Taxpayer $’s Paid for the Clinton Server(s) and Bed Bug Problems

Posted on September 1, 2016September 1, 2016 by Denise Simon

This is going to be a long item but stick with it and you will learn some disgusting facts.

Primer:

The Former Presidents Act (FPA; 3 U.S.C. §102 note) was enacted to “maintain the dignity” of the Office of the President. The act provides the former President—and his or her spouse—certain benefits to help him respond to post-presidency mail and speaking requests, among other informal public duties often required of a former President. Prior to enactment of the FPA in 1958, former Presidents leaving office received no pension or other federal assistance. The FPA charges the General Services Administration (GSA) with providing former U.S. Presidents a pension, support staff, office support, travel funds, and mailing privileges.

Pursuant to statute, former Presidents currently receive a pension that is equal to pay for Cabinet Secretaries (Executive Level I), which for calendar year 2015 was $203,700. Executive Level I pay was increased to $205,700 for calendar year 2016. In addition to benefits provided pursuant to the FPA, former Presidents are also provided Secret Service protection and financial “transition” benefits to assist their transition to post-presidential life. Pursuant to the FPA, former Presidents are eligible for benefits unless they hold “an appointive or elective office or position in or under the Federal Government or the government of the District of Columbia to which is attached a rate of pay other than a nominal rate.”

The President’s FY2017 budget request seeks $3,865,000 in appropriations for expenditures for former Presidents, an increase of $588,000 (17.9%) from the FY2016 appropriation level. The increase in requested appropriations for FY2017 anticipates President Barack Obama’s transition from incumbent to former President. For FY2016, President Obama requested and received appropriations of $3,277,000 for expenditures for former Presidents—an increase of $25,000 from FY2015 appropriated levels.

By the way, former Vice Presidents have the same privilege.

***** Now for the real disgusting Clinton thing….

Getty

Great investigative reporting by Politico: Bill Clinton used a decades-old federal government program, originally created to keep former presidents out of the poorhouse, to subsidize his family’s foundation and an associated business, and to support his wife’s private email server, a POLITICO investigation has found.

Taxpayer cash was used to buy IT equipment — including servers — housed at the Clinton Foundation, and also to supplement the pay and benefits of several aides now at the center of the email and cash-for-access scandals dogging Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

This investigation, which is based on records obtained from the General Services Administration through the Freedom of Information Act, does not reveal anything illegal. But it does offer fresh evidence of how the Clintons blurred the line between their non-profit foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the business dealings of Bill Clinton and the couple’s aides.

The thousands of pages of newly uncovered records reveal sometimes granular detail about how Bill Clinton’s representatives directed the spending of taxpayer cash allocated by the GSA under the Former President’s Act.

The Act authorizes the GSA to fund the pensions, correspondence, support staff and travel of ex-presidents. It was passed in 1958 to “maintain the dignity” of the presidency by helping former commanders in chief avoid hard times like those that befell Harry S. Truman. He complained that, without help from Uncle Sam, he would be forced to “go ahead with some contracts to keep ahead of the hounds.”

The Clintons did not have this problem.

After leaving the White House “dead broke”, in the words of Hillary Clinton, they quicklyraked in tens of millions of dollars from book deals, speaking fees and consulting gigs. At the same time, Bill Clinton was relying on his connections to some of the world’s deepest-pocketed donors, corporations and governments to seed a global philanthropy operation that overlapped with his consulting work and speaking fees and his wife’s work as Secretary of State — and served as a jumping off point for her presidential campaign.

But even as the Clintons got rich and grew their foundation into a $2 billion organization credited with major victories in the fights against childhood obesity and AIDS — while paying six figure salaries to top aides — Bill Clinton continued drawing more cash from the Former President’s Act than any other ex-president, according to a POLITICO analysis. The analysis also found that Clintons’ representatives, between 2001, when the Clintons left the White House, and the end of this year, had requested allocations under the Act totaling $16 million. That’s more than any of the other living former presidents — Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush — requested during that span.

The program supplemented the income of Clinton’s staff, while providing them with coveted federal government benefits, alleviating the need for the Clinton Foundation or other Clinton-linked entities to foot the bill for such benefits. Similarly, Clinton aides got the GSA to pay for computer technology used partly by the foundation.

An analysis of the records provided by GSA, combined with Clinton Foundation tax returns, found that at least 13 of the 22 staffers who have been paid by GSA to work for Clinton’s personal office also worked for the Clinton Foundation.

A Clinton aide said his boss’s use of the GSA program is entirely consistent with the Former Presidents Act.

Generally, the aide explained that Clinton “wears several hats — among them being former President of the United States and the founder of the Clinton Foundation. His staffing reflects those roles.”

The aide added “there is no legal prohibition that would preclude the former president’s staff from receiving compensation from other sources or doing personal work for the former presidents. We are unaware of any legal prohibition that would preclude these activities.”

The aide wouldn’t discuss specific employees, or their sources of income, explaining “the Office of Former President Bill Clinton does not discuss personnel matters.”

But using the GSA records, POLITICO pieced together a list of Clinton loyalists who at various times have had their earnings supplemented by federal payments of about $10,000-a-year using funds from the Former Presidents Act.

The list reads like a field guide to Clinton World.

It includes longtime Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper, who despite not having a security clearance, any apparent training in cyber-security or a job at the State Department, in early 2009 helped set up the private email account that Hillary Clinton would use to send and receive classified information as Secretary of State. Her use of that system was dubbed “extremely careless” by the FBI director. Cooper continued working to maintain Clinton’s private email system — including advising her top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills on attempted hacks — through at least 2012, according to emails released by the State Department.

During some of that period, Cooper was on the GSA payroll, drawing a federal government stipend from February 2011 through 2013, according to the records obtained by POLITICO.

At the same time, though, Cooper was working with Doug Band, a trusted Bill Clinton lieutenant, and Declan Kelly, a top Hillary Clinton fundraiser-turned-State Department official, to launch a global consulting firm called Teneo. It did lucrative work for foundation donors and entities with business before Clinton’s State Department. And it signed a contract reportedly worth $3.5 million with Bill Clinton to serve as a “honorary chairman” (though the former president ultimately kept only $100,000 of that, according to his tax returns and a source familiar with the arrangement). Teneo also paid Abedin as a “senior advisor.”

