Category Archives: IRS White House Collusion

Could Loretta Lynch Decide Hillary’s Fate?

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Truth be known, Hillary was ONLY allowed to use a specially designed Blackberry as was the policy at the State Department. But lil miss Hillary admitted to finessing that policy by also using an iPhone, iPad, and other tablets. She is shown here in her own words.

It must be included in this EmailGate affair as the Clinton server resides in their home in New York which is currently under the legal jurisdiction of AG Loretta Lynch and she is slate to be confirmed next week by the Senate to replace the now resigned U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Lynch is a legal protective firewall of the White House and all government employees, so Hillary’s fate could necessarily be placed in the lap of Loretta Lynch, which means that Hillary could be on the good receiving end of the Department of IN-Justice.

So this begins to add more gasoline to the fire and more comes out where it could be that Hillary committed a felony. Everyone at the State Department assigned directly to Hillary’s inner circle knew about her exclusive email server and private emails. This server should be considered either a proxy server under the ownership of the State Department and hence part of official government property or it could be called an alias server still part of government property. It would be also prudent at this juncture to ask who else uses private emails….alas that of Lisa Jackson the formerly of the EPA and are there other alias servers out there as well. Digressing….

One of the defenses that Hillary Clinton offered at yesterday’s press conference was that she had complied with federal records laws because those laws leave it up to her, as the employee who created or received an e-mail, to decide whether that e-mail must be preserved under the Federal Records Act. But while Clinton is correct that every employee has to make some initial determination of whether a particular document is an official “record,” the ultimate determination is most definitely not up to the employee, but rather to the agency and its records-management officials. Bear with me through some bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo for a moment, because the payoff is pretty significant. That Mrs. Clinton is not the ultimate arbiter of whether her records must be preserved is made very clear in the Department of State’s own records-management manual. Under a provision titled “Removal Procedures,” the manual sets forth the process that each Department of State employee must go through upon separation (i.e., resignation or retirement) from the department. In addition to relinquishing classified materials, all employees are required to clear the removal of any unclassified materials through records-management officials.

First, the “departing official or a staff member must prepare an inventory of personal papers and nonrecord materials proposed for removal.” The departing official must then “request a review of the materials proposed for removal.” Lest Mrs. Clinton claim she was not subject to this rule, the manual provides that this review process is specifically required for “Presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate.” The purpose of this independent review by records officials (as opposed to simply accepting the say-so of the departing official) is “to certify that the documentary materials proposed for removal may be removed without diminishing the official records of the Department; violating national security, privacy or other restrictions on disclosure; or exceeding normal administrative economies.” The process “generally requires a hands-on examination of the materials to verify the accuracy of the inventory.” (5 FAH-4 H-217.2(b)). Finally, there is a formal certification by the State Department records official authorizing the employee to remove the documents from State’s custody: “Once the reviewing official is satisfied that documentary materials proposed for removal comply with Federal law and regulations the reviewing official completes Form DS-1904, Authorization for the Removal of Personal Papers and Non-Record Materials, and forwards the form and the inventory to the Department of State records officer.” These “nonrecord materials” may be removed only “when authorized by the Department and only to the extent that their removal does not: (1) Diminish the official records of the Department; (2) Violate confidentiality required by national security, privacy or other restrictions on disclosure (e.g., commercial or financial information, personnel files or investigative records); (3) Exceed normal administrative economies.” Despite her repeated protestations at yesterday’s press conference that she followed all applicable rules, it is pellucid that she did not. Mrs. Clinton plainly did not just remove personal e-mails without clearing that removal with records officials; she also did not even return official records. Her defense now is that returning the documents two years later is good enough. But the same records manual emphatically rebuts that post-hoc justification. The department’s records manual requires that departing officials “must ensure that all record material that they possess is incorporated in the Department’s official files and that all file searches for which they have been tasked have been completed, such as those required to respond to FOIA, Congressional, or litigation-related document requests.” And lest the employee not get the message, the manual adds that “fines, imprisonment, or both may be imposed for the willful and unlawful removal or destruction of records as stated in the U.S. Criminal Code (e.g., 18 U.S.C., section 2071).” I have already discussed here the question of whether Mrs. Clinton may have violated that criminal prohibition on willful concealment of government records, and the evidence to date — especially her disclosure yesterday that she deleted any document that she determined to be personal in nature (without permission of the Department under the records-removal guidelines) — suggests a strong possibility that she did. But might she have lied to department records officials when she separated from service? The department’s records manual (5 FAH-4 H-217.1(a)) requires that records officials “remind[] all officials, about to leave the Department or a post, of the requirements for the removal of personal papers and nonrecord materials.” Critically, the department enforces “compliance with these procedures for the removal of documentary materials prior to execution of the Separation Statement (Form OF-109).” And what is Form OF-109? It is a formal separation statement, in which the departing official certifies the return of any classified materials, and, more relevant for present purposes, that the departing official has “surrendered to responsible officials all unclassified documents, and papers relating to the official business of the Government acquired by me while in the employ of the Department.” The form makes very clear that a false statement in the certification is punishable as a crime, including under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it a crime to knowingly and willfully falsify or conceal facts in statements made to federal agencies concerning a matter within its jurisdiction. According to the department’s procedures, then, every departing official is required to certify the return of all government documents under penalty of law. Did Hillary Clinton sign such a certification upon her separation from government? Did she knowingly swear that she had returned all records, when in fact she had retained at least 55,000 pages of official e-mails (and perhaps more)? And if she did not sign such a certification, why not? Every other departing employee and official of the State Department is required to do so. Did she ignore her obligations to return the records and thus avoid a false certification? It seems that the one document in all of this that we need to see, if it exists, is Hillary Clinton’s Form OF-109.
**** Get some popcorn, there is more…

