Category Archives: Whistleblower

Judge Orders Full Discovery of Hillary’s Server

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It appears the Judge has almost lost his wig and he is keeping the option of delivering a subpoena to Hillary herself. What is the problem? What was deleted before emails were delivered to the State Department and who deleted them. Further, there is still the matter of the other people in Hillary’s circle and their emails, were any of those deleted? Heck there are countless questions and the Judge is about out of patience.

U.S. judge orders discovery to go forward over Clinton’s private email system

WaPo: A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that State Department officials and top aides to Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about whether they intentionally thwarted federal open records laws by using or allowing the use of a private email server throughout Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington came in a lawsuit over public records brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal watchdog group, regarding its May 2013 request, for information about the employment arrangement of Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide.

A State Department official said that the department is aware of the order and that it is reviewing it but declined to comment further, citing the ongoing litigation.

Although it was not immediately clear whether the government will appeal, Sullivan set an April deadline for parties to lay out a detailed investigative plan that would extend well beyond the limited and carefully worded explanations of the use of the private server that department and Clinton officials have given.

Sullivan also suggested from the bench that he might at some point order the department to subpoena Clinton and Abedin, to return all records related to Clinton’s private account, not just those their camps have previously deemed work-related and returned.

“There has been a constant drip, drip, drip of declarations. When does it stop?” Sullivan said, adding that months of piecemeal revelations about Clinton and the State Department’s handling of the email controversy create “at least a ‘reasonable suspicion’ ” that public access to official government records under the federal Freedom of Information Act was undermined. “This case is about the public’s right to know.”

In granting Judicial Watch’s request, Sullivan noted that there was no dispute that senior State Department officials were aware of the email set-up, citing a January 2009 email exchange including Undersecretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, Clinton chief of staff Cheryl D. Mills and Abedin about establishing an “off-network” email system.

The watchdog group did not ask to depose Clinton by name, but its requests in its lawsuit targeted those who handled her transition, arrival and departure from the department and who oversaw Abedin, a direct subordinate.

Sullivan’s decision came as Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination and three weeks after the State Department acknowledged for the first time that “top secret” information passed through the server.

The FBI and the department’s inspector general are continuing to look into whether the private setup mishandled classified information or violated other federal laws.

For six months in 2012, Abedin was employed simultaneously by the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, Clinton’s personal office and a private consulting firm connected to the Clintons.

The department stated in February 2014 that it had completed its search of records for the secretary’s office. After Clinton’s exclusive use of a private server was made public in May, the department said that additional records probably were available.

In pursuing information about Abedin’s role, Judicial Watch argued that the only way to determine whether all official records subject to its request were made public was to allow it to depose or submit detailed written questions about the private email arrangement to a slew of current and former top State Department officials, Clinton aides, her attorneys and outside parties.

“We know discovery in FOIA cases is not typical, and we do not ask for it lightly,” Judicial Watch President Thomas J. Fitton said before the hearing. “If it’s not appropriate under these circumstances, it’s difficult to imagine when it would be appropriate.”

Fitton noted that the State Department’s inspector general last month faulted the department and Clinton’s office for overseeing processes that repeatedly allowed “inaccurate and incomplete” FOIA responses, including a May 2013 reply that found “no records” concerning email accounts that Clinton used, even though dozens of senior officials had corresponded with her private account.

Justice Department lawyers countered in court that the State Department is poised to finish publicly releasing all 54,000 pages of emails that Clinton’s attorneys determined to be work-related and that were returned to the State Department at its request for review.

The case before Sullivan, a longtime jurist who has overseen other politically contentious FOIA cases, is one of more than 50 active FOIA lawsuits by legal groups, news media organizations and others seeking information included in emails sent to or by Clinton and her aides on the private server.

The State Department has been releasing Clinton’s newly recovered correspondence in batches since last summer with a final set due Monday.

Meanwhile, former Clinton department aides Mills, Abedin, Jacob Sullivan and Philippe Reines have returned tens of thousands of pages of documents to the department for FOIA review, with releases projected to continue into at least 2017.

The State Department also has asked the FBI to turn over any of an estimated 30,000 deleted emails deemed personal by Clinton’s attorneys that the FBI is able to recover in its investigation of the security of the private email server.

