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FBI Documents Show Hillary Clinton Used Many Email Devices Colin Powell warned former secretary of state her work-related messages could become subject to public release By Byron Tau

Hillary Clinton used more than a dozen email devices during her time as secretary of state, and a technician took steps to delete an archive of her emails after House lawmakers demanded they be saved, according to documents released Friday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The newly public information also shows that Mrs. Clinton was warned at the outset of her tenure by former Secretary of State Colin Powell that her work-related email messages could become subject to public release. And in an interview with FBI agents in July, the Democratic presidential candidate offered a defense of her handling of sensitive drone-strike conversations.

The new disclosures were contained in two documents released by the FBI on Friday—a report summarizing the bureau’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement, which concluded with a recommendation that she not be prosecuted, and a summary of her interview. The FBI said it was releasing the material in the interests of transparency.
On Friday, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said, “We are pleased that the FBI has released the materials from Hillary Clinton’s interview, as we had requested.” He added, “While her use of a single email account was clearly a mistake and she has taken responsibility for it, these materials make clear why the Justice Department believed there was no basis to move forward with this case.”

The documents disclosed few dramatic new facts, but they painted a picture of Mrs. Clinton as inattentive to computer security and unsophisticated about the classification system. They also confirmed a Wall Street Journal report in June that the FBI was especially concerned about email exchanges including Mrs. Clinton that concerned possible drone strikes.

Much in the documents is redacted, with information removed for security, privacy or other reasons, leaving significant gaps in the FBI’s information and conclusions.

The report contains the descriptions of an email exchange between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Powell, secretary of state under President George W. Bush, in which Mr. Powell warned her two days after she became secretary that if her use of a BlackBerry became “public,” her emails could become part of the “official record and subject to the law.”

“Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data,” said Mr. Powell. A spokeswoman for Mr. Powell didn’t respond to a request for comment. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Clinton Foundation: Cashing in on the Theater of Charity Without the Actual Results By Andrew C. McCarthy

The Left wins many arguments by setting the framework of the debate, often by indignant brushback pitches establishing that certain topics are strictly out of bounds – on pain of banishment from polite media society. Generally, those topics are the ones they know can hurt them. As Nathan J. Robinson illustrates in a striking profile of the Clinton Foundation in Current Affairs, Camp Clinton is striving to set a firm rule for discussions of the “charity” now at center stage in the presidential campaign: Don’t you dare question the good work done by the Foundation. Robinson notes, for example, James Carville’s admonition that “somebody is going to hell” for questioning the Foundation’s fundraising practices in light of all the wonderful things we are to believe it does.

As has reliably been the case over the years, establishment Republicans and other Clinton critics feel compelled to salute Bill and Hill’s heroic dedication to “public service” – their unimpeachable intentions and sincere efforts – before zeroing in on the shenanigans by which the pair has managed to cash in to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Recall the praise heaped on the Clintons by the Bush family and Senator John McCain.

Things are no different when it comes to the Clinton Foundation: Public etiquette requires genuflection to the Clintons’ selflessness before one may marvel at how they grab with all four hands.

It is a good strategy. The Clintons’ grubbiness is surely extraordinary, but only by degree – albeit big degree. Putting the State Department or the White House up for sale is huge, but it is not different in principle from what other shady pols do on the smaller scale available to them. Since the public tends to think of politics as an inherently shady business, the Clintons are apt to be given immunity, even for their monumental corruption, if it is stipulated from the start that it is all for the greater good of charity on a grand global scale.

