The case is presented in the other DoJ memo on Comey posted below. Just remember the Deputy Director of the FBI is Andrew McCabe, whose wife Jill, took up to $700,000 for campaign funds in her run for a political seat from Hillary Clinton’s friend Terry McAuliffe.
French presidential candidate Marcon was hacked on Friday before the Sunday voting. Per the NSA Chief, U.S. Tipped Off France on the Russia hacks. The U.S. tipped off France when it saw that Russians were carrying out cyberattacks targeting French President-elect Emmanuel Macron, NSA chief Adm. Mike Rogers told a Senate panel on Tuesday. Macron’s campaign revealed it was hacked just hours before a campaigning blackout in the country ahead of the presidential election on Sunday. Macron ended up handily defeating his rival, Putin-backed Marine Le Pen. “We had become aware of Russian activity. We had talked to our French counterparts and gave them a heads-up—‘Look, we’re watching the Russians. We’re seeing them penetrate some of your infrastructure. Here’s what we’ve seen. What can we do to try to assist?’” Rogers told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
*** Meanwhile….there is no strategy or policy position on U.S. cyber warfare. However…
Next Steps for U.S. Cybersecurity in the Trump Administration: Active Cyber Defense
The failure of the government to provide adequate protection has led many cybersecurity analysts, scholars, and policymakers to suggest that there is a need for private-sector self-help. If the government is unable or unwilling to take or threaten credible offensive actions to deter cyberattacks or to punish those who engage in them, it may be incumbent upon private-sector actors to take up an active defense. In other words, the private sector may wish to take actions that go beyond protective software, firewalls, and other passive screening methods—and instead actively deceive, identify, or retaliate against hackers to raise their costs for conducting cyberattacks. Taking into consideration U.S., foreign, and international law, the U.S. should expressly allow active defenses that annoy adversaries while allowing only certified actors to engage in attribution-level active defenses. More aggressive active defenses that could be considered counterattacks should be taken only by law enforcement or in close collaboration with them.
Key Takeaways
If the government is unable or unwilling to deter cyberattacks, it may be incumbent upon private-sector actors to take up an active defense.
Before the U.S. authorizes private hack back, it must consider not only U.S. laws, but also foreign and international laws governing cyberspace.
Congress should establish a new active cyber defense system that enables the private sector to identify and respond to hackers more effectively.
***
Heritage: Americans want their cyber data to be safe from prying eyes. They also want the government to be able to catch criminals. Can they have both?
It’s an especially pertinent question to ask at a time when concerns over Russian hacking are prevalent. Can we expose lawbreakers without also putting law-abiders at greater risk? After all, the same iPhone that makes life easier for ordinary Americans also makes life easier for criminals.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has described the operating system of the iPhone as “warrant-proof,” saying criminals are using the devices – encrypted by default – to their advantage. In one instance, he quoted an inmate who, ironically, called the iPhone a “gift from God.”
Divine involvement is a matter of debate, but there’s no question that when it comes to the choice of breaking the cybersecurity of criminals without also endangering the personal data of ordinary Americans, well, the devil is in the details.
This is especially true given the evolving nature of the threat. Even if we wanted to give the government access to all the metadata it wants (when, where, and who called), technology is moving away from phone calls to text messages and other non-telephony applications. Traditional metadata will be of limited use to law enforcement in pursuit of the savvy criminal of the future. Law enforcement needs to develop new strategies and investigative techniques without making us all prey.
It’s nearly impossible to assess the total monetary value for all successfully prosecuted cybercrimes in the U.S., let alone estimate the number of criminal cases that would have fallen apart without access to a smartphone’s data. The Department of Justice doesn’t publish such data. But, according to the 2014 Center for Strategic and International Studies report “Net Losses: Estimating the Global Cost of Cybercrime,” global cybercriminal activity is valued at $400 billion a year. Cybercrime damages trade, reduces competitiveness, and limits innovation and global growth.
The fundamental problem is that no one in the government is responsible for securing the internet for all of us. The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for safeguarding our nation’s critical infrastructure, yet the insecure internet presents cyberthreats to non-enterprise users affect individual security, safety and economic prosperity. Who is responsible for their security?