All the while, Band and Abedin were working together to broker meetings between Secretary of State Clinton and donors to the foundation, where Band served as an official until 2012, drawing a salary that in some years exceeded $111,000-a-year.

Yet, despite the profitable consulting business and his foundation compensation, Band continued drawing a taxpayer-funded stipend from the GSA until 2013.

Also receiving a salary from both the GSA and the Clinton Foundation was Laura Graham, who remained in extremely close contact with Clinton’s top aide at the State Department, swapping emails about sensitive foreign policy issues. During most of her time on the GSA payroll, Graham was earning a six-figure salary from the Clinton Foundation, which topped out at $190,000 per year in 2014.

Cooper, Band and Graham are no longer on the GSA payroll, nor are they working for the foundation. They all either declined to comment or did not respond to questions about the overlap between their taxpayer-funded work, the foundation and the State Department.

According to several people familiar with the former president’s operation, the rationale behind the interwoven payrolls is that they allow for a small team to assist Clinton in a variety of settings without having to do logistically complicated hockey-like line changes. In a given day, Clinton might deliver a paid private speech (during which time his employees’ salaries could be paid by the executive services corporation) and a public speech in his capacity as a former president (during which his staff could be paid by the GSA funds). And he could attend events for the foundation (where staff time would be paid by the foundation) as well as his wife’s presidential campaign (staff time would be paid by the campaign).

The records provided by GSA show that for each pay period, Clinton’s office submitted a list of personnel to GSA who were eligible to receive pay or reimbursement for travel done on behalf of the former president, along with the number of hours worked by each Clinton aide.

For many years, that list included two influential Clinton confidants who were listed as having worked zero hours each pay period — John Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff who served as the foundation’s temporary CEO in 2011, and Bruce Lindsey, the Clintons’ Arkansas confidant who served as the foundation’s CEO from 2004 through mid-2013.

A spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign said Podesta, who is the campaign’s chairman, was on the list because, in 2001, he was paid less than $500 for helping “transition President Clinton from the White House to a DC-based personal office to the Harlem office. Beyond that, he received no compensation for his work.”

It’s unclear if Lindsey ever received GSA payments for work or travel on behalf of the former president. Neither he nor Podesta responded to requests for comment.

A GSA spokesperson declined to comment on specific employees, but said ex-presidents have broad discretion over how they choose to divvy up the $96,600 they are provided each year for staffing. They can give the entire sum to a single employee or divide it among multiple employees.

George H. W. Bush has four people on his taxpayer-funded staff, while Bill Clinton has 10, which has been roughly his staffing level for most of his post-presidency, according to the GSA documents. That means that each earned about $9,600 a year — far from a living wage in Manhattan, where both the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s personal office are located.

But most Clinton aides on the GSA payroll also earned far more from other groups in the Clinton orbit — from the foundation to Teneo to an entity funded by the Clintons’ personal funds called the Clinton Executive Services Corporation or CESC.

The aide to Bill Clinton said that the former president “personally pays the costs over and above what is provided for by GSA,” adding that Clinton’s contribution “far exceeds the $96,000 provided by GSA.”

The key reason for adding staffers to the GSA payroll, according to two people familiar with the Clintons’ staffing arrangements, was that each employee became eligible for full federal employee benefits, including health and life insurance and pensions. The two people familiar with Bill Clinton’s staffing said the employees on his GSA payroll almost never received benefits from either the Clinton Foundation or the CESC.

Neither the CESC nor the Clinton Foundation are obligated to release their full payrolls, and GSA wouldn’t release the names of the staff being paid through the Former President’s Act.

So POLITICO in March 2015 filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for GSA records detailing payments made through the Act to the offices of all former presidents between 1999 and the present. Nearly 18 months later, the agency partially fulfilled the request, this week delivering thousands of pages of emails, invoices and payroll documents covering 2009 through this year.

Correspondence related to Clinton’s payroll and requested purchases of computer equipment and other office gear through GSA under the Act comprise the overwhelming majority of the records provided in response to POLITICO’s FOIA request.

That could be a quirk of the FOIA search process.

But Clinton’s reimbursement requests also seem to generate far more back-and-forth with GSA about the justification for the spending (for instance, a GSA official asked in response to a request for a bed bug removal service, “is there currently a bed bug issue … or is the request for some type of on-going maintenance services.” The answer is not included in the documents). And Clinton’s requested purchases also prompted more debate about what’s allowable under the Act.

Part of that likely stems from Clinton’s approach to his ex-presidency, which is far more active and public than that of his former commander-in-chief peers — and that’s even before factoring in his wife’s history-making political career. But the GSA records also reveal just how tricky it can be to separate the various entities, players and controversies that have circulated for decades around Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In several cases, GSA officials raised questions about whether requested furniture and IT equipment including servers were intended for the Clinton Foundation, rather than Clinton’s personal office. In at least one instance, GSA paid to purchase and maintain a specialty Lockheed Martin database system called Intranet Quorom, the supporting systems for which were housed at one time at the Clinton Foundation’s offices, and used by both foundation staff and Bill Clinton’s personal office staff to store and process his correspondence.

The Clinton aide said servers supporting the Intranet Quorom system — which is used for data storage, not email — were the only pieces of equipment purchased by GSA that were housed at the Clinton Foundation at one point, but he said it was justified by the specific circumstances around it.

“As staff needs to have the full picture of all correspondence sent by President Clinton, both staff from the Office of the Former President and the Foundation have access to, and can input into, the Intranet Quorum database,” the aide said.

The Clinton Foundation’s website suggests that there’s a strict wall between the foundation and the ex-president’s personal office. “All Foundation employees are paid for work through the Foundation payroll,” the website says. “No Foundation staff are paid for Foundation work with taxpayer dollars.”

But the aide acknowledged “staff at the Foundation and staff at the Office of the Former President may have similar tasks, and need to coordinate this work — specifically staff that handles President Clinton’s correspondence.”

That shared work is facilitated by the Lockheed Martin IQ database system, the aide said.