But of course, it’s not. Indeed, it is not charity at all. As acknowledged (in Robinson’s piece) by longtime Clinton confidant Ira Magaziner, head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, “the whole thing is bankable…. It’s a commercial proposition. This is not charity.” Robinson continues:

Instead of aid, the Clinton Foundation spends much of its effort “creating new markets,” finding lucrative investment opportunities in the developing world for Western private capital. These have included everything from “using business methods to streamline fertilizer markets in Africa” to “working with credit card companies to expand the volume of low-cost loans offered to poor inner city residents.” (Note that typically, enticing poor people into taking on large amounts of credit card debt is not among the activities of a charitable foundation.) Bill Clinton is open about the fact that in this work, he is trying to help corporations profit from the developing world. He attempts to “reinvent philanthropy” as a lucrative enterprise for his partners because, in his words, “I think it’s wrong to ask anyone to lose money.”

It’s hard to keep track of all the “commercial propositions” the Foundation is engaged in, because it operates in a highly unusual fashion. Ordinarily, charitable foundations make grants to outside organizations. But only 15% of the Clinton Foundation’s spending is on charitable grants. Instead, it spends most of its money on its in-house programs, whose efficacy can be far more difficult to track. The task is made even more difficult thanks to the Foundation’s ongoing allergy to transparency.

Partly because of that, Charity Navigator, a watchdog group, at one point added the Clinton Foundation to its watch list of problematic charities, and still does not rate the organization because its “atypical business model. . . doesn’t meet our criteria.” The Clinton Health Access Initiative has refused to allow the charity evaluation organization GiveWell to analyze its outcomes, and the Better Business Bureau has listed the Clinton Foundation as failing to meet the basic standards for reporting the effectiveness of its programs. Bill Allison of the pro-transparency Sunlight Foundation has gone much further, and said that the organization operates as a “slush fund for the Clintons.”

Hillary Clinton’s Mind-Boggling FBI Interview – What Was Cheryl Mills Doing There? Andrew McCarthy

The FBI-302 report of the interview of Hillary Clinton, along with the other notes of investigation released today, make for mind boggling reading. Most bracing is the fact that Mrs. Clinton had her server wiped clean sometime between March 25 and 31, 2015, only three weeks after the New York Times on March 3 broke the story of the server system’s existence. David notes that, at the same time the Democrats’ Janus-faced presidential nominee was outwardly taking the position that she “want[ed] the public to see my email,” she was having her minions frantically purge her emails behind the scenes. I’d add that this was five months before she feigned ignorance when Fox News’s Ed Henry pressed her on whether she’d “tried to wipe the entire server … so there could be no email – no personal, no official.” Henry finally asked, “Did you wipe the server?”

Famously, Clinton scoffed, “Like with a cloth or something?” But we now know, as the FBI notes recount, she had the server purged with a sophisticated software program, BleachBit, which eventually made it extraordinarily difficult for the FBI to recover her emails, several thousand of which were successfully destroyed. And remember: We’ve just learned that 30 emails related to Benghazi were on the server Clinton purged – emails that she never turned over to the State Department despite claiming repeatedly that she’d surrendered all of her government-related emails. I would thus note that the March 2015 purge right after public revelation of the server’s existence occurred long after Mrs. Clinton was well aware of several official government investigations of the Benghazi massacre – one by the State Department, several by Congress, and a judicial proceeding involving the one defendant who has been indicted for the terrorist attack.

There were also, quite obviously, several relevant Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigations. From what I’ve been able to glean so far, it is not clear from the FBI’s notes (and it was certainly not clear from Director James Comey’s press conference and House testimony) whether any consideration was given to indicting Mrs. Clinton for obstruction of justice and of government investigations – and if not, why not. Among the most eye-popping claims Clinton made to the FBI was that she was unfamiliar with the markings on classified documents. Yes, you read that correctly: one of the highest ranking national security officials in the United States government – an official whose day-to-day responsibilities extensively involved classified information; who had secure facilities installed in her two homes (in addition to her office) so she could review classified information in them; and who acknowledged to the FBI that, as secretary of state, she was designated by the president as “an Original Classification Authority,” meaning she had the power to determine what information should be classified and at what level – had the audacity to tell the interviewing agents that she did not know what the different classification symbols in classified documents signified. For example, when asked about an email chain containing the symbol “(C)” – meaning “confidential,” a designation ubiquitous in classified documents – Clinton claimed not to know what it meant and, according to the notes, “could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.”