Some elements of the federal government are so focused on hunting down information against a few horrendous criminals that they don’t seem to realize they’re doing it at the expense of our right to privacy and online protection. We can appreciate their dedication in these noble causes, but the fact remains that the internet has become a host to more and more personal information ever since Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone.
Since then, the smartphone has evolved to have much more control over our lives, homes and vehicles. There is no sign of less data being held in the cyberspace.
In attempting to square this cyber-circle, the government would be wise to take a cue from the medical profession, which uses the Hippocratic oath to dictate an underlying requirement to refrain from causing harm to patients.
There is no such oath for members of the Department of Justice. They simply affirm that they will faithfully execute their duties without affirming that they will do so without harming the citizenry as a whole.
DOJ lawyers focus on individual prosecutions. That is too narrow of a definition of success. It forces them to use all means they can muster to make their prosecutions successful with little or no consideration of the larger harm their efforts may cause to the population in general.
That is a problem today and will only be magnified in the coming years as technology advances and the gap between those advances and the DOJ’s understanding of them widens. Within this environment, where insecurity breed’s criminality and stopping individual high-value criminals can motivate the DOJ to undermine security, one can only wonder, who is responsible for our security?
The world has changed. A new paradigm is needed to ensure the safety and security of all American’s data predicated on applying airtight security to our data. There is no return to the past. Perhaps the Trump administration will make this need for security a priority in a manner the previous administration did not.
This is a product of Politico but with shame, Politico wanted to add the race and gender as a twist to the article. Anyway, this Trump White House is busy for sure.
Zimbio
The process and methodology on how Politico compile this report and summary is noted at the base of the post.
The people who have met with Donald Trump since he became president tend to have a lot in common, according to a database POLITICO compiled from public documents, media accounts and its own reporting: They’re mostly male, largely Republican and often rich.
Of the more than 1,200 people who have had direct access to the president as of Monday night, the majority — about 80 percent — are white. And almost 63 percent are white men.
Trump has huddled with at least 270 business executives and nearly 350 politicians — mainly Republicans but also dozens of Democrats. And he’s met in person or spoken by phone with 47 world leaders, most often the leaders of Japan and Germany, plus a vast grab bag of other figures, from pro golfers to rocker Ted Nugent to Matt Drudge.
Aside from Democrats in Congress, Trump has met with relatively few ideological opponents, according to the data. But there have been a number of exceptions: Zeke Emanuel, a doctor who served in the Obama administration and helped design Obamacare, took part in an Oval Office discussion in March, and the president has spoken with several CEOs who had previously donated to Democratic politicians.
This database is inevitably incomplete, partly because the White House — unlike the Obama administration — refuses to release a public log of its visitors. (Barack Obama’s version was not a full record of all his meetings either, of course.) Official White House media advisories about Trump’s activities have also left out information at times, failing to mention his encounters with Drudge or former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
But POLITICO has compiled its own log, drawn from sources including White House schedules, news stories and pool reports filed by reporters who follow the president’s travels. The dataset is the most comprehensive public list available of the people who have had access to the president since Jan. 20, either in the White House, on the phone or in locations such as Mar-a-Lago.
Information about who meets with the president would be valuable to understanding any administration, offering a window into the range of interest groups and personalities that have an opportunity to shape the White House’s deliberations. That may be doubly true for Trump, who has been known to make decisions on the fly based on even brief conversations — for example, the 10-minute exchange with Chinese President Xi Jinping that he says changed his thinking about China’s influence on North Korea.
People who have met with Trump say he has a surprisingly informal and improvisational style, sometimes scheduling last-minute meetings after seeing people on cable television. The president is said to make frequent calls at night to his friends and trusted outside advisers, and he often holds court with Mar-a-Lago members during his trips to the club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.
POLITICO will continue to update its records based on feedback from readers and sources inside and outside the administration. For now, here’s a breakdown of what it has found:
Business executives
Trump has talked to or appeared at events with at least 270 business executives, from JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon to PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi and United Airlines’ Oscar Munoz.
