RUTHFULLY YOURS

The more information that drips out about the Clinton e-mail investigation, the more we learn that two key subjects, Hillary confidants Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, got extraordinarily special treatment — concessions that would never be given to subjects in a normal investigation. The primary reason for this is that the Obama Justice Department was never going to charge Hillary Clinton and her accomplices with crimes.

The guise under which Mills and Samuelson got the kid-glove treatment was their status as lawyers. Crucially, this status was the Justice Department’s pretext for resolving that potentially incriminating evidence against them, and against their “client,” Mrs. Clinton, had to be shielded from investigators pursuant to the attorney-client privilege.

Except neither Mills nor Samuelson was eligible to represent Clinton in matters related to the e-mails, including the FBI’s criminal investigation. Moreover, even if they had arguably been eligible, attorney-client communications in furtherance of criminal schemes are not privileged.

I wrote on Tuesday about the jaw-dropping allegation by House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte (R. Va.) that the immunity deals given to Mills and Samuelson were accompanied by at least two “side agreements.” One severely hampered the FBI’s examination of Mills’s and Samuelson’s laptop computers — the ones used to vet e-mails on Hillary Clinton’s server in order to determine which ones would be turned over to the State Department and which ones Clinton would hoard and destroy, falsely claiming that they were all “personal” in nature. The other side deal, astonishing if true, is said to have called for the FBI to destroy the laptop computers after the Bureau’s limited examination was concluded.

In congressional testimony last week, FBI director James Comey did not mention the side deals but did attempt to defend the immunity grant. He claimed it was justifiable because it is always very complicated for investigators when a lawyer’s computer becomes evidence in a criminal probe — it’s “a big meghillah” as he put it.

However colorfully expressed, Comey was making a category error. When a lawyer is implicated in a criminal investigation, which is not all that unusual, searching the lawyer’s computer tends to be complicated because there are likely to be privileged attorney-client communications on it. If the lawyer has a busy practice, many of those communications will have nothing to do with the investigation in which the lawyer is a suspect. That is not an immunity issue. It is a privilege issue. The problem is routinely addressed, without a grant of immunity, by a screening procedure that prevents the prosecutors and agents investigating the case from getting access to any communications that are legitimately protected by attorney-client privilege.

Chairman Goodlatte’s letter indicates that just such a procedure was employed in the limited search of the Mills and Samuelson computers. This underscores that the immunity grant was wholly unnecessary. Granting immunity does nothing to resolve attorney-client privilege complications, just as the screening procedure does nothing to shield the lawyer from prosecution for any non-privileged incriminating evidence.

Mills and Samuelson were given immunity in exchange for surrendering their laptops not because searching lawyers’ computers is complicated, but because the Justice Department had no intention of prosecuting them. That is also why Justice severely limited the FBI’s search of the laptops, just as it severely limited the FBI’s questioning of Mills. Mills and Samuelson were given immunity because Justice did not want to commence a grand-jury investigation, which would have empowered investigators to compel production of the laptops by simply issuing subpoenas. Justice did not want to use the grand jury because doing so would have signaled that the case was headed toward indictment. The Obama Justice Department was never going to indict Hillary Clinton, and was determined not to damage her presidential campaign by taking steps suggestive of a possible indictment.

Newly revealed State Department emails from last spring show that senior White House officials were coordinating with senior State Department officials about how to manage damaging stories about Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

The emails feature Jen Psaki, a former State Department spokesperson who is now the White House communications director; senior State Department official Patrick Kennedy; Jennifer Palmieri, the former White House communications director who is now Clinton’s campaign communications director; and Heather Samuelson, the Clinton staffer who received immunity during the FBI investigation into her emails. The new information makes clear that the Obama administration worked with State to downplay the controversy right from the beginning, even though publicly the president was feigning a hands-off approach to the scandal.

The Republican National Committee obtained the 17 pages of records through one of several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

Via the Washington Examiner:

In one exchange from March 2015, White House and State Department staff discussed an effort to prevent John Kerry from facing questions about Clinton’s emails in an upcoming interview on an CBS’ Face the Nation.

“Think we can get this done so he is not asked about email,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the former White House communications director who went on to serve in the same position on Clinton’s campaign.

Transcripts from the March 15, 2015 appearance show Kerry was not asked about the emails during his appearance.