Hillary’s World

“The United States is an exceptional nation,” she said. “I believe we are still Lincoln’s last, best hope of Earth . . . And part of what makes America an exceptional nation, is that we are also an indispensable nation. In fact, we are the indispensable nation. People all over the world look to us and follow our lead.” She asserted that “we recognize America’s unique and unparalleled ability to be a force for peace and progress, a champion for freedom and opportunity” and that “our power comes with a responsibility to lead, humbly, thoughtfully, and with a fierce commitment to our values”:

Because, when America fails to lead, we leave a vacuum that either causes chaos or other countries or networks rush in to fill the void. So no matter how hard it gets, no matter how great the challenge, America must lead . . . [O]ur network of allies is part of what makes us exceptional. No other country in the world has alliances like ours. Russia and China have nothing close . . . At our best the United States is the global force for freedom, justice and human dignity.

Hillary Clinton’s global vision reflects the fundamentally flawed post-Cold War consensus, to which both ends of the Beltway Duopoly—neoconservatives and neoliberals—subscribe with equal zeal. Its key tenet is that our unchallengeable military might is essential to the maintenance of a global order in which the U.S. Government treats each and every spot on the globe as an area of vital American interest, fiercely resists any change of regional power balances, and actively promotes regime changes. The resulting military interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya (and, if Hillary wins, there will be one in Syria) have been validated by the rhetoric of . . . well, she reminded us: “peace and progress,” “freedom and opportunity,” “justice and human dignity,” and by the invocation of American exceptionalism and indispensability (M. Albright). In world affairs America is supposedly motivated by “a fierce commitment to our values,” rather than mere interests.

Trump immigration speech: A president was born on Wednesday: Wayne Allyn Root

Trump immigration speech: A president was born on Wednesday

America, we were introduced to our next president on Wednesday night. He’s not a politician. He is one of a kind. He is an American. Welcome President Donald J. Trump.

I’m a cynical Jewish Ivy Leaguer from New York. Nothing gets me too excited. I don’t believe politicians. Nor do I believe in politicians. I don’t fall for theatrical political productions. I don’t believe rhetoric or propaganda. And I’ve never teared up over a political speech in my life.

Until now. . .

Wednesday night I found myself fist-pumping. I found myself chanting along with the crowd “USA, USA, USA.” And as the procession of mothers and fathers came up to the podium to state the name of their child — who was murdered by illegal immigrants — and then say “I’m voting for Trump” or “Trump is our last chance to save America” I found myself tearing up. And the amazing thing is… I couldn’t stop. The tears rolled down my face.

A Tough but Sensible Immigration Policy By The Editors

After two weeks spent waffling on immigration, and making noises on the subject largely indistinguishable from those of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, Donald Trump has settled on a hawkish position — and a practical one. Trump’s crowd-pleasing antics aside, in his immigration speech in Phoenix, Ariz., on Wednesday he laid out a sensible, realistic path forward on genuine immigration reform.

Trump’s plan, even in its most primitive iterations, always has been based on the entirely commonsensical principle that America’s immigration policy should serve American interests. Taking this as a starting point, Trump laid out a ten-point policy that emphasizes securing the border, enforcing immigration laws, prioritizing the removal of criminal aliens, and creating the legal and economic disincentives necessary to reduce illegal immigration in the long term.

These are the right priorities. On border security, Trump renewed his commitment to a “physical” wall on the southern border (as well as, alas, his absurd promise that Mexico would pay for it), pledged to swell the ranks of the understaffed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agencies, and vowed to deploy technology, such as below-ground sensors, to aid them. He also promised an end to the catch-and-release policies that have defined the Obama-era commitment (or lack thereof) to border security and to defund sanctuary cities (an initiative that would, of course, have to come out of Congress). And as Trump noted, about half of America’s illegal-immigrant population overstayed legally gotten visas, meaning that a comprehensive visa-overstay tracking system of the sort he is proposing is also crucial part of any real enforcement agenda.