“There can be no doubt that [the State Department’s] search for responsive records has been exceedingly thorough and more than adequate under FOIA,” according to filings by Justice Department civil division lawyers, led by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer.

They argued that FOIA requires the agency to release records only under its control — not under the control of its current or former officials — and that “federal employees routinely manage their email and ‘self-select’ their work-related messages when they, quite permissibly, designate and delete personal emails from their government email accounts.”

Sullivan’s decision will almost certainly extend through Election Day an inquiry that has dogged Clinton’s campaign, frustrating allies and providing fodder to Republican opponents.

FOIA law generally gives agencies the benefit of the doubt and sets a high bar for plaintiffs’ requests for discovery. However, one similar public records battle during Bill Clinton’s presidency lasted 14 years and led to depositions of the president’s White House counsel and chief of staff.

Because of the number of judges hearing the FOIA cases, there is likewise a chance that the fight over Hillary Clinton’s emails could “take on a life of their own,” not ending “until there are endless depositions of top [agency] aides and officials, and just a parade of horribles,” said Anne L. Weismann, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability. Weismann also is a former Justice Department FOIA litigation supervisor who oversaw dozens of such fights from 1991 to 2002.

Still, she said, such drawn-out legal proceedings could be valuable if they shed light on whether the State Department met its legal obligations under open-government laws or systematically withheld releasable records.

Last month, one of Sullivan’s colleagues, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, dismissed lawsuits brought by Judicial Watch and the Cause of Action Institute that sought to force the government to take more aggressive steps to recover Clinton’s deleted emails under the Federal Records Act.

Plaintiffs “cannot sue to force the recovery of records that they hope or imagine might exist,” Boasberg wrote Jan. 11, adding that, to date, recovery efforts by the State Department and the National Archives under that law “cannot in any way be described as a dereliction of duty.”

The server’s existence was disclosed two years after Clinton left, in February 2013, as secretary of state and as the department faced a congressional subpoena and media requests for emails related to scores of matters, including attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador in Benghazi, Libya, and fundraising for the Clinton family’s global charity.

In seeking records related to Abedin’s employment, Judicial Watch asked to be allowed to depose or submit written questions to current and former State Department employees and Clinton aides, including Kennedy; John F. Hackett, director of information services; Executive Secretary Joseph E. Macmanus; Clinton’s chief of staff, Mills; lawyer David E. Kendall; Abedin; and Bryan Pagliano, a Clinton staff member during her 2008 presidential campaign who helped set up the private server.

More broadly, the group’s motion targets who oversaw State Department information systems, Clinton’s transition and arrival at the department, her communications, and her and Abedin’s departure from the agency.

“What emails . . . were deleted . . . who decided to delete them, and when?” Judicial Watch asks in filings.

The group also asks whether any archived copies of sent or received emails on the private server existed, including correspondence with Clinton technology contractors Platte River Networks and Datto.

 

35 and 56…Watch Out, Ask Lots of Questions, Gitmo

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The White House Guantanamo Detention Center plan calls for transferring another 35 detainees to other countries and shifting the remaining 56 to US-based facilities. These guys really want to give up top notch healthcare, food, housing and soccer?     

In 2009: TheHill: The House instructed conferees negotiating with the Senate on a final version of the Homeland Security spending bill to include language prohibiting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil. The bill already includes a provision prohibiting the detainees from air travel within or to the United States.

Appropriators have placed Guantanamo provisions into at least four other bills. The Senate Defense spending bill, which has yet to pass the chamber, and the House-approved version would also block the use of federal money for the transfer of detainees to the United States. The House Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill and the State Department spending bill would block 2010 federal funding for the closure of the prison. Those bills have been passed by the House and are awaiting Senate action. *** The Senate did confirm and Obama signed it into law as it was in the spending bill. Note the year, this was a Democrat controlled Congress. If Obama does move forward in any method, he will have to sign a waiver of the law and then a Constitutional crisis begins as the military knows this is a law. Does the military comply with the Commander in Chief or do they comply with the law?

