Ted Cruz Putting DC and IRS Scandal on Notice

 

Sen. Cruz Asks DOJ to Preserve All IRS-Related Documents

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) preserve all Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents and information for investigation under the next administration. Sen. Cruz’s letter comes after the DOJ recently closed its investigation into improper targeting of conservative groups by the IRS.

“Make no mistake: the IRS’s targeting of ordinary citizens for their political viewpoints under this Administration is not a minor issue, and represents a significant breach of the public trust.  Even a casual observer of the IRS targeting scandal could not help but come to the conclusion that there is a strong appearance that the IRS, under this Administration’s political leadership, used the coercive tools available to the tax collection agency to harass people with conservative viewpoints,” Sen. Cruz wrote. “It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this Administration’s decisions to neither continue this investigation nor appoint a special prosecutor do not represent the conclusion of this matter.”

Sen. Cruz’s letter can be read in its entirety below and here.

November 2, 2015

The Honorable Loretta E. Lynch
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Attorney General Lynch:

I write today to strongly urge you, as head of the Department of Justice, to take specific steps to ensure that the Department preserves all of its Internal Revenue Service-related documents and information indefinitely.  This Administration’s recent announcement that it does not intend to conduct or allow an appropriate criminal investigation of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party and other conservative organizations has finally made it abundantly clear that the responsibility of ensuring a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation of IRS employees and their potential criminal conduct will fall to the next presidential administration, and relevant materials must be protected accordingly.

On Friday, October 23, the Department stated that it would end its investigation of the IRS and the personnel who were part of the agency’s well-documented targeting efforts, including the former director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Unit, Lois Lerner, who invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself during a 2013 congressional oversight hearing.   Presumably, this latest decision to abandon the investigation required your approval.  This decision also comes in the wake of at least two formal rejections by President Obama’s former Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., of requests for the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the investigation.

Bluntly stated, your decision is disappointing but also not surprising, and only confirms suspicions that the current Department is equipped to neither handle an appropriate investigation nor make appropriate judgments regarding existing conflicts of interest,  based on its failure to appoint a special prosecutor.  Despite numerous requests for a fair and impartial process, you, your predecessor, and this Administration generally have been dismissive of congressional and other calls for an appropriate accounting of the IRS’s abusive behavior.

Make no mistake: the IRS’s targeting of ordinary citizens for their political viewpoints under this Administration is not a minor issue, and represents a significant breach of the public trust.  Even a casual observer of the IRS targeting scandal could not help but come to the conclusion that there is a strong appearance that the IRS, under this Administration’s political leadership, used the coercive tools available to the tax collection agency to harass people with conservative viewpoints.  The little information that is available in the public domain about what happened at the IRS also makes it appear that laws, including criminal laws, may have been broken.

That said, as an attorney and former state law enforcement official, I am keenly aware that the facts of a case require objective, non-political review.  That is why I and others have been adamant about the need for the appointment of a special prosecutor, who would be appointed by the Administration in accordance with federal law and afforded the freedom and resources to conduct a thorough, fair, and impartial investigation and, if necessary, prosecution.

It is important for you and other officials in this Administration to understand that this Administration’s decisions to neither continue this investigation nor appoint a special prosecutor do not represent the conclusion of this matter.  Given this Administration’s refusal to conduct itself appropriately, or take the issue of the potential illegal conduct of IRS employees seriously, any subsequent administration should reserve the right to reopen the matter, conduct its own investigation, or appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation.

With that in mind, it is imperative that you, as Attorney General, take extraordinary steps to see to it that the Department preserves all the documents and materials in its possession in relation to its evaluation of the IRS’s targeting efforts, as well as everything in its possession used to evaluate the potential criminal activity of IRS employees.  This request for extraordinary preservation steps is unfortunately necessary, given this Administration’s poor track record for recordkeeping.

I will also take this moment to remind you, your fellow political appointees within the Department, and any other Department employees, advisors, or contractors that destruction of any of the requested documents or information could subject those responsible for such destruction to criminal prosecution in the future.   I have previously warned Treasury and IRS officials that such consequences could also result for any such destruction of records within their control, and those warnings stand.  One’s position as a past or present federal employee does not afford immunity from the federal criminal justice system.  It is my hope that a future administration would pursue justified prosecutions with all due energy.