Trump would add to this an expanded use of E-Verify, which would help prevent employers from exploiting illegal labor and so make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to find work. “Turning off the jobs and benefits magnet,” to use Trump’s words, would make the prospect of entering and residing in the country less enticing for foreigners. If immigration trends at the height of the Great Recession are any indication, a sizable number of illegal immigrants are likely to return home when jobs are not readily available.

Serving Muslim Interests With American Foreign Policy The lethal consequences of the Clintons’ foreign policy leadership. Joseph Klein

A Hillary Clinton presidency would likely continue along the pro-Islamist foreign policy arc that both her husband’s administration and the Obama administration have developed.

President Bill Clinton committed U.S. military resources to help Muslims during the so-called “humanitarian” intervention in Bosnia. However, he chose to turn a blind eye to the genocide that swamped Rwanda during his administration. As G. Murphy Donovan wrote in his American Thinker article “How the Clintons Gave American Foreign Policy its Muslim Tilt,” “Muslim lives matter, Black Africans, not so much.” Noting that “it was Muslim unrest that precipitated Serb pushback, civil war, and the eventual collapse of Yugoslavia,” Donovan added, “Bosnians are, for the most part, Muslims with a bloody fascist pedigree.” Nevertheless, with no strategic U.S. national interest at stake, Bill Clinton tilted American foreign policy in favor of the Muslim side in the Bosnia conflict. We are now reaping the lethal consequences of that tilt. Donovan points out in his article that, on a per capita basis, Bosnia Herzegovina is the leading source of ISIS volunteers in all of Europe.

President Obama, along with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, took the side of Islamist “rebels” against the secular authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Libya and Syria that had managed to keep the lid on jihadist terrorism for many years. These Islamists included members of al Qaeda as well as the Muslim Brotherhood.

In Libya, Hillary Clinton was the leading voice pressing for military intervention against Col. Muammar el- Qaddafi’s regime. She did so, even though, according to sources cited in a State Department memo passed on to Hillary by her deputy at the time, Jake Sullivan, in an e-mail dated April 1, 2011, “we just don’t know enough about the make-up or leadership of the rebel forces.” In fact, as subsequently reported by the New York Times, the only organized opposition to the Qaddafi regime that had developed underground during Qaddafi’s rule were the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a terrorist group, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The author of the State Department memo had acknowledged the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s terrorist past but said they “express a newfound keenness for peaceful politics.” Was Hillary Clinton relying on such assurances of a reformed “peaceful” Islamic group fighting against Qaddafi, even though it had been on the State Department’s terrorist list since 2004 and one of its leaders, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, praised al Qaeda members as “good Muslims” in a March 2011 interview? If so, that is just another indication of her bad judgment.

As for Egypt, Hillary was informed by her outside adviser and confidante Sid Blumenthal, in an e-mail dated December 16, 2011, that the Muslim Brotherhood’s intention was to create an Islamic state. Moreover, the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and other radical groups was “complicated,” Blumenthal quoted a source “with access to the highest levels of the MB” as saying. Blumenthal also reported, based on a confidential source, that Mohamed Morsi, who was then leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, believed that “it will be difficult for this new, Islamic government to control the rise of al Qa’ida and other radical/terrorist groups.”

Thornton: We Citizens Have to Guard the Media ‘Guardians’ Mainstream media journalists rationalize their war on Trump. Bruce Thornton

The mainstream media’s lopsided coverage of the presidential campaign has gotten so blatantly anti-Trump and pro-Hillary that even some progressives are starting to notice. The New York Times’ media reporter Jim Rutenberg last month had a front-page column slyly justifying the bias by a clever use of rhetorical questions: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”

Rutenberg’s dubious implication is that Trump is so outrageously unprecedented and dangerous a candidate in American history that he can’t be covered objectively. “If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional.” But Rutenberg says he rues this development, for it compromises “that idealistic form of journalism with a capital ‘J’ we’ve been trained to always strive for.”

