March 27, 2015

"While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server..."

"... it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department."

86 comments:

Paul said...

Well she took Dick Nixon's advice.

He said he should have destroyed all the tapes.

Well Hillary destroyed all the emails.

Obstruction of Justice is the MINIMUM charge I'd file on her.

MathMom said...

Wow! What a GREAT President she'll be!

YoungHegelian said...

So, where are the backups? Did she ordered them destroyed, too?

That she was sending secure mail to Blumethal when he wasn't a Fed. employee & when Blumenthal was running an email server that was so unsecured it was hacked is bad enough. But, this "the dog ate my email" stuff is just beyond the pale!

Democrats, this woman is a train wreck! Find someone else now! If you don't, once the Republican oppo research teams go to work on her, and she has to face her opponents in venues that she can't control the question & answers, she will go down in flames. Right now, the independents don't understand why this business over email is important. Once it gets explained to them a few dozen times, it'll sink in why she's either a criminal scumbag or incompetent or both.

Run away! Run away!

Original Mike said...

This is my shocked face.

I'm Full of Soup said...

In a just world, this news would put a wooden stake through Hillary's heart at least figuratively and end her career.

Then the Dem race and class hustlers could move onto their next rock star, Michele Obama.

Achilles said...

Just think how bad those emails were. She just made Nixon look like a piker. Given that she lied to the faces of parents of fallen vets it is pretty clear she is terrible and subhuman. There are people, if you can call them that still, who support her and would vote for her if she ran against any republican.

If you support Hillary in any way you are a piece of shit.

clint said...

Yawn. Are we still talking about this? Wasn't this news like two or three weeks ago? Quick, someone come up with a #hashtag to mock the conspiracy theorists who think there's something wrong here.

I'll believe we live in a nation of laws when powerful people start to go to jail for obvious, blatant, unashamed criminal acts.

chickelit said...

Unidentified sources say it took it took Ms Clinton approximately 18.5 milliseconds to delete 18 1/2 months of email.

She's toast. Get over it America's Politico. Her ship is sinking. Better scurry to the next one via some ratline.

chickelit said...

This will play into the hands of Elizabeth Warren.

Patrick said...

Smart move on her part. It will keep her out of prison. Also, the White House. Hopefully.

For the record, my phone tried to correct "white" to "whore." Must be trying to tell me something.

Original Mike said...

Are we allowed to use the word "secretary" when referring to Mrs. Clinton?

Gahrie said...

When Nixon erased 18 1/2 minutes, the Republicans forced him to resign. Hillary destroys years worth of emails, and the democrats are going to do their damndest to elect her president.

That really tells you all you need to know about the two political parties right there.

Gahrie said...

I bet it was a man who actually destroyed the emails.

FleetUSA said...

The insecure system was child's play for foreign bad actors. Don't believe having tha secret service guard the house or office prevents hackers with a keen desire to know.

Jim Gust said...

If Hillary were Republican, the grand jury would already be empaneled.

Sebastian said...

@YoungHegelian: "Once it gets explained to them a few dozen times, it'll sink in why she's either a criminal scumbag or incompetent or both."

I wish this weren't wishful thinking. In a just world, this would happen, but it assumes Dems care.

Sebastian said...

Can't Congress go after the lawyers and other staff who did her dirty work? Force them to testify about procedures, access to classified material, etc.?

Anonymous said...

The Democrats best candidate is a lying, cheating, lowlife. And our current President and defacto head of their party is going to absurd lengths to secure a deal with perhaps the most evil nation on Earth against the wishes of many of our closet allies in the vain hope that maybe perhaps they won't develop nukes for a little while longer. The current Democrat party seems to be truly bankrupt of any and all moral and ethical standards.

Sadly, given the state of mind of the greater public Hillary still has a damn good chance of being our next president.

Pianoman said...

All Gowdy needs to do is subpoena the IT staff. There's no way that an IT guy is going to jail. He'll sing like a canary.

The Bergall said...

"Not clear"?

