Category Archives: Cyber War

Creepy Underworld Advertised on Billboards Escort Service

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Read with caution, fair warning.

Raid of Rentboy, an Escort Website, Angers Gay Activists


For some gay activists, it had shades of bathhouse raids and gay-bar roundups from decades ago. On Tuesday, federal authorities burst into the Union Square office of the gay-escort website Rentboy.com and arrested the chief executive and several employees on prostitution charges.


Rentboy, which federal authorities called the biggest male-escort website, had been around for almost two decades, allowing escorts to pay to advertise themselves. It was well known in the gay community, hosting pool parties, dances and awards shows throughout the country. Many members of the L.G.B.T community have criticised the authorities for allowing certain escort services like Asian VIP Service to continue while targeting the male-escort industry.
After federal authorities charged its top executives with promoting prostitution, seized the website and went after the business’s assets on Tuesday, many gay activists were infuriated. The Transgender Law Center, a civil-rights group, criticized the arrests, as did some male sex workers from websites similar to teentuber xxx. Several activists said they would use the episode to renew calls to decriminalize prostitution.

“To many in our community this feels like a throwback to when the police raided gay bars in the ’50s and ’60s,” Justin Vivian Bond, a performer and an activist who is transgender, wrote in an email. “This invasion of a consensual hookup site which is run for and by members of the L.G.B.T. community feels like a real slap in the face after gentrification and the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations drove so many gay bars out of business and forced people to meet online instead of in person,” the activist added, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Danny Cruz said he had posted ads on Rentboy “to supplement income” for about seven years, starting when he moved to New York. He said he had talked regularly to the executives who were arrested, both about his business and about staying safe.

“I don’t see why the government would be interested in what two people do behind closed doors,” Mr. Cruz, who is now involved in the Sex Workers Outreach Project in Los Angeles, said.

Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which participated in the investigation, said in an email that “any insinuation that a specific population was targeted is categorically false.”

The federal complaint says that although Rentboy.com, whose headquarters are on 14th Street at Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, had a disclaimer telling visitors that they could not exchange money for sex, that was “clearly” happening. Escorts, the complaint says, posted ads including penis size, pay rate and preferred fetishes, and the site’s visitors then contacted them directly. On a separate website, DaddysReviews.com, clients would review the individual escorts, the complaint says.

The seven current and former Rentboy executives were charged with conspiring to violate the Travel Act by promoting prostitution, and each faces up to five years in prison.

Mr. Walls said: “As the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE is responsible for the enforcement of laws that promote the legitimate movement of people, goods and currency in domestic and foreign transactions. Our allegation with this case is that the business and its principals purported itself to be an escort service while promoting criminal acts, namely illegal prostitution.”

Rentboy’s chief executive, Jeffrey Hurant, 50, said in an interview excerpted in the criminal complaint that “there is no place on this website where somebody says I’ll have sex for money because that is against the law.”

The director of the site, Michael Sean Belman, 47, said in another interview excerpted in the complaint: “We say that escorts are selling their time only.”

“What happens between you and the escort is up to you,” he said. “That way it’s legal.” (The complaint says he “incorrectly” summarized the legality.)

Derrick De Lise, publisher of the online magazine Queer Voices, said the fact that the government went after a gay-escort website, without making mention of protecting sex workers, made it seem as though the site’s gay affiliation attracted the government attention.

In 2014, federal authorities seized myRedBook, a California-based site with ads for sex. But unlike in the Rentboy case, the charges included money laundering. The authorities also said myRedBook allowed child prostitution, which has not been cited in the Rentboy case.

MyRedBook’s owner, Eric Omuro, was charged with using the mail and the Internet to promote prostitution and with laundering money derived from the site. Mr. Omuro pleaded guilty in 2014 to using a facility of interstate commerce with the intent to facilitate prostitution, and admitted that the site allowed prostitutes to post ads. He was sentenced to 13 months in prison. In an affidavit submitted for sentencing, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had found more than 50 juveniles advertised for prostitution on his site.

Mr. Omuro was the first website operator to be convicted on prostitution charges, the Department of Justice said.