Say what? Was it an “idealistic form of journalism” when the media carried on its “slobbering love affair,” as Bernie Goldberg put it, with Barack Obama in 2008? Where were the intrepid “guardians” of the public weal when the media ignored the gaps in Obama’s history, his fabrications in his memoirs, and his associations with the racist pastor Jeremiah Wright and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayres? Or when Journolist, an online discussion group of journalists and activists, colluded to downplay these unpleasant facts and coordinate negative coverage of the Republicans?

Or how about CNN Political Correspondent Candy Crowley in the 2012 presidential debate, violating every canon of professional objectivity when she intruded herself into the debate in Obama’s favor by backing up his false claim that he had called the Benghazi attacks an act of terror? And don’t forget Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who recently wrote in Time magazine, “Like it or not, this election is a plebiscite on the most divisive, polarizing and disrupting figure in American politics in decades. And neutrality is not an option.” Or CNN calling “false,” without any evidence, AP’s story that more than half of Hillary’s non-governmental meetings while Secretary of State were with donors to her foundation. Are these examples of “idealistic” journalism?

Despite all this contrary evidence, Rutenberg recycles one of the progressive media’s most cherished self-justifying myths, that there really is an “objective” journalism they supposedly practice. Such a notion has seldom existed in American history, and has especially been scarce since the 1960s, when activist journalism came out of the closet with its ideological coverage of Vietnam and then Watergate, all perfumed with the spurious claim to journalistic integrity and public service.

The truth is, journalism has been a form of political activism long before Jim Rutenberg noticed. Orville Schell, dean of the prestigious UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism from 1996-2006, was not shy about embracing this role for journalism: “In a democracy,” Schell wrote over a decade ago, “indeed in any intelligent society, the media and politicians have to lead. The media should be introducing us to new things, interesting things, things we don’t already know about; helping us change our minds or make up our minds, not just pandering to lowest-denominator wisdom.”

Muslim Terrorists and Jewish Anti-Semites Against Trump Moderate Saudi businessmen who fund terror warn of Trump’s “extremism.” September 2, 2016 Daniel Greenfield

“I was often the ‘designated yeller.’”

That’s how Hillary Clinton described her relationship with the Israeli prime minister. Yelling and cursing was her particular specialty.

One marathon Hillary yelling session allegedly lasted 45 minutes. Afterward the Israeli ambassador said that relations between the United States and Israel had reached their lowest point.

Her favorite name for Netanyahu was, “F____ Bibi.”

But it wasn’t just about her hatred of any particular Israeli leader. The same year that Hillary was yelling herself hoarse at a man who had fought terrorists on the battlefield, she addressed the American Task Force on Palestine, a leading terror lobby, and blasted Israel and praised Islamic terrorists.

Hillary told the terror lobby, “I may have been the first person ever associated with an American administration to call for a Palestinian state.” She praised Mahmoud Abbas, the PA terror dictator who had boasted, “There is no difference between our policies and those of Hamas.”

She celebrated Naomi Shihab Nye who had written of the Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli cities, “Oppression makes people do desperate things.” Echoing her, Hillary denounced the “indignity of occupation”. A few years later she accused Israelis of a lack of “empathy” in understanding “the pain of an oppressed people”.

Perhaps they were too busy mourning their dead to emphasize with the terrorists who were killing them.

But fighting for her political life, Hillary and Huma dug through her closet and threw on a blue and white pantsuit. Her campaign placed an editorial in the Forward headlined, “How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Probably by yelling “F___ Bibi” at him for another 45 minutes.