But the system’s dual purpose raised questions among GSA officials, who pressed Clinton’s representatives when they submitted an invoice in September 2011 to the GSA to purchase a $7,700 Dell server and other IT equipment to support the Lockheed Martin IQ database.

Clinton Foundation officials explained to the GSA that they wanted the Dell server housed at foundation headquarters rather than at Clinton’s personal office. They explained in an email that the foundation office had better air conditioning, allowing it to support “about 10-15 more servers,” and also it was where IT staff were based, so “trouble shooting with the servers can be done ASAP.”

The GSA staff asked Graham, then serving as the foundation’s COO, to demonstrate that “safeguards are in place to ensure that the servers are solely for use by” Clinton’s personal office. A note affixed to the bottom of an email produced pursuant to POLITICO’s FOIA indicates that the GSA ultimately decided not to purchase the Dell server.

Asked about the reasoning this week, a GSA spokesman suggested that Clinton’s representatives failed to provide sufficient evidence that the Dell server was not for use by the foundation.

“Consistent with the support we provide to every former President, GSA does not approve purchases for entities other than the offices of former Presidents,” the spokesman said. “In this case, GSA staff sought clarification about the intended use of proposed purchases. Ultimately, the referenced server was not purchased.”

But, perhaps highlighting the confusion caused by the overlapping spheres in the Clinton’s universe, the Clinton aide offered a different recollection. “We believe that the information GSA provided you with is incomplete. Our files show that GSA purchased the Dell server that operates the IQ database in 2010.”

Rachael Bade, Cory Bennett and Eric Geller contributed to this report.

After Hillary Left State, More Classified Emails Exchanged

Posted on August 31, 2016August 31, 2016 by Denise Simon

About to have HSS? It is a looming disease….Hillary Saturation Syndrome. Sheesh

Clinton emailed classified info after leaving State: report

NewYorkPost: Hillary Clinton continued sending classified information even after leaving the State Department, The Post has exclusively learned.

On May 28, 2013, months after stepping down as secretary of state, Clinton sent an email to a group of diplomats and top aides about the “123 Deal” with the United Arab Emirates.

But the email, which was obtained by the Republican National Committee through a Freedom of Information Act request, was heavily redacted upon its release by the State Department because it contains classified information.

The markings on the email state it will be declassified on May 28, 2033, and that information in the note is being redacted because it contains “information regarding foreign governors” and because it contains “Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.”

The email from Clinton was sent from the email account — hrod17@clintonemail.com— associated with her private email server.

The email’s recipients were Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, diplomat Jeffrey Feltman, policy aide Jake Sullivan, diplomat Kurt Campbell, State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

The “123 Deal” was a 2009 agreement between the United Arab Emirates and the US on materials and technological sharing for nuclear energy production.

“Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information was so pervasive, it continued after she left government,” Republican National Committee research director Raj Shah told The Post. “She clearly can’t be trusted with our nation’s security.”

Clinton is believed to have sent 2,101 emails that contained at least some classified information.

The Trump campaign said the latest revelation about Clinton’s email habits is more proof she can’t be trusted with national security.

“Hillary Clinton’s secret server jeopardized our national security and sensitive diplomatic efforts on more than 2,000 occasions, and shockingly, it now appears her reckless conduct continued even after leaving the State Department. Hillary Clinton’s terrible judgment shows she cannot be trusted with our national security,” said Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications advisor, in a statement.

What was the ‘123 Deal’?

While the purpose of multilateral negotiations with Iran is to reduce proliferation concerns, successful talks may in fact accelerate nuclear plans in the Gulf states and Jordan.

In April 2009, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia famously told U.S. special envoy Dennis Ross that “if [the Iranians] get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons.” Such comments suggest that leaders in Riyadh and other Gulf capitals will closely study any deal reached with Iran, whether on or after the expiration of current nuclear talks next Monday. The message out of the kingdom, delivered repeatedly and recently in Washington by former intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, is that whatever Tehran gets, Gulf Arabs will want. U.S. wishes aside, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and perhaps even Jordan could make as plausible a case as Iran for building nuclear power plants. And from their perspective, if Iran is going to be allowed to enrich uranium and retain its nuclear-capable missiles — as they believe likely given Washington’s reported approach to the negotiations thus far — why shouldn’t they be permitted to acquire similar capabilities?

THE UAE’S NUCLEAR CALCULUS

The first challenge to even limited diplomatic success with Iran would likely come from Abu Dhabi, the lead sheikhdom of the United Arab Emirates. Despite having around 10 percent of the world’s oil, the UAE also has the region’s most advanced plans for domestic nuclear power. Its first two nuclear facilities are under construction and due to start up in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Abu Dhabi obtained the reactors from South Korea, but in order to secure access to U.S. technology, material, and equipment, it also agreed to forgo uranium enrichment by signing a so-called “123 Agreement” at Washington’s behest.

Yet the UAE’s continued commitment to eschew enrichment is hardly guaranteed. For one thing, the 123 Agreement itself may give Abu Dhabi an out. The “123” refers to the section of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act that regulates U.S. nuclear cooperation with foreign countries. Depending on how one reads the “Agreed Minute” attached to that section, if Washington and its P5+1 partners (Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany) reach a deal with Iran, the UAE may have cause to renegotiate its enrichment rights. Of particular note is this passage from the Minute: “The fields of cooperation, terms and conditions accorded…shall be no less favorable in scope and effect than those which may be accorded from time to time to any other non-nuclear weapons state in the Middle East in a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement.”

More important, if the UAE decides that pursuing enrichment — whether alone or with its Gulf partners — is in its interest, it would not need to ask Washington to renegotiate the 123 Agreement. Instead, it could simply abandon U.S. nuclear cooperation altogether and obtain the technological help it needs elsewhere. Whether it takes either route will depend on Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed, the effective ruler of Abu Dhabi, whose admiration for America is matched only by his disappointment with the Obama administration’s policies. Already infuriated when Washington allowed the initial euphoria of the “Arab Spring” to distract it from Iran, he is now said to be livid at the prospect that Tehran’s quasi-nuclear status will be confirmed by an agreement not worth, in his mind, the paper it is written on.