About 75 percent of the executives who have gotten time with Trump are white men, according to POLITICO’s analysis. That lack of diversity also reflects the reality at many large companies: According to Forbes, women made up just 4.2 percent of the CEOs last year at the 500 largest U.S. companies. And a recent study found that women and minorities make up just 31 percent of the 500 largest U.S. companies’ boards.
Executives representing the finance, manufacturing, auto and energy industries met with Trump most frequently, according to POLITICO’s analysis.
Although all presidents have met with business leaders, Trump, a career businessman, seems particularly comfortable with them. These meetings also foster the public view Trump cultivated while sitting in the biggest chair in the boardroom on his TV series Celebrity Apprentice.
Meg Jacobs, a research scholar at Princeton University who has studied business-government relations, said the meetings with executives project the image “that he can get deals done, he’s a negotiator, a wheeler-dealer and he’s loved and effective.”
And this comfort with CEOs comes across in their meetings. Corporate heads who have met with Trump describe him as curious about which regulations hurt their bottom lines.
“He’s not, from the normal characterization of him, or even from his own tweets sometimes, what you would expect,” said Robert Murray, an outspoken Trump supporter who heads the coal company Murray Energy.
During the campaign, Trump spoke out against Wall Street and Big Business, running as a populist who would “drain the swamp” of Washington influence. For any executive who may have found that rhetoric unnerving, publicly meeting with CEOs sends a reassuring message that Trump will follow the classic Republican playbook of tax cuts and deregulation.
“Not a single member of the Obama administration made anyone from the coal industry welcome, nor would they give us any meetings,” said Murray, who has appeared with Trump twice since he took office. “We have a government now that’s wanting to hear on behalf of the electric power grid and the coal miners.”
Business executives’ priorities often align closely with Trump’s policy agenda. Murray, for example, said the administration has already tackled the first four agenda items on a list of policy recommendations he provided to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
Watchdog groups expressed concern over Trump’s heavy interaction with executives.
“There’s a risk of crony capitalism. Individual business leaders are very good at advocating for their individual company’s situation,” said Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations at the Project on Government Oversight. “That does not necessarily translate to being better for the economy as a whole.”
Foreign leaders
Trump has spoken to or met with at least 47 world leaders since his inauguration. He has most frequently been in contact with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Theresa May and China’s Xi, based on POLITICO’s analysis.
Abe and Merkel are tied in the data for the most publicly announced interactions with the president, with the records showing that each leader has met with or talked to Trump seven times. Those include their visits to the United States, where Merkel huddled with Trump at the White House and Abe visited Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s meetings reflect his foreign policy objectives, including concerns about North Korea’s aggression — Trump has spoken with South Korea’s acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, at least three times — and his ongoing deliberation about how to interact with the European Union.
The president has also made frequent contact with Middle Eastern and North African leaders, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (two phone calls and one in-person meeting), Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (two phone calls and one in-person meeting) and Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi (three phone calls), as well as top officials from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Politicians
Trump has wooed nearly 350 politicians of both parties since taking office. And according to POLITICO’s data, congressional Republican leaders Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise have been his most regular guests as he pursued priorities including his push for health care legislation.
But Trump has also met with Democrats, including critics like Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who later said he had told the president his rhetoric has been “hurtful” to African-Americans. Democratic House leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer also got time with Trump.
Still, his meetings have had a decidedly partisan tilt: He’s met with at least 250 Republican politicians and 92 Democrats, according to POLITICO’s records.
One of Trump’s home-state senators and frequent sparring partners, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), has visited the White House at least five times. Trump has also seemingly taken a liking to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the moderate West Virginian who faces a contentious reelection fight in 2018 in a state Trump won handily. Trump and Manchin have met at least four times, more than any other Democratic senator except Schumer.
He’s also mingled with his former rivals on the campaign trail more than other Republican senators, based on the data. Trump has met with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at least five times, and with Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky at least four times apiece, including a golf outing with Paul.
Alaska’s Republican senators, Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, have both had above-average face time with the president, with at least five interactions for Sullivan and four for Murkowski.
