Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

Terrorism Works, U.S. Chart Proves Vulnerability

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Chart Lists Terrorists in U.S. Due to Lax Immigration Policies

The Obama administration’s lax immigration policies have allowed a large number of terrorists with documented ties to ISIS and other radical Islamic groups into the United States, including individuals from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Uzbekistan who have been criminally charged in recent years.

Examples include a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia (Hinda Osman Dhirane) charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, a lawful permanent resident (Akhror Saidakhmetov) from Kazakhstan charged with conspiracy to provide material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Yemeni national named Mufid A. Elfgeeh who also supported a foreign terrorist organization, possessed illegal firearms and attempted to kill U.S. government officers and a Syrian national named Mohamad Saeed Kodaimati who knowingly made false, fraudulently and fictitious statements to the FBI.

That’s just a snippet of a long list of foreigners with terrorist ties who have been granted U.S. entry by the Obama administration. The document was provided this month by a pair of federal lawmakers attempting to pinpoint the tragic consequences of Obama’s negligent immigration policies. The legislators, both U.S. senators, are asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Secretary of State John Kerry to provide details on the immigration history of the individuals—as well as their family—that appear on the chart. The list features 72 people involved with or sentenced for terrorist activity in the last year alone.

They include individuals who have engaged in or attempted to engage in acts of terrorism; conspired or attempted to conspire to provide material support to a terrorist organization; engaged in criminal conduct inspired by terrorist ideology; or who have been sentenced for any of the foregoing, the senators, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas, reveal. “We would like to understand more about these individuals, and others similarly situated in recent history, and the nexus between terrorism and our immigration system,” they write in a letter to Lynch and Kerry. Sessions chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Cruz chairs the Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts.

They ask that the State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) coordinate with other relevant agencies to provide answers to their questions by early next month. Among the senators’ inquires is an unredacted copy of each non-citizen or naturalized citizen’s alien file and a breakdown by immigration status of those who at any time after entering the U.S. got flagged as a member of a terrorist organization or political/social group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity. The lawmakers seek other information as well, including the identification of subjects with terrorist ties who have been deported from the U.S. and those who have been placed in removal proceedings but were allowed to remain inside the country.

As if it weren’t bad enough that terrorists are entering the U.S. legally thanks to our weak immigration policies, the Obama administration also has a terrorist “hands off” list that permits individuals with extremist ties to enter the country. The disturbing details of this secret list come from internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents exposed last year by a U.S. senator. Specifically, an electronic email exchange between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asks whether to admit an individual with ties to various terrorist groups. The individual had scheduled an upcoming flight into the U.S. and was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close associate and supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Islamic terrorists are also sneaking into the U.S. through the porous southern border. Judicial Watch has reported this for years and, more recently, published a series of stories documenting how Mexican drug cartels are smuggling foreigners with terrorist links into the El Paso, Texas region. The foreigners are classified as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the government and they are being transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. JW has also reported that Mexican smugglers are moving ISIS operatives through the desert and across the U.S.-Mexico border with tremendous ease.

America’s Dramatic Drop in Freedom, Shameful

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Ronald Reagan is shuttering in his grave

Every person in the United States has a DUTY to be a watchdog of government and to protect the legacy of our Founding Fathers. As noted below, the failure belongs with us.

What are you ready to do and when do you start to remove this shame?

United States Drops In Overall Freedom Ranking 

Daily Caller: A new report on the freedom of countries around the world ranks the United States 20th, putting countries like Chile and the United Kingdom ahead of the U.S.

Last year, the U.S. was ranked 17th, but a steady decline of economic freedom and “rule of law” has dropped the level of freedom, according to the Cato Institute, Fraser Institute and the Swiss Liberales Institut, which created the study together.

Co-author of the report Ian Vasquez told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the steady growth of government and increased regulations of business and labor contribute to the U.S. low rating.

“Since the year 2000, the U.S. has been on a decline in terms of economic freedom,” Vasquez told TheDCNF.