Besides exclusively using a secret email account to conduct official government business, it’s likely that Hillary Clinton also used unauthorized electronic equipment—an iPad and an iPhone—as Secretary of State after being warned not to, a veteran State Department official told Judicial Watch this week.

On at least half a dozen occasions Clinton’s top aides asked the State Department’s Office of Security Technology to approve the use of an iPad and iPhone, according to JW’s inside source. Each time the request was rejected for security reasons, the source confirms. The only mobile device that meets the agency’s security standards is the BlackBerry, JW’s source said, adding that the Office of Security Technology—Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Directorate  of Countermeasures must approve all equipment such as cameras, phones and communication devices for all officials.

Evidently set on using the popular Apple devices, Clinton repeatedly challenged the ban and asked management in the Office of Security Technology to allow their use. The executive secretariat responsible for all communications and information technology always rejected the requests, JW’s source affirms. “From day one Hillary was trying to get the iPhone and the iPad approved,” the State Department official told JW. “She kept trying and trying to get us to approve the iPhone and the iPad, but we wouldn’t do it. Technology security experts tested the iPhone and the iPad several times because she constantly wanted them approved, but it never happened.”

The longtime State Department employee reveals that it’s common knowledge among government security tech experts that Apple devices don’t meet strict security standards so agency insiders were puzzled that the Secretary of State was hell-bent on using them. “There was a lot of head-scratching,” JW’s source revealed. Every State Department employee goes through a rigorous security training that includes strict warnings about using non approved equipment or personal email like Clinton did throughout her tenure as the president’s chief foreign affairs officer, the agency insider said.

Clinton’s persistent efforts to persuade the State Department’s technology security experts to approve the use of her favorite Apple devices led those in the division to conclude that she did in fact go through with it. “My guess is she did it and wanted approval after the fact,” JW’s source said. “But no waivers were ever issued.” JW reached out to the State Department for a comment on this latest potential scandal surrounding its former leader, but failed to get a response.

In the meantime, JW has launched a full-scale investigation into Clinton’s secret email system and has filed a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that will likely end up being litigated in federal court. Prior to the email scandal JW already had nearly a dozen active lawsuits in federal court that could be affected by Clinton and her staff’s use of secret email accounts to conduct official government business. Among them is a public-records request for communications between the former Secretary of State and her Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi.

ICE at Work, Almost 2100 Arrested

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Could it be a token effort to seek illegal felons across America? Offenses included manslaughter, robbery, rape, kidnapping and pornography. An estimated 58 were gang members while 89 are convicted sex offenders. States included Georgia, Texas, California, Michigan and Ohio.