Whew.........

Pianoman said...

Plus: Backups? Did Clinton also destroy the tapes and/or cloud service?

You don't run a server without backups, especially when you have an "IT Staff". So did she direct her staff to destroy the tapes?

@Professor: This is a Federal crime, right?

SGT Ted said...

Nixon in a pants suit.

MayBee said...

This will not hurt her chances at becoming POTUS.

Why? Because the people who want a Democrat POTUS don't worry about what a Democrat has hidden from the rest of us. It was for the right reasons.

Obama didn't do this, but he hid pretty much every document about his time as a lawyer, his time at the Annenberg Challenge (hid that whole job for a while), his calendar as a state senator. He tried to hide his relationship with Ayers and Tony Rezko.

And nobody in the democratic party really cared, because they really liked Obama and wanted him to be president.

sane_voter said...

So Chris Christie is the "Worst Person in the World" and unfit for the Presidency for some stupid lane closing on a single bridge.

But Hillary is still the annoited presidential front-runner after breaking governmental rules, destruction of governmental property and obstruction of congressional investigations.

We are truly fucked.

Mattman26 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chickelit said...

MayBee wrote: And nobody in the democratic party really cared, because they really liked Obama and wanted him to be president.

Yes, but exigencies will play a bigger role this time around. Obama won playing as a replacement for Bush. Not so for HRC. Americans will not elect another Democratic immune to criticism just because of a race card or a sexism card. And ultimately, Hillary must paint opposition to her obfuscation/obstruction as sexism.

Mattman26 said...

Maybe the best ever Drudge headline/photo combo on this topic right now.

YoungHegelian said...

@Sebastian,

I wish this weren't wishful thinking. In a just world, this would happen, but it assumes Dems care.

I agree with you that many Democrats will vote to elect her even if she rode down 5th Ave in the back of a flatbed truck tossing babies into a blender the whole damn way. That's why I said "Right now, the independents..." It's the independent voters who will ultimately turn on her, and without them she loses.

friscoda said...

her aides who worked at State also used that server - so their emails were deleted too?

holdfast said...

This is totally a Democrat hit job - look at where all the leaks and stories are coming from - NYT, Politico, Gawker, etc. - not exactly Fox News or the Weekly Standard, m'kay? Sure the MSM is very pro-Democrat, as always, but the Clintons aren't the Dem royalty they once were - they've personally pissed off more than a few reporters along the way (Chelsea's fake journalist job anyone?) - and the MSM LOVES Obama.

Not sure if it is just Obama and ValJar getting revenge for past slights, or if it is a strategic move to keep her from becoming the nominee because TPTB in the Dem Party think she's a fatally flawed candidate.

MayBee said...

chicklit- I agree. I guess it just depends who turns out to vote.
Also, I guess, it depends on how cray Obama lets things get. His behavior toward Israel has shown an unpleasant side of him, I think. Will he keep that side showing?

MayBee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MayBee said...

As for Hillary doing this, I guess I'm not surprised. It's bad, but even though Bill was a good president, they got away with a ton of slimey stuff.

Mark said...

It's been 15 years since the Clinton regime. That means a substantial part of the electorate has no significant memory of Hillary. Most people do not become politically aware until late teens, early twenties (if ever).

I should think a common response of anyone under 30-35 would be "Who the hell is Hillary Clinton and why should I care, much less be expected to automatically vote for her as if she is royalty?"

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Somebody must have been backing up the server. Where are the backup disks?

Mark said...

Meanwhile, a substantial portion of the electorate that do have an significant memory of Clintonism are thoroughly tired of her and the whole lot. That's why a good deal of the 2008 Obama Democrat primary vote was as much anti-Clinton as it was pro-first black president. "Hope and change" was as much a repudiation of Clintonism as it was Bushism.

traditionalguy said...

Hillary cannot win unless JEB III runs against her. A Clinton beats a Bush, like rock, paper, sticks. And a Bush beats a Warren. And a Warren beats a Paul.And a Walker beats them all.