UAE officials have never stated publicly that they would pursue enrichment if Iran is permitted to do so. Yet it is uncertain whether they are silent because they do not plan to do so or because they do not wish to tip their hand.

SAUDI MINDSET

Saudi Arabia’s plans for nuclear power lag behind the UAE’s but are even more ambitious — sixteen plants are to be built over the next twenty years. Although the kingdom has nearly a quarter of the world’s oil reserves, its rapidly growing energy demand could drain much of its oil exports unless it finds ways to reduce consumption. Switching to an alternative fuel source for electricity generation and increasing energy efficiency are the two most promising routes.

The kingdom’s ambition will stretch its capabilities, however. So far it has only one nuclear institution up and running, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE). Despite the organization’s civilian-sounding name, a U.S. official noted last month that the kingdom’s perceived nuclear intentions were not straightforward or obvious, and that KA-CARE’s recent leadership transition could also be cover for a policy change.

OTHER GULF PLANS

Kuwait’s tentative nuclear moves have slowed of late, but they have not stopped. In 2009, the government formed the Kuwait National Nuclear Energy Committee (KNNEC). In addition, economic feasibility studies and site surveys have been conducted, and students have been sent abroad for specialist education. Although much of the nascent program was cancelled after the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan, KNNEC’s activities were transferred to the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, and there are plans to set up a nuclear research and training facility.

Qatar has investigated the viability of domestic nuclear power as well. In 2008, it announced that it was not proceeding with any such plans, yet two years later it raised the prospect of a regional nuclear project. Doha has also signed a cooperation agreement with Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear corporation.

For its part, Jordan persists in talking ambitiously of nuclear power plans. In September, it signed an agreement with a Rosatom subsidiary aimed at reaching a final construction contract within two years. The projected power plant would cost $10 billion, with half being paid by Russia. Jordan also has plans to mine domestic uranium deposits and is working with South Korea on a project to build a small research and training reactor.

MISSILES, CENTRIFUGES, AND PAKISTAN

One of the clearest signals of how Gulf leaders view Iran diplomacy was Saudi Arabia’s decision to show off two of its nuclear-capable missiles at a military parade in April. The weapons were acquired from China in the 1980s but had hitherto never been put on display, so the timing was conspicuous. Gulf Arabs believe that Washington’s intended nuclear deal with Tehran is unlikely to include limits on the regime’s arsenal of long-range missiles capable of being modified to carry a nuclear warhead. UN Security Council Resolution 1929 (2010) called for Iran to halt work on nuclear-capable missiles, but there is no indication it has done so.

Pakistan’s potential proliferation role remains troubling as well. Among the dignitaries at the Saudi parade last spring was Pakistan’s military chief Gen. Raheel Sharif (who, it should be noted, paid an official visit to Washington earlier this week). Even if the Obama administration hopes that an Iran deal will squash the prospect of Riyadh borrowing or buying nuclear warheads from Pakistan, it must also consider the distinct possibility that the Saudis will ask Islamabad for enrichment technology. Pakistan currently operates the P-2 centrifuge, equivalent to Iran’s IR-2m, which is causing so much concern because of its higher efficiency compared to Iran’s more numerous IR-1.

Saudi Arabia — along with the UAE — has been associated with Pakistan’s enrichment program since as early as the 1980s. This included hosting controversial nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan, who was placed under house arrest ten years ago when revelations emerged about his nuclear trading with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Well before his detainment and subsequent release, Khan was a frequent visitor to the kingdom — a 1998 brochure commemorating Pakistan’s first nuclear tests contained photos of him meeting former Saudi defense minister Prince Sultan, as well as the late Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi, Crown Prince Muhammad’s father and founder of the UAE. And in 1989, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed — then the UAE minister of information and now foreign minister — visited Pakistan’s enrichment plant at Kahuta outside Islamabad.

The Obama administration appears to believe it can stop the proliferation of nuclear technology to Gulf allies by having suppliers insist on extremely tough inspection regimes such as that used for Iran. Yet long-time Gulf partners are unlikely to appreciate being told that they will be treated in the same manner as Iran, with its long track record of violating obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, it is by no means clear that all potential suppliers of enrichment technology — such as Pakistan — would impose such tough restrictions on Gulf states. In short, if an Iran deal is reached and Gulf leaders dislike it, preventing the proliferation of nuclear technology in the region will be a considerable challenge.

Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute. Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center and a former deputy director-general for safeguards at the IAEA. Previously, they coauthored Nuclear Iran: A Glossary of Terms, a joint publication of the Institute and the Belfer Center.

Hillary’s Responses are Under Oath

Posted on August 31, 2016August 31, 2016 by Denise Simon

If anyone believes that Hillary herself will be crafting the responses to the 25 questions, you need to think again. Hillary likely wont even be in the same room, a fleet of lawyers will assume the task in full.

Personally, I have several additional questions that should be asked. 1. How many servers, where are they and what is being used today? 2. Where did you received classified and top secret communications? 3. Where are the communications between you, Mrs. Clinton and the Pentagon and or the White House? 4. Where are the communications regarding Syria, Russian and Iran? 5. Where are all the hardcopies of top secret materials that were delivered to you on a daily basis assuring all were placed in burn bags? 6. Where are the communications regarding the countless waivers to law you signed and list what they were and why?

Hillary Clinton to explain to court who ‘recommended’ secret email account

WashingtonTimes: Hillary Clinton will get a chance to explain why she continued to use her secret home email account for government business in defiance of repeated security warnings from her underlings — just some of the 25 questions she’ll have to answer, in writing and under oath, to a federal court.

Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm, submitted the 25 questions to Mrs. Clinton Tuesday, and she now has a month to respond under the procedure set by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.

Among the questions are who “recommended” that she use a secret email account in the first place, whether she ever told the officials responsible for archiving records that she had the secret account, and what steps she took after attempts to hack her account.

Mrs. Clinton could also have to answer whether she destroyed work-related emails.

“These are simple questions about her email system that we hope will finally result in straightforward answers, under oath, from Hillary Clinton,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement as he released the 25 questions.

Mrs. Clinton eschewed a state.gov account during her time in office and instead used an account tied to a server she kept at her home in New York. That arrangement effectively thwarted open-records laws and shielded her communications from public view for more than six years.