WASHINGTON

— A five-day nationwide operation targeting convicted criminal aliens subject to removal from the United States yielded the arrest of 2,059 convicted criminals. The operation was led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

“This nationwide operation led to the apprehension of more than 2,000 convicted criminal aliens who pose the greatest risk to our public safety,” said Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. “Today, communities around the country are safer because of the great work of the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

The operation, dubbed “Cross Check,” began Sunday, March 1, and ended Thursday, March 5. Hundreds of ERO officers participated in the operation that focused on the arrests of public safety threats. Those arrested are from 94 countries and have a wide array of criminal convictions.

The 2,059 individuals with prior criminal convictions who were arrested included more than 1,000 individuals who had multiple criminal convictions. More than 1,000 of those arrested had felony convictions, including voluntary manslaughter, child pornography, robbery, kidnapping and rape.

Of the total 2,059 criminals arrested, 58 were known gang members or affiliates, and 89 were convicted sex offenders.

The vast majority of misdemeanor convictions were for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs (DUI). ICE considers DUI offenders, particularly repeat offenders, to be a significant public safety threat.

In addition to being convicted criminals, five of those arrested were also immigration fugitives who had previously been ordered to leave the country but failed to depart. Also, 476 were illegal re-entrants who had been previously removed from the country. Because of their serious criminal histories and prior immigration arrest records, 163 of those arrested during the enforcement action were presented to U.S. attorneys for prosecution on a variety of charges, including illegal re-entry after deportation, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Arrests include:

Arrests include:

A Jamaican citizen arrested in Atlanta, Georgia, who was convicted in 2014 of breaking and entering, larceny, speeding to elude arrest and assault with a deadly weapon on a law enforcement officer.
A Polish citizen arrested in East Hartford, Connecticut, who was convicted twice for possession of cocaine and other drugs, twice for probation violation and resisting arrest and once for reckless driving.
A Finnish citizen arrested in Naperville, Illinois, who was convicted in 2014 of child pornography involving a victim under 13-years-old.
A Mexican citizen arrested in Arvada, Colorado, who is a documented member of the Sureños criminal street gang and was convicted in 2014 of possession of a weapon.


Two targets of this operation who were not apprehended were added to ICE’s most wanted fugitives list.

“This national operation exemplifies ICE’s ongoing commitment to prioritizing convicted criminals and public safety threats for apprehension and removal,” said ICE Director Sarah R. Saldaña. “By taking these individuals off our streets and removing them from the country, we are making our communities safer for everyone.”
All targets of this operation fell within the top two priorities established in Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson’s Nov. 20 memorandum entitled “Policies for the Apprehension, Detention and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants.” Priority 1 targets include threats to national security, criminal street gang members, convicted felons, and aggravated felons. Priority 2 targets have convictions for three or more misdemeanors or convictions for significant misdemeanors, including DUIs.

The foreign nationals detained during the operation who are not being criminally prosecuted will be processed administratively for removal from the United States. Those who have outstanding orders of deportation, or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported, are subject to immediate removal from the country. The remaining individuals are in ICE custody awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, or pending travel arrangements for removal in the near future.

Secretary Johnson has directed ICE to prioritize the use of enforcement personnel, detention space, and removal assets to support the department’s civil immigration enforcement priorities. By taking criminals who pose public safety threats off community streets and removing them from the country, ICE addresses a significant security and public safety vulnerability.

ICE began conducting large-scale national operations targeting convicted and other ERO priority aliens in May 2011. Since then, five national Cross Check operations resulted in the arrest of more than 12,440 convicted criminals as well as 774 other priority individuals for a total of 13,214 arrests. This operation is the sixth nationwide Cross Check operation in the agency’s history. The first nationwide Cross Check operation occurred at the end of May 2011 and resulted in the arrest of 2,442 convicted criminals. The last Cross Check operation in August 2013 resulted in the arrest of 1,517 convicted criminals, as well as 143 other priority individuals for a total of 1,660 arrests.

This week’s enforcement action was spearheaded by ICE’s National Fugitive Operations Program, which locates, arrests and removes at-large criminals. The officers who conducted this operation received substantial assistance from ICE’s Fugitive Operations Support Center and ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center, both located in Williston, Vermont.

In fiscal year 2014, ERO removed 315,943 individuals from the United States. ICE enforcement priorities include removable aliens considered threats to national security, those attempting to unlawfully enter the U.S., gang members, felons, and individuals convicted of crimes including domestic violence, sexual abuse, drug distribution or driving under the influence.

**** “ICE considers DUI offenders, particularly repeat offenders, to be a significant public safety threat.”

Two targets of the operation who were not located have been added to ICE’s Most Wanted list.

Those who will not face further criminal prosecution will be processed for removal from the United States. Detainees with outstanding orders of deportation or who returned to the country illegally after being deported are subject to immediate removal from the U.S., while others will remain in ICE custody while they await a hearing before an immigration judge. Others will remain in custody pending travel arrangements.

“This national operation exemplifies ICE’s ongoing commitment to prioritizing convicted criminals and public safety threats for apprehension and removal,” stated ICE Director Sarah R. Saldaña. “By taking these individuals off our streets and removing them from the country, we are making our communities safer for everyone.”

Rebecca Adducci, field office director for ERO Detroit, which covers Michigan and Ohio, stated: “Our focus on priority targets continues to contribute significantly to the safety and security of communities throughout Michigan. By targeting criminal aliens, we are ensuring the best use of agency resources and a continued focus on public safety.”

Hillary was Hacked, Data Virgin Islands/Ukraine

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EmailGate courtesy of Hillary Clinton’s home server has taken on a life of its own.

From the Blaze:

Clinton Email Domain Hosted by a Company That Was Hacked in 2010 and Had Data Redirected to Ukraine — and IP Address Reveals Link to British Virgin Islands

As news of Hillary Clinton using a private email during her tenure as Secretary of State continues to emerge, TheBlaze has learned that the email domain was hosted by a “consumer grade” company whose data was hacked in 2010, with information being sent to Ukraine. Additionally, data reveals that the domain was hosted at one point in the British Virgin Islands. This, experts say, is a big security no-no.

Domain history data reveals Clintonemail.com was registered in 2009 with Network Solutions, shortly after Clinton was appointed as the nation’s top diplomat. But the decision to host the domain for such a high-profile person on a consumer registrar like Network Solutions is questionable to security experts.

Bill Sweetman, a domain registration expert based in Canada who describes himself as part of the “left-leaning camp,” told TheBlaze Friday that the whole Clinton email controversy has struck him as “naive on the part of the players.”

Image source: DomainTools.com
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“If you’re someone that is concerned about security of your data, you don’t go and register your domain name with a consumer-oriented registrar like Network Solutions or GoDaddy,” Sweetman said.

Image source: DomainTools.com

“You would work either with a corporate domain registrar like MarkMonitor or CVSC, or you would talk to your employer – in this case the government – about their internal solutions that would protect the domain name and would protect the data associated with it.”

Sweetman isn’t alone in thinking this.

Rod Rasmussen, a leading expert on the abuse of domain name systems, wrote in a 2013 column for the trade publication Security Week, that any domain managers using a consumer-grade registrar for a “major enterprise” should lose their jobs. Rasmussen wrote the piece after Network Solutions was hacked in 2010, resulting in thousands of domains being transferred to Confluence Networks, a domain registrar traced to the British Virgin Islands.

“When it comes to Internet security, there is absolutely no way major corporations would use consumer grade anti-malware and anti-phishing solutions as a one-stop security solution. So why would major organizations – we’re talking major Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, financial services and critical infrastructure organizations – put their domains in the hands of consumer grade registrars?” Rasmussen wrote.

Among the companies whose domains were moved offshore at the time of Rasmussen’s column were organizations like LinkedIn, Fidelity, Craigslist, Yelp and the U.S. Postal Service

“We have received reports that Network Solutions customers are seeing malicious code added to their websites, and we are really sorry for this experience,” company spokesman Shashi Bellamkonda wrote in a company blog post at the time. Aside from that admission, Rasmussen wrote that Network Solutions has been “tight-lipped” about the details, only adding that the websites of a “small number” of customers were “inadvertently affected for up to several hours.”

Computer World reported in 2010 that throughout the course of the attack, users of up to 50 domains hosted by Network Solutions were redirected to a Ukrainian attack server.  Historical domain data associated with Clintonemail.com reveals the last recorded change to a Clintonemail.com IP address occurred Dec. 22, 2011. A simple lookup of that particular IP address shows it is hosted in Road Town, British Virgin Islands, although its unclear whether the offshore IP address is a direct result of the Network Solutions hack.

What’s also unclear is whether Clintonemail.com was one of the domains directly involved in the same attack that redirected to a Ukrainian attack server. What is evident, however, is that the security threat posed by Hillary Clinton using a “consumer-grade registrar” for her private email domain, potentially containing classified information, was greater than the threat that could have been posed had she decided to use the State.gov domain.

Since the New York Times broke the story, questions surrounding Clinton’s use of private email have circulated throughout the media and even some members of her own party. Republicans, especially those who are expected to be considering a 2016 presidential run, have also pounced on the issue. After days of silence, Clinton finally tweeted a response to the controversy Thursday.

Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, told the press during a visit to Saudi Arabia that the review would be conducted “as rapidly as possible,” Reuters reported.

But the review of the nearly 55,000 emails Clinton sent from her private email could take some time, as one State Department official acknowledged: ”The review is likely to take several months given the sheer volume of the document set.”   ***    SIX YEARS

Hillary Clinton was in violation of State Department rules governing the use of non-governmental email accounts during her entire tenure as secretary of state and for nearly two years after she left the job, ABC News has learned.

A senior State Department official tells ABC News that under rules in place while Clinton was secretary of state, employees could only use private email accounts for official business if they turned those emails over to be entered into government computers. They were also forbidden from including sensitive but unclassified information on private email, except under some very narrow exceptions.

This policy is still in place, according to the Department. Until any private emails are entered into government computers, the official says, an employee is in violation of the rules.

Clinton used a private email account for her entire tenure as secretary — and did not even have a government-issued email. She only turned over some 55,000 pages of emails to be entered into government computer systems late last year, nearly two years after she stepped down from the State Department.

 

 

Hillary’s Emails, no Encryption and False Names

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There was also stolen White House furniture and then Wall Street. The makings of a Hollywood movie in the text below:

Is the Mysterious ‘Eric Hoteham’ Actually Longtime Clinton Aide Eric Hothem? 

The name of the mysterious individual who registered the servers for Hillary Clinton’s private email address used at the State Department bears a striking resemblance to a longtime Clinton aide.

Clinton and her top aides in the State Department were using email addresses on a private server registered to the Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, New York, according to Internet records reviewed by the Associated Press.

The customer listed in records registering the Internet address to the Chappaqua home was “Eric Hoteham.” The AP, however, was unable to identify an “Eric Hoteham,” stating that the “name does not appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records, or Internet background searches.”

But the name is similar to that of Eric Hothem, who worked as a staff assistant for Clinton during her time as First Lady.

Hothem was involved in multiple personal matters during his service to Clinton and played a role in the controversy surrounding the pardon given to former President Bill Clinton’s half-brother Roger Clinton.

A congressional investigation into Clinton’s clemency decisions found that as Roger Clinton refused to testify to the committee in March 2001, he received a $15,000 wire transfer from a Citibank account in the care of Hothem.

The name of the account was “E.C. 934(A) c/o Eric Hothem.” Lawyers told the committee that “the account is a personal Citibank account of former President and Senator Clinton” and that the money was a loan for Roger Clinton to obtain legal counsel for the investigation.

The congressional report points out that the “payment occurred at the height of public outcry and investigative activity regarding the pardons and at a time when Roger Clinton was deciding whether to provide testimony.”

According to accounts of the final days of the Clinton administration, Hothem told chief White House usher Gary Walters that multiple items of furniture were “the Clintons’ personal property” even though they were not.

The Clintons would later have to return or pay for more than $100,000 in furnishings stolen from the White House.

Hothem also received a special acknowledgement in Hillary Clinton’s book Living History.

Hothem went to work for Citigroup, then moved to JP Morgan Chase in 2013, according to public disclosure reports accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The documents indicate that Hothem began his financial career in 2002, just a year after his last documented work as an aide to Clinton.

Members of Hothem’s JP Morgan office in Washington, D.C., said on Wednesday that they had “no comment” to any questions regarding Hothem and directed the Washington Free Beacon to the company’s media relations department.

Inquiries made to media relations were not answered by press time. An email sent to an account believed to be Hothem’s was also not returned.

An analysis of Clinton’s personal financial disclosure forms shows she maintained accounts worth millions of dollars at Citibank throughout her years in the Senate. She moved her largest accounts to JP Morgan in 2009.

Her most recent available public financial disclosure in 2012 shows that she holds up to $25 million worth of assets in a JP Morgan account. Hothem did not make the switch to JP Morgan until Clinton was out of federal office in May 2013.

Hothem has maintained ties to Democratic campaigns. His wife, Sue Hothem, has “raised millions of dollars in political contributions,” and helped found a political action committee worth nearly $1 million. She was also the director of development Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

***    

Clinton’s E-Mail System Built For Privacy Though Not Security

No Encryption or protections and once the emails are gone…well they ARE gone?

A week before becoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton set up a private e-mail system that gave her a high level of control over communications, including the ability to erase messages completely, according to security experts who have examined Internet records.

“You erase it and everything’s gone,” Matt Devost, a security expert who has had his own private e-mail for years. Commercial services like those from Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. retain copies even after users erase them from their in-box.

Although Clinton worked hard to secure the private system, her consultants appear to have set it up with a misconfigured encryption system, something that left it vulnerable to hacking, said Alex McGeorge, head of threat intelligence at Immunity Inc., a Miami Beach-based digital security firm.

The e-mail flap has political significance because Clinton is preparing to announce a bid for the Democratic nomination for president as soon as April. It also reminds voters of allegations of secrecy that surrounded Bill Clinton’s White House. In those years, First Lady Hillary Clinton fought efforts by some White House advisers to turn over information to Whitewater investigators and, later, sought to keep secret records of her task force on health-care reform.

Representative Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who leads a special committee looking into the events surrounding the 2012 terrorist attack at a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, said he will subpoena Clinton’s e-mails.

“We’re going to use every bit of legal recourse at our disposal,” Gowdy said Wednesday during an interview on CNN.

Private Service

The committee also said Wednesday that it has discovered two e-mail addresses used by Clinton while secretary of state.

Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, though he said in a statement Tuesday that her practices followed “both the letter and spirit of the rules.”

Setting up a private e-mail service was once onerous and rare. Now, it’s relatively easy, said Devost, president of FusionX LLC, based in Arlington, Virginia.

“There are tons of disadvantages of not having teams of government people to make sure that mail server isn’t compromised,” McGeorge said. “It’s just inherently less secure.”

Former Florida Governor and likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and used a personal e-mail while he was governor and has done so since, according to his spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell. He kept a server he owned in his state office and didn’t have a private server at home, Campbell said in a phone interview.

Bush E-Mails

Bush differed from Clinton in that it was known he was using a personal e-mail, his aides had regular access to the server and “his office consistently throughout his term complied with Florida’s public records laws,” Campbell said.

In order to ensure her e-mails were private, Clinton’s system appeared to use a commercial encryption product from Fortinet — a good step, McGeorge said.

However, when McGeorge examined the set-up this week he found it used a default encryption “certificate,” instead of one purchased specifically for Clinton’s service. Encryption certificates are like digital security badges, which websites use to signal to incoming browsers that they are legitimate.

“It’s bewildering to me,” he said. “We should have a much better standard of security for the secretary of state.”

Confirmation Hearing

Clinton’s private e-mail — [email protected] — was on a domain set up Jan. 13, 2009, the same day a Senate committee held her confirmation hearing. She was confirmed and sworn in on Jan. 21 as President Barack Obama’s first Secretary of State.

It’s entirely possible that Clinton had a private e-mail system set up at her home as a way to maintain administrative and legal control over her communications, said Tim “T.K.” Keanini, chief technology officer for network security company Lancope Inc. based in Atlanta.

“What we know is that she cared about that communication channel so much that she went out of her way,” and likely hired an expert to configure it for her, Keanini said in a phone interview.

Even so, there’s no guarantee she had complete control over what happened to the e-mails, Keanini said.

Keanini searched Internet records to determine that the computer server supporting Clinton’s e-mail was located in her hometown of Chappaqua, New York. An exact physical address could not be determined. The Internet Protocol address for the server was registered to a person by the name of Eric Hoteham, according to the records.