Paul said...

Democrats better hurry up and get a few more million illegals in to vote.

Looks like a tight election coming up.

No wonder they hate voter ID laws.

MayBee said...

I think they must have been destroyed after she was subpoenaed, no?

She didn't mention it when she discussed it before. And I had read she had asked for a two week delay to fulfill the subpoena request. Which, why would you ask for that if you knew they didn't exist.

She must figure nothing is going to happen to her.

Mark said...

Don't worry though. The idiot Republicans will find a way to lose to this boob. Already they have started to blow it by not having the first thing out of Gowdy's mouth being a call for an indictment of Hillary for obstruction of justice.

mccullough said...

Subpoena her IT people to testify

Bay Area Guy said...

Politically, she will likely survive this because no prominent Dems will criticize her actions and all GOP criticsm will be dismissed as partisan posturing.

The woman is definitely hiding things. Some serious Islamic money going to her foundation? Some weird orgies by hubby Bill and that Epstein sleazebag? Some awkward romantic interludes with Huma and her sleazy husband Anthony Weiner? Who knows.

chickelit said...

mccullough said...
Subpoena her IT people to testify

But suppose that her IT People live in California...

averagejoe said...

holdfast said... "Not sure if it is just Obama and ValJar getting revenge for past slights," 3/27/15, 11:30 PM

I don't think Obama wants the world to see Hillary's email's either, especially not those concerning Benghazi. Can you imagine the back and forth between Lady Clinton and Hussein while they were learning about the embassy under attack, then scheming to come up with some excuses for their decisions? Pretty sure that Obama administration is right there with Hillary making sure everything is wiped clean and all the evidence is destroyed. It worked for the IRS, right? Whoops, computer crashed- can't help you with that information, sorry. It's the Obama White House M.O. Because they get away with it.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

Planned purposeful and malicious, Hillary Clinton did this with the full knowledge her actions were illegal. She will get away with this without any punishment. She will not be punished by the legal system, the media or the Democratic electorate.

tim maguire said...

It is safe to assume that whatever was in those emails is more damaging than her deleting them. She will not receive a punishment that fits the crime.

Nixon would have finished out his term if he'd destroyed the tapes.

Paco Wové said...

"I bet it was a man who actually destroyed the emails."

Probably a white frat boy.

rhhardin said...

Ask the Chinese for the copy.

lgv said...

Those asking about backups aren't clear on the concept. If you are wiping your server on purpose, you are doing so to permanently remove the files. You wipe the backups, too.

This isn't the IRS coverup story of crashed servers, ergo the likely possibility of a backup somewhere.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

The only solution to this kind of crap is dispersal of power.

The voters, if they care, must elect Legislators committed to reducing the scope of Federal powers and to a balanced Federal budget.

Time was when
..public schools were run by local school boards;
..charitable and welfare functions were done by
....churches,
....secular organizations,
....individual local power men,
....or just not done at all;
..States could set policy in important areas ("State's Rights" meant something);
..etc.

Yes, there were problems with that. Yes, there were abuses.

The solution then was to "put it in the hands of the National Government."

The National Government - as unwatched governments tend to do - usurped yet more powers from the States and from the People.

State and Local governments still exist. They still collect taxes and administer. But enough of the total tax money is collected nationally that local control is an illusion.

Local units must beg - at an additional administrative cost - to get some of the money back. It comes with strings and conditions that make State or Local control a fiction.

The National Government has become so powerful and arrogant it is incompetent at even the basic functions of defending the borders and printing sound currency.

Yes, the path back to sanity is uncertain. How will health care, retirement funding be handled, if not by the National Government? I don't know. We could take responsibility for those things personally.

Anonymous said...

The next POTUS will be Deadbroke HRC, because there is not a thing GOP can do:

1. GOP has no accomplishments.
2. No women in GOP leadership (house or senate)
3. No appreciation in GOP of American science.
4. GOP has no understanding of immigration in our economy.
5. GOP opponents are crazies: Think of Cruz.