After prodding by Congress, the State Department demanded she return her emails, and she turned over about 30,000 messages she said were work-related, and said she deleted another 30,000 that were personal — and then wiped her server.

The FBI, after a yearlong investigation, recovered thousands of work-related messages it said Mrs. Clinton failed to turn over, and said there may have been others that investigators were unable to recover thanks to Mrs. Clinton’s thoroughness in wiping the server.

Judicial Watch had tried to force Mrs. Clinton to testify in person under oath but Judge Sullivan ruled against that, instead saying that the former Cabinet official, senator and first lady, and current Democratic presidential candidate, could testify in writing.

The questions are supposed to focus on the creation, use and handling of Mrs. Clinton’s emails under open-records laws.

Mrs. Clinton has said she thought her messages were being captured because she regularly emails fellow employees on their official State Department accounts. She estimated to Congress that as many as 95 percent of the messages should have been stored that way.

But her campaign has been unable to back up that number, and Judicial Watch said that has little bearing on the other messages Mrs. Clinton exchanged with those outside of the State Department, whose mail wasn’t part of the department’s system.

“What was your understanding about how such emails would be maintained, preserved, or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests?” Judicial Watch said in one of its questions to Mrs. Clinton.

The FBI turned over some 15,000 messages it recovered that it said Mrs. Clinton didn’t turn over to the government. It’s unclear how many of those are personal, but at least several dozen are related to the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, department lawyers told a federal judge Tuesday.

The State Department is now fending off a barrage of requests to go through the 15,000 messages and release them ahead of the election.

The campaign of GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump said the surfacing of additional Benghazi emails was troubling.

“Hillary Clinton swore before a federal court and told the American people she handed over all of her work-related emails. If Clinton did not consider emails about something as important as Benghazi to be work-related, one has to wonder what is contained in the other emails she attempted to wipe from her server,” said Jason Miller, a spokesman for the campaign.

*****

The questions are:

Describe the creation of the clintonemail.com system, including who decided to create the system, the date it was decided to create the system, why it was created, who set it up, and when it became operational.

Describe the creation of your clintonemail.com email account, including who decided to create it, when it was created, why it was created, and, if you did not set up the account yourself, who set it up for you.

When did you decide to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and whom did you consult in making this decision?

Identify all communications in which you participated concerning or relating to your decision to use a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business and, for each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the communication.

In a 60 Minutes interview aired on July 24, 2016, you stated that it was “recommended” you use a personal email account to conduct official State Department business. What recommendations were you given about using or not using a personal email account to conduct official State Department business, who made any such recommendations, and when were any such recommendations made?

Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned, was it ever suggested, or did you ever participate in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed that your use of a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business conflicted with or violated federal recordkeeping laws. For each instance in which you were so advised, cautioned or warned, in which such a suggestion was made, or in which such a discussion took place, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the advice, caution, warning, suggestion, or discussion.

Your campaign website states, “When Clinton got to the Department, she opted to use her personal email account as a matter of convenience.” What factors other than convenience did you consider in deciding to use a personal email account to conduct official State Department business? Include in your answer whether you considered federal records management and preservation requirements and how email you used to conduct official State Department business would be searched in response to FOIA requests.

After President Obama nominated you to be Secretary of State and during your tenure as secretary, did you expect the State Department to receive FOIA requests for or concerning your email?

During your tenure as Secretary of State, did you understand that email you sent or received in the course of conducting official State Department business was subject to FOIA?

During your tenure as Secretary of State, how did you manage and preserve emails in your clintonemail.com email account sent or received in the course of conducting official State Department business, and what, if anything, did you do to make those emails available to the Department for conducting searches in response to FOIA requests?

During your tenure as Secretary of State, what, if any, effort did you make to inform the State Department’s records management personnel (e.g., Clarence Finney or the Executive Secretariat’s Office of Correspondence and Records) about your use of a clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business?

During your tenure as Secretary of State, did State Department personnel ever request access to your clintonemail.com email account to search for email responsive to a FOIA request? If so, identify the date access to your account was requested, the person or persons requesting access, and whether access was granted or denied.

At the time you decided to use your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business, or at any time thereafter during your tenure as Secretary of State, did you consider how emails you sent to or received from persons who did not have State Department email accounts (i.e., “state.gov” accounts) would be maintained and preserved by the Department or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests? If so, what was your understanding about how such emails would be maintained, preserved, or searched by the Department in response to FOIA requests?

On March 6, 2009, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell wrote in an Information Memo to your Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, that he “cannot stress too strongly, however, that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting calendars.” A March 11, 2009 email states that, in a management meeting with the assistant secretaries, you approached Assistant Secretary Boswell and mentioned that you had read the “IM” and that you “get it.” Did you review the March 6, 2009 Information Memo, and, if so, why did you continue using an unclassified BlackBerry to access your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business? Copies of the March 6, 2009 Information Memo and March 11, 2009 email are attached as Exhibit A for your review.

In a November 13, 2010 email exchange with Huma Abedin about problems with your clintonemail.com email account, you wrote to Ms. Abedin, in response to her suggestion that you use a State Department email account or release your email address to the Department, “Let’s get a separate address or device.” Why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business after agreeing on November 13, 2010 to “get a separate address or device?” Include in your answer whether by “address” you meant an official State Department email account (i.e., a “state.gov” account) and by “device” you meant a State Department-issued BlackBerry. A copy of the November 13, 2010 email exchange with Ms. Abedin is attached as Exhibit B for your review.

Email exchanges among your top aides and assistants in August 30, 2011 discuss providing you with a State Department-issued BlackBerry or State Department email address. In the course of these discussions, State Department Executive Secretary Stephen Mull wrote, “[W]e are working to provide the Secretary per her request a Department issued BlackBerry to replace her personal unit which is malfunctioning (possibly because of her personal email server is down). We will prepare two versions for her to use – one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests).” Similarly, John Bentel, the Director of Information and Records Management in the Executive Secretariat, wrote, “You should be aware that any email would go through the Department’s infrastructure and [be] subject to FOIA searches.” Did you request a State Department issued Blackberry or a State Department email account in or around August 2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your personal device and clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business instead of replacing your device and account with a State Department-issued BlackBerry or a State Department email account? Include in your answer whether the fact that a State Department-issued BlackBerry or a State Department email address would be subject to FOIA affected your decision. Copies of the email exchanges are attached as Exhibit C for your review.