Kerry’s E-Mail

Supporters note that e-mails sent to State Department employees would have been retained on the government’s system.

However, the e-mail system was also used by at least some close staff, including Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department.

Clinton has yet to speak publicly about her motivation for setting up the system or what discussions she had with her advisers at the time.

Secretary of State John Kerry is the first in his position to rely primarily on a state.gov e-mail account, Deputy Press Secretary Marie Harf said. Harf said that the State Department has “no indication that Secretary Clinton used her personal e-mail account for anything but unclassified purposes.”

While Clinton didn’t have a classified e-mail system, she had multiple ways of communicating in a classified manner, including assistants printing documents for her, secure phone calls and secure video conferences.

Top Aide

Clinton’s top aide during that period, Cheryl Mills, is a respected scandal-defense lawyer. As a member of the White House counsel’s office, Mills helped guide President Bill Clinton through a series of investigations in the 1990s and won praise for her performance in successfully defending him when the Senate voted not to remove him from office in 1999.

Mills would go on to combine two of the most powerful posts at the State Department — chief of staff and counselor — under Hillary Clinton. In that job, she spoke for Clinton on management matters within the department.

Mills didn’t reply to an e-mail seeking comment.

Not long after resigning as secretary of state, Clinton’s private e-mail service was transferred to a commercial provider, MX Logic, Devost said.

“The timing makes sense,” Devost said. “When she left office and was no longer worried as much about control over her e-mails, she moved to a system that was easier to administer.”

Encrypted Connection

It took less than a day for researchers to find potential problems with the Clinton’s system.

Using a scanning tool called Fierce that he developed, Robert Hansen, a web-application security specialist, found what he said were the addresses for Microsoft Outlook Web access server used by Clinton’s e-mail service, and the virtual private network used to download e-mail over an encrypted connection. If hackers located those links, they could search for weaknesses and intercept traffic, according to security experts.

Using those addresses, McGeorge discovered that the certificate appearing on the site Tuesday appeared to be the factory default for the security appliance, made by Fortinet Inc., running the service.

Those defaults would normally be replaced by a unique certificate purchased for a few hundred dollars. By not taking that step, the system was vulnerable to hacking.

Fortinet Statement

It’s unclear whether the site’s settings were the same before news of the private e-mail account emerged this week.

Fortinet issued a statement saying it wasn’t aware the company’s technologies were used by Clinton.

“If they were, our recommendation is to replace provided self-signed certificates with valid digital certificates for the protected domains,” said Andrea Cousens, a Fortinet spokeswoman.

“It may have fallen in the realm of acceptable risk,” Devost said. “They wanted to make sure that when she was in Egypt all of the traffic from her phone to the mail server was encrypted and that was their priority.”

SCOTUS on Obamacare, Facts

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court was sharply divided Wednesday in the latest challenge to President Barack Obama’s health overhaul, this time over the tax subsidies that make insurance affordable for millions of Americans.

The justices aggressively questioned lawyers on both sides of what Justice Elena Kagan called “this never-ending saga,” the latest politically charged fight over the Affordable Care Act.

Chief Justice John Roberts said almost nothing in nearly 90 minutes of back-and-forth, and Justice Anthony Kennedy’s questions did not make clear how he will come out. Roberts was the decisive vote to uphold the law in 2012.

Otherwise, the same liberal-conservative divide that characterized the earlier case was evident.

Opponents of the law say that only residents of states that set up their own insurance markets can get federal subsidies to help pay their premiums. The administration says the law provides for subsidies in all 50 states.

The liberal justices peppered lawyer Michael Carvin almost from the outset of his argument to limit the subsidies.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the law set up flexibility for states to either set up their own markets or rely on the federal healthcare.gov. Giving subsidies only to people in some states would be “disastrous,” Ginsburg said.

When Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. stepped to the lectern, the liberal justices fell silent, and Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia took over.

“It may not be the statute Congress intended, but it may be the statute Congress wrote,” Scalia said of the provision in question. The case focuses on four words in the law, “established by the state.” The challengers say those words are clear and conclusive evidence that Congress wanted to limit subsidies to those consumers who get their insurance through a marketplace, or exchange, that was established by a state.