In accordance with the above, I would request that the Department engage in the following preservation efforts, effective immediately:

1.Preserve all paper-based documents, e-mail-based communications, e-mail-based calendar appointments, electronic documents, electronic communications (including voicemails, SMS (i.e., text) messages, and instant messages), and all other electronic data regardless of format, created since January 1, 2010, that:

a. Are records, regardless of content, that were originally produced or possessed by the IRS or any of its employees, contractors, subcontractors, grantees, subgrantees, or consultants;

b. Are communications, regardless of author, source, or content, that in any way address the IRS or any of its past or current employees; and

c. Include or reference the names Douglas Shulman, John Koskinen, Lois Lerner, William Wilkins, Holly Paz, Judy Kindell, and/or Carter Hull, or any versions of these names, including initials or nicknames.

For the purposes of this request, “preserve” means taking any and all reasonable steps to prevent the partial or full destruction, alteration, overwriting, formatting, deletion, shredding, incineration, wiping, relocation, migration, theft, revision, or mutation of electronic and non-electronic documents, records, and logs, as well as negligent or intentional handling that would make such records incomplete or inaccessible.

2. Exercise any and all reasonable efforts to identify and notify former Department employees, contractors, subcontractors, grantees, subgrantees, and consultants who may have access to such electronic or non-electronic records that these records are also to be preserved.

3. If it is a practice of the Department, any Department component, any federal employee, any contract employee, any grantee or subgrantee, or any consultant to destroy or otherwise alter such electronic or non-electronic records, either halt such practices immediately, or arrange for the preservation of complete and accurate duplicates or copies of such records, suitable for production if requested.

I am also requesting that the Department make additional arrangements with both the Department’s Inspector General and the Archivist of the United States for them to receive copies of all such records.

Please provide a detailed update regarding your efforts to coordinate with the Inspector General and the Archivist no later than 5:00 p.m. on Monday, November 9, 2015.

I look forward to your cooperation.  Please contact Committee staff at (202) 224-5225 if you have any additional questions about these requirements.

Sincerely,

Ted Cruz
Chairman
Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action,
Federal Rights and Federal Courts

Cc:
The Honorable Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Senate Committee on the Judiciary

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on the Judiciary

The Honorable Christopher A. Coons
Ranking Member
Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action,
Federal Rights and Federal Courts

The Honorable James Comey
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Department of Justice

The Honorable Michael E. Horowitz
Inspector General
Office of the Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice

The Honorable David S. Ferriero
Archivist of the United States
National Archives and Records Administration

Gary M. Stern
General Counsel
National Archives and Records Administration

The Honorable Jack Lew<
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Treasury

The Honorable John Koskinen
Commissioner
Internal Revenue Service

2 Items: Clinton Corruption Continues

Clinton Foundation Organization Will Not Refile Tax Returns Despite Mistakes

FreeBeacon: An organization created by the Clinton Foundation is not going to refile its tax returns after failing to comply with a conflict-of-interest pledge despite reportedly promising to do so when the mistakes were revealed earlier this year.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which was spun off from the foundation in 2010, did not solicit a State Department ethics review of multiple contributions from foreign governments as mandated by a conflict-of-interest pledge established before Hillary Clinton assumed the role of secretary of state in 2009. A CHAI representative told Reuters in April that the organization was planning to refile its 2012 and 2013 tax returns.

However, Politico reported Monday that the same representative insists that the organization never promised to refile the forms and will not do so.

“Contrary to what was reported, CHAI has consistently stated that they would conduct a review process to determine whether the transposition errors required a refiling,” CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley stated. “After conducting the review, the transpositional errors made had no material impact and we do not believe a refiling is required.”

The organization, which provides cheaper drugs for individuals with HIV worldwide, has previously refiled its returns for 2010 and 2011, having initially over-reported grants from governments by upwards of $100 million. CHAI received about $45 million in government grants in 2012 and $56 million in 2013, according to tax returns for those years.

The broader Clinton Foundation was also found in April to have made errors related to the conflict-of-interest pledge by failing to report funds it received from foreign and U.S. governments. The foundation said in April that it would have an external review conducted of its tax returns from 2010, 2011, and 2012 and “likely” refile forms.

“We have said that after a voluntary external review is completed we will likely refile forms for some years,”then-acting CEO and senior Vice President Maura Pally said in an April statement shortly after Clinton announced her presidential bid.

“We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them, and have taken steps to ensure they don’t happen in the future. We are committed to operating the foundation responsibly and effectively to continue the life-changing work that this philanthropy is doing every day.”

Pally also reiterated the foundation’s “commitment to transparency.”