In another, Patrick Kennedy and Heather Samuelson, a Clinton aide who received immunity during the FBI investigation into her emails, complained about a “wildly inaccurate” Politico story that suggested, in May 2015, that Clinton had done the “wrong thing” by operating a private server.

The Politico story in question simply quoted what a State Department representative had said during a Senate hearing. The agency’s inspector general later confirmed that Clinton’s email practices violated State Department record-keeping practices.

Psaki wrote to Palmieri and bragged in March 2015 that she was “good to go on killing CBS idea.”

Read the emails here: 326702703-clinton-coordination-emails-chronological-order-1

The emails were first provided to the Wall Street Journal.

There is a litmus test. http://joemiller.us/2016/10/2016-election-referendum-government-corruption/

If you would like to know how a Hillary Clinton administration would operate, remind yourself of how her email scandal was handled, not just by Hillary and her aides, but by the Obama Department of Justice, the FBI and the Republicans in Congress — one might say they are all unindicted co-conspirators in a cover-up.

It is a scandal punctuated by government lying and stonewalling and a conspicuous absence of moral courage by those in a position to do the right thing.Author of “Clinton Cash,” Peter Schweizer, said that this secrecy and financial scandal is unprecedented in terms of scale.

The efforts taken by the Clintons to avoid transparency by setting up a private server and the quantity of money flowing to them dwarfs any previous government scandal. During Hillary’s public service, about $250 million went to the Clintons directly and about $2 billion to the Clinton Foundation, an entity seemingly designed to intentionally evade the laws preventing foreign interests from influencing American politics and policy decisions.

If allowed to stand without accountability, the scandal will itself become a precedent for other greedy politicians to follow, essentially putting America up for sale to the highest international bidder.

According to reports, Hillary Clinton established her private email server on Jan. 13, 2009, eight days prior to her confirmation by the Senate as secretary of State. She later identified March 18, 2009, as the date she began using the private server.

Her use of a private nonsecure server for government business, including the exchange of classified material, remained known only to high officials in the Obama administration until after the Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

As a consequence of that attack, the nonpartisan government accountability organization Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Department of State for Benghazi-related emails and other information on Nov. 7, 2012.

Sometime during the week ending on March 15, 2013, Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazar, aka “Guccifer,” accessed the email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton confidant, indicating that Hillary had received sensitive, confidential information on what was later revealed to be the private server she improperly used for government business.

It was not the vigilance of government that uncovered Hillary’s private email server, but the intrusions of a computer hacker and the pressure brought to bear on the Obama administration’s Department of Justice and the FBI through ligation by Judicial Watch.

By March 2015, even the Hillary-friendly New York Times finally admitted that she did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure as secretary of State and she exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business, a potential violation of the Federal Records Act.

And what about Congress?

In 2010, incumbent and write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski defeated the Republican nominee for Senate, Joe Miller, with 40% of the vote (100,000 votes) to Miller’s 35% (90,000 votes) and Democrat Scott McAdams’s 25% (60,000 votes). The poor showing of McAdams was a result of underfunding ($100,000 total) and a realization by Alaskan Democrats, led by Democratic U.S. senator Mark Begich, that the race was really between Miller and Murkowski. For his own purposes, principally his chances of winning re-election in 2014, Begich preferred Murkowski to Miller. He had served with her in the Senate for two years and had developed a mutually beneficial relationship with her. As a liberal Republican, she was close to Begich, a moderate Democrat, ideologically, and they shared many common political interests in Alaska. When he ran for re-election in 2014, Begich touted their close working relationship to such an extent that Murkowski was forced to publicly distance herself from him. In 2010, Murkowski was able to assemble 40% of the electorate because of an ad hoc coalition with the Democratic Party, or at least the Begich wing of that party.

Recreating that coalition is her path to victory again in 2016, but Begich Democrats now prefer Miller. Begich wants to return to the Senate, as evidenced by his flirtation with the idea of running as a write-in this year. Two years ago, as an incumbent, he lost to Dan Sullivan, and if he challenges him in 2020, the situation will be reversed. He will be the challenger, Sullivan, a savvy politician, the incumbent. But if Miller is elected, he’ll be up for re-election in 2022. This is a much more winnable race in Begich’s eyes. He thinks Miller is a wild-eyed extremist who will embarrass himself in office. Begich will run against him, and also arrange for an independent candidacy to draw moderate Republican support away from Miller. In 2022, Begich will be a vigorous 60 years old, with an empty nest and a burning desire to redeem himself and the Begich brand. He wants Miller, not Murkowski, as his opponent.