When Hillary Clinton promised to reaffirm her “Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu” it was in the pages of The Forward. And, striving to sell a rotten radical to skeptical Jews, the left-wing paper has decided to run a piece claiming that “Trump Would Be Israel’s Worst Nightmare”. As if anyone in Israel goes to bed dreaming of eight years of Hillary.

The Forward shares Hillary’s view of Netanyahu. And it violently loathes Israel.

A Lonely Pro-Trump Psychiatrist Speaks By Peter A. Olsson MD

As a lonely psychoanalyst Trump supporter, I feel the need to exercise my First Amendment right to speak up. I think the majority of my psychiatrist, psychologist, and psychiatric social worker colleagues feel dislike, distain and antipathy towards Donald Trump. Many psychologists state that he is mentally ill and could damage mental health in America. I disagree with these colleagues.

American voters usually are exposed to a variety of clever political demagoguery, obfuscations, deceptions, and a spectrum of lies from little white ones to whoppers. With Donald Trump’s bombastic campaign style, a new glossary of terms is needed to understand his evolving policies and predict his way of leading and governing if elected. The new glossary would include words and concepts such as bombast, sarcasm (cruel at times), overt insults, crude personal verbal attack, hyperbolic impulsive statements to focus large group attention, paradoxical intention, mixed simultaneous use of an object as symbol and reality (i.e., a wall as the need for clear national boundaries and rules of behavior as compared to an actual wall). And, extemporaneous free associations about the powerful emotions beneath political issues, ambivalent political relationships and evolving policy statements.

The author imagines the following inner soliloquy of Donald Trump as he decided to run for president:

I observe America floundering. I see the economy sputtering after almost eight years of Obama’s incompetent leadership, mushrooming regulations that hamstring job creation and ever mushrooming national debt. I see bad trade deals with China, Mexico and other countries that hurt America. I see tax policies that drive jobs and industries out of America. I see increasing unemployment especially of young black Americans. I see law and order declining especially in big urban areas like Chicago, Obama’s hometown. I see migrants and illegal immigrants given government assistance as Americans go deeper into debt and poverty. Big expensive government programs favored by Democrat politicians are redundant and often failing.

I see American military power, political leadership in the world decline to the extent that other nations laugh at us behind our backs as they give smarmy smiles to Obama. The Obama administration seems bound and determined to teach white America and Americans in general to be ashamed of their/our alleged hidden racism, bigotry, islamophobia, homophobia and xenophobia. He shames us and our political leaders who he paints as bad guys if they disagree with him.

The constant search for micro-aggressions and political incorrectness by Obama-ites repulses me. I watched Obama and his minions insult, lie about, and distort the motives, intentions and character of sweet gentlemen like John McCain and Mitt Romney. I know I can be a strong, powerful and benevolent leader to rescue America. Obama uses his sneaky phone and pen to bring America down a peg or two and share it’s /our wealth around in some neo-socialist ways. I know and have participates in the rigged American political system that is floundering. I know where the crooked bodies are buried. I made billions legally through the flawed system in America. I will be a benevolent Trojan Horse to lead a hopefully bloodless revolution in America. I will use a P.T. Barnum, applied reality TV model of politics to win. I can’ t be bought by anyone. America will be great and safe again. I love America so much that I will make mistakes and try to honestly correct them. I will listen to as many Americans as I can. I will talk straight to them about what I see as the truth of where America must go to be great and safe again.

I will re-make the Republican party into a modern this time successful Bull Moose Populist Republican Party. Here I come, a new TR!

In recent days, psychologists have defied the Goldwater Rule. Most of the opinions from the American Psychological Association members have been extremely negative about Trump. They call “Trumpism” fascist, bullying, misogynistic, bigoted, racist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic. Some psychologist colleagues even say Trump would be destructive to the mental health of America. I suspect many psychiatrists and psychoanalysts would agree.