Bill Clinton On Leadership Board Of Presidential Debate Commission

DailyCaller: A conflict of interest could be afoot at the Commission on Presidential Debates if Hillary Clinton gets the Democratic presidential nomination. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, is an honorary chairman on the commission leadership board.

Republican primary campaigns just finished a confab in Alexandria, Va. discussing how to better improve the debates among themselves, but the bipartisan commission handles details of general election debates between the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees.

The other Democrat who is an honorary chair is former president Jimmy Carter. The only two former Republican presidents who served as honorary chairmen of the commission, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, are deceased. It is unclear, however, how Carter and Clinton function in these roles.

Additionally, considering Jeb Bush’s run for the presidency, if it is an issue of simply lending one’s name to a board and not participating in any process, it is unknown why both former presidents George W. Bush and his father George H.W. Bush are not included as honorary chairs.

“The general is a completely different issue. It’s not part of [the primary debate discussion] at all. My guess is there will be change in the general election debates too. I think the commission has highlighted that too,” Ben Ginsburg, GOP lawyer and current liaison between the Republican primary campaigns and network sponsors told The Daily Caller Sunday night. “I think the Annenberg working group talked about a lot of different options in the general election debates and it will ultimately be left up to the candidates and the nominees to decide.”

The commission is no stranger to controversy. Groups have complained about how moderators are chosen and how much time networks spend lobbying campaigns to get their stars chosen as moderators, Politico points out.

In 2012, Republicans were angry when CNN’s Candy Crowley attempted to fact check GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the middle of the debate over his calling out President Obama’s description of the Benghazi attack.

Additionally, conservatives are distrustful over the Republicans who served on the commission during the last election cycle. The Commission added six new members last year including: former Senator Olympia Snowe, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Leon Panetta, a former Clinton and later Obama administration official.

 

 

Obama’s New Executive Action: Ban the Box

In part from Officer.com: The federal Bureau of Prisons plans to release 6,000 prisoners at the end of October, implementing a decision last year to slash the number of incarcerated drug offenders by nearly half.

Officials said the nationwide releases over four days starting Oct. 30 will be the largest in U.S. history.

Last year, in line with a concerted effort by the Obama administration to reduce the number of drug offenders in U.S. prisons, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to cut drug sentences by an average of two years, potentially affecting as many as 46,000 of 100,000 cases.

In the coming year, an additional 8,550 prisoners will be eligible for release, according to Sentencing Commission spokesman Matt Osterrieder, though he said that not all of them will be approved.

What are employers supposed to do to vet applicants especially in positions where a clean background is required, something like banking, retail or any position for that matter where integrity and morality is centric to employment? Well…there is always Facebook, where employers are presently using social media platforms to determine history, friends, associates and even political bias.

Further, presidential executive orders are designed for exclusive use of operating government, yet with Barack Obama and this mission of his, he is injecting his policies into private enterprise. There must be legal challenges to this new ‘protected class’ operation which is common in the Obama administration, as we clearly know foreign illegals are a proven protected class.

HuffPo:WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a series of measures designed to reduce obstacles facing former prisoners reintegrating into society, including an executive action directing federal employers to delay asking questions about a job applicant’s criminal history until later in the application process.

Many states, cities and private employers have already taken steps to “ban the box,” which refers to the checkbox on employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime. However, some federal employers and contractors still ask the question. Obama’s executive action will apply to federal employers, but not to contractors.

Hillary joins Barack Obama on this same objective calling it ‘racial profiling’. This is all yet another misguided social engineering plan to reform the criminal justice system, where law enforcement, district attorneys and judges don’t seem to get any opportunity to voice their respective positions.

Obama to announce executive actions to help prisoners rejoin society

Plans for current and former inmates include education and housing efforts and a push to remove criminal-background questions from job applications

Barack Obama will announce a series of executive actions to help current and former prisoners re-enter society on Monday, as the president continues his campaign to wind down the war on drugs and reform a “broken” system.

Obama’s plans include millions of dollars in education grants for current prisoners, new policies to help former inmates find housing, a “clean slate clearing house” to help former prisoners clear their records where possible, and a call to Congress to “ban the box” – the space on a job application that asks about criminal backgrounds.

Obama is expected to unveil the plans at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, the hometown of Democratic senator Cory Booker, one of the leaders of a bipartisan push for criminal justice reform.

The president has for months toured the nation in a loose campaign for reform, visiting police in Chicago, the NAACP in Philadelphia, and inmates in Oklahoma. On Saturday, he again raised the issue in his weekly address, saying: “We know that having millions of people in the criminal justice system, without any ability to find a job after release, is unsustainable.”

