The Letter to James Comey, Director of the FBI

Posted on October 25, 2016October 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

October 25, 2016

A Retired FBI Agent Addresses James Comey on the Hillary Clinton Investigation

Mr. James Comey, Director

Federal Bureau of Investigation

J. Edgar Hoover Building

935 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W

Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Sir,

I am writing regarding your public statement in July, 2016 informing the American people that the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton was being closed without referring it to a Federal Grand Jury or the Attorney General of the U. S. for a decision whether or not to indict her. Strangely, you eloquently laid out enough of the evidence deduced from the investigation to strongly indicate there was abundant evidence uncovered during the investigation and interview of her to not only indict but to convict her in Federal Court. However, you personally re-worded and soft-pedaled the actions she took as Secretary of State describing her actions as “extremely careless” in using a personal email and un-secured server for her communications while Secretary of State. You rewrote the statute, which is not your job.

As a retired Special Agent of the FBI, I have standing to write this letter. My thirty years in law enforcement, including 22 years as a Special Agent with the FBI have given me the knowledge, expertise and experience to question and confront you for your perplexing actions, which (as you well know) were outside the normal standard operating procedure of the FBI and Federal judicial procedures. Some of the finest people in the world proudly carry the credentials of FBI Agent and you have soiled them and not allowed them to speak. But I will not be silent.

Sorry, but NO SIR, MS Clinton was not merely careless or extremely careless. She was not even negligent or grossly negligent (as the statute requires). Hillary Clinton was knowingly purposeful in her decisions and actions to set up a server under her exclusive control and possession in order to control what information was available to the American public and Congress regarding her actions as Secretary of State. Furthermore, she took those government owned communications into her personal possession after leaving her position and knowingly and willingly attempted to destroy them so her nefarious actions could never be known or used as evidence of her corrupt moral character against her.

Sir, what possessed you? Did you cave in to political pressure to unilaterally come to this decision? I fear that is the case, and Rule of Law be damned. I am embarrassed for and ashamed of you. You have set a precedent that can never be rectified… and certainly not justified. Shame on you, Sir. You ought to resign right now in disgrace for what you have done to tarnish the reputation of the finest Law Enforcement Agency in the world… for entirely political reasons.

Normally, an investigation will be assigned to an agent, or team of agents with one being the Case agent, or the lead investigator. When the investigation is complete, an investigative report will be presented to the U.S. Attorney for the Federal District involved. It would be the U.S. Attorney who decides whether to decline prosecution for that investigation… NOT the FBI agent. But in the Clinton investigation, YOU (unilaterally) decided not to forward the investigation to the U.S. Attorney or the Attorney General of the U.S., but instead personally made the decision not to prosecute her or even provide the information to a Federal Grand Jury. You were wrong to take this upon yourself.

Sir, in order to indict a subject, only a preponderance of evidence, or 51% is needed for probable cause to exist. You did not think even that level of probability existed? Who do you think you are fooling? What judicial proceeding did you think you were following?

Throughout my years with the FBI, I (along with my fellow agents) took great pride in conducting each investigation in an unbiased manner regardless of the subject’s position or standing in the community.

All were treated equally under the law. But you, Sir, decided to allow this corrupt, evil and nasty human being to go free and unchallenged for her treasonous actions (yes, treasonous, in my opinion) which threatened the security of this nation. Furthermore, you stopped short of investigating the Clinton Foundation as a RICO case (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization. This is a RICO case if

there ever were one. Even an untrained person can tell from the communications which were recovered that Hillary Clinton spent more time working for the Clinton Foundation while Secretary of State than on State Business. It may be argued that Hillary did not do any State business UNLESS the Clinton Foundation benefitted. You decided to just let this uncomfortable truth alone without addressing it.

I will conclude with this: Following my retirement from the FBI, I volunteered for a 12 month tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Law Enforcement Professional, embedded with U.S. forces as a subject matter expert in counter-terrorism investigations. For most of that year I operated “outside the wire” patrolling with the troops, interviewing witnesses to IED incidents and gathering evidence on the bad guys. The results of my work would then be reported through secure channels to the Commanding Officer. All reports and communications were required to be transmitted via secure and encrypted devices. Occasionally my remote location in the mountains of Afghanistan made transmission impossible and I would have to fly back to Bagram Air Base in order to securely report to the Commander of the battle space. It would have been convenient if I could have just called the Commander on my personal cell phone or written him an email on my personal laptop. But, had I done so I would have been reporting classified information via an unsecured device and it could have been compromised. These were, relative to Secretary of State communications, low level classifications of Secret. Had I ever sent even one in such a manner I would have been prosecuted and sent to Federal Prison for 20 years or so. That is how serious this violation is considered.

Now, because of you, Hillary Clinton is allowed to continue her RICO activities and is running for President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world. You have trampled on the Rule of Law and destroyed the trust of the American people in the FBI and in unbiased enforcement of the law. How do you sleep at night? It is time for you to go and work for the Clinton Foundation.

Sincerely,

Hugh W. Galyean

(FBI Agent, Retired)

Hat tip to Mr. Galyean and American Thinker

POTUS Lied about Knowing of the Private Hillary Email Server

Posted on October 25, 2016October 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

…and Cheryl Mills knew Obama lied…

Politico: A top Hillary Clinton aide expressed alarm in early 2015 that President Barack Obama claimed he was unaware of Clinton’s private email server until he learned about it in the news.

“We need to clean this up – he has emails from her – they do not say state.gov,” said Clinton adviser Cheryl Mills in a hacked email posted Tuesday on WikiLeaks.

As the scandal over Clinton’s use of a private email server was still emerging in March 2015, Obama told CBS News that he learned about the arrangement through the media. “The same time everybody else learned it through news reports,” Obama told CBS News’ Bill Plante.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest later clarified that while the president knew about Clinton’s email address, he “was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up.”

Clinton’s campaign declined to confirm the authenticity of the emails. White House spokesman Eric Schultz pointed to Earnest’s comments from March when asked for comment about the email exchange.

In part from FreeBeacon:

The email came less than a week after the New York Times broke the story on Clinton’s use of a private email address to conduct official State Department business.

Subsequent interviews by the FBI in the course of its probe into Clinton’s email practices revealed that Obama had emailed Clinton at her personal address using a pseudonym.

Two days after Mills’ email, White House press secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged that Obama had emailed Clinton at her personal address, but said that was consistent with his public remarks.

“The point that the president was making is not that he didn’t know Secretary Clinton’s email address, he did,” Earnest said. “But he was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act.”

However, the wording of the question to Obama appears to contradict that explanation.

Though personal email accounts can be hosted by virtually every major email provider—services such as Gmail and Yahoo—Obama was asked specifically about Clinton’s use of an email system “outside the U.S. government,” which would include not just a private email server but an account hosted by anyone other than the State Department.

Mills’ email was one of thousands released by the group Wikileaks after hackers believed to be acting in concert with the Russian government breached Podesta’s personal email account.

Additional hacked emails show Clinton confidantes worried about the fallout from the Times story, including one who suggested that Clinton and other aides using her private email system knew what they were doing could land them in hot water.

“Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” wrote Center for American Progress president and informal Clinton adviser Neera Tanden in an email to Podesta on the day the Times story broke.

“I guess I know the answer,” she wrote in a follow-up. “They wanted to get away with it.”

Podesta appeared to acknowledge that Mills and Clinton aides David Kendall and Phillip Reines had been misleading about their roles in about the email controversy.

“Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” he wrote to Tanden.

Reines was later denied an official role on the Clinton campaign after a long email diatribe in response to Washington Free Beacon inquiries into his and Clinton’s email practices.

**** What may have been was exponentially worse:

If you Don’t Remember Thomas Pickering, Check this…

Posted on October 25, 2016October 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat: Thomas Pickering and Russia’s Pipeline Sales to Iran…

CenterforSecurityPolicy: “Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” is a hard-hitting investigative report from the Center for Security Policy, exposing the ties of former Ambassador Thomas Pickering to a Putin-linked Russian company that sold oil and gas pipelines to Iran and Syria when Pickering was on its Board of Directors. The report reveals Pickering’s overlapping roles: as Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Advisor, as an Advisory Board member for two Iranian advocacy groups, as a paid Director for a Russian firm selling pipeline to Iran and Syria, as a paid consultant to Iranian aircraft contractor Boeing, and as a Senate committee hearing witness, all with a common goal of ending economic sanctions on Iran and reversing U.S. Iran policies.

As meticulously documented in “Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat,” Pickering was a paid Director for the Russian-owned company Trubnaya Metallurgicheskaya Kompaniya (TMK) from June 30, 2009 to June 26, 2012. TMK is majority-owned by Russian billionaire oligarch Dmitry Pumpyansky, a close Putin ally.

The investigation discovered extensive proof of TMK’s business dealings in Iran and Syria while Pickering was on the Board, including a financial offering disclosure, catalogs, marketing materials, websites, press releases, legal documents, reports from the steel industry press and Iranian customer websites. Sales of oil and gas pipelines to Iran were specifically prohibited under U.S. laws and executive orders.

According to TMK’s records, Pickering attended 143 of the 145 TMK Board meetings. Pickering is estimated to have been paid over half a million dollars for his service to TMK, based on TMK’s compensation rules.

“Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” documents TMK’s relationships with three Iranian customers, all listed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as “Specially Designated Nationals” during the years Pickering served on the Board: the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Petropars, and Pars Oil and Gas Company.

The investigation also shows TMK’s relationships with three Syrian customers listed by OFAC as “Specially Designated Nationals” in 2011, while Pickering was on the Board: the Syrian Gas Company, the Syrian Petroleum Company, and the Al Furat Petroleum Company. U.S. persons are generally prohibited from conducting any kind of business with “Specially Designated Nationals.”

Thomas Pickering was appointed by Clinton as Chairman for the Benghazi Accountability Review Board three months after he left TMK. Starting in December 2011, he also served in official capacity on Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Emails released from Clinton’s private server show that Pickering was emailing and meeting with Clinton and her staff from the beginning of her time as Secretary of State, arguing for an end to economic sanctions on Iran, during the same years he was on TMK’s Board of Directors.

“Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” raises questions for the American public and policymakers about Thomas Pickering’s and Hillary Clinton’s priorities. Did they put America’s interests first, or those of Iran and Russia?

****

Pickering was briefly the president of the Eurasia Foundation, a Washington-based organization that makes small grants and loans in the states of the former Soviet Union.

Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc., which was incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands. CHRIS USHER AP

WASHINGTON

As Russian software company Luxoft prepared to offer shares on the U.S. stock market, its executives turned to a well-known U.S. diplomat.

Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Bill Clinton, agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc. a month before the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The relationship between Luxoft and Pickering, whose diplomatic career spans six presidents and four decades, is detailed in the massive Panama Papers leak and comes amid a global debate over the role of offshore companies. Luxoft is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. More here from McClatchy/MiamiHerald.

****

Anyone find it curious that Luxoft just happened to be protected from the U.S. sanctions list due to the Russian invasion of Crimea and Ukraine? Barack Obama signed a couple of Executive Orders against Russia in 2014 as published here by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the U.S. State Department, but Luxoft was exempt.

Luxoft Gains in U.S. as Sales Shielded From Sanctions while this company has an intriguing business model:

Industries / areas:

Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Banking and Financial Services, Education, Entertainment, Industrial, Insurance, Media, Publishing, Retail / Distribution, Science and Research, Software and Technology, Telecom, Transportation, Travel

Global headquarters: Moscow Russia

Worldwide office locations:

New York, Seattle United States US; Kiev, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk Ukraine UA; London United Kingdom GB; Bucharest Romania RO; Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam VN; Eschborn/Frankfurt Germany DE; Krakow Poland PL; Singapore Singapore SG

Russian office locations:

St. Petersburg Russia RU, Omsk Russia RU, Dubna Russia RU

*****

The United States last week experienced the largest intrusion of the internet affecting social media platforms and Internet Service Providers. The further investigations found that specific malware was used via the pathway of the ‘Internet of Things’. IoT is all those other appliances that are attached to the internet for communications.

So this slide is rather fascinating and may have some clues to domestic cyber threats and risks…

LUXOFT HORIZONTAL TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE – IOT PRACTICE

While it’s called the Internet of Things, it’s really about the data you gather from those connected “things” and the derived insights that help you make improvements to your business – new service offerings, transformed product lines, and improved time-to-market.

IOT can help you transform your business.

Continue here to this link from the Luxoft Corporate presentation dated May 2016 and begin at slide 28.