Russia Is Reportedly Set To Release Clinton’s Intercepted Emails
Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.
The reports indicated that the decision as to whether to reveal the intercepts would be made by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, and it was possible that the release would, if made, be through a third party, such as Wikileaks. The apparent message from Moscow, through the intelligence community, seemed to indicate frustration with the pace of the official U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the so-called server scandal, which seemed to offer prima facie evidence that U.S. law had been violated by Mrs Clinton’s decision to use a private server through which to conduct official and often highly-secret communications during her time as Secretary of State. U.S. sources indicated that the extensive Deptartment of Justice probe was more focused on the possibility that the private server was used to protect messaging in which Secretary Clinton allegedly discussed quid pro quo transactions with private donors to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for influence on U.S. policy.
The Russian possession of the intercepts, however, was designed also to show that, apart from violating U.S. law in the fundamental handling of classified documents (which Sec. Clinton had alleged was no worse than the mishandling of a few documents by CIA Director David Petraeus or Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger), the traffic included highly-classified materials which had their classification headers stripped. Russian (and other) sources had indicated frustration with the pace of the Justice Dept. probe, and its avoidance of the national security aspects of intelligence handling. This meant that the topic would be suppressed by the U.S. Barack Obama Administration so that it would not be a factor in the current U.S. Presidential election campaign, in which President Obama had endorsed Mrs Clinton.
Moscow’s discreet messaging about a possible leak of the traffic, in time to impact the U.S. elections, was designed to pressure faster U.S. legal action on the matter, but was largely due to Russian concerns about possible U.S. strategic policy in the event of a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Apart from the breach of U.S. Federal law in the handling of classified material, the Clinton private server was, according to GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs analysts, always likely to have been a primary target for foreign cyber warfare interception operations, particularly those of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, and North Korea (DPRK), but probably also by others, including Iran.
EXCLUSIVE: Cryptic NY Filing Reveals Clinton Foundation’s Millions In Foreign Donations
DCCallerNewsFoundation: Clinton Foundation officials used an obscure New York state charity board filing amendment to disclose that the non-profit received $17.7 million in donations from foreign governments while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
The specific foreign governments involved and the particular amounts they each gave were not disclosed on the document, entitled “Exhibit A” and filed to the public charity division operated by New York Attorney General Eric Schneidermann, a Democrat. The money was given between 2010 and 2013 when Clinton was America’s chief diplomat.
The amended document included a line that was present in November 2015 when the foundation announced revised federal tax filings for the four years. The line added in January 2016 said: “All other government grants came from foreign governments” with a total figure for each of the four years that equalled $17.7 million.
The foreign donations are still not listed on the financial portion of the foundation’s web site despite a claim in November by the non-profit’s president, Donna Shalala, that “there is nothing to suggest that the foundation intended to conceal the receipt of government grants, which we report on our website.”
Criticism of the the latest revelation concerning Clinton Foundation tax returns came from across the ideological spectrum.
Leslie Lenkowski, an expert on philanthropy who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1993 as a founding director of the Corporation for National and Community Service, a government-operated volunteer organization, told TheDCNF that the Clinton Foundation was “an appearance of a conflict of interest waiting to happen.”
President George W. Bush later appointed Lenkowski to also serve as CEO of the corporation in 2001.
Similarly Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, which grades and ranks the financial disclosures of charities, said her group expects more transparency, not less from non-profits.
“I think more transparency is better than less and this is an issue that the public is questioning. Yeah, they should make it a point to be more transparent about it and share that information,” she told TheDCNF.
Former U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova told TheDCNF that the foundation’s failure to break out foreign government donations specifically was part of an effort to “protect” Clinton while she headed the Department of State.
“There is no doubt that the foundation purposely refused to make public certain things as a way of protecting the Secretary of State during her tenure,” DiGenova charged. “The entire process to hide information from the public is completely inconsistent with a public charity.”
DiGenova predicted that “the new revelations will up the ante for the FBI. This will just add fodder to the ongoing investigation.” The former federal prosecutor also doubted that the $18 million figure was accurate.
“There is no reason to believe that the $18 million figure is complete,” he said, citing the “unreliability” of past foundation accountings. “It may very well be much, much more.”
Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the Washington, D.C. law office of Foley & Lardner LLP who frequently represents conservative nonprofits, slammed the Clintons for “their determination to disguise what they are doing.”
The New York filings also were unusual in that the latest foundation submission constituted a third “official” revised version of the Clinton Foundation’s financial statements for those years.
Clinton officials last November publicly issued a second revision to their Internal Revenue Service form 990 filings that covered the same four years.
At the time, foundation officials revealed at least 29 separate “amendments,” including new revenue numbers and income from Clinton speaking engagements. But foundation officials did not list dollar amounts from foreign government donations.
During Clinton’s tenure at State, the foundation operated in at least 29 countries, including places that contained rampant corruption such as Nigeria, Uganda, Ukraine, Haiti, Mozambique, China and South Africa.
The amended Exhibit A also revealed how foreign government gifts vastly overshadowed domestic government contributions during her State Department tenure.
In the foundation’s revised 2010 filing, $7.8 million of $8.8 million in all government grants originated from foreign governments, according to the exhibit. In 2011, $2 million of the $3 million were foreign donations.
In 2012, $3.5 million came from foreign governments while only $300,000 came from domestic government sources. And in 2013, nearly 100 percent of the $4.4 million of the government donations came from overseas governments. Only $23,000 came from U.S. government entities, according to the exhibit.
The disclosures likely will fuel charges by presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who claims Clinton turned her secretaryship into a huge “hedge fund” where “the Russians, the Saudis and the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return.” Trump demanded that the foundation return $25 million from the Saudis.
Clinton defended the foundation but admitted last week in a Politico interview that in “one or two instances” some foreign donations aiming to influence her office may have “slipped through the cracks.”
A 2008 Memorandum of Understanding between the Clinton Foundation and Valerie Jarrett, then-vice-chairwoman of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team attempted to limit and in some instances to ban foreign government to the Clinton Foundation and its many projects.
The FBI currently has two criminal investigations involving Clinton and the foundation, with one focused on her use of a private email server located in her New York home to conduct official diplomatic business instead of a secure government communication channel.
The second investigation is focused on allegations of “pay-to-play” efforts in which Clinton traded policy or other official actions in return for contributions by foreign donors to the foundation.
DiGenova and Mitchell were also critical of Schneidermann for his inaction on the foundation’s filing.
“One has to wonder what the New York State Attorney General is doing,” DiGenova said. “He’s a very partisan Democrat. And it is readily apparent that he intends to do nothing about the Clinton Foundation.”
Mitchell agreed, saying “the Attorney General of New York has a statutory and fiduciary responsibility to conduct an investigation into the Clinton Foundation to determine whether this entity is engaged in fulfilling its charitable mission.”
Neither the Clinton Foundation nor Schneidermann responded to TheDCNF’s request for comment.