There are 2.2m people incarcerated in federal and state prisons around the US, roughly 20% of the world’s total number of imprisoned people. The number ballooned in the decades of the “war on drugs”, in particular due to “tough on crime” laws enacted during the 1990s.

Obama’s latest push for reform coincides with the early release of several thousand federal prisoners this past weekend. About 6,000 drug offenders were granted early releases thanks to policy changes by the US Sentencing Commission, which made the revisions retroactive last year. Judges then reviewed tens of thousands of applications, with the 6,000 federal prisoners the first to receive early release.

But despite the push for reducing mandatory minimum sentences – often seen as a major cause of mass incarceration over minor crimes – reform advocates around the country have called for more attention for former prisoners. About 650,000 inmates are released every year, and many return to an alien, hostile America facing bars to housing and employment and with little to their names. More here.

Can FBI Investigate the Director of CIA over Private Emails?

There have been countless top agency people within the Obama administration that have violated law, procedures and even a White House directive regarding use of private emails and violations of communications security and operational security.

First we came to know about Lisa Jackson, Secretary of the EPA, then there was Eric Holder himself, while he was the top lawyer at the Department of Justice. Hillary and her server operation made an art of violating all protocols, but now John Brennan appears to be the next one in line where the FBI needs to open an investigation case. Is that possible? Has anyone asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about his use of private emails? How about a massive campaign where every administration official has to sign a compliance document, then take a polygraph, then be terminated for violations? Imagine…..just imagine the fallout. If for nothing else, these people should lose their respective security clearances, this is dereliction of duty and malfeasance, much less a violation of Oath.

Hackers release info on Obama’s national security transition team

by: Aaron Boyd 

The slow drip of information allegedly stolen from CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account continues to find its way onto WikiLeaks, with a list of personal information about 20 members of President Obama’s transition team added to the leak in the most recent post on Oct. 26.

The list — which includes names, personal emails, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and more — was originally posted to Twitter by user @_CWA_ on Oct. 19, however the account was quickly suspended and the post removed.

After the Twitter account was shut down, “Crackas With Attitude” — the duo claiming to have perpetrated the hack — began slowly posting the information to WikiLeaks. The third and latest dump came on Oct. 26, including the list and the dossier of a FBI agent in the counterterrorism division.

The list posted Monday mostly includes names of former intelligence and national security officials, some of whom served under President George W. Bush and some who served or currently serve under President Barack Obama, including Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

The names have something else in common, as well.

All of the people listed were part of the Obama administration’s transition team, with most of them serving on the National Security Team. The team members listed covered the Defense Department, DHS, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Only three names advised on other aspects of the transition but Federal Times confirmed that everyone whose information was exposed served in some capacity.

The document was created (or most recently updated) on Nov. 16, 2008, according to the associated metadata.

The breadth of the release is minor compared to the high-profile breach of the Office of Personnel Management last year but the implications are still serious, especially as this information was released publicly on the Internet.

“It’s a pretty serious proposition to have any of that information out there,” said Marcus Christian, a former federal prosecutor and current partner with the law firm of Mayer Brown’s cybersecurity and data privacy practice.

While the perpetrators reportedly used social engineering to trick a helpline support employee into changing Brennan’s account password, the subsequent exfiltration of data and postings online still constitute a cyber crime, Christian said.

“Often times we look to the technological solution [for cybersecurity] but often times the problem — no matter how intricate and hardened we think our technology happens to be — there’s always some weakness,” he said, including the human element.

If the perpetrators are caught, Christian expects they could be prosecuted under a combination of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and federal Aggravated Identity Theft statutes, with the latter carrying a two-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Hillary’s Top Security Clearance Status in Question

While the FBI is performing a robust investigation on Hillary’s servers, emails and communications that include her inner circle of people, no one is publically asking about her present security clearance status. Consider the following facts and then question whether she should even has any clearance.

  1. There were emails between Hillary Clinton, the White House and Barack Obama himself. The White House has said they were aware of Hillary’s use of a private email but not her use of a covert communications server. Consequently, the White House is fully protecting all communications between Hillary and the White House until after Mr. Obama leaves office. There are legal challenges to this underway.
  2. Hillary was derelict and forgetful when it came to securing classified material at her office at Foggy Bottom. Classified material must be protected at all times and comply with protocol and procedures.
  3. Hillary and Susan Rice were warned NOT to use the excuse of the video, 2 days before Susan Rice trotted out to the 5 Sunday morning talk shows as there was no evidence the video played any role in the Benghazi attack.
  4. Per the House Committee on Benghazi and the CIA: “CIA Head: ‘Analysts Never Said the Video was a Factor in the Benghazi Attacks’.