One early Trump supporter, Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue, has been rewarded for his loyalty, with at least five interactions with the president. The first-term senator is said to be close to members of Trump’s inner circle.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has been Trump’s most frequent gubernatorial guest, with at least four interactions. He’s also met at least three times with New Jersey’s Chris Christie, a former presidential rival who briefly headed his transition, and is said to speak with Christie more frequently.
Cabinet secretaries
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spent Trump’s earliest weeks enduring a reputation as a social outcast in the administration. But his stock has risen as he’s taken a leading role on Syria, Russia, North Korea and China — and the records show he has had more publicly disclosed direct contact with Trump than anyone else in the Cabinet.
Tillerson has met with the president at least 22 times, according to the analysis.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao also have had frequent interactions with Trump.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has also emerged as one of Trump’s go-to Cabinet officials, having joined the president repeatedly at Mar-a-Lago.
Others appear to have spent little time with Trump. POLITICO could document only four instances in which Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has met with the president since he’s taken office, and just three for Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
The rest
Trump has met with a wide range of other figures. Trump welcomed Palin, Nugent and musician Kid Rock in April to the White House, where they posed mockingly underneath a portrait of Hillary Clinton.
An avid golfer, Trump played rounds with Rory McIlroy and Ernie Els on one of his Florida golf courses in February, which led to online blowback from some of the golfers’ fans. Former Yankees closer Mariano Rivera also sat down with Trump as part of a meeting on the opioid epidemic.
Trump reunited with friends Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick when they visited the White House with their Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in April. Some Patriots skipped the event to protest Trump’s policies, though Trump friend Tom Brady was absent as well. Team owner Kraft, a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago, has enjoyed unprecedented access to the president, even sitting in on his dinner at the Palm Beach resort with the Japanese prime minister.
Trump has held more traditional meetings and photo opportunities, ranging from the presidents of historically black colleges and universities to Medal of Honor recipients. He’s also met with female small-business leaders and America’s national and state teachers of the year.
The president has also engaged conservative leaders during his first 100 days, meeting with them to discuss health care, abortion and other topics of interest. Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has been spotted at the White House, as has conservative radio firebrand Laura Ingraham. Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch reportedly speaks with Trump weekly, and Fox anchor and Trump defender Sean Hannity also advises the president.
Trump has also granted at least 33 interviews with at least 22 news outlets since taking office, not counting off-the-record meetings. While Fox has been Trump’s outlet of choice, The New York Times places second in access to the president, with Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman interviewing him at least three times.
Methodology
This analysis includes publicly available information, media reports and POLITICO reporting regarding meetings President Donald Trump has held since his inauguration. This includes executive order signings, White House meetings, public appearances, phone calls and interactions at Mar-a-Lago. Some events, such as the White House Easter egg roll, inauguration and others were not included because interactions with the president were superficial.
The analysis does not include Trump’s meetings with White House aides or meetings held by Vice President Mike Pence or other administration officials. Trump family members are also not included. It is limited by access to full guest lists as well as knowledge about whom Trump speaks with daily.
Individuals’ races were determined according to definitions used by the U.S. Census Bureau, except in the case of Hispanics, who were treated as a separate racial group for the purposes of this database.
The Chinese leadership headed by President Xi Jinping made the request, through its ambassador in the United States, to dismiss Adm. Harry Harris, known as a hard-liner on China, including with respect to the South China Sea issue, the source said.
Adm. Harry Harris, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, addresses the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney last December. | AFP-JIJIChina’s envoy to the United States, Cui Tiankai, conveyed the request to the U.S. side, to coincide with the first face-to-face, two-day meeting between President Donald Trump and Xi in Florida from April 6, but the Trump administration likely rejected it, the source said.
China is a longtime economic and diplomatic benefactor of North Korea.
As the head of Pacific Command, Harris, who was born in Japan and raised in the United States, plays a vital role in the security of the region.
He was responsible in ordering last month the dispatch of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier to waters near off the Korean Peninsula in a show of force amid signs the North was preparing to test-fire another ballistic missile or conduct a sixth nuclear test.
The Trump administration has called for exerting “maximum pressure” on North Korea to prod it to give up its nuclear and missile programs. The administration has said all options — including a military strikes — remain on the table.