“It’s troubling to think that we’re investing resources and time to target Rentboy and sex workers,” said Alex Garner, a writer and activist in Washington, “when what we really should be having is a reasonable and thoughtful conversation about the decriminalization of sex work. We have an entire police force we should be overhauling, we have murders of trans women happening in large numbers, and we’re devoting our time and energy to cracking down on sex work. Who’s choosing to prioritize it?”

Nellin McIntosh, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment.

1/2 of Michelle Obama’s Lunch Program is Trash-canned

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In 2012, First lady, Michelle Obama introduced new rules for public schools aimed at reducing obesity. This was a mandate deployed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Michelle announced in January. 32 million children are forced to participate.

The first 15 years of the program had a budget of $11 billion as it doubled the amounts of fruits and vegetables that are served to students. Milk must be served and must be low fat and limits were set on trans fats as well as salt intake.

Almost immediately, this food police program met with major issues and essentially student and parent protests.

Then there were school employee layoffs.

Hundreds of school districts in the country have made layoffs and reduced hours for cafeteria workers due to First Lady Michelle Obama’s lunch rules, a new survey has found.

Participation in the school lunch program is down, food waste is up, and 80 percent of districts have taken steps to offset financial losses as a result of the healthy rules, according to a survey released Tuesday of more than 1,000 school districts by the Student Nutritional Association (SNA).

Enter the trash cans…

– A new study confirms what many parents and school lunch officials already know: students in the National School Lunch Program are trashing their government-mandated fruits and vegetables.

University of Vermont researchers used digital photography to analyze hundreds of school lunch trays at two northeast elementary schools on 21 visits before and after increased school food regulations championed by first lady Michelle Obama went into effect in 2012, CBS News reports.

Those regulations limit calories, fat, sugar, sodium, whole grain and other elements of school lunches, as well as mandate that all students take a fruit or vegetable, whether they eat it or not.

Researchers discovered “that while children placed more fruits and vegetables on their trays – as required by the USDA mandates put in place in 2012 – they consumed fewer of them,” according to the news site.

“The amount of food wasted increased by 56 percent, the researchers found.”

The findings contradict an often cited study by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2014 that found the opposite – that students ate more fruits and vegetables – although that study also noted more fruits and vegetables in the trash.

The Harvard study noted “high levels of fruit and vegetable waste continued to be a problem – students discarded roughly 60-75 percent of the vegetables and 40 percent of the fruit on their trays. The authors say that schools must focus on improving food quality and palatability to reduce waste,” according to the Harvard Gazette.

There’s a distinct difference between the Harvard study and the recently released University of Vermont study: the latter backs up anecdotal evidence from school districts across the country, while the Harvard study contradicts it.

“We was this as a great opportunity to access the policy change and ask a really important question, which was, ‘Does requiring a child to select a fruit or vegetable under the updated national school lunch program guidelines that came into effect in 2012 correspond with increased fruit and vegetable consumption?” lead author Sarah Amin told CBS News. “The answer was clearly no.”

Amin and her team also pointed out that schools can’t simply force students to take a fruit or vegetable and expect them to eat them if they don’t address the numerous other factors that affect their decisions about nutrition and food.

“Public health practitioners should also consider strategies extending to the home because more frequent exposure to (fruits and vegetables) at home may result in children consuming a variety of (fruits and vegetables) at school,” according to the report.

“Our research findings, that children selected more (fruits and vegetables) but consumed less and wasted more after the new regulations were in place, support the importance of public health practitioners addressing the environmental, home, and personal factors that encourage children’s (fruit and vegetable) consumption.

“While these data from one geographic area may not be generalizable to other regions, we based the measures of consumptions and waste on validated, objective measures,” the report continues. “Furthermore, the findings are consistent with those from other parts of the country where requiring a child to select a (fruit or vegetable) also corresponded with decreased consumption and increased food waste.”

The latest school food study comes about a month before Congress is expected to vote on reauthorizing Michelle Obama’s school food restrictions, and seems to support the call by the School Nutrition Association and its thousands of members in school lunch rooms calling on lawmakers to relax the regulations to reduce waste and increase student participation.