In February 2011, Assistant Secretary Boswell sent you an Information Memo noting “a dramatic increase since January 2011 in attempts . . . to compromise the private home email accounts of senior Department officials.” Assistant Secretary Boswell “urge[d] Department users to minimize the use of personal web-email for business.” Did you review Assistant Secretary Boswell’s Information Memo in or after February 2011, and, if so, why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business? Include in your answer any steps you took to minimize use of your clintonemail.com email account after reviewing the memo. A copy of Assistant Secretary Boswell’s February 2011 Information Memo is attached as Exhibit D for your review.

On June 28, 2011, you sent a message to all State Department personnel about securing personal email accounts. In the message, you noted “recent targeting of personal email accounts by online adversaries” and directed all personnel to “[a]void conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts.” Why did you continue using your clintonemail.com email account to conduct official State Department business after June 28, 2011, when you were advising all State Department Personnel to avoid doing so? A copy of the June 28, 2011 message is attached as Exhibit E for your review.

Were you ever advised, cautioned, or warned about hacking or attempted hacking of your clintonemail.com email account or the server that hosted your clintonemail.com account and, if so, what did you do in response to the advice, caution, or warning?

When you were preparing to leave office, did you consider allowing the State Department access to your clintonemail.com email account to manage and preserve the official emails in your account and to search those emails in response to FOIA requests? If you considered allowing access to your email account, why did you decide against it? If you did not consider allowing access to your email account, why not?

After you left office, did you believe you could alter, destroy, disclose, or use email you sent or received concerning official State Department business as you saw fit? If not, why not?

In late 2014, the State Department asked that you make available to the Department copies of any federal records of which you were aware, “such as an email sent or received on a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State.” After you left office but before your attorneys reviewed the email in your clintonemail.com email account in response to the State Department’s request, did you alter, destroy, disclose, or use any of the email in the account or authorize or instruct that any email in the account be altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used? If so, describe any email that was altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used, when the alteration, destruction, disclosure, or use took place, and the circumstances under which the email was altered, destroyed, disclosed, or used? A copy of a November 12, 2014 letter from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy regarding the State Department’s request is attached as Exhibit F for your review.

After your lawyers completed their review of the emails in your clintonemail.com email account in late 2014, were the electronic versions of your emails preserved, deleted, or destroyed? If they were deleted or destroyed, what tool or software was used to delete or destroy them, who deleted or destroyed them, and was the deletion or destruction done at your direction?

During your October 22, 2015 appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, you testified that 90 to 95 percent of your emails “were in the State’s system” and “if they wanted to see them, they would certainly have been able to do so.” Identify the basis for this statement, including all facts on which you relied in support of the statement, how and when you became aware of these facts, and, if you were made aware of these facts by or through another person, identify the person who made you aware of these facts.

Identify all communications between you and Brian Pagliano concerning or relating to the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of any emails in your clintonemail.com email account, including any instruction or direction to Mr. Pagliano about the management, preservation, deletion, or destruction of emails in your account when transferring the clintonemail.com email system to any alternate or replacement server. For each communication, identify the time, date, place, manner (e.g., in person, in writing, by telephone, or by electronic or other means), persons present or participating, and content of the communication.

“These are simple questions about her email system that we hope will finally result in straight-forward answers, under oath, from Hillary Clinton,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

In his opinion ordering Clinton to answer written questions under oath Judge Sullivan wrote:

The Court is persuaded that Secretary Clinton’s testimony is necessary to enable her to explain on the record the purpose for the creation and operation of the clintonemail.com system for State Department business.

In its July 2016 request to depose Hillary Clinton, Judicial Watch argued:

Secretary Clinton’s deposition is necessary to complete the record. Although certain information has become available through investigations by the Benghazi Select Committee, the FBI, and the State Department Inspector General, as well as through Plaintiff’s narrowly tailored discovery to date, significant gaps in the evidence remain. Only Secretary Clinton can fill these gaps, and she does not argue otherwise.

***

To [Judicial Watch’s] knowledge, Secretary Clinton has never testified under oath why she created and used the clintonemail.com system to conduct official government business. Her only public statements on the issue are unsworn.

Judge Sullivan also ordered that Judicial Watch may depose the former Director of Information Resource Management of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-IRM”) John Bentel by October 31.

The questions and deposition arise in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit before Judge Sullivan first filed in September 2013 seeking records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former Deputy Chief of Staff to Clinton. The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)).

Judicial Watch has already taken the deposition testimony of seven Clinton aides and State Department officials.

For further information on this case, click here.

When the U.S. Justice System is Bought by Soros

Posted on August 30, 2016August 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

Maybe the FBI as well given Hillary? Spooky dude and his billons have twisted the system across the country. Perhaps he reached the White House as well, given the commuted sentences of criminals where Obama used his pen to release hundreds of felons. Is Soros paying senators on the Judiciary Committee for votes on Supreme Court Justice nominations?

It is no wonder violent felons never serve out their prison terms much less do the District Attorneys bother with the cases to begin with as noted by criminals on the streets with case files that are a mile long only to offend again.

NYMag

George Soros’ quiet overhaul of the U.S. justice system

Politico: Progressives have zeroed in on electing prosecutors as an avenue for criminal justice reform, and the billionaire financier is providing the cash to make it happen.

While America’s political kingmakers inject their millions into high-profile presidential and congressional contests, Democratic mega-donor George Soros has directed his wealth into an under-the-radar 2016 campaign to advance one of the progressive movement’s core goals — reshaping the American justice system.

The billionaire financier has channeled more than $3 million into seven local district-attorney campaigns in six states over the past year — a sum that exceeds the total spent on the 2016 presidential campaign by all but a handful of rival super-donors.

