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

NY Post: Hillary’s 33,000 emails might not be ‘missing’ after all

By Paul Sperry

For months now, we’ve been told that Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails were permanently erased and destroyed beyond recovery. But newly released FBI notes strongly suggest they still exist in several locations — and they could be recovered, if only someone would impanel a grand jury and seize them.

In a May interview with FBI agents, an executive with the Denver contractor that maintained Clinton’s private server revealed that an underling didn’t bleach-clean all her subpoenaed emails, just ones he stored in a data file he used to transfer the emails from the server to Clinton’s aides, who in turn sorted them for delivery to Congress.

The Platte River Networks executive, whose name was redacted from the interview report, said PRN tech Paul Combetta “created a ‘vehicle’ to transfer email files from the live mailboxes of [Clinton Executive Services Corp.] email accounts [and] then later used BleachBit software to shred the ‘vehicle,’ but the email content still existed in the live email accounts.”

Unless one of Clinton’s aides had the capability to log in to the PRN server as an administrator and remove a mailbox, her archived mailboxes more than likely still reside somewhere in that system. And they may also materialize on an internal “shared drive” that PRN created to control access to the Clinton email accounts among PRN employees. PRN has been under FBI order to preserve all emails and other evidence since the start of its investigation last year.

Clinton’s missing “personal” emails may also be captured on a Google server. According to FBI notes, Combetta “transferred all of the Clinton email content to a personal Google email address he created.” Only the FBI never subpoenaed Google to find out.

The FBI documents also reveal that Hillary’s server was mirrored on a cloud server in Pennsylvania maintained by Datto Inc., a tech firm that performs cloud-to-cloud data protection.

When PRN contracted with Datto, it requested that Hillary’s server be backed up locally and privately. But the techs forgot to order the private node, and they sent the server backup data “remotely to Datto’s secure cloud and not to a local private node.” The FBI never subpoenaed Datto’s server, either.

Then there’s the laptop Combetta loaded with the Clinton email archive and allegedly shipped back to a Clinton aide in Washington, who claims it got “lost” in the mail. Not so fast: The latest FBI document dump includes a series of interviews with an unidentified former “special assistant” to Clinton at the State Department who said the elusive Apple MacBook laptop was actually “shipped to the Clinton Foundation in New York City.”

But in a June follow-up interview, FBI agents inexplicably left it up to this critical witness to “inquire about the shipment” with the foundation’s mailroom manager, who works in Rockefeller Center. The FBI still does not have the laptop in its possession.

It turns out that investigators also know the whereabouts of the original Apple server Clinton used in her first two months in office. Recovering that equipment is critical because it contains a mass of unseen emails from Jan. 21, 2009, to March 18, 2009 — a critical period in Clinton’s tenure at State. Witnesses say the equipment was not discarded, as first believed, but “repurposed” as a “work station” used by staff in Clinton’s Chappaqua residence.

Yet the FBI says it “was unable to obtain the original Apple server for a forensic review.” Instead of seizing it, the agency has taken Clinton’s aides’ and lawyers’ word that the server’s bereft of relevant emails. In fact, the agency confesses on Page 27 of its 47-page investigative case summary that it failed to recover other equipment and data as well: “The FBI’s inability to recover all server equipment and the lack of complete server log data for the relevant time period limited the FBI’s forensic analysis of the server systems. As a result, FBI cyber analysis relied, in large part, on witness statements.”

Congressional investigators say FBI Director James Comey in his year-long “investigation” didn’t even bother to send agents to search Clinton’s homes in Chappaqua or Washington, DC. Nor did he dispatch them to the offices of the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Executive Services Corp. in New York City.

“The Clinton residences and other locations should have been treated like any other criminal investigation — with federal grand jury subpoenas or search warrants issued by judges and served in the middle of the night,” said veteran FBI special agent Michael M. Biasello, who worked criminal cases out of New York and other field offices for 27 years.

“Never — I repeat, never — in my career have I or any FBI agent known to me investigated a criminal case without the use of a federal grand jury, grand jury subpoenas or search warrants,” he said. “It’s disgraceful they weren’t used in this case.”