Are you ready for HRC? She is your 45th POTUS.

Bobber Fleck said...

This thread is sexist. You misogynistic clowns have even used some of Hillary's banned words:

Polarizing
Calculating
Disingenuous
Insincere
Ambitious
Inevitable
Entitled
Over-confident
Secretive
Will do anything to win
Represents the past
Out of touch
Tone deaf

MadisonMan said...

The timing is totally coincidental and she's hiding nothing.

Am I right?

Paul said...

Nrhardan,

Better yet, ask the NSA for the backups.

And arrest her IT staff for obstruction. Bet a special prosecutor can be appointed.

rhhardin said...

Belmmont Club explains the private servers.

National goals are out. Private gain is in.

Tank said...

The interesting thing about this story is the news/blogs it is first appearing on.

It's like that Asian Pilot who missed the runway.

Sum Ting Wong.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I watched some of the Big Ten men's gymnastics championship on TV last night. Fucking magnificent athleticism!

Fucking gorgeous male bodies, too. Made me envious as all-get-out.

Nearly all of the guys had homo haircuts, and tweezed eyebrows, and maybe even makeup, and God knows what else.

The body ink I've pretty much gotten used to but I still think it's a bit of a shame.

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!1!!11!

Levi Starks said...

Personall I'm glad to see this happening now. Not because it will hinder, or injure her inevitable rise to power, but because it is a clear signal to congress exactly how she will be treating them after her coronation. Not that anything can be done about it, rather it gives the mainstream media an opportunity to show an early allegiance to her reign.
I can only imagine the private reactions of Democratic hopefulls like Warren. She must be like "really"?!

Curious George said...

This is more about the Clinton's shaking down foreign entities for millions in donations to the Foundation than Benghazi.

PB said...

I have a hard time believing the technology guy who set up the server for Hillary didn't set up a backup system. I would not want to face the insane wrath of Hillary if she lost emails unintentionally.

I think the timing of the initial request for documents and the Clinton request for a two week extension are of high interest. It appears that sometime in November somebody set auto delete on Hillary's account to 60 days. Depending upon the version of Exchange server there are recoverable emails that can be retrieved on the server but these also have definsble limits.

They likely also set the capacity on the server for 60 days so the two-week extension was to make sure that both the emails in Hillary's account was deleted by the server and the server recovery copies were also deleted by its 60 day limit. In this way the Clintons can parse the truth by saying that we didn't delete anything the system did.

Curious George said...

If I was the IT guy responsible for wiping the server I would have someone start my car for me until this all blow over.

Curious George said...

Anyone with a pocket protector show up dead in Fort Marcy Park?

Levi Starks said...

People seem to think Hillary will not be sufficiently punished for what they view as criminal activity, but you so miss the mark, not only will she not be punished, she will be praised for her bravery in the face of political operatives who's only aim is to destroy her.
Come on, get with the narrative.

Fritz said...

rhhardin said...
Ask the Chinese for the copy.


If we get a bidding war going between the Chinese, the Norks, the Iranian, the Russian mob, the Israelis and Anonymous, we might get them one the cheap.

The Israelis might want to do it just for revenge.

David said...

Deeply fundamentally corrupt. Is that sexist?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Why did Gowdy announce this in the late Friday afternoon news doldrums dump?

He should have held the news, gone on one of the Sunday morning news shows and made the announcement.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Can you imagine the devastating critiques her emails had about Obama and his oh so brilliant Team of Rivals?

campy said...

When did she decide to delete? That decision was implicit in the very decision to control her own server in the first place. There's no other plausible reason she needed her own server.

khesanh0802 said...

It just gets worse and worse. Kept no backup - are you kidding? She has no record of any correspondence for four years - whether it be personal or governmental? Completely unbelievable. At the very least she would have had some private e-mails that she would have liked for future reference and she deleted all those? Young Hegelian is right: Run away! Run away!

Michael The Magnificent said...