His money has supported African-American and Hispanic candidates for these powerful local roles, all of whom ran on platforms sharing major goals of Soros’, like reducing racial disparities in sentencing and directing some drug offenders to diversion programs instead of to trial. It is by far the most tangible action in a progressive push to find, prepare and finance criminal justice reform-oriented candidates for jobs that have been held by longtime incumbents and serve as pipelines to the federal courts — and it has inspired fury among opponents angry about the outside influence in local elections.

“The prosecutor exercises the greatest discretion and power in the system. It is so important,” said Andrea Dew Steele, president of Emerge America, a candidate-training organization for Democratic women. “There’s been a confluence of events in the past couple years and all of the sudden, the progressive community is waking up to this.”

Soros has spent on district attorney campaigns in Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas through a network of state-level super PACs and a national “527” unlimited-money group, each named a variation on “Safety and Justice.” (Soros has also funded a federal super PAC with the same name.) Each organization received most of its money directly from Soros, according to public state and federal financial records, though some groups also got donations from nonprofits like the Civic Participation Action Fund, which gave to the Safety and Justice group in Illinois.

The Florida Safety and Justice group just poured nearly $1.4 million — all of which came from Soros and his 527 group — into a previously low-budget Democratic primary for state attorney in Central Florida before Tuesday’s vote. The group is backing Aramis Ayala, a former public defender and prosecutor, in her campaign against incumbent Jeff Ashton, whose jurisdiction covers over 1.6 million people across two counties in metro Orlando.

One TV ad from Florida Safety and Justice boosts Ayala, touting her “plan to remove bias so defendants charged with the same crime receive the same treatment, no matter their background or race.” The Soros-funded group is also attacking Ashton with ads saying he “got rid of protections that helped ensure equal treatment regardless of background or race. … Take two similar traffic incidents that happened on the same night. A white man got off with a slap on the wrist, while the black man faces prison.”

Opponents of Soros’ favored candidates have laced into the billionaire, saying that his influence has wildly tipped the scales of local elections and even charging that he made residents less safe.

“As a candidate and citizen of Caddo Parish, if an outsider was that interested in the race, I wanted to know exactly what he had in mind for the criminal justice system if he were to win,” said Dhu Thompson, a Louisiana attorney who lost a district attorney race to a Soros-backed candidate, James Stewart, in 2015. Soros gave over $930,000 — more than 22 times the local median household income — to the group boosting Stewart.

“I know some of his troubling opinions on social issues, especially the criminal justice system,” Thompson said. “I’ve never known him as an individual who was very strong on some of our crime and punishment issues. I felt it was very detrimental to the safety of Caddo Parish, and that’s why I took such a strong stand against him.”

A Soros representative declined to comment on his involvement in the DA races.

Progressive operatives and activists say that the recent uptick in news coverage of racial justice issues, especially police-involved deaths of African-Americans, helped sparked intense new interest in the powerful role of district attorneys, who did not indict officers in some high-profile cases. So has the longer-term reform push to shrink the U.S. prison population and promote treatment over punishment for drug users.

Reform groups have spent years advocating criminal justice policies and legislation that would reduce incarceration rates. Liberal donors have long given to policy-focused nonprofits; the Soros-chaired Open Societies Foundation, for example, works on drug policy and criminal justice reform and has supported other reform groups like the California-based Alliance for Safety and Justice — which, despite its similar name, has had no involvement in district attorney races, a spokeswoman said.

Prosecutorial discretion gives district attorneys a huge say in the charges and sentences that defendants face. But reform efforts have not traditionally focused on harnessing that power.

“They are often a very invisible part of the criminal justice system and the political system,” said Brenda Carter, director of the Reflective Democracy Campaign, an arm of the progressive Women Donors Network. “Many people can’t name their district attorney. It’s not an office people think about a lot.”

Carter’s group commissioned research in 2015 that found that 95 percent of elected local prosecutors in the U.S. are white and three-quarters overall are white men. It also highlighted a Wake Forest University study that found that a vast majority of prosecutors — 85 percent — run for reelection unopposed.

“I found that to be shocking, and I think people are waking up to the untapped potential for intervention in these seats to really change the day-to-day realities of criminal justice,” Carter said. “It’s been really gratifying for us to see the research taken up and run with by different groups around the country.”

Armed with that knowledge, progressive groups including Color of Change began researching potentially interesting district attorney races around the country, multiple sources said. (The organization declined to comment.)

“It’s hard to find this information!” exclaimed Steele, the Emerge America president. “You can’t just Google ‘hot DA races.’ So part of the issue is identifying what potential races there are.”

Soros’ spending started on these races about a year ago, when he put over $1 million into “Safety and Justice” groups that helped elect two new district attorneys in Louisiana and Mississippi and reelect a third — Hinds County, Miss., DA Robert Shuler Smith — who has since been charged by the Mississippi attorney general with improperly providing information to defendants.

The other Mississippi district attorney Soros’ spending helped elect, Scott Colom, has now represented a four-county stretch of the eastern part of the state for eight months. Colom said in an interview that he has focused on prosecuting violent crime in his new position while trying not to burden local prisons with first-time, low-level drug offenders.

“I’ve expanded the charges eligible for pre-trial diversion,” Colom said, adding that the number of people in the program in his jurisdiction has doubled since he took office seven months ago. “It’s all focused on the individual person, on trying to find a plan with the best chance possible of avoiding criminal behavior.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who think prison is too nice and we need to spend more on it,” Colom continued. “But it seems like a large majority of people out there get it and realize there have to be priorities. Just because a fella commits a crime doesn’t mean the best outcome is sending them to jail. … As much as possible, I want to take people from being tax burdens to taxpayers.”

After the Louisiana and Mississippi races, Soros next piled money into two of the biggest jurisdictions in the country: Houston’s Harris County (his lone losing effort so far) and Chicago’s Cook County, where he funded one of several groups that helped Kim Foxx defeat incumbent state’s attorney Anita Alvarez in a high-profile primary campaign dominated by the 13-month delay between the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the indictment of the police officer involved.

In late spring, $107,000 from a Soros-funded New Mexico super PAC helped Raul Torrez win his Democratic district attorney primary by a 2-to-1 margin in Albuquerque’s Bernalillo County. Torrez’s Republican opponent dropped out of the general election soon after, citing the potentially exorbitant cost of opposing the Soros-backed candidate in the general election.