(AP) Members of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association rally…
Full Image

Verrilli argued that the law can only be read more broadly and noted that millions of people would lose health insurance if the court rules against the administration.

Alito wondered if the justices could delay the effect of such a ruling to allow states and perhaps the federal government to act. Scalia said he believes Congress would act.

“This Congress, Your Honor?” Verrilli said to widespread laughter in a packed courtroom that included leading congressional Democrats and Republicans.

Kennedy voted to strike down the health law in 2012, but on Wednesday he asked questions of both sides that made it hard to tell where he might come out this time.

He suggested that challenger Carvin’s argument raised a “serious” constitutional problem affecting the relationship between states and the federal government. On the other hand, he seemed less than convinced by Verrilli’s reading of the law to allow the subsidies nationwide.

Millions of people could be affected by the court’s decision. The justices are trying to determine whether the law makes people in all 50 states eligible for federal tax subsidies to cut the cost of insurance premiums. Or, does it limit tax credits to people who live in states that created their own health insurance marketplaces?

A ruling that limits where subsidies are available would have dramatic consequences because roughly three dozen states opted against their own marketplace, or exchange, and instead rely on the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s healthcare.gov. Independent studies estimate that 8 million people could lose insurance coverage.

Activists on both sides were in place outside the marble courthouse by 5:30 a.m. Wednesday. Some held placards showing how many people in each state would lose insurance if the court ruled that the law does not allow subsidies everywhere.

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act failed to kill the law in an epic, election-year Supreme Court case in 2012. Chief Justice Roberts joined with the court’s liberal justices and provided the crucial vote to uphold the law in the midst of Obama’s re-election campaign.

The new case, part of a long-running political and legal fight to get rid of the law also known as Obamacare, focuses on the four words “established by the state” in a law that runs more than 900 pages.

The administration counters that the law was written to dramatically reduce the ranks of uninsured, and that it would make no sense to condition subsidies on where people live. The phrase “established by the state,” is what the administration calls a “term of art” that takes in both state- and federally run exchanges. The administration also says the term cannot be read in isolation, and that other parts of the law show that subsidies should be widely available.

Each side in the case argues that the law unambiguously supports only its position. One other option for the court is to declare the law is ambiguous when it comes to subsidies and defer to the Internal Revenue Service’s regulations making tax credits available nationwide.

Partisan and ideological divisions remain stark for a law that passed Congress in 2010 with no Republican votes. Of the judges who have ruled on lawsuits over the subsidies, Democratic appointees have sided with the administration and Republican appointees have been with the challengers.

Roberts was the only justice to essentially cross party lines with his vote in 2012. His fellow conservatives on the court voted to strike down Obamacare in its entirety.

A decision in King v. Burwell, 14-114, is expected by late June.

To understand the case that House has against the Department of Health and Human Services on Obamacare (ACA), in part this is from the lead lawyer, Jonathan Turley representing the House of Representatives:

The case could again put Chief Justice Roberts in the position of saving or dooming the ACA with a court that has been deeply divided over the Act. Roberts appeared to have switched sides soon before the issuance in the individual mandate case — a decision that saved the ACA but also produced a rather convoluted opinion. Now the Administration seems to be trying to influence Roberts with dire predictions about what would occur if he or his colleagues vote against the President. Obviously, the ramifications of a legal interpretation should not influence the Court but clearly some believe it may factor into the analysis.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the Health and Human Services secretary, told lawmakers in a letter on Tuesday that millions of Americans would lose their health insurance if the court rules against President Barack Obama’s administration in the case, which is expected to be decided by June. The timing of the letter is rather obvious and the question is whether such heavy-handed moves could backfire. It seems pretty obvious who the letter is really directed toward and Roberts may feel like he is being played as a chump.

Ironically, there is no need for the letter. As I have noted in the past, King and Halbig represent serious threats to the ACA, even though there could be legislative remedies. The problem is that the President has burned every bridge with Congress in continuing to take unilateral actions in violation of the the Separation of Powers (at least in the view of some of us).

In the end, this type of public campaign can irritate and alienate justices before an argument. Whether the President acted constitutionally (and I believe that he did not) should not be a question that turns on how you feel about health care or the ramification of enforcing what you believe is the constitutional mandate.

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