Harris has pushed for the U.S. deployment of the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea. China has opposed the deployment, saying it could undermine its security interests and the strategic balance of the region.
He has also called for continuing U.S. “freedom of navigation” operations in the contested South China Sea. Overlapping territorial claims, as well as land construction and militarization of outposts in disputed areas in the sea, remain a source of tension in the region.
According to the source, Cui also asked the Trump administration not to label China as a currency manipulator. As per the request, the United States did not label China as such, in light of Beijing’s role in helping Washington deal with the North Korean issue.
*** Related reading: 2013 Study Finds North Korea Has Indigenous Capabilities to Produce Nuclear Weapons
An example of the open-source evidence used for Kemp’s study: A 2011 image from a television broadcast in North Korea showing Kim-Jong Il inspecting a flow-forming machine located in an underground tunnel. This type of machine is able to produce centrifuge rotors for North Korea’s uranium-enrichment program.
***
Is the United States partners in the Asia Pacific region ready to deal with 5000 tunnels and an underground operation?
The entrance of an ‘intrusion tunnel’ under the DMZ between South and North Korea, Telegraph
North Korea’s Secret Strategy in a War with America: Go Underground
North Korea, one of the most secretive countries in the world, is no stranger to building underground military facilities. Whether a tunnel dug under the demilitarized zone designed to pass thousands of troops an hour, or bunkers to accommodate the regime’s leadership, North Korea has built extensive underground facilities designed to give it an edge in wartime.
One of the earliest examples of North Korean underground engineering was the discovery of several tunnels leading from North Korea under the demilitarized zone to South Korea. The first tunnel was located in 1974, extending one kilometer south of the DMZ. The tunnel was large enough to move up to two thousand troops per hour under the DMZ. A U.S. Navy officer and South Korean Marine corporal were killed by a booby trap while investigating the tunnel. Thanks to a tip from a North Korean defector, an even larger tunnel was discovered in 1978, a mile long and nearly seven feet wide.
Since then at least four tunnels have been discovered, with reinforced concrete slabs, electricity for lighting and fresh air generation, and narrow railway gauges to shuttle dirt and rock back to the tunnel entrance. Collectively, the four tunnels would have likely been able to move a brigade’s worth of troops an hour under South Korea’s defenses.
It’s difficult to determine how many tunnels exist. One report says that Kim Il-sung, the founder of the North Korean state and Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, ordered each of the ten frontline combat divisions to dig two tunnels. If completed, that would theoretically mean another dozen or so tunnels remain undiscovered. A former South Korean general, Han Sung-chu, claims there are at least eighty-four tunnels—some reaching as far as downtown Seoul. The South Korean government does not believe Han’s numbers—nor the claimed ability to reach Seoul—are credible. A forty-mile tunnel would reportedly generate a seven-hundred-thousand-ton debris pile, which has not been picked up by satellite. Despite the warnings, the last major tunnel was discovered in 1990 and South Korea seems to believe that the tunneling danger has passed.
If it has passed, it may be because North Korea has decided to tunnel in different ways. The North Korean People’s Liberation Army Air Force is believed to have three different underground air bases at Wonsan, Jangjin and Onchun. The underground base at Wonsan reportedly includes a runway 5,900 feet long and ninety feet wide that passes through a mountain. According to a defector, during wartime NK PLAAF aircraft, including MiG-29 fighters and Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack aircraft, would take off from conventional air bases but return to underground air bases. This is plausible, as one would expect North Korean air bases to be quickly destroyed during wartime.
Another underground development is a series of troop bunkers near the DMZ. A North Korean defector disclosed that, starting in 2004, North Korea began building bunkers capable of concealing between 1,500 and two thousand fully armed combat troops near the border. At least eight hundred bunkers were built, not including decoys, meant to conceal units such as light-infantry brigades and keep them rested until the start of an invasion.
Other underground facilities are believed to have been constructed to shelter the North’s leadership. According to a South Korean military journal, the United States believes there are between six thousand and eight thousand such shelters scattered across the country. This information was reportedly gathered from defectors in order to hunt down regime members in the event of war or government collapse.