Continue reading at the NY Post.

/0 Comments/by

Politico: FBI reviewing new evidence in Clinton email probe

The FBI doesn’t yet know if the new material is ‘significant,’ Comey writes.

By Madeline Conway

The FBI on Friday dropped a bombshell on Hillary Clinton’s campaign less than two weeks before Election Day, announcing that it is reviewing new evidence in its investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

In a letter to several congressional committee chairmen, FBI Director James Comey wrote that, “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to this investigation.”

Comey said he was briefed on those emails on Thursday and that he “agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

He did not specify where the additional emails came from.

Comey wrote that the FBI does not yet know if the new material is “significant” and did not provide a timeframe for investigating.

In July, Comey said the FBI was not recommending charges against Clinton, saying “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring such a case. But he did chastise her for being “extremely careless” in her handling of sensitive information. The controversy over Clinton’s use of the server, reported for the first time by The New York Times in March 2015, has dogged her presidential run since its beginning.

While Clinton said her decision to use a private email server was a “mistake,” she has steadfastly said that she violated no laws.

The news broke as Clinton was en route to a campaign event. As she got off the plane, she smiled and waved — and ignored all questions by the press around her.

But her campaign appeared blindsided by the development. When asked by NBC News to respond to the revelation, a top Clinton campaign spokesperson said, “No idea.”

Donald Trump immediately celebrated the FBI’s move.

“I need to open with a very critical, breaking news announcement,” Trump said at the start of a rally in New Hampshire. “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale that we have never seen before. We must not let her take her are criminal scheme into the Oval Office. I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the department of justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made.”

“This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood,” he continued. “And it is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.”

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, also cheered the news. “A great day in our campaign just got even better. FBI reviewing new emails in Clinton probe,” Conway tweeted.

A spokesman from the Senate Judiciary panel said they only learned of the new evidence on Friday from Comey’s letter. They were unsure what emails the FBI had discovered and did not know what the “unrelated case” pertained to. However, the aide said the panels will likely seek to find out more in the coming days.

The revelation comes less than two weeks before Election Day and has the potential to change the dynamic of the race, in which Clinton had pulled away from Trump in recent weeks.

Republicans, many of whom had become increasingly resigned to the idea that Clinton was running away with the election, appeared buoyed by the FBI’s decision to take another look at Clinton’s handling of classified materials.

House Speaker Paul Ryan called the FBI’s move “long overdue.” “Yes again, Hillary Clinton has nobody but herself to blame,” he said in a statement. “She was entrusted with some of our nation’s most important secrets, and she betrayed that trust by carelessly mishandling highly classified information.”

Continue reading at Politico.

 

/0 Comments/by

The Hill: Oversight Committee votes to hold Clinton IT aide in contempt of Congress

By Katie Bo Williams

The House Oversight Committee recommended Thursday morning on party lines that the House hold former State Department IT technician Bryan Pagliano in contempt of Congress.

Pagliano was responsible for setting up Clinton’s private email server during her tenure as secretary of State.

The former State Department employee declined to appear at an Oversight hearing on Clinton’s server last week, in spite of a subpoena demanding his presence. The committee held a follow-up hearing on the same subject on Thursday morning, which Pagliano also declined to attend.

When Pagliano didn’t show, Republicans immediately adjourned the hearing and held a business meeting to vote on the contempt of Congress resolution.

“Subpoenas are not optional,” Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said Thursday. “Mr. Pagliano is a crucial fact witness in this committee’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to conduct government business.”

The resolution still needs to go to the House floor to be adopted.

Outraged Democrats argued repeatedly that the move was an abuse of power that violates rules against harassing witnesses.

“Never, no how, no way, no,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said when asked to vote on the resolution.

The committee asked Pagliano be served by U.S. marshals, according to both Chaffetz and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). Chaffetz argued that the move was intended to prevent ambiguity, while Cummings characterized the move as harassment.

“The committee could have sent a staffer in a coat and tie, but they sent federal marshals with guns,” Cummings said. “This served no purpose but to harass and intimidate Mr. Pagliano.”