The other main reason for the United States’ low rank comes from the “rule of law” measure. Vasquez told TheDCNF that increased invasions of privacy through the war on drugs and war on terror have contributed to the decline in freedom.

Also, the increased use of eminent domain is factored in as a violation of property rights.

The other indicators used to make the list were security and safety, movement, religion, association, assembly and civil society, expression, relationships, size of government, legal system and property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, regulation of credit, labor and business.

Based on those measures, here are the top 25 countries.

 

1. Hong Kong

2. Switzerland

3. Finland

4. Denmark

5. New Zealand

6. Canada

7. Australia

8. Ireland

9. United Kingdom

10. Sweden

11. Norway

12. Austria

12. Germany

14. Iceland

14. Netherlands

16. Malta

17. Luxembourg

18. Chile

19. Mauritius

And then finally..

20. United States

Just after the U.S.,

21. Czech Republic

22. Estonia

22. Belgium

24. Taiwan

25. Portugal

“The U.S. performance is worrisome and shows that the United States can no longer claim to be the leading bastion of liberty in the world,” Vasquez wrote.”In addition to the expansion of the regulatory state and drop in economic freedom, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the erosion of property rights due to greater use of eminent domain all likely have contributed to the U.S. decline.”

 

Obama Still Pledges More with Iran

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This video was released two weeks after the Iran Nuclear Deal (JPOA) was announced.

 Click here to see the White House in action.

Add to Obama’s To-Do List: Regime Change in Iran

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President Obama has been thinking a lot recently about his post-presidency. According to a detailed dispatch in the New York Times, he has been meeting with notable authors and business leaders over late-night dinners and discussing what he will do next.

High on his post-presidential to-do list should be regime change for Iran. No, Barack Obama should not press his successor to invade Iran and set up an occupation government. But the president should use his time after office to nurture and support Iran’s democratic opposition in its struggle against Iran’s dictator.

For now, the president should hear from some people who disagree with him. The White House “vision committee” should invite Iranian dissidents who recently signed an open letter opposing the Iran deal. They would have interesting comments over late-night cocktails with the commander-in-chief. Obama’s aides could send for Gene Sharp, the leading theorist of nonviolent conflict, and Michael Ledeen, the conservative historian who has spent the last 20 years trying to foment political warfare against the regime.

As an elder statesman, Obama should busy himself with the fate of that regime’s political prisoners the way Jimmy Carter has taken up the cause of Palestinian statehood. Obama’s legacy in foreign policy depends not on the success of the nuclear deal in the short term, but on the success of Iran’s democracy movement in the long term.

Obama can’t acknowledge this publicly for the remainder of his presidency. He still needs to make sure Iran’s hardliners live up to their end of the bargain, and he can’t afford to provoke Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And even if his nuclear deal were not tying his hands while he’s in office, history would be. U.S. government programs to support Iranian civil society have not had much success.

George W. Bush authorized U.S. government grants to support Iran’s democratic opposition, but in some cases the receipt of this support endangered Iranians brave enough to accept it. Also many Iranians still remember the role the U.S. played in the 1953 coup that unseated Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. U.S. government programs to support Iranian democracy unfortunately are interpreted as an official pursuit of regime change. That’s why Obama can be especially helpful once he is out of office — by supporting the Iranian opposition as a private citizen, allied with other private citizens to shame Iran’s government to treat its people better.

Ultimately it’s up to Iranians to rise up against a government that suppresses them. But like any “people power” movement, those activists struggling inside the country need solidarity and support from the outside. Former President Obama would be an ideal person to raise private money and awareness for Iranians who seek the same freedoms we take for granted in the West. Who knows better the dynamics necessary to helping build a coalition for political change? He was, after all, a community organizer.

There are a few doses of self-interest here too. For Obama, a plan to champion Iranian democracy after he leaves office is good politics now, to get his nuclear deal. He could privately assure doubtful Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer that he would devote his energies during the 10 to 15 years ahead to changing the nature of Iran’s regime.