Previous research on the school lunch program found school food waste increased by about $1 billion because of the federal regulations. The Government Accountability Office estimates that about 1.2 million fewer students than before the restrictions went into effect.

 

Ukraine, Another Forgotten War NATO Struggles

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No one in media speaks about Russia or Ukraine and the White House along with the National Security Council has left the matter of Russia and adhering to the Minsk Agreement to General Breedlove at NATO.

When we have our top Generals saying that Russia is a major and aggressive threat, someone needs to listen.

Ukraine Live Day 554: Ukrainian Forces Suffer Heavy Casualties After Village Just Outside Mariupol Shelled This Morning

Liveblog Team August 25, 2015

Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here. An archive of our liveblogs can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast.

Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs.


For links to individual updates click on the timestamps.

For the latest summary of evidence surrounding the shooting down of flight MH17 see our separate article: Evidence Review: Who Shot Down MH17?

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Turchynov Claims Russian Troops Have Set Up Pontoon Bridges On Seversky Donets River
14:45 (GMT)

Oleksandr Turchynov, the secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC), has claimed today that Russian forces are preparing for a major offensive in the Lugansk region.

The statement, published on the NSDC website, reads:

In the East of our country activation of Russian army is taking place. This was stated by NSDC Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov in his comment. According to him, the engineering units of Russian armed forces have put up 5 pontoon ferries across the river Siverskyi Donets at the area, where the state border of Ukraine with Russia goes along its fairway, “as well as have equipped the access routes to these crossings”.

“In this way the military infrastructure is being formed to provide redeployment of additional units of Russian troops to the occupied territory of Ukraine for their combat use”, – NSDC Secretary said, emphasizing that this is another evidence of direct and unmediated participation of the Russian army in war, unleashed by the Kremlin in the East of Ukraine.

This is not the first report of Russian military bridging equipment in Ukraine.

On July 4 this year, an OSCE observation drone spotted two pontoon bridge layers near Komsomolskoye, on the eastern banks of the river Kalmius, in the south of the Donetsk region.

This is another area of the front where a river forms a natural barrier to a Russian offensive. Fighting along both the Seversky Donets and the Kalmius has been intensifying in recent weeks.

The Seversky Donets river forms a natural barrier, running along most of the demarcation line in the Lugansk region between Krymskoye, in the west, and the Russian border.

 

Earlier today, Liga Novosti, citing the Lugansk Regional Military-Civil Administration, reported that, after a day of attacks on Stanitsa Luganskaya and Popasnaya, Russian-backed forces were shelling the villages of Troitskoye and Novozvanovka with self-propelled guns, severing power lines and leaving 600 people without electricity,

— Pierre Vaux

Published in Press-Stream Ukraine Live Day 554 in Publication Ukraine Liveblogs
Ukrainian Forces Suffer Heavy Casualties After Village Just Outside Mariupol Shelled This Morning
09:51 (GMT)

News has emerged this morning that Ukrainian naval infantry in Sopino, less than seven kilometres outside Mariupol, have suffered casualties when Russian-backed forces shelled the village after midnight.

 

Leviy Bereg‘s Oleksandr Rudomanov reported, citing soldiers in the naval infantry, that one serviceman had been killed and another wounded.

Halyna Odnoroh, a volunteer supporting Ukrainian troops in Mariupol, wrote on her Facebook at 8:31 local time:

Night in Mariupol

We have 2 killed and 5 wounded, some very seriously. Three fighters from the Donbass Battalion, two marines, one of which is very critical and on life support, and two dead marines.

Heavy artillery smashed down on Sopino, and also on the marines’ checkpoint.

Power has been cut.

Yaroslav Chepurnoy, a military spokesman for the Ukrainian military headquarters in Mariupol, told 0629.com.ua that the attack had been conducted with 152 mm self-propelled artillery and had begun at 00:30.

At around the same time, Chepurnoy said, Ukrainian positions in the village of Talakovka, around 10 kilometres north of Sopino, were shelled with 122 mm self-propelled artillery.

He also described “very serious” shelling in Granitnoye, east of Volnovakha, which was attacked from 5:40 until 6:50 this morning with 120 mm mortars.