The Begich wing of the Alaska Democratic Party is supporting the independent candidacy of political newcomer Margaret Stock, an idealistic environmentalist, a woman who believes, with a good showing, that she has a future in Alaska politics. She has reportedly assembled a war chest of $250,000 and has the resources to conduct a serious campaign. She will attend all of the debates, including Kodiak on October 12 and Barrow on October 26. She’s a good government mainstream liberal Democrat and a far superior candidate to the 2010 Democratic nominee, Scott McAdams, who was a sacrificial lamb. She could easily exceed the 25% of the vote gathered by McAdams, except for the wild card in this Senate race, the Democratic nominee, former Republican state legislator Ray Metcalfe.

Metcalfe founded the Republican Moderate Party of Alaska in 1986, and in the 1998 governor’s race he won 13,000 votes, 6% of the total, as its candidate. He’s a reform candidate and has attempted for years to expose the corruption of the Ted Stevens political machine, which included not only Frank and Lisa Murkowski, but Stevens’s son, former State Senate president Ben Stevens. Metcalfe’s Alaska Public Offices Commission complaint against Ben Stevens led to a raid on Stevens’s offices by the FBI and his abandonment of a career in politics. In Metcalfe’s mind, and in truth, Lisa Murkowski is the illegitimate heiress of the corrupt Stevens organization. The political power of Stevens, and now Lisa Murkowski, depended on “Stevens money” – as much as $1 billion and more in federal pork projects each year. That money is no longer available, and thus the glue that held the Stevens machine together no longer exists.

The organization WikiLeaks on Friday released what it claimed to be Clinton campaign email correspondence revealing excerpts from paid speeches that Hillary Clinton gave in recent years, before her presidential bid.

A Clinton campaign spokesman declined to verify whether the documents are authentic.

The emails appear to show Mrs. Clinton taking a tone in private that is more favorable to free trade and to banks than she has often taken on the campaign trail. The emails also suggest she was aware of security concerns regarding electronic devices, which could feed into criticism that Mrs. Clinton was careless with national secrets when she was secretary of state.

The release marks the latest time WikiLeaks has inserted itself into this year’s presidential campaign, and it came the same day the U.S. intelligence community accused the Russian government of trying to interfere in the U.S. elections by purposefully leaking emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and other entities. The intelligence agencies alleged the hacks were directed by the most senior officials in the Russian government, with WikiLeaks one of the entities whose methods are consistent with those of a Russia-directed effort.

“Earlier today the U.S. government removed any reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has weaponized WikiLeaks to meddle in our election and benefit Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin in a statement. “We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange who has made no secret of his desire to damage Hillary Clinton.”

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails were WikiLeaks’s primary target, sent several tweets on the subject late Friday.

“I’m not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump,” he wrote. “Don’t have time to figure out which docs are real and which are faked.” He added that the organization’s claim on its website that he owns the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm headed by his brother, Tony, was “completely false.”

Some of the documents in the most recent WikiLeaks release are similar in their design to documents released in recent days by DCLeaks.com, another entity that the U.S. intelligence community says has published documents stolen by the Russian government. The documents have proven difficult to authenticate.

In the two years between her time at the State Department and her presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton earned millions on the paid speech circuit, including $4.1 million from financial institutions, according to financial disclosures. This became an issue during Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic primary campaign when Sen. Bernie Sanders called for her to release the speech transcripts, particularly for speeches she gave to major financial firms. At the time, Mrs. Clinton said she would “look into” releasing the transcripts but hasn’t provided them.

This past January, the WikiLeaks documents suggest, Clinton campaign research director Tony Carrk emailed excerpts of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches to senior campaign officials, including Mr. Podesta and communications director Jennifer Palmieri, calling them the “flags from HRC’s paid speeches.”

Mr. Carrk said he had obtained the transcripts from “HWA,” an apparent reference to the Harry Walker Agency, which arranged Mrs. Clinton’s paid speeches after she left the State Department in 2013.

“I put some highlights below,” Mr. Carrk wrote. “There is a lot of policy positions that we should give an extra scrub with Policy.”