North Korea is believed to have hundreds of artillery-concealing caves just north of the DMZ. Known as Hardened Artillery Sites, or HARTS, these are usually tunneled into the sides of mountains. An artillery piece, such as a 170-millimeter Koksan gun or 240-millimeter multiple-launch rocket system, can fire from the mouth of the cave and then withdraw into the safety of the mountain to reload. These sites are used to provide artillery support for an invasion of South Korea or direct fire against Seoul itself. As of 1986, and estimated two hundred to five hundred HARTS were thought to exist.
According to a report by the Nautilus Institute, North Korea is also thought to have “radar sites in elevator shafts that can be raised up like a submarine periscope; submarine and missile patrol boat bases in tunnels hewn in rock; tunnels a kilometer or more in length for storing vehicles and supplies, or to hide the population of a nearby city.”
How would the United States and South Korea deal with these underground facilities in wartime? First, it would have to locate the facilities. These facilities are hard to spot via satellite, and gleaning information from defectors is perhaps the best way to learn about them in peacetime. Once war commences, signal intelligence will pick up radio transmissions from previously unknown underground locations, enemy troops will from concealed positions or tunnel entrances, and artillery counter-battery radars will fix the positions of HARTS. It is likely that, despite advance preparations, many of these positions will be a surprise to Washington and Seoul.
Once located, there are three ways of dealing with the sites. The first and safest way to deal with them is to bomb them from above. This presents the least risk to allied forces, but it will also prove difficult to determine whether air or artillery strikes have had good effect. The use of bombs or artillery shells may cause cave-ins that prevent allied forces from entering an underground complex and exploiting any intelligence found inside.
Another option is to simply station troops outside tunnels and shoot anyone who ventures outside. While also a safer option, an underground complex will always have multiple exits—the tunnels Kim Il-sung ordered his divisions to dig were to each have four or five exit points. The most thorough way to deal with the tunnels would be to enter them. This would be by far the most effective way to deal with regime holdouts, but also the most dangerous.
Pyongyang’s eventual defeat in any wartime scenario is a given, but its underground headquarters, fortifications and troop depots have the potential to not only enhance the Korean People’s Army’s ability to mount a surprise attack, but also to prolong the war, confounding the high-tech armed forces of its adversaries. Such underground shelters, wherever they are, will likely be the site of the endgame phase of the war, as the regime is driven underground by rapidly advancing allied forces. Only then will we discover the true extent of North Korea’s extensive underground empire.
DING DING DING and it seems there are still 2 missing boxes…
FNC: The Obama administration’s White House counsel was directly involved in deliberations over the release of Hillary Clinton emails as early as spring 2015, according to handwritten FBI agent notes released by the bureau late Friday.
The notes read: “Pat Kennedy (early May ’15) calls interagency MTG (meeting) re: scheduled release by JAN ’16, asking quick turnarounds – WH Counsel, CIA, etc…OSD, DNI, NSC and (redacted)”
The notes offer a raw account of the case from the perspective of FBI agents. Much of the content already had been documented in previously released FBI interview summaries, called 302s. The reference to “Counsel,” however, appears to be the earliest confirmation of White House involvement.
From the outset, the White House tried to put distance between itself and the former secretary of state’s personal email controversy. The records were also released to Judicial Watch which sued in federal court.
On March 7, 2015, then-President Barack Obama told CBS News that he learned about Clinton’s private server for government business from the media. “The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports,” he said. But an email sent from Clinton aide Cheryl Mills later that day, and published by WikiLeaks, shows she told Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta otherwise: “We need to clean this up. He has emails from her — they do not say state.gov.”
The newly released notes, from an interview with a State Department employee, also show how the department’s No. 3 at the time, Patrick Kennedy, tried to convince an FBI agent to change the classification of the Clinton emails, arguing they did not contain sensitive information. This was first reported by Fox News in September 2015, and later described in an FBI summary released last year as a “quid pro quo.”
At the time, Kennedy and the State Department denied the charge, which was credible.
The notes also cover how FBI agents were expecting 14 bankers boxes of Clinton emails from her lawyer’s firm Williams & Connolly, but only received 12, as Fox News reported in October. The two boxes have never been accounted for.