When did she decide to delete? That decision was implicit in the very decision to control her own server in the first place.

Agreed. That was the whole point behind going through the trouble and cost of setting up a private email server - she would have control over it's contents, and could destroy evidence at will.

Had she used State's email system, as she was supposed to, her emails would be archived, and reachable via subpoena.

As Tom pointed out, She knows what was in those emails, and she knows that there is a greater risk to her if those emails get out than there is if she destroys the evidence in full view.

So she's accepting foreign (middle-east) "donations" to her "foundation" to the tune of tens of millions while she is acting Sec State, which should be illegal if it isn't already.

And we see from Blumenthal's hacked email that Hillary is running some sort of private spy operation in the middle east, while the middle east is in turmoil.

So, what service is she selling to her foreign donors that would cause her more legal problems than keeping and subsequently wiping clean a private server she used to conduct both official Sec State and unofficial spying business?

Michael The Magnificent said...

And to all of you left-wing partisans who are still willing to pull the lever for Hillary come election day, think of all the potential bad actors who may have hacked into her email server, and are holding these emails hostage unless she does their bidding for them once elected.

Bruce Hayden said...

And to all of you left-wing partisans who are still willing to pull the lever for Hillary come election day, think of all the potential bad actors who may have hacked into her email server, and are holding these emails hostage unless she does their bidding for them once elected.

I don't vote for Democrats. Period. I may not vote, but I won't vote for Democrats. Why? Because Dem politicians enable this sort of thing. The Republicans forced Nixon out for much less, because they forced him to do the honorable thing. There is no such thing for a Clinton (or an Obama). The only thing that matters is winning, and that is because the thing that matters is power, Anything else is merely a sideshow. And, power is a result of winning. So, anything goes, as long as you win. And, yes, time and time again, we have seen that part of winning is controlling the levers of justice, which means that you can cheat to win, and if you do, can keep power by preventing investigations and prosecutions. And, no, they don't have shame, because what is shame, compared to power and wealth? If you register as a Democrat, or vote for Democrats, you are essentially condoning this sort of behavior.

Pettifogger said...

I am skeptical whether most Democratic voters would care about anything she did, regardless. Selling military secrets to the Chinese would merely show her astuteness in cultivating allies. Serial murders of kindergartners would merely show her commitment to the environment and population control.

It is possible there is some marginal percentage of voters who may be swayed by her flouting the law, but we'll have to wait until 2016 to see. Law itself, after all, is merely an artifact of the patriarchy.

Sebastian said...

"The only thing that matters is winning, and that is because the thing that matters is power, Anything else is merely a sideshow."

Which is why Dems won't "run away," journalists (I repeat myself) will keep giving her standing ovations, etc. etc.

Big Mike said...

I think we can recover the missing Emails. Just call the Russian and Chinese embassies. As crappy as the cyber security was on her survey, I imagine that they were reading her Emails before she was.

The protestations of Lanny Davis and James ("the Talking Skull") Carville aside, every activity associated with the Email servers was at least contrary to regulations and often against the law. But the most serious complaint is that it was downright stupid for the head of the US Department of State to use such an unsecure system.

I've had Democrats try to argue that, well, the State Department's own servers were known to have been penetrated. To which I respond by asking who was the head of the State Department and therefore who bore the ultimate responsibility for hiring the cyber experts to fix things? Using a less secure server is surely not the answer to unsecure State Department Emails servers.

Anonymous said...

Kendall wrote. “To avoid prolonging a discussion that would be academic, I have confirmed with the secretary’s IT support that no emails…..for the time period January 21, 2009 through February 1, 2013 reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server.”

Drago said...

Pettifogger: "I am skeptical whether most Democratic voters would care about anything she did, regardless."

On the contrary. Most dem voters are at a place where the willingness to violate laws to extend dem rule and power is seen as an absolute good.

The dems relish the idea and sure knowledge that clinton broke the law and will not be punished or even attacked rhetorically very much. They know they own the mechanisms of enforcement at the Fed level and those mechanisms are never going to be used against the dems.