And once he has that deal, it’s in Obama’s interest to ensure that it succeeds, which can only happen if Iran’s current rulers fall. As Obama himself told NPR in April, after 15 years Iran’s breakout time to produce enough fissile material for a bomb would decrease from around a year to a matter of a few weeks. If in 2030, Iran is ruled by reactionaries as belligerent as today’s reactionaries, Obama’s signature foreign policy initiative will have only given the regime more time to perfect the means by which it can blackmail the rest of the world. Obama needs to worry today about who will replace Khamenei and his ilk down the road.

Fortunately there are many Iranians who don’t want to live under an Islamic police state. Obama can start with the leaders of Iran’s Green movement, like Mir Hossein Mousavi, who took to the streets in 2009 and accused Khamenei of stealing Mousavi’s electoral victory. Mousavi, like the current regime has opposed sanctions and supported the nuclear program. But Mousavi and others in the opposition are better long-term partners because they also challenge the unaccountable power of the ayatollah. Remember that the international sanctions that are to be dismantled in exchange for more nuclear transparency were imposed because Iran’s leaders went forward with a nuclear program condemned by the rest of the world. That kind of defiance is much harder to pull off when leaders have to face an electorate suffering under the resulting sanctions.

Obama would say he is already working with Iranian reformers, like President Hassan Rouhani. But Mousavi remains under house arrest and state executions have gone through the roof, despite Rouhani’s initial promises to free political prisoners.

The truth is, Iran’s opposition needs all the help it can get. The hope from the deal’s proponents is that increased investment and integration into the world economy will open up enough political space for a democratic opposition to thrive someday. But the odds are against them. Before much money trickles down to Iran’s middle class, much more will go to the revolutionary guard commanders who oppress them.

The regime sees the threat coming. On his official website on Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei wrote: “We will permit neither American economic influence, nor political influence, nor cultural influence.”

He has good reason to be worried. A decade ago in Washington, I met the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the cleric who led the original Islamic revolution in 1979. Back then the grandson, Hossein Khomeini, was an outspoken opponent of the Iranian regime. He told me that he couldn’t imagine a scenario where Iran’s rulers gave up power in the face of overwhelming nonviolent resistance, the way Slobodan Milosevic ultimately was forced to give up the Serbian presidency in 2000 after Serbians rose up without violence against him. Khomeini told me that when Iran’s people rebelled, the current leaders would pay with their lives.

Someone like Obama, who understands nonviolent conflict more than his predecessors, could help avoid such a bloodbath in Iran. He owes as much to the Iranian people. He owes as much to the American people. And ultimately, Obama owes as much to his own legacy.

Amnesty director’s links to global network of Islamists

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Amnesty International courtesy of financial support from George Soros:

In part from Discover the Networks:

During the Cold War, however, AI focused scant attention on the human rights abuses committed by the Soviet Union and its satellites via the Warsaw Pact. Only in 1975, fully 13 years after its formation, did the organization finally release a report — “Prisoners of Conscience in the USSR” — documenting the plight of political prisoners behind the Iron Curtain. In its own defense, AI maintained that its work was complicated by the lack of access to prisoners in the Communist world, and by the possibility that its activism might trigger retaliation against political prisoners by the ruling authorities.

The consequences of this approach were evident in AI’s assessment of human rights in Communist Cuba, where throughout the 1970s the organization underestimated the number of political prisoners while offering only mild criticism of the Castro regime’s persecution of political opponents. An AI annual report for 1976, for instance, noted that the “persistence of fear, real or imaginary, was primarily responsible for the early excesses in the treatment of political prisoners.” This cautiously diplomatic approach to the Castro dictatorship did not prevent AI from being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. In his acceptance lecture, Mumtaz Soysal, a little-known professor from Turkey, hailed what he called AI’s mission “to spotlight the victims in every society where imprisonment results from political or religious belief …”

A grossly disproportionate share of Amnesty International’s criticism is reserved for the United States. In the 1980s AI joined leftist non-governmental organizations like the Church World Service and Americas Watch in vocally opposing the Reagan administration’s support for the Contra resistance movement against Nicaragua’s Communist dictatorship.

In recent years, AI has emerged as a vocal critic of the U.S.-led war on terror, opposing especially the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. AI’s University of Oklahoma chapter endorsed a May 1, 2003 document titled “10 Reasons Environmentalists Oppose an Attack on Iraq,” which was published by Environmentalists Against War.

AI has also condemned the U.S.-operated detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In March 2005, Amnesty International-USA’s then-Executive Director William Schulz alleged that the United States had become “a leading purveyor and practitioner” of torture and urged that senior American officials — including President Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet, and high-ranking officers at Guantanamo Bay — face prosecution by other governments for violations of the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture. On May 25, 2005, Schulz announced that his organization “calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior U.S. officials involved in the torture scandal.” “The apparent high-level architects of torture,” he added, “should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riveria because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998.” Schulz’s remarks were echoed in May of 2005 by Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan, who charged that “Guantanamo [Bay] has become the gulag of our times…”

An expose by a British paper has revealed that a senior Amnesty international official has links with Hamas and a wider secret global Islamist network, once again raising questions about the NGO’s alleged “impartiality.”

The report by The Times revealed that Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein, is linked to a British “aid agency” which helps finance Hamas, and held a private meeting with a senior Muslim Brotherhood official at his house in Egypt.

What’s more, Hussein’s husband Wael Musabbeh was named in documents released by the United Arab Emirates after a 2013 trial which saw 60 UAE citizens accused of conspiracy and sedition, over a plot to overthrow the government. While Musabbeh was not himself a defendant in that case, he and his wife were both directors of a Bradford-based charity “said by the authorities to be part of a complex financial and ideological network in which the UK and Ireland served as important hubs, linking the (Muslim) Brotherhood to its group in UAE,” the paper said.

Amnesty International director alleged to have links to Muslim Brotherhood & radical Islamists

Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein.

A senior Amnesty International official has been found to have private links with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and revolutionary Islamists accused of plotting a coup in an Arab state.

Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein, stayed overnight at the residence of a Muslim Brotherhood advisor during an official visit to Egypt in direct contravention of Amnesty guidelines.

Her husband was also named as an alleged Islamist in documents relating to a 2013 sedition trial in the United Arab Emirates.

Hussein, who was until recently the charity’s director of international advocacy and among its leading voices at the UN, denies being an Islamist and has said she is “vehemently opposed” to raising money for “any organization that supports terrorism.”

An investigation published by The Times claimed that Hussein, 51, held a private meeting with a Muslim Brotherhood government official during an Amnesty mission to Egypt in 2012.

After the private meeting with Adly al-Qazzaz, a ministerial education adviser, Hussein had dinner with his family and stayed overnight in their home.

Amnesty International was not informed of the visit, despite instructing its staff to declare any links that may generate a real or perceived conflict of interest with its independence and impartiality.

An Amnesty employee told The Times that the charity had strict rules on overseas trips, adding: “For an Amnesty delegate to accept an invitation to stay at the residence of a government official is a serious breach of protocol.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist organization in Bahrain, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The transnational Sunni Islamist organization has been illegal in Egypt since 2013, when the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown by the military in a coup d’état which has since led to a violent crackdown on the group.

According to The Times, Adly al-Qazzaz’s family was well connected within the party. His son, Khaled al-Qazzaz, was the Brotherhood’s presidential secretary for foreign affairs. His daughter was the official spokeswoman for the group in the UK.

Both Adly al-Qazzaz and his son were arrested and detained following the military coup in 2013, but the father has since been released.

Hussein said she did not know about the Muslim Brotherhood positions held by members of the family and that she met with al-Qazzaz to speak about “the synergies between human rights and educational planning.”

Amnesty said that, with the exception of the overnight stay, it “found no evidence to suggest any inappropriate links between Ms Hussein and the al-Qazzaz family.”

In a separate incident, Hussein’s husband was identified in documents released after a criminal trial of Islamists accused of plotting a coup in the United Arab Emirates.

Wael Musabbeh was one of several alleged British Islamists, none of whom were charged, named in documents relating to a 2013 trial that ended with the jailing of more than 60 Emirati citizens for conspiracy and sedition.

Amnesty, which challenged the fairness of the trial at the time, said it was unaware of the connection because it did not realize Musabbeh was Hussein’s husband.

Musabbeh is also a director and trustee of Human Relief Foundation, a global Islamic charity banned in Israel for its alleged connecting to groups which finance Hamas.

The charity said Hussein denied being a supporter of the Brotherhood and has told Amnesty “any connections are purely circumstantial.” It said it did not believe any of her alleged connections with Islamists represented a conflict of interest.

It added: “Amnesty International does, however, take very seriously any allegations that would call into question our impartiality and is therefore investigating the issues raised.”

The charity has also come under fire for a separate incident in which an employee defended the organization’s links with CAGE, an advocacy group which campaigns for victims of the “war on terror,” but which has been accused of acting as apologists for jihadists.

The Amnesty employee voiced sympathy for those whose “only crime is to be soft on Islamic militants.”

CAGE was condemned by Prime Minister David Cameron in February for suggesting the UK-born Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) executioner “Jihadi John” was turned into a brutal killer after coming into contact with UK intelligence services.

An Amnesty spokeswoman said the charity “believes that staff should feel free to discuss and debate issues and other topics which impact the organization.”

“[Amnesty] campaigns and calls for states to respect, protect and fulfill their international human rights obligations, including freedom of expression, freedom of religion and women’s rights,” the spokeswoman added.

Head-Desk, the Hillary Server-Gate Thing is Over the Top

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What about that Hillary lawyer, David Kendall?

Examiner:

Hillary Clinton’s private attorney, who was permitted to retain copies of Clinton’s emails until earlier this month, may not have had the proper security clearance or adequate tools to protect those documents.

“[I]t appears the FBI has determined that your clearance is not sufficient to allow you to maintain custody of the emails,” wrote Sen. Charles Grassley in a letter Friday to David Kendall, Clinton’s attorney.

Three days earlier, the FBI had taken from Kendall a thumb drive that he used to store copies of the work-related emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in December of last year.

Investigators grew increasingly concerned about the documents Clinton and her attorney still possessed after the intelligence community inspector general determined some of the emails were classified up to “top secret,” the highest level of classification in government.

Grassley noted the State Department had identified classified information among Clinton’s emails as early as May.

But the agency did not give Kendall a safe in which to store the thumb drive until July, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said.

“Thus, since at least May 2015 and possibly December 2014, it appears that in addition to not having an adequate security clearance, you did not have the appropriate tools in place to secure the thumb drives,” Grassley wrote. “Even with the safe, there are questions as to whether it was an adequate mechanism to secure [top secret] material.”

The Iowa Republican pressed Kendall on whether his security clearance was active when the State Department allowed him to keep the thumb drive despite knowing it contained classified information.

Grassley also demanded to know who besides Kendall was granted access to the emails at Williams & Connolly, the law firm where he works.

Daily Mail:

The IT company Hilary Clinton chose to maintain her private email account was run from a loft apartment and its servers were housed in the bathroom closet, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

Daily Mail Online tracked down ex-employees of Platte River Networks in Denver, Colorado, who revealed the outfit’s strong links to the Democratic Party but expressed shock that the 2016 presidential candidate chose the small private company for such a sensitive job. One, Tera Dadiotis, called it ‘a mom and pop shop’ which was an excellent place to work, but hardly seemed likely to be used to secure state secrets. And Tom Welch, who helped found the company, confirmed the servers were in a bathroom closet.

It can also be disclosed that the small number of employees who were aware of the Clinton contract were told to keep it secret. The way in which Clinton came to contract a company described as a ‘mom and pop’ operation remains unclear. However Daily Mail Online has established a series of connections between the firm and the Democratic Party.

Platte River Networks worked for Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper – once heavily tipped to be Clinton’s 2016 running mate – during his election to be mayor of the city in 2003

The company’s controversial vice president of sales David DeCamillis is also said to be a ‘big Democrat’ supporter who offered his house to Joe Biden for the party’s convention held in Denver in 2008.

It will be the small scale of the firm and its own home-made arrangements which will raise the most significant questions over security and over what checks Clinton’s aides made about how suitable it was for dealing with what new transpires to be classified material.

Daily Mail Online spoke to former employees of the firm, including Tera Dadiotis, who was a customer relations consultant between 2007 and 2010. Describing it as ‘a great place to work, but kind of like a mom and pop shop’, Tera reacted with disbelief that her former company was hired to manage the email system of Democratic juggernaut Hilary Clinton.

Speaking to Daily Mail Online at her home in Castle Rock, Colorado, Tera said: ‘I think it’s really bizarre, I don’t know how that relationship evolved. ‘At the time I worked for them they wouldn’t have been equipped to work for Hilary Clinton because I don’t think they had the resources, they were based out of a loft, so [it was] not very high security, we didn’t even have an alarm.

‘I don’t know how they run their operation now, but we literally had our server racks in the bathroom. I mean knowing how small Platte River Networks… I don’t see how that would be secure [enough for Clinton].’

Founded in 2002 by entrepreneurs Treve Suazo, Brent Allshouse and Tom Welch, Platte River Networks worked out of a 1,858 square feet loft apartment in downtown Denver up until this earlier year when they moved to a much bigger 12,000 sq.ft space.

The company celebrated the upgrade with an open house party on June 18, which they excitedly posted on their website and facebook page. Describing the old office, Tera, 30, said: ‘It was a loft downtown and they [the co-founders] owned it. It was one big open space where we had cubicles and two bathrooms.

‘I actually lived in the same building.’

Clinton’s ‘homebrew’ computer system housed her emails while she was Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013. Platte River Networks provided its services in mid-2013 according to Barbara Wells, the company’s lawyer. In March Clinton said she wiped the server clean but experts say some of the more than 60,000 emails she deleted may be recoverable.

The server is now in the hands of the FBI who took it off Platte River Networks hands last Wednesday. Four emails on the private server are said to have been ‘classified’ with two of them labeled ‘top secret’, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said on Tuesday.  Up to 60 in all may have been found during further samples, it has been reported. Clinton has maintained nothing on her server was classified at the time she saw it.

Wherever the truth lies, Tera thinks Platte River was an unsuitable choice for Clinton, she said: ‘It’s so weird, because it’s just a small IT company. I know they’ve expanded quite a bit since I left but I do think it’s strange, we only had the three owners and like eight employees. We didn’t do any work in other states.

‘No offense to them, but who are they? I know of a lot of IT companies that are much bigger. When I was there I answered all the phone calls, paid all the bills, and had a good handle on what was coming in and going out.

‘We were like your local IT company, nothing special or fancy, we had a really good reputation but that was on a local level.’

She thinks Clinton should have used a company with government security clearance, adding: ‘I just think government stuff should be handled by the government.’ Baffled by how Clinton decided to hire Platte River, ex-employees suggested David DeCamillis, the company’s vice-president of sales and marketing might have had a hand in courting her business. 

Another theory put forward was that Colorado governor John Hickenlooper recommended them to her. The Democratic National Convention was held in Denver in 2008.

Tera said: ‘David DeCamillis was a big Democrat. He went to the Democrat Convention. ‘He definitely helped Platte River grow, he had a strong sales background. And he brought a lot of clients on, that was his role as the VP of sales.’

Platte River co-founder Tom Welch revealed DeCamillis – who we revealed was sued for fraud when he worked for Lou Pearlman, the disgraced music impresario who discovered Backstreet Boys and NSync – had hoped to put up Joe Biden, now the vice-president, during the 2008 convention. ‘During that Democratic Convention David DeCamillis was going to rent his home to Joe Biden. It was in a relatively posh part of Denver, it was called Washington Park in downtown Denver,’ Welch said.

‘Then Joe Biden was selected as [vice-presidential] candidate and didn’t take him up on the deal.

‘I’m not sure how that all happened, all I know he was saying he had the opportunity to make quite a bit of money doing it. ‘I think when he was selected as a Vice President candidate he got more luxurious accommodation.’

Welch, 47, sold his third of the company to Suazo and Allshouse in February 2010.

