from long-term strategic trends to more contemporary defense analysis.

The shift prompted Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to consider setting up his own office of net assessment within the Joint Staff. According to defense officials, the strategists on the Joint Staff were concerned the civilian office was not doing enough relevant work.

The Clinton emails provide a snapshot of how Clinton sought to help her daughter’s friend navigate the Pentagon. On July 19, 2009, while traveling in India, Clinton wrote to Deal thanking her for an analysis of the Chinese military buildup and asked, “by the way, did the DoD contract work out?”

Two days later, Deal wrote back that “we have discussed with Mr. [Andrew] Marshall the kinds of assessments that need to be done to identify which technologies can be transferred even if there is a risk of their being compromised,” Deal stated.

“On the contract question, we are still working with Mr. Marshall to establish a vehicle that might allow us to do work for Michele,” she stated. “When you next speak with her, if she mentions what she envisions for the start date, that would be very helpful to know!”

Months later, in September 2009, Deal wrote Clinton an email that was redacted because it contained classified information withheld under security rules that prohibit releasing CIA information about agency personnel or sources.

Deal stated in this email that she had completed a workshop with Pentagon officials and outside experts on Iran that concluded that any military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities would be counterproductive.

“Based on patterns of Iranian behavior in the past, there is reason to think that some diplomatic communications may serve to increase Iranian fears about the consequences of its pursuit of a nuclear capability,” Deal stated, in what appears to be support for the White House’s effort to ultimately reach the nuclear deal with Iran.

The last series of emails between Deal and Clinton took place in May 2011. In the email chain, Deal thanked the secretary of state for attending her wedding on April 29—one day before the commando raid in Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“I was delighted to be there and stayed as long as I could at the reception before having to leave,” Clinton wrote back. “I confess that the Bin Laden op the next day consumed most of my mental space!”

Continue reading, Washington Free Beacon.

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