Every single thing the left has said about ethics, rule of law, unitary presidency, etc has always been a lie.

We are Venezuela now and the left could not be happier.

John Cunningham said...

I would bet serious money that the Hildebeast just backed up all those emails on another machine, then cleaned out her server. no way would she give them up totally, she would need them for future blackmails,etc.

Mountain Maven said...

The hacked emails to and from Sidney Blumenthal revealing that he ran a private intelligence network will hurt her as much as her

Contempt of Congress

that she committed by refusing to comply with the Benghazi Committee's demand for the emails and the server.

Sammy Finkelman said...

I think the Sidney Blumenthal e-mails are Russian forgeries.

Those e-mails are much too un-opinionated to be real, and every source cited is anonymous, which doesn’t sound like something Sidney Blumenthal would write, or even forward without comment in what, after all, are supposed to be secret e-mail messages.

And every thing that could prove the messages real was hidden.

While apparently the very real hdr22@clinetonemail.com address, where I think it supposedly was sent, is cited somewhere in something connected with this,
the FSB could have gotten that very real email address from a hundred different sources since this was also used for her Clinton Foundation business. It doesn’t mean the messages are real or the hacking was real. It just maybe makes the forgery look better.

It might have been used or mentioned because the address was known to some people, and not actualy secret.

There also exist forgeries of imaginary excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s real book “Hard Choices” and further excerpts from an totally imaginary book she didn’t write.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/world/middleeast/isis-conspiracy-theories-include-a-purported-american-plot.html?_r=0

The passages described by supporters of the Egyptian military on Facebook as quotes from Mrs. Clinton’s memoir were entirely fabricated and do not appear anywhere in the text of her book, “Hard Choices.”

The fictional plot was reported as fact by Egyptian, Tunisian, Palestinian, Jordanian and Lebanese news organizations.


And if you research this thing more, you'll find out about other quotes from a book by Hillary Clinton that doesn't even exist.

I figure Hillary Clinton is a favorite target of Russian forgers.

And since the KGB was known for forgeries, this would be more of the same thing.

Sammy Finkelman said...

Putin is a logical candidate for trying to spread a theory that the U.S. created ISIS, and creating forgeries is a known pre-1991 Soviet tactic.

Sammy Finkelman said...

@PB.

During the 2-week extension, the server would have been deleting January, 2015 e-mails.

Sammy Finkelman said...

Sebastian said...3/27/15, 10:25 PM

Can't Congress go after the lawyers and other staff who did her dirty work? Force them to testify about procedures, access to classified material, etc.?

They all have attorney client privilege. (even non-attorneys working for attorneys)

They should request that any attorney-client privilege be waived and the lawyers testify about this.

And if she doesn’t waive attorney client privilege, some Republicans can make a point about this, and they shouldn’t stop.

If she makes a counter-claim that some Republican, like Scott walker, or Chris Christie, should waive attorney client privilege, distinguish the cases, and otherwise ignore it, and keep on pressing the issue.

The lawyers and their employees could be asked some very interesting questions, and probably the answers would give rise to more questions..

Sammy Finkelman said...

One thing they could do is subpoena all communication between the State Department and Hillary or her lawyers about these emails.

I think there can be no legitimate attorney-client privilege here because we’re not talking about communications between the lawyers and Hillary but between the lawyers and the State Department..

And I think the exchanges would be very informative.

Now it’s for the follow-up questions that attorney-client privilege should be waived.

For starters:

Was there any reverse engineering of question, for instance?

Was any of her e-mail forwarded anywhere (Forwarding would not have been picked up either by a correspondent search or by a text search, because text searches don’t go into attachments.)

Sammy Finkelman said...

Why is Kendall suddenly so interested in NOT prolonging a discussion?

I suspect because in fact something useful could be learned by prolonging it, and there is something that could be subpoenaed (besides the history of her process foe selecting e-mails to sending to the State Department.)