Taxpayers are on the hook for this malfeasance and dereliction of duty and reckless behavior, so the entire bill as it accumulates needs to be paid by Hillary. Ever wonder why she did this? My bet is to keep from responding to Freedom of Information Act requests and to keep information from the White House…cant prove but she has a history of being cunning.
It is time for a special prosecutor, voters…DEMAND IT
Washington (CNN)Employees at the company that maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email server expressed concern among themselves about the way the former secretary of state’s team directed them to manage data backups after the FBI started looking into the arrangements, according to emails obtained by a senator.
In a letter obtained by CNN, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, asks Datto, Inc, the makers of Clinton’s server back-up system, for information on how her emails were preserved and protected. The FBI has also sought information from the company, according to sources.
Johnson indicates that a “Clinton family company,” Clinton Executive Service Corp., paid for the back-up services, operated through a device called the Datto SIRIS S2000, and that the purchase was made by Platte River Networks when the server was moved from her private residence to a New Jersey-based data center in 2013.
7 photos: Hillary Clinton email controversy
In the letter, Johnson quotes from emails sent by and to employees at Platte River Networks, which indicate there was discussion about how the duration of data backups could be reduced, apparently at the direction of the Clinton Executive Service Corp.
Clinton on emails: ‘It is a drip-drip-drip’
Then this past August, a Platte River Networks employee wrote to a coworker that he was, “Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy (sic) s**t.”
“I just think if we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups, and that we can go public with our statement saying we have backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30days (sic), it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” the unnamed employee continued.
The email was sent shortly after news emerged that the FBI was looking into the security of the server, and several months after it was revealed that Clinton exclusively used the private account to conduct State Department business.
The employee indicates in the email that Clinton’s team asked them to change the back-up duration between October and February, presumably of 2014/2015, though that isn’t explicitly stated in the portion of the email included in Johnson’s letter.
Clinton’s email controversy explained
In a statement Wednesday morning, the Clinton campaign accused Johnson of “ripping a page from the House Benghazi Committee’s playbook and mounting his own, taxpayer-funded sham of an investigation with the sole purpose of attacking Hillary Clinton politically.”
“The Justice Department’s independent review is led by nonpolitical, career professionals, and Ron Johnson has no business interfering with it for his own partisan ends,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in the statement.
The committee did not share any of the emails with CNN, but excerpts and descriptions from them are printed in Johnson’s letter.
Emails sent between Datto and Platte River Networks during that time indicate there was confusion about where the backed-up data would be stored, and for a while it was backed-up to an off-site Datto server, apparently against the wishes of Clinton staff.
When Platte River Networks became aware of the off-site syncing issue, they contacted Datto and discussed how they could retrieve that data for storage on-site, according to Johnson’s letter.
“Despite these communications, it is unclear whether or not this course of action was followed,” Johnson said. “Additionally,questions still remain as to whether Datto actually transferred the data from its off-site datacenter to the on-site server, what data was backed up and whether Datto wiped the data after it was transferred.”
Johnson wrote to Datto seeking more information about their dealings with Platte River Networks and Clinton Executive Service Corp.
Johnson also asked the company to say whether Datto is authorized to store classified information, and whether any employees at the company have security clearances that would allow them to view classified information.
FBI seizes four State Department servers in Clinton email probe
The FBI has seized four State Department computer servers as part of its probe into how classified information was compromised on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email system, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The four servers, which were located at the State Department’s headquarters building, were seized by the FBI several weeks ago. They are being checked by technical forensic analysts charged with determining how Top Secret material was sent to Clinton’s private email by State Department aides during her tenure as secretary from 2009 to 2013, said two people familiar with the probe. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing investigation.
State Department spokesman John Kirby referred questions about the computer servers to the FBI. An FBI spokeswoman, Carol Cratty, declined to comment.
No other details about the servers, including whether they are part of the department’s classified system, or used for unclassified information networks, could be learned.
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not respond to an email request for comment.
Clinton has offered varying explanations for her use of a private email server, initially claiming she had done nothing wrong. Then, under pressure from critics, she said she was sorry people were confused by the practice, later admitting in early September that her use of a private email system had been a mistake.
The State Department uses two separate networks, one for classified information and one for unclassified information. The two networks are kept separate for security reasons. Most classified networks are equipped with audit systems that allow security managers to check who has accessed intelligence or foreign policy secrets.
The FBI is trying to determine the origin of the highly classified information that was found in Clinton emails.
However, the task is said to be complicated because those with authority to create classified information have broad authority to label information in one of three categories: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret.
The FBI is primarily concerned with trying to determine how Top Secret information made its way on to the private server.
Chris Farrell, an investigator with the public interest legal group Judicial Watch, said the State Department has been reluctant to describe the nature of its computer networks as some of the 16 Freedom of Information Act lawsuits the group has filed make their way through the courts.
Farrell said in an interview that the department also has been unwilling to say whether the private email system, used by Clinton and close aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, should be considered an official State Department network covered by FOIA laws.
Farrell said the seizure of the four State Department servers is likely part of the forensic investigation underway by the FBI into hardware used by Clinton and her aides to send email to the private server.
“In the midst of what I believe to be a forensic examination of the hardware that [Clinton lawyer David] Kendall surrendered on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, any serious national security investigation would seek to track all emails inbound and outbound,” Farrell said. “If they are doing that tracking of email since she was secretary of state, then they would be looking at any email that could have crossed into a State server.”
The servers were part of the State Department bureau of information resource management.
The bureau helps the department “to successfully carry out its foreign policy mission by applying modern IT tools, approaches, systems, and information products.”
In addition to improving efforts of “transparent, interconnected diplomacy,” the bureau is “focused on enhancing security for the department’s computer and communications systems.”
The FBI probe of State Department servers is the latest disclosure on the criminal investigation into the private Clinton email server that has embroiled the leading Democratic presidential candidate for several months.
The FBI took possession of Clinton’s private email server last summer after classified information was found in some of the more than 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department.
The investigation began after I. Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, reported to Congress Aug. 11 that Clinton’s private emails included some highly classified information labeled “Top Secret//SI/TK//Noforn.” Information classified at that level is deemed by the government to be very sensitive, requiring strong security protections because its compromise would cause grave damage to U.S. national security.
The politics surrounding the probe prompted FBI Director James Comey to tell reporters last week that the bureau will not be influenced by politics.
“One of the main reasons I have a 10-year term is to make sure that this organization stays outside of politics, and if you know my folks, you know that they don’t give a whit about politics,” Comey said, adding that the FBI has devoted sufficient resources and personnel so that the Clinton email probe can be completed in a timely way.
Those remarks were the first official confirmation of the investigation.
The State Department contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David E. Kendall, seeking additional emails that were not part of the more than 30,000 emails provided to the department earlier, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday.
The private email server was discovered by the legal public interest group Judicial Watch in late 2014 after the State Department informed the group that it had discovered a new tranche of records. Judicial Watch currently has at least 16 lawsuits related to State Department and other government records.
The email server material then became the focus of House investigators looking into Clinton’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi in 2012.
The House investigation of the Benghazi attack was attacked by Clinton this week after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), the frontrunner to be the next House speaker, said the Benghazi probe was part of a political effort to diminish Clinton’s presidential prospects.
Clinton seized on the comments in a New Hampshire town hall meeting this week.
Asked if she would have investigated a member of a Republican administration amid charges of improperly using a personal email account and server, Clinton said, “I would never have done that.”
“Look at the situation they chose to exploit to go after me for political reasons, the death of four Americans in Benghazi,” she continued.
In a sign of increasing worries about the probe at the Clinton campaign, the New York Post reported that an unidentified legal aide to Clinton has advised her to hire a criminal defense lawyer.
The number of communications regarded as classified is about 400, according to the latest State Department release of emails. Three of the new emails released last month were marked secret, including emails relating to Iranian nuclear talks.
Security analysts have voiced concerns that foreign hackers may have breached the private email server.
One theory is that Clinton aides who were cleared for access to national security secrets first read classified reports on State Department information system and then “gisted” the material into private emails for Clinton.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told the New York Times that none of the candidate’s aides had mishandled classified information.
“She and her team took the handling of classified information very seriously, and at home and abroad she communicated with others via secure phone, cable, and in meetings in secure settings,” Merrill said.
The State Department has confirmed to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) in a related development that Clinton currently holds a security clearance for Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information, the highest-level security clearance.
The department said Clinton’s clearance was “revalidated” after she left office in 2013 and was done so as part of a standard practice allowing former high-ranking officials to be granted access to secrets.
Critics in Congress have called for Clinton’s clearance to be revoked based on the compromises involved in her use of the private email system.