Chepurnoy confirmed that their had indeed been casualties in the Mariupol area, but said that numbers were still being confirmed.

According to the spokesman, there were three attacks in the area yesterday, two incidents of fire from small arms, and one from an infantry fighting vehicle, These occurred near Granitnoye, Shirokino and Novotroitskoye.

***

Ukraine crisis: ‘Column from Russia’ crosses border

BBC:

A pro-Russian rebel displays a flag in central Donetsk, 24 Aug

The Ukrainian military says it has clashed with rebel armoured vehicles that crossed from Russia and headed to the south-eastern port of Mariupol.

One commander said rebels might be trying to open up a new southern front. Russia did not comment on the issue.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko voiced his “extreme concern” about the alleged crossing, his office said.

More than 2,000 people have died in fighting between Ukrainian forces and the separatists in recent months.

Some 330,00 people have been displaced.

Mr Poroshenko made the comments during a telephone conversation with EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, his office said.

He was reacting to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said the Kremlin planned to send a second humanitarian convoy “in the next few days” as the situation there was “deteriorating”.

The first convoy, which returned at the weekend, crossed the border without Ukraine’s authorisation. Ukraine feared it was carrying military equipment to pro-Russian separatists and denounced it as an invasion.

The Russian and Ukrainian presidents are scheduled to meet in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday for talks on the crisis.

‘Enough resources’

Ukraine’s military said border guards had halted the column about 5km (3 miles) north-east of Novoazovsk, which is about 10km from the frontier in the far south-east of Ukraine.

First Russian aid convoy returns, 23 Aug
Image caption The first Russian aid convoy returned at the weekend

Heavy clashes were reported at the village of Markyne.

One commander of a Ukrainian national guard unit in the area told Reuters news agency: “A war has broken out here.”

Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council later said in a statement that two tanks were destroyed and several members of a “sabotage and reconnaissance” group were seized.

It said the area was blocked by Ukrainian troops.

Ukrainian sources earlier said the armoured vehicles had crossed the border bearing symbols of the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic.

Officials said 10 tanks and two armoured personnel carriers were in the column although other reports said the number of vehicles was as high as 50.

Mariupol, a major port on the Azov Sea, is in the hands of Ukrainian government forces, who ousted rebels from the city in June after weeks of fighting.

A Ukrainian military spokesman said government forces still controlled Mariupol and the road to Novoazovsk.

Spokesman Andriy Lysenko said it was an attempt “by the Russian military in the guise of Donbas fighters (rebels) to open a new area of military confrontation”. The scene of most of the fighting has been much further north.

Mr Lysenko said there were enough resources to repel any attack.

Ukraine and Western powers have accused Russia of arming the rebels, charges Moscow has denied.

There have been numerous previous reports of armoured vehicles crossing Ukraine’s eastern border.

‘Fascists’

Mr Lavrov said he had also sent a note to the Ukrainian foreign ministry on Sunday informing it of the new aid convoy.

“The humanitarian situation is not improving but deteriorating,” he said.

“We want to reach an agreement on all conditions for delivering a second convoy by the same route… in the coming days”.

Russia said the first convoy had delivered generators, food and drink.

Asked about Tuesday’s presidential meeting, Mr Lavrov said: “We are ready… for any format as long as there is a result,” adding that Russia wanted “to help Ukrainians agree among themselves”.

 

 

Obama’s Motivation for the Iran Nuclear Deal

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Obama’s Motivation for the Iran Nuclear Deal

This may be somewhat conspiratorial, so critiques and commentary is invited. The common question has been for several months, why is Barack Obama so pro-Iran in order to get a final deal signed with regard to their nuclear weapons program.

No one seems to be able to suggest a viable reason, personally I went so far as to track down and interview Ambassador Mark Wallace, CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran.

 

Still without any meaningful answer as to why, it was prudent to search far and wide for clues and suddenly a real story began to develop on its own.

 

 

Plans for an Iran strike by Israel has been on the table and in 2011, Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared the time would be delayed for a future time. In 2012, Israel was poised to attack Iran, and the Obama National Security Council ensured that operation was terminated.