“These actions are the definition of abuse. They are harassment. And I believe they are unethical.”

Republicans say the subpoena was issued correctly and transparently, and that Pagliano has no reason not to testify.

Oversight members on Thursday morning reviewed an immunity agreement struck between Pagliano and the Department of Justice during the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s server, according to a Democratic committee aide.

“Under those circumstances, Mr. Pagliano has no fear of criminal liability preventing him from testifying before the committee,” Chaffetz said Thursday.

Democrats say that the agreement is “limited” and therefore does not protect Pagliano before the Oversight Committee. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) pointed to an outstanding criminal referral from Chaffetz that asked the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to investigate deletions from the server.

Continue reading, The Hill.

/0 Comments/by

Washington Times: House GOP lays out case for Clinton perjury over emails

Hillary & Huma Email perjury

By Stephen Dinan

Two top House Republicans accused Hillary Clinton of appearing to have lied to Congress, laying out a case Monday they said could sustain perjury charges against the former State Department secretary for her use of a secret email server.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz said the evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email use contradicts what she herself told Congress in testimony last year.

Mrs. Clinton testified that she never sent or received information marked classified, but FBI Director James Comeysaid there were three such documents that were marked at the time.

Mrs. Clinton also said her lawyers “went through every single email” in deciding which ones to return to the government to comply with open-records laws, but Mr. Comey said that wasn’t true, and in fact the lawyers only used search terms and subject lines.

The two chairman also said the FBI showed Mrs. Clinton didn’t provide all of her work-related emails to the government, and also had more than one server that stored her messages.

Continue reading, Washington Times

/0 Comments/by

Daily Caller: EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Aide Cheryl Mills OK’d Oil Deal That Put $500K In Bill’s Pocket

By Richard Pollock, Daily Caller

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly defended an embattled banker during an official visit to Bangladesh while Clinton Foundation officials tried to steer money from an Abu Dhabi oil company into the banker’s coffers.

A Daily Caller News Foundation investigation traced the convoluted payment by TAQA — formally known as the the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company — to Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank. Yunus is a long-time friend and Clinton Foundation donor.

The oil company deal eventually put as much as $500,000 into President Bill Clinton’s pockets via a speaking fee he got in Scotland.

The complicated set of international transactions is contained in a cryptic May 7, 2012, email chain between Cheryl Mills, then Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, and Amitabh Desai, the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director. The email chain was obtained by Citizens United, the conservative activist group that is the lead plaintiff in multiple federal Freedom of Information Act court cases.

Continue reading, DailyCaller.com

 

/0 Comments/by

Daily Caller: Top Clinton Foundation Official Asked Hillary’s State Department For Favors For Associates, Donors

By Chuck Ross, Daily Caller

Newly released State Department emails appear to show that a top Clinton Foundation official asked Hillary Clinton’s State Department aides for favors for two individuals — controversial multi-million dollar Clinton Foundation donor and for an unnamed associate.

The April 2009 exchanges, which the State Department provided to the watchdog group Judicial Watch, will likely raise more questions about conflicts of interest between the former secretary of state and her family charity.

In one exchange, Doug Band, the former “body man” to Bill Clinton, forwarded an email from an associate to Hillary Clinton aides Huma Abedin, Nora Toiv, and Cheryl Mills.

The unidentified individual had sent an email to Band with the subject line: “A favor.”

“Important to take care of [redacted],” Band, who then served as a top adviser to the Clinton Foundation, wrote to the trio of Hillary Clinton aides.

“Important to take care of [redacted],” Band, who then served as a top adviser to the Clinton Foundation, wrote to the trio of Hillary Clinton aides.

Abedin replied: “We all have had him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.”

Another email released to Judicial Watch shows that Band asked Abedin and Mills for help in connecting Gilbert Chagoury, a controversial Clinton Foundation donor, to a top State Department official in order to discuss events in Lebanon.

Band asked the Clinton aides to connect Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who has given at least $1 million to the Clinton Foundation, to the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon.

Continue reading, Daily Caller

 

/0 Comments/by