There is more, but at this point, continue with the question, if Hillary has top security clearance, the objective must be to have it terminated. If Hillary does not have top security clearance at this point as she has been gone from the State Department since 2013, she should be forced to apply again if she becomes the Democratic nominee for President. Then given the existing facts and those that come from the FBI investigation, she should not be granted this clearance status, thus preventing her completely from holding the office of President in totality.

There was also a trail of communications that prove complete disdain of Israel by not only the White House but by Hillary’s State Department internal officials and those of her outer and more clandestine circle of advisors beginning in 2009.

Click here for that particular email.

For perspective and for some context as to the willful and derelict attitude and culture was at Hillary’s State Department, a handful of emails most recently released tell the story.

From Politico: (in part)

A White House official declined to say whether any of the Obama-Clinton emails related to Libya. If so, the White House’s position could cause an executive privilege clash with Congress, since the House Benghazi Committee subpoenaed all Clinton emails related to Benghazi in March of this year.

The new release of Clinton emails — the largest batch of messages made public since State began posting the messages online to comply with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — revealed more about Clinton’s knowledge of embassy security issues and provided a window into lighter moments like Clinton being instructed in the use of emojis.

Friday’s document release is the sixth of its kind and with it, more than half of the messages Clinton turned over to the agency from her private email account and server have now been made public. In the new batch, State deemed 268 emails classified at the lowest classification tier, according to spokesman John Kirby, who said that none of these emails “were marked classified at the time they were sent or received.” There are now between 600 and 700 emails newly marked as classified since the releases began in May.

Clinton, who has been battling the controversy regarding her exclusive use of a private email account and homebrew server during her tenure at Foggy Bottom, has contended that no emails on her account were marked as classified at the time she received them.

The emails released on Friday were sent and received largely during 2011 and 2012, with additional messages from 2009 and 2010 that were not part of previous batches.

Many of the early messages reflect difficulty coordinating between Clinton’s team and the White House. In April 2009, then-National Security Council communications adviser Denis McDonough apologized after senior State officials were left out of the loop on White House announcements about Armenia and Sri Lanka. Clinton told aides she had “forcefully” complained and asked a colleague to show “a little sternness” in confronting the White House about the snubs.

In one message in May 2011, Clinton vented to a longtime friend that not even “the allure of Mother Moon in all her glory” could impress Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Longtime Clinton friend Sid Blumenthal, who frequently gave advice that Clinton said was unsolicited, also offered up in May his analysis of the upcoming November 2010 election, making reference to Rand Paul, then a candidate for Kentucky Senate.

“In the short-term, post-May 18 primaries, the splits within the GOP need to be highlighted; the takeover by extremist forces emphasized; the rejection of traditional Republicans within their own party stressed; and the economic consequences of the extremists—not least now, the gift of Rand Paul, the Republicans’ new spokesman on the scene—who would shut down Social Seucrity [sic], Medicare, student scholarships, and the interstate highway system—constantly targeted as a threat to economic recovery. Run, Rand, run!” he wrote in a memo marked “CONFIDENTIAL.”

In another email chain, Clinton expressed hesitance about the protocol of helping out a famous friend. She received at least three emails from chief of staff Cheryl Mills pertaining to a request from a former ambassador asking the secretary of state to lobby for composer Marvin Hamlisch to receive Kennedy Center honors. Clinton, noted Fay Hartog Levin, was a friend and fan of the musician.

After the ambassador followed up again to see about a letter or a call, Mills asked Clinton her thoughts.

“Sure. I’ll do, but didn’t know that was appropriate. Can you ask Ann Stock. I’d like to support him in best way possible,” she wrote.

Hamlisch died in August 2012, four months after the exchange.

Clinton also got a crash course in emojis. “Here’s my question: on this new berry can I get smiley faces?” Clinton asked senior adviser Philippe Reines.

“For email, no, I don’t think so – you need to type them out manually like 🙂 for happy, or :-I I if you want to express anger at my tardiness,” Reines wrote, after his initial email apologizing for keeping her waiting.

Reines pointed out that for texting, “the chart might be there in the lower right, next to where you type the message.”

“If it’s not, I THINK that if you type 🙂 it MIGHT automatically convert it into a symbol. Try it,” he told the secretary of state.