 

In summary, the United States and Israel have cooperated for decades on defense, military aid, arms sales, joint exercises and intelligence. This stems from a 1981 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that established cooperation on national security of both countries. In 1983, both sides signed a Joint Political Military Group implementing the MOU and in 1984 those activities commenced. In 1987, the United States constructed facilities to stockpile advanced military gear and munitions. In 1996, Congress codified this standard that included defense contracts, weapons systems, interagency strategic cooperation, diplomatic and intelligence operations and ballistic missiles. Countless laws/acts have been passed and signed in the United States where the U.S. and Israel together preserve and enhance Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge.

 

Barack Obama is bound by agreement, law and treaty history yet he takes this history and text to the line where his policy does not support or stand with Israel in fully defending Israel in military hostilities or engagements as noted in the most recent conflicts in Gaza. Having a JPOA, a nuclear agreement has for the most part thrown sand in the gears keeping his own anti-Israel cultural and lifelong behavior intact, all at the expense of stability in the Middle East. Barack Obama’s background demonstrates he would rather have a failed nuclear agreement that satisfies his Muslim doctrine against Jews and Israel than to militarily stand with Israel even as new alliances and relationships have been established, isolating the United States. The same theory here is also applied to the balance of the Middle East with emphasis on Iraq and Syria.

Another Day of Hillary Email Disarray

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No Mandated Audit

DHS has no record of State Dept. giving info for Clinton server audit, despite rules

FNC: The State Department does not appear to have submitted legally required information regarding Hillary Clinton’s secret computer server to the Department of Homeland Security during her term as secretary, FoxNews.com has learned.

All federal government agencies are mandated to submit a list of systems, vulnerabilities and configuration issues to DHS every 30 days. The department then performs a “cyberscope audit” to ensure security, a responsibility the agency has had since 2010.

FoxNews.com learned of the lapse as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request submitted June 11. It is not clear if State Department officials in charge of compliance with the DHS audits knew of their boss’s server, which has been shown to have included “top secret” information in emails.

Clinton headed the agency from 2009-2013. The DHS established the “Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation” program in 2010, amid growing concerns government systems could be vulnerable to cyber attack. But Clinton’s computer server, through which she and key aides sent and received tens of thousands of emails, was apparently never audited, according to DHS, which conducted a comprehensive search of Office of Cyber Security and Communications records after FoxNews.com lodged its request.

“Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records,” wrote Sandy Ford Page, chief of Freedom of Information Act operations for DHS.

The revelation means DHS never audited Clinton’s server, and the State Department allowed Clinton to operate outside the federal mandate aimed at hardening defenses in federal networks, one cyber expert told Fox News.

The State Department has not provided a substantive response to a similar FOIA submitted by FoxNews.com in early June.

The State Department did not comment on media requests about why it did not comply with the DHS security review requirement.

“There are reviews and investigations under way, including by the IG and Congress,” said State Department Spokesman Alec Gerlach. “It would not be appropriate to comment on these matters at this time.”

Denver-based Platte River Networks upgraded and maintained the server Clinton shares with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, after she left the State Department.

The company is not on the list of contractors approved by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Service, the only federal agency with the authority to review and approve private contractors. The department administers the National Industrial Security Program on behalf of the Pentagon and 30 other federal agencies, including the State Department. About 13,000 companies have received clearance.

“But Platte River is not one of them,” a spokesman for the DSS told Fox News. “As Platte River Networks is not a cleared facility under the National Industrial Security Program, DSS has no cognizance over the facility and cannot comment further.”

Clinton, the leading contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, and the State Department have been under fire in recent months after it was revealed Clinton had a “homebrew” server and private Blackberry system that could have left classified or sensitive government data open to hackers.

Clinton maintains her use of a private email server was allowed under government regulations and her system was secure.

But this followed the news Clinton wiped her server of some 31,000 private email messages, turning over just 30,000 hard copies of her emails to the State Department amid a congressional investigation into her actions during the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, where four U.S. personnel including the U.S. ambassador to Libya were killed.

While Clinton has maintained that she neither sent nor received information marked classified on her private server or Blackberry, Reuters reported last week that dozens of emails that passed through Clinton’s server while she was secretary of state, under the U.S. government’s own regulations, were automatically considered classified.

That includes 30 email threads starting as early as 2009, which contained information on foreign governments, Reuters said.

The FBI has opened an investigation to determine whether or not Clinton’s private email server was secure and if classified material was improperly shared or stored on the Clintons’ private email account.

A federal court hearing last week only added to the intrigue. The State Department asserted in a court filing that it did not give personal electronic devices to Clinton and may have destroyed the smartphones of her top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

“If the State Department was not providing secure email devices to Mrs. Clinton, who was? Best Buy? Target? Mrs. Clinton clearly did whatever she wanted, without regard to national security or federal records keeping laws,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who took the State Department to court over its lack of disclosure on the email and server issues.

Huma Lawyers up to Fight Back

Lawyer for Huma Abedin, a Hillary Clinton Aide, Strikes Back at Accuser

A lawyer for Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has accused Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of damaging Ms. Abedin’s reputation through “unfounded allegations” about her time at the State Department.

The lawyer, Miguel Rodriguez, sent a letter to the State Department on Friday responding forcefully to two sets of questions posed by Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa: whether Ms. Abedin, while a department official, had been overpaid during her maternity leave and a vacation, and whether she had demonstrated a conflict of interest by aiding one of her part-time employers through her work at the State Department.

Ms. Abedin was granted permission by the State Department to work as a “special government employee” while also performing work for certain outside clients. Mr. Grassley has focused recently on her consulting work in 2012 for the firm Teneo, which was founded by Douglas J. Band, a longtime adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Grassley has suggested that emails existed showing that Mr. Band had asked Ms. Abedin to press Mrs. Clinton to seek a White House appointment for Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, a Teneo client. Ms. Rodin is a longtime friend of the Clintons.

But Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter on Friday, cited a Washington Post article pointing out that Ms. Rodin, a longtime friend of Mr. Clinton’s, received that White House appointment in 2010, before the Rockefeller Foundation had retained Teneo “and before Teneo hired Abedin.”

Mr. Grassley has also recently disclosed that the State Department’s inspector general had found that Ms. Abedin received nearly $10,000 in excess pay during her maternity leave. But Mr. Rodriguez wrote that Ms. Abedin was contesting that finding because she “extensively worked” during those periods, as the inspector general’s “report itself found.”

“Chairman Grassley also has asked about Ms. Abedin’s 2011 trip to France and Italy,” the letter said. “That trip was intended to be a vacation, and Ms. Abedin personally paid for it.” But, he added, Ms. Abedin — who is married to former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who resigned from Congress in June 2011 — worked during that trip as well.

Mr. Rodriguez, in his letter, alluded to a recent report that Mr. Grassley had received information from a confidential source about an internal investigation into Ms. Abedin that was completed in May by the State Department inspector general.

“We are deeply concerned that Chairman Grassley’s letter has unfairly tarnished Ms. Abedin’s reputation by making unsubstantiated allegations that appear to flow from misinformation that Chairman Grassley has been provided by an unnamed — and apparently unreliable — source,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. Those allegations, he wrote, included the “suggestion that Ms. Abedin has violated any criminal statute.”

He also noted Mr. Grassley’s assertion that there were about 7,300 emails mentioning both Ms. Abedin and Mr. Band, but he said that this was because the two remained on many of the same mass email distribution lists thanks to their longstanding ties to the Clintons.

“These are but two examples of the unfortunate and unfounded allegations that have been made about Ms. Abedin,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. “No staffer — indeed, nobody at all — should be subject to such unfounded attacks based on ill-informed leaks, much less someone who has made countless personal sacrifices in distinguished service to the country she loves.”

Mr. Grassley, who also serves on the Senate Finance Committee, has been aggressive in questioning Ms. Abedin’s status as a special government employee since it was revealed in 2013.

A former investigator on the Finance Committee who worked with Mr. Grassley there and was at one point expected to work for him on the Judiciary Committee, Emilia DiSanto, is now a deputy inspector general at the State Department.