While Soros has spent heavily in 2015 and 2016, a broader national push into local prosecutor campaigns is expected to intensify in the next few years, thanks to longer-term planning and candidate recruitment. A Safety and Justice group has already organized in Ohio, according to campaign finance filings there. But it has not yet disclosed raising or spending any money.

“There’s been a realization that there’s not very much we can do this year, when you’re coming up to an election,” said Steele. “You have to have the right candidates. That’s a big piece of the puzzle and why I’m part of this conversation. … A lot of the conversations I’m having are about 2017 and 2018, about looking forward to next year in Virginia and other places.”

That means more local candidates should prepare for the shock of one of the biggest donors in American politics flooding their neighborhoods with ads.

Colom, the Mississippi prosecutor, says he has never met Soros — like other district attorney candidates supported by the Democratic billionaire this year. He said there was no hint that hundreds of thousands of dollars were coming to aid his campaign until advertising started pushing the same criminal-justice reform message that Colom had been touting — albeit on a much cheaper scale.

“The first I heard of it, someone told me they liked my radio ad, and I was thinking, that doesn’t sound like one of mine,” Colom said.

C’mon Hillary and Bill, Really?

Posted on August 24, 2016August 24, 2016 by Denise Simon

Hillary State Dept. Helped Jailed Clinton Foundation Donor Get $10 Mil from U.S. for Failed Haiti

The new batch of emails showing that the State Department gave special access to top Clinton Foundation donors while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state brings to mind the case of a shady Miami businessman serving a 12-year prison sentence after scamming the government out of millions. His name is Claudio Osorio, a Clinton Foundation donor who got $10 million from the government after the Clinton State Department reportedly pulled some strings.

Osorio got the money from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a federal agency that operates under the guidance of the State Department, to build houses in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The OPIC supposedly promotes U.S. government investments abroad to foster the development and growth of free markets. Osorio’s “Haiti project” was supposed to build 500 homes for displaced families in the aftermath of the earthquake. The project never broke ground and Osorio used the money to finance his lavish lifestyle and fund his illicit business ventures. He also ran a fraudulent international company with facilities in the U.S., United Arab Emirates, Germany, Angola and Tanzania that stole millions from investors. Some of the OPIC Haiti money was used to repay investors of his fraudulent company (Innovida), according to federal prosecutors. In September 2013, Osorio was sentenced to 150 months imprisonment and three years of supervised release.

Not surprisingly, the Department of Justice (DOJ) never mentioned Osorio’s Clinton connections and seemed to downplay the $10 million scam of taxpayer funds by focusing on the “victims” that invested in his bogus company. More here.

The inside story of how the Clintons built a $2 billion global empire

In part from WashingtonPost: The foundation now includes 11 major initiatives, focused on issues as divergent as crop yields in Africa, earthquake relief in Haiti and the cost of AIDS drugs worldwide. In all, the Clintons’ constellation of related charities has raised $2 billion, employs more than 2,000 people and has a combined annual budget of more than $223 million.

As donations have surged, particularly as her bid for the Democratic nomination grew closer, she has been forced to answer for whether those supporters have been not merely giving to a charity but also paying to curry favor with a former secretary of state and a would-be president.

Sights on something big

In the beginning of it all, Bill Clinton was feeling unfulfilled.

More photos here.

In the months after he left the White House in 2001, he was living at his family’s new home in Chappaqua, N.Y. His wife was in the Senate. His daughter was away, first at Stanford, then at Oxford. He stewed about leftover legal bills and bad press over last-minute pardons.

To pass the time, he turned to TiVo.
No sign of that pesky server though.

At the same time, Clinton did more formal planning with aides. He was just 56. He would be an ex-president for a long time. He wanted to do something big. And something international. He wanted to stay out of domestic policy, so it didn’t look as though he was meddling in the domain of the president who had succeeded him. Or the senator he was married to.

Ira Magaziner, a longtime aide, had an idea that fit both criteria.

New drugs were available to fight the progress of HIV and AIDS, but in Africa the drugs were too expensive for many people. Magaziner wanted to lower the cost. He knew Clinton didn’t have the money to help, because he was still fundraising for the library and his own legal bills.

But, Magaziner told Clinton, he had a name brand with limitless value.

“We should use that reputation and your contacts for something big. If we succeed at this, we can help save millions of lives,” Magaziner wrote in a memo he handed to Clinton at an AIDS conference in 2002. “If we are not so successful, we still might help save tens of thousands of lives which would not be so bad.”

Expanding in all directions

“Now here’s something else in my hot little hand,” Clinton said, standing on a stage at the Sheraton Times Square, according to media reports. “My old friend Carlos Slim Helú here has just said he’s willing to develop a cellphone network for Gaza and link it to Jordan’s network. Why, thanks, Carlos. Come up here and be recognized.”

It was September 2005. A year and a half after Band’s brainstorm, the first meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative was a smashing success. Some Clinton aides had been skeptical that it would work, but Clinton had shrewdly timed it to coincide with a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly — when New York was already chockablock with world leaders looking for something more interesting than a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

This is quite the story so please read it in full here. There are stunning connections, people, agendas, timelines, money and access. A real picture has emerged on the collusion and the work of Hillary and Bill’s circle of friends. This is hardly the whole story but it does begin to explain why they had at least 2 private servers and refused FOIA requests.

Last year, the Washington Post offer an early comprehensive summary:

The Post identified donations from roughly 336,000 individuals, corporations, unions and foreign governments in support of their political or philanthropic endeavors — a list that includes top patrons such as Steven Spielberg and George Soros, as well as lesser-known backers who have given smaller amounts dozens of times. Not included in the count are an untold number of small donors whose names are not identified in campaign finance reports but together have given millions to the Clintons over the years.

The majority of the money — $2 billion — has gone to the Clinton Foundation, one of the world’s fastest-growing charities, which supports health, education and economic development initiatives around the globe. A handful of elite givers have contributed more than $25 million to the foundation, including Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, who is among the wealthy foreign donors who have given tens of millions.

Keep reading here as it is full of names and under-handed requests and access.