Another email shows Clinton getting briefed on embassy security issues, despite her contention at last week’s House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing that she did not directly deal with security matters.

When Republicans tried to buttonhole Clinton because State declined numerous requests for additional security at the Benghazi compound that was later over-run, Clinton largely waved them off. Those requests for more protection, she argued several times that day, went to people who deal with security — not her, personally.

One email from April 23, 2009, however, shows top State aide Huma Abedin updating Clinton on a few embassy security issues. In a series of bullet points sent to “H2” at 8:34 a.m., Abedin listed steps State was taking to secure Afghanistan and Pakistan embassies, including “increasing the number of hooches, and doubling up staff in lodging.”
“[W]e need to improve the security perimeter — acquiring property adjacent to our current facilities in Kabul, which is now difficult to secure,” one bullet reads. “Long-term, we need embassies in these countries adequate to serve the mission. It’s not so long ago our Embassy in Islamabad was torched; we need a facility which is structurally sound. In Kabul, we need facilities adequate to size the mission needed.”

It was not clear, though, if Clinton responded to the email or followed up in any other way.

Another newly released Libya email forwarded to Clinton and her top policy staffer Jake Sullivan, dated about a year before the Benghazi attack, warned of Islamist threats in Libya that could turn eventually pose a serious danger. State Department policy planning official Andrew Miller sent Sullivan a memo warning that once Qaddafi was ousted, Islamist groups that had focused their energy on canning the brutal dictator could turn their attention elsewhere and become violent.

“Once operations against Qadhafi and the regime are wrapped up, this force for unity is likely to dissipate,” Miller wrote. Sullivan forwarded the memo to Clinton, who asked her staff to “pls print.” “It is at this point that militias, including the Islamists, will probably abandon caution and pursue a more aggressive campaign for power, perhaps including violence.”

Clinton emerged from last Thursday’s high-stakes, marathon 11-hour Benghazi committee hearing with her campaign and messaging intact. However, Clinton is not out of the woods as far as potential new discoveries in the email controversy that has dogged her campaign. Beyond the other thousands of emails that the State Department has yet to publicly release, there are myriad Freedom of Information Act lawsuits seeking the release of emails from not only Clinton but also her top aides, and at least two other Senate committees are probing Clinton’s email setup.

Additionally, the FBI is probing Clinton’s email arrangement to determine whether sensitive materials were mishandled, and investigators have reportedly successfully recovered some of the messages Clinton’s aides deleted from her server because they deemed them private.

In an interview in March, Obama said he was not aware of Clinton’s email arrangement until news reports about it emerged earlier this year. However, White House spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged a short time later that Obama had exchanged emails with Clinton on her account, but was not aware that she had no official account and exclusively used her private one during her time as America’s top diplomat.

When producing records to the House Benghazi Committee, the State Department has repeatedly acknowledged that it was holding back a “small” number of documents that implicate “important executive branch confidentiality interests.” However, a New York Times report Friday was the first to make clear the Obama Administration is taking such a tack with respect to the Obama-Clinton messages.

While the White House seems eager to avoid asserting executive privilege over the Obama-Clinton messages, it may have little choice but to do so if it wants to protect them from disclosure. All of Clinton’s emails have been requested in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Vice News. Lawyers said State will eventually have to account for all of those messages and identify a basis for any deletions or omissions. In that context, the Justice Department is likely to assert a version of executive privilege called the “presidential communications privilege.”

The White House could try to argue that the Clinton-Obama messages are not subject to FOIA at all, but that would be an aggressive stance that lawyers who fight for government transparency are sure to resist.

“I would take the view that the copy that is in Obama’s email account at the White House is a presidential record and the copy that went to Hillary Clinton and was maintained on her email server is a State Department record subject to the Federal Records Act and FOIA,” said Scott Nelson of Public Citizen Litigation Group.

Ultimately, the courts are unlikely to force the release of the contents of the Clinton-Obama exchanges through FOIA, although details about who was on the email chains and when they were exchanged will probably emerge in the coming months. Nelson noted that the substance of the messages will probably come out through Obama’s presidential library before they would be accessible under FOIA. Presidential records detailing advice to a president are usually subject to release 12 years after he leaves office.

“You might get access to the presidential records one sooner than the FOIA one,” Nelson said.

Congress could also press for the emails, but if they don’t relate to Libya or Benghazi, it’s unclear which committee would do so. A Hill subpoena could force Obama to formally assert executive privilege over the records, as it did in a House committee’s showdown with Attorney General Eric Holder over records relating to the government’s response to the Operation Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal.