Category Archives: Veterans

Why No Search Warrant for Hillary’s Mobile Devices?

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The revelation that Hillary had her own email server was a shocker. Then the forced and scheduled production of those emails was another shocker as they were produced. The Trey Gowdy House Benghazi Committee being stonewalled by the Clinton camp and by the State Department was another shocker as compared with Hillary’s own false pledges of cooperation. Several outside organizations have been forced to file FOIA requests and then were forced to file lawsuits for production of those FOIA requests. This is coupled with the subpoenas from the Gowdy commission.

We hear about the server and the emails, but to date, it seems any request for search warrants has been nil. We cannot overlook the fact that Hillary also had and may still have 3 mobile devices, a Blackberry, and iPhone and an iPad. What about the electronic data on those devices or the meta-data trail to either back up the server data or perhaps in addition to that cache the FBI is investigating?

To date, the general conclusion is the FBI is protecting Hillary at the behest of the Justice Department, which hardly seems to be the case. The FBI has assigned their ‘A’ team to this mission and they have a multi-track objective that includes global cyber- espionage, hacking and a meticulous investigation to determine just how many laws were broken beyond the scope of the one or two prevailing violations of protecting classified material. It must be mentioned here that the FBI was also a recipient from the normal intelligence distribution list, so the FBI has their own record of transmissions that went to Hillary and other intelligence or national security personnel.

It would also be a good time as well to include the fact that the Chinese hacked the Office of Personnel management and was able to capture files of all security clearance employees which included Hillary. It is estimate that the OPM hack was determined to have occurred in June of 2014, a year or so after Hillary left her position as Secretary of State, but that OPM hack date is an estimate. Further the depths of the stolen electronic files are still being realized and those numbers are growing exponentially. Were they other known foreign hacks the FBI has open case files on, beyond the OPM intrusion?

This is an important and perhaps a top concern for the FBI, the NSA and associated cyber agencies to determine other possible foreign hacks into Hillary’s electronic files and those of her inner circle personnel. This could in fact be the single reason why the White House or the Obama National Security Council has chosen to defer answers and comments on the Hillary server-gate scandal to either the Department of Justice or the FBI. There is a high probability of a deeper and more threatening security condition of classified material. There could be the likelihood of other cyber intrusions being investigated by the FBI that have not been made public for which Hillary and her team may have been victims.

Anyway, this is hardly a matter that will be solved soon, yet it is a sure bet that almost daily more will bubble to the surface. Meanwhile, Politico has published a fairly good summary as to why Hillary and her lawyers are white knuckled and in panic mode at this moment.

One also cannot omit the entire notion that violations on behalf of Hillary, Bill, Jake Sullivan, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and others at the Clinton Foundation or at the State Department could add to the building nightmares for those mentioned or for the Hillary legal team headed by David Kendall. Mixing government business with a private and global foundation where big big money moved back and forth could be the cherry on the banana split for this building scandal.

Hillary’s FBI nightmare

If the feds have Clinton’s personal emails, too, some of them are bound to come out — exactly as she feared.

The next question in the Hillary Clinton email matter is who will force the FBI to release any documents it may have retrieved from the 2016 presidential candidate’s homemade server — Congress or the courts?

The answer: A federal judge may decide to get aggressive and order the law enforcement agency to turn over any newly discovered records or at least preserve them pending further court action. But don’t expect congressional subpoenas to fly — or FBI director James Comey to get hauled to Capitol Hill anytime soon.

Key congressional committees investigating Clinton’s emails argue that the courts are better suited to force the release of federal documents. One GOP source familiar with the investigations said a congressional committee could “theoretically subpoena the FBI” to demand the contents of Clinton’s server, but judges are likely to wade into the issue first.

“I think the court is better positioned right now because of where the cases are in litigation,” the source said.

Court action, however, depends on the aggressiveness of federal judges who are now managing more than 30 Freedom of Information Act cases involving emails on accounts maintained by Clinton or her top aides.

The FBI has already rebuffed one judge’s effort to obtain messages the agency has recovered from Clinton’s server, prompting a stinging attack from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On Wednesday, key members of Capitol Hill expressed reluctance to dive in after a report surfaced that the FBI has successfully retrieved messages left on Clinton’s server. The FBI declined to confirm the Bloomberg report Wednesday.

House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy — a former federal prosecutor — made clear through a spokesman that he has no intention to cross swords with the FBI.

“Chairman Gowdy has not asked the FBI about its investigation into Secretary Clinton’s unusual and unprecedented email arrangement, nor has the Bureau offered a briefing to the committee,” Benghazi panel spokesman Jamal Ware said.

“The chairman believes the FBI is the nation’s premier law enforcement agency and he is not willing to comment on its ongoing investigation into the mishandling of classified information in connection with Secretary Clinton’s server.”

Grassley said he was concerned by anonymous leaks cited in the Bloomberg story, noting that the FBI has not responded to congressional inquiries about the investigation.

“You know it is getting a little absurd when someone at the Justice Department is apparently leaking details to the press about an investigation that the department officially refuses to admit to Congress that it is conducting,” Grassley said.

“In light of the details reported in the media, the committee will be seeking more information about the State Department’s attempts to regain possession of the email records that should have remained at the State Department in the first place. The FBI should also provide clarity on how it will handle the emails now that they have been recovered from the server.”

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he was “hopeful” that the results of the FBI inquiry will be made public. He promised to press his own inquiry but offered no specifics.

Regardless of what Congress decides to do, Hillary Clinton’s decision to have a tech firm she hired turn the server over to the FBI last month at its request greatly raises the potential that messages she has claimed to be private will eventually make it into the public domain, lawyers tracking the case said. Clinton has said that she had tens of thousands of emails deleted after determining that they contained personal information, but now the FBI appears to have at least some of those in its possession.

“This is enormously significant,” said Dan Metcalfe, a former top Justice Department official handling disclosure issues. “It’s one thing for the bureau to have taken control of the server itself, and when you add to that their technical capabilities to glean information from it, if there is information there that transcends what [Clinton] furnished to State, I think the odds are exceedingly high that that at least some if not all of that information will ultimately enter the public domain.”

While State and the National Archives have determined that about 1,500 of the 30,000 emails Clinton turned over last December are entirely personal records, that determination won’t render those messages or others entirely and indefinitely off limits under the Freedom of Information Act if they turn up in the FBI’s files after being extracted from Clinton’s server, Metcalfe said.

“Those are no longer merely personal records,” said Metcalfe, a former director of Justice’s Office of Information & Privacy who now teaches law at American University. “Anything that the bureau pulls off that server, old messages, new messages, Hillary’s allegedly personal messages, Hillary’s admittedly official records is now an agency record of the bureau’s law enforcement activities.”

Metcalfe said those records could be withheld by the FBI, but once its investigation ends, the documents would have to be processed if requested. That could lead to messages State viewed as entirely personal being published at least in part, he added.

Meanwhile, action continues in the courts. On Monday, the FBI turned down U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s invitation to explain where its investigation stands. The response led Grassley to blast the FBI for “behaving like it’s above the law.”

Sullivan has not yet signaled what other steps he will take, if any. The plaintiff in the case, the conservative group Judicial Watch, could ask the judge to issue a subpoena to the FBI for relevant records. It would be an unusual step and likely lead to legal fireworks.

“A subpoena served upon the FBI will be resisted by the U.S. attorney’s office,” predicted former federal magistrate John Facciola.

At a hearing earlier this month in another case, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton seemed uncomfortable with the idea that Clinton and her attorneys had the final call in determining that over 31,000 emails from her private account were purely personal.

“We’re not sure exactly what type of evaluation was made of that 31,000 messages,” the judge said.

Clinton’s lawyers have argued that government employees generally have the right to determine whether emails or other records are personal and delete them. The Justice Department backed Clinton — to a point — in a recent legal brief, while stopping short of saying that a former government employee such as Clinton has the right to independently make such a determination nearly two years after leaving the government.

Walton said the scenario that played out doesn’t really fit others the courts have previously addressed.

“This is sort of a unique situation,” the judge said. “The State Department never had possession of these records.”

Still, not all judges may be interested in delving into any Clinton files now in the possession of the FBI, particularly if it appears Congress is punting the issue to the courts.

“Congress has different and more powerful ways to obtain information from the State Department than a FOIA plaintiff,” Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote in an order Monday rejecting one group’s arguments that it needed prompt access to Clinton-related emails to aid Congress in getting to the bottom of the Benghazi attacks.

Another challenge for Congress is that it could be disturbing precedent by trying to bring in an outside party to verify that Clinton has turned over all her official emails or even those relevant to the Benghazi attacks. Usually, the recipient of a subpoena turns over what he or she deems responsive, not a broader set of records for someone else to review. “The way we’ve always had is a process of self-production,” Facciola said.

In cases involving search warrants for electronic records, courts have sometimes appointed magistrates to go through the records and sift out what law enforcement really needs. But the question these days is more often about how the computer that does the sorting should be programmed and who gets to decide that.

“That’s the real battle going on,” Facciola said. “Oftentimes, the technicians who create these programs don’t even agree on one methodology. … How do you separate the wheat from the chaff?”

 

 

 

 

 

OPM Hack, Lies Came First, Truth Creeps out Slowly

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We are conditioned to hearing the lies first from the administration stemming from an event affecting the homeland security and the citizens within. It takes months, sometimes years for the truth to be known, and it must be said, suspicions still remain. Stinks huh?

Such is the case with the Office of Personnel Management hack that took place several months ago. The numbers and depth of the hack are getting published that are closer to the truth….. the truth has no agenda but achieving the whole truth takes enduring tenacity.

Unconfirmed chatter but apparently during the diplomatic and business visit by China President Xi, Barack Obama will not address the hacking except perhaps is a side meeting with lower level staffers. The mission by the White House is to defer to the corporations such as Boeing and Microsoft to target the matter of hacking with China.

OPM Now Admits 5.6 Million Fed’s Fingerprints were Stolen by Hackers

Wired: by Andy Greenberg > When hackers steal your password, you change it. When hackers steal your fingerprints, they’ve got an unchangeable credential that lets them spoof your identity for life. When they steal 5.6 million of those irrevocable biometric identifiers from U.S. federal employees—many with secret clearances—well, that’s very bad.

On Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management admitted that the number of federal employees’ fingerprints compromised in the massive breach of its servers revealed over the summer has grown from 1.1 million to 5.6 million. OPM, which serves as a sort of human resources department for the federal government, didn’t respond to WIRED’s request for comment on who exactly those fingerprints belong to within the federal government. But OPM had previously confirmed that the data of 21.5 million federal employees was potentially compromised by the hack—which likely originated in China—and that those victims included intelligence and military employees with security clearances.

The revelation comes at a particularly ironic time: During the U.S. visit of Chinese president Xi Jinping, who said at a public appearance in Seattle that the Chinese government doesn’t condone hacking of U.S. targets, and pledged to partner with the U.S. to curb cybercrime.

“As part of the government’s ongoing work to notify individuals affected by the theft of background investigation records, the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Defense have been analyzing impacted data to verify its quality and completeness,” reads OPM’s statement posted to its website. “During that process, OPM and [the Department of Defense] identified archived records containing additional fingerprint data not previously analyzed. Of the 21.5 million individuals whose Social Security Numbers and other sensitive information were impacted by the breach, the subset of individuals whose fingerprints have been stolen has increased from a total of approximately 1.1 million to approximately 5.6 million.”

OPM adds that it’s mailing letters to all affected victims, and notes that it’s also offering them free credit monitoring. But that identity theft protection, which cost $133 million in likely misspent tax dollars, doesn’t begin to address the national security implications of having the fingerprints of high-level federal officials in the hands of hackers who are potentially employed by a foreign government.

OPM downplayed the significance of that biometric breach in its statement, adding that “federal experts believe that, as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited.” When WIRED asked about those limitations, however, an OPM spokesperson wrote only that “law enforcement and intelligence communities are best positioned to give the most fulsome answer.”

The agency’s statement does admit that hackers’ ability to exploit the stolen fingerprints “could change over time as technology evolves,” perhaps as more biometric authentication features are built into federal government security systems. And it says it’s assembled an interagency working group that includes officials from the Pentagon, FBI, DHS, and intelligence agencies to review the problem. “This group will also seek to develop potential ways to prevent such misuse,” the statement reads. “If, in the future, new means are developed to misuse the fingerprint data, the government will provide additional information to individuals whose fingerprints may have been stolen in this breach.”

The increased number of stolen fingerprints represents only the latest in a series of calamitous revelations from OPM about the hacker intrusion that led to the resignation of the agency’s director Katherine Archuleta in July. Aside from the 21.5 million social security numbers taken by attackers and the newly confessed 5.6 million fingerprints, the agency has also confirmed that hackers gained access to many victims’ SF-86 forms, security clearance questionnaires that include highly personal information such as previous drug use or extramarital affairs that could be used for blackmail.

“The American people have no reason to believe that they’ve heard the full story and every reason to believe that Washington assumes they are too stupid or preoccupied to care about cyber security,” Senator Ben Sasse wrote today in an email.

For the hackers who cracked OPM’s vault of highly private information, it’s the gift to foreign intelligence that keeps on giving.

 

Honest Summary of Obama vs. Syria and Putin

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There are gratifying moments when honest assessments are written. We often think we have a handle on conditions both on domestic policy and that of foreign policy. Personally, this blogger think she has most conditions and circumstances figured out while motivations and other objectives remain in question. I want to see the world through others eyes, from those that own bona fides and the resume where omissions on my part are checked and re-checked.

When it comes to the National Security Council running operations in the Middle East with regard to Iraq and Syria, one must challenge those decisions and seek the grander realities. Even the White House has admitted the NatSec team is too big, but is firing on all cylinders. What?

In recent weeks, Russia has taken a proactive, aggressive posture as well as a military stance in Syria, a country he knows well and the reason is, Obama retreated handing Putin an alternate set of keys to access the region on his own terms.

John Schindler writes below a summary I find is in full agreement with my own conclusion, yet the big question in the elephant in the room….what now?

Obama’s Collapsing War on the Islamic State

For the Obama administration, the news from the Middle East keeps going from bad to worse. Vladimir Putin’s power play, moving significant military forces into Syria to support his ailing client, Bashar al-Assad, caught the White House flat footed and unsure how to respond.

Although the administration gave the Kremlin de facto control over American policy in Syria some two years ago when it walked away from its own “red line,” granting Russia a veto on Western action there, President Obama and his national security staff nevertheless seem befuddled by this latest Russian move.

The forces Mr. Putin has just deployed to Syria are impressive, veteran special operators backed by a wing of fighters and ground attack jets that are expected to commence air strikes on Assad’s foes soon. They are backed by air defense units, which is puzzling since the Islamic State has no air force, indicating that the Kremlin’s true intent in Syria has little to do with the stated aim of fighting terrorism and is really about propping up Russia’s longtime client in Damascus.

The White House is left planning “deconfliction” with Moscow—which is diplomatic language for entreating Russians, who now dominate Syrian airspace, not to shoot down American drones, which provide the lion’s share of our intelligence on the Islamic State. The recent meeting on Syrian developments between Mr. Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who clearly finds dealing with the Russian strongman preferable to parleying with President Obama, indicates where power is flowing in today’s Middle East.

This is about much more than merely “cherry-picking” intelligence.

To make matters worse for the administration, new revelations regarding flawed intelligence assessments of the Islamic State, which I told you about last week, paint a troubling portrait of organized lying at the Pentagon. Some of the more than 50 analysts at Central Command in Tampa who blew the whistle on politicized intelligence reported feeling “bullied” to make their assessments of the U.S.-led war on the Islamic State appear more successful than the facts warranted. This is about much more than merely “cherry-picking” intelligence.

One named whistleblower has come forward about CENTCOM’s intelligence problems, explaining that he witnessed persistent, command-mandated low-balling of terrorist threats in Iraq since the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Rising terrorism in Iraq was “off message” for the White House, eager to pronounce jihadism there as dead as its leader.

David Shedd, who until recently was the acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which supplies CENTCOM with many of its analysts, spoke for colleagues still serving with his caution that such rampant politicization of intelligence cannot be tolerated. In language sure to cause heartburn at the White House, Mr. Shedd stated, “the problem is not a stand-alone case but systemic.” In response, Congress has taken interest in the allegations and President Obama’s problems there are only now starting to take political shape.

An even greater blow to President Obama’s diffident war against the Islamic State, known to the Pentagon as Operation Inherent Resolve, came this week with the stunning news that John Allen, the White House’s “war czar,” is stepping down this fall. In that job for almost exactly a year, Mr. Allen, a retired Marine four-star general whose last uniformed position was commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, enjoyed a bumpy tenure thanks to frequent meddling by West Wing staffers.

Mr. Allen, ostensibly charged with managing the war across agencies in tandem with allies, was unable to secure the military assets he believed were needed to defeat the Islamic State, for instance meeting strong White House resistance to his plans to put air controllers on the ground to guide airstrikes by Western forces. Although Mr. Allen has portrayed his resignation as a personal matter, due to his wife’s health problems, Pentagon insiders insist this an excuse to save face—mainly President Obama’s.

The main culprit is micromanagement by White House staffers, especially on the National Security Council, which is bloated and regularly treats senior military officers and diplomats like hired help. Obscenity-laced tirades by senior NSC staff are not uncommon. To make matters worse, significant differences between the NSC and the Pentagon on how to defeat the Islamic State went unresolved for months, leading to lethargy inside the Beltway while U.S. theater commanders were close to panicking about the enemy’s rise. Mr. Allen eventually had enough.

Now the White House needs to find a replacement who’s up to the job, which looks to be no easy task. “Good luck with that,” stated a senior Pentagon official, “I doubt they’ll find another four-star eager to be the dog who catches that car.” A senior NATO official explained that Mr. Allen’s departure “is really a serious blow. We had little confidence before in President Obama’s ability to defeat Daesh,” the Arabic term for the Islamic State. “Now we have none.”

As long as Mr. Putin calibrates his strategy to realistic expectations, he may avoid the overreach disasters that plagued the American wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Allen is leaving an administration in disarray in the Middle East. President Obama’s promise to grow a “moderate” Syrian opposition force of thousands, able to serve as an alternative to Assad and the jihadists alike, is in tatters, with only a handful of fighters remaining. The resulting gap has been filled by the Russians, who have entered the Levantine fray with gusto and purpose.

Secretary of State John Kerry presented the deployment of Russian jet fighters to Syria as “basically force protection,” but Pentagon planners are less charitable in their assessments. “The only ‘force’ the Russians are protecting themselves from with Su-30s,” referring to the four modern fighters deployed to Syria, “is the U.S. Air Force,” one military officer said to me.

Some Pentagon staffers are taking comfort in hopes that the Russians will find themselves mired in a messy stalemate in Syria, whose civil war has raged for four bloody and indecisive years already. That may be optimistic, however, as Russian spies and soldiers have served in Syria for over a half-century and many of them are well acquainted with Syrian realities. As long as Mr. Putin calibrates his strategy to realistic expectations, he may avoid the overreach disasters that plagued the American wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

What happens next in Syria is the top guessing game among security experts the world over right now. Has Mr. Putin finally gone too far? Can anything be salvaged from that awful conflict that could serve Western interests while stopping the rise of the Islamic State—and perhaps even save innocent lives? What is the aim of Operation Inherent Resolve now that General Allen is leaving the stage? All that’s certain at this point is that President Obama’s flailing war against the Islamic State is looking for a strategy as well as a new czar.

John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a navy officer and a war college professor.

bin Ladin’s Bodyguard Transferred to SA from Gitmo

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Usama bin Ladin’s bodyguard is transferred to Saudi Arabia.

Full detainee file is here.

  1. (S//NF) Personal Information:
  • JDIMS/NDRC Reference Name: Abdul Shalabi
  • Current/True Name and Aliases: Abd al-Rahman Shalbi Isa

Uwaydah, Abdul Haq Rahman, Saqr al-Madani, Mahmud

Abd Aziz al-Mujahid

  • Place of Birth: Medina, Saudi Arabia (SA)
  • Date of Birth: 4 December 1975
  • Citizenship: Saudi Arabia
  • Internment Serial Number (ISN): US9SA-000042DP
  1. (U//FOUO) Health: Detainee is in good health.
  2. (U) JTF-GTMO Assessment:
  3. (S) Recommendation: JTF-GTMO recommends this detainee for Continued Detention

Under DoD Control (CD). JTF-GTMO previously recommended detainee for Continued

Detention Under DoD Control (CD) on 26 October 2007.

  1. (S//NF) Executive Summary: Detainee is a member of al-Qaida and a long-term bodyguard for Usama Bin Laden (UBL), serving in that position beginning in 1999.

Detainee received specialized close combat training for his role as a suicide operative in an aborted component of the 11 September 2001 al-Qaida attacks. Detainee participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces and was captured with a group referred to as the Dirty 30, which included UBL bodyguards and an assessed 20th 11 September 2001 hijacker.

Detainee received basic militant and advanced training at al-Qaida associated training camps.

 

October 6 & 22, Benghazi Cmte, Popcorn Buttered?

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More emails surface in Hillary Clinton Benghazi probe

Politico: More previously-undisclosed State Department emails related to Benghazi have surfaced in a federal court filing, offering a public accounting of at least some of the records still being sought by congressional investigators.

The filing Monday in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the conservative group Citizens United describes about a dozen Benghazi-related emails that were withheld in whole or in part as State responded to one of the group’s requests seeking information about contacts between a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and officials with the Clinton Foundation.
Most of the documents also appear to have been withheld from the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is investigating State’s response to the attack. The committee is scheduled to take public testimony from Clinton on Oct. 22.

A panel spokesman said he could not immediately confirm which of the documents had been turned over to the committee, but Citizens United President David Bossie told reporters staffers at the House panel told the group State never produced the records to Congress.

“To the best of their knowledge, the do not have these documents either, even though they are under subpoena for an extended period of time,” Bossie told reporters outside U.S. District Court in Washington after a hearing on the suit.

State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach told POLITICO there is no effort to impede congressional probes.

“The Department has made every effort to cooperate with the Benghazi Committee, providing 32 witnesses for interviews and over 70,000 pages of documents, including over 20,000 pages in the last month alone,” Gerlach said. “We will continue to respond to the Benghazi Committee’s requests, but as they mount and modify over time, so too must we plan accordingly for the time and resources they consume.”

In the new court filing, State Department official John Hackett said nearly all the Benghazi-related emails involved in the FOIA lawsuit involve deliberations among State officials about how to respond to Benghazi-related congressional inquiries.

In several high profile cases, including the ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning investigation, the Obama Administration has defended its right to keep confidential its internal discussions about House and Senate investigations. The administration has also sought to extend that confidentiality to cover responses to media inquiries prompted by congressional probes.

In June, while producing records to congressional committees, the State Department confirmed it was holding back some Benghazi documents.

“A small number of documents implicate important Executive Branch institutional interests and are therefore not included in this production,” Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affiairs Anna Frifield wrote in a letter to the House Benghazi panel.

However, House staffers said the diplomatic agency has repeatedly rebuffed requests for a log of documents State is withholding. The FOIA lawsuits provide a vehicle to force the agency to identify those emails, although the substance of the messages is not disclosed.

At the court hearing Tuesday, a federal judge pressed the State Department to move more quickly to process documents requested by Citizens United and others who have been demanding records relating to Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state .

“I think there has to be some reallocation of resources, because these are atypical cases,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said. “This case is important to the public. The public is clamoring for information. Everyone is clamoring for information.”

After Sullivan derided State’s approach as “business as usual,” Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Shapiro insisted that State’s 63.5-member FOIA processing staff has been working long hours and weekends in “demoralizing” conditions to publish emails from Clinton’s account as well as records sought in about 100 pending FOIA lawsuits and thousands of pending FOIA requests.
“I just want to assure the court that it’s not business as usual,” Shapiro declared. “The State Department’s being crushed by obligations.”

Much of the hearing was spent discussing why the State Department failed to complete searches of emails provided by former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin by a court-ordered deadline of September 13.

Sullivan seemed to waver on how culpable State was for delays, sometimes suggesting that the agency had to wait for the cooperation of its former employees and at other points suggesting that State was being sluggish.

The judge initially attributed the delay to “foot-dragging” by Mills and Abedin in response to requests from their former agency. However, he quickly withdrew that accusation.
“So, there was foot-dragging on their part–well, there was delay. I can’t say there was foot-dragging,” Sullivan said.

Justice Department attorney Caroline Anderson insisted that the State Department was only obliged to produce records in its possession at the time the search began, so records turned over later by Mills and Abedin were not technically covered by the FOIA requests filed last year for records of contacts between top Clinton aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a private consulting firm with connections to former President Bill Clinton.

“The State Department is in compliance with every order of this court,” Anderson said.

Anderson proposed that State have until December 9 to locate and process relevant records from Mills’ and Abedin’s accounts, but eventually said it was just “the State Department’s hope” to get it done by then. That seemed to irritate Sullivan.

“How long does it take you to run a computer search?” the judge asked. “Someone pushes a button. I’m not minimizing it, but it’s a computer search.”

Citizens United attorney Matthew McGill insisted that State knew or should have known weeks ago if it was going to have trouble meeting the deadline. “They should have come to the court then….Instead, they waited,” McGill said. “That was a tactical decision on their part. It was meant to delay.”

Anderson asked that State have a month to finish the computer-based searches and then more time to review the content of the documents for sensitive national security information and other details subject to withholding. But the judge said a shorter timeline was necessary.

Sullivan ordered State to finish the searches by October 2 and set a hearing four days later.

Bossie said State’s sluggish response was part and parcel of an effort to benefit Clinton’s Democratic presidential bid by kicking the issue down the road.

“Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills have taken the specific strategy and tactics just like they did in the 90s–the same people the same strategies–to drag these efforts out, to drag out congressional committees, to frustrate justice and to frustrate the American people from getting information so that people ask questions like: ‘This has been going on for three years and don’t we know everything and isn’t this a rehash?” the conservative activist said. “That is their deliberate strategy. They’ve been doing this for 20 years…..the same Clinton playbook is played over and over and over again.”

Clinton campaign spokesmen and attorneys for Abedin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mills’s lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, called Bossie’s claim of deliberate delay “untrue.”