He had no idea Clinton became a client until the news broke last week. He said: ‘The whole thing is very surprising to me. ‘I had no idea they had that kind of client, when I was with the company we were a small Denver business focused company, we really didn’t do a lot, we did some stuff statewide, may have had a client or two in the western region but we certainly weren’t doing business in Washington DC or on the East coast.’

Welch, who now runs his own IT company Colorado Cloud, revealed Platte River did work for John Hickenlooper when he was running to be mayor of Denver. He said: ‘In the past, when I was with the company we did some work with John Hickenlooper, he was running for mayor of Denver Colorado, around 2004.

The space that we had our office was essentially designed as a residential unit… the bathroom connected to the master closet and that’s what we retrofitted as a server room

Tom Welch, former Platte River Networks executive

‘We did some IT support for his campaign.’

Asked if that was the connection to Clinton, he said: ‘I would have no idea, it’s the only connection I can possibly imagine. Hickenlooper was elected Mayor of Denver in 2003 and served two terms until 2011 when he became Governor.

Welch also said it was also ‘very possible’ Clinton’s team came across Platte River thanks to the 2008 Denver convention.

Welch confirmed his former company kept its servers in the bathroom closet.

He said: ‘The space that we had our office was essentially designed as a residential unit… the bathroom connected to the master closet and that’s what we retrofitted as a server room.’ He claimed the set up was secure, adding: ‘Our internal network was extremely secure. At the time Inca St was a relatively obscure location, second floor office. The technology we had in place was pretty good. The security we had in place at the office was really good to protect our well-being.’

Asked if he thinks Clinton’s emails could ever have been at risk from hackers, he said: ‘What changed after I left the company I have no idea, I really could not comment on that. I don’t know.’ However he thinks the company will struggle to overcome the Clinton controversy.

He said: ‘If they can get through this hurdle I suspect its going to cost them a fair amount of money, if they can survive the money side of it, they’re going to have a pretty serious black eye from an industry perspective if it’s shown they didn’t take the proper security measures or anything along those lines – that could hurt them.’ Asked if the fault lay with Clinton and not Platte River, he added: ‘I don’t know where you assign blame. Is it her fault for hiring an IT management company?’

Jim Zimmerman, another ex-employee recalled the company being secretive about acquiring Clinton as a client.

Speaking to Daily Mail Online, he said: ‘Before they actually did the work, they said “that we’ve got this contract we’re going to do it, we don’t want a lot of talk about it, we just want to get in and get out”. ‘The sales rep made a general announcement to say we were going to do it and we would just prefer to keep it private.

‘I don’t know the techs were who dealt with her account, they didn’t say, they said they’re doing it and that’s it.’

Zimmerman, 55, added: ‘It was an ego trip for somebody I’m sure. They may have seen it as a feather in their cap and a challenge. And I’m sure it wasn’t Hillary that hired them directly, I’m sure it was whoever was doing the managing. ‘I’m sure it was an exciting contract for the guys who sold it [to her].’

Zimmerman also thinks the Democratic National Convention may have been where Platte River first came onto Clinton’s radar.

He said: ‘To acquire business like that, my best guess is it had something to do with the convention being in town… that would be three degrees of separation, everybody had something to do with that. ‘I’m sure someone knew somebody at DNC and said “hey how would you guys like to do this” and they probably thought, that would be such a cool thing to do for our company.

‘I know at that time Platte River was marketing heavily, I mean they were jumping on work.

‘And when I heard it on the radio about Hilary Clinton emails a year or so ago. I thought “I can think of two guys who are c***ing their pants right now, they did not expect this.’ Defending his ex-employers from criticism, Zimmerman added: ‘I’m sure they didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t write the emails, they didn’t make the choice to tell her she was going to use that email server. They were just turning the wrenches… you make it as secure as possible.

‘If she did stupid stuff on the email and sent out classified information, that’s all on her, Platte River can’t control what she does with it. In the end they can only build something to her requirements. ‘They were just doing what they were contracted to do to the best of their abilities.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For me details, photos and the timeline of server-gate, click here.