Then again in 2010:

Congress Bars Gitmo Transfers  

WSJ: Congress on Wednesday passed legislation that would effectively bar the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for trial, rejecting pleas from Obama administration officials who called the move unwise.

A defense authorization bill passed by the House and Senate included the language on the offshore prison, which President Barack Obama tried unsuccessfully to close in his first year in office.

*** Then again this month, February 2016:

Military Tells Congress It Can’t Send Gitmo Detainees to U.S.

Bloomberg: Just as President Barack Obama is planning to send Congress his plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison this year, leaders of the military say it will not transfer any detainees to the U.S., unless the law prohibiting such transfers is changed.

Lt. General William Mayville Jr., the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as much in a letter to Congress last week, which I obtained. Mayville’s letter gets to the heart of a knotty constitutional issue on Guantanamo: Does President Obama have the authority to close the facility without the consent of Congress?

Writing to 16 House members who served in the military, Mayville writes: “Current law prohibits the use of funds to ‘transfer, release or assist in the transfer or release’ of detainees of Guantanamo Bay to or within the United States, and prohibits the construction, modification or acquisition of any facility within the United States to house any Guantanamo detainee. The Joint Staff will not take any action contrary to those restrictions.”

Start here and this was today further telling how reckless the whole release thing really is:

4 Arrested in Spain, Morocco for IS Armed Group Ties

ABC: Spanish and Moroccan police on Tuesday arrested four suspected members of a jihadi cell that sought to recruit fighters for the Islamic State group, including one described as a former Guantanamo detainee who once fought with militants in Afghanistan.

Three people were arrested in Spain’s North African enclave city of Ceuta while a Moroccan was arrested in the Moroccan border town of Farkhana, next to Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave, statements from the two nations’ interior ministries said.

One of those detained in Ceuta was the former Guantanamo detainee who was not named by Spanish authorities but described as “a leader who was trained in handling weapons, explosives and in military tactics.” After being captured in 2002 and held in Guantanamo, he was returned to Spain in 2004, said Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz.

Another suspect was the brother of a fighter who blew himself up during an attack in Syria and man detained Tuesday “was inclined to do the same thing,” he said.

The suspects had set up contacts to try to acquire weapons and bomb-making materials and were aiming “to carry out terrorist acts in Spanish territory,” the Spanish ministry statement said, without specifying possible targets.

They also worked to recruit teenagers from Ceuta to join IS in Iraq and Syria, the Spanish statement said.

Spanish police arrested about 100 suspected Islamic extremists last year and more than 600 total since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured nearly 2,000.

Rubio: Today, In the Senate, I have sponsored and supported legislation to prohibit dangerous detainee transfers, block funds for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and prevent the return of the facility to Cuba. And I have stood with Senators Tim Scott (R-SC), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Pat Roberts (R-KS) to oppose bringing terrorists to facilities in South Carolina, Colorado, and Kansas, because it is unnecessary, expensive and, most importantly, dangerous.

 

 

OPM Top Person Donna Seymour Resigns

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Chaffetz Responds to Retirement of OPM CIO Donna Seymour

Oversight Committee: WASHINGTON, D.C.—This afternoon, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) issued the following statement upon learning of the retirement of U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Chief Information Officer (CIO) Donna Seymour:

“Ms. Seymour’s retirement is good news and an important turning point for OPM. While I am disappointed Ms. Seymour will no longer appear before our Committee this week to answer to the American people, her retirement is necessary and long overdue. On her watch, whether through negligence or incompetence, millions of Americans lost their privacy and personal data. The national security implications of this entirely foreseeable breach are far-reaching and long-lasting. OPM now needs a qualified CIO at the helm to right the ship and restore confidence in the agency.” 

 Background: 

Chairman Chaffetz has publicly expressed the need for Ms. Seymour’s removal on the following occasions:

Chaffetz to OPM: Remove Donna Seymour (12/10/2015)

Chaffetz Responds to Nomination of Beth Cobert as OPM Director (11/10/2015)

Chaffetz Renews Call for Removal of OPM CIO Donna Seymour (08/06/2015)

Chaffetz Statement on Latest OPM Data Breach Revelation (07/09/2015)

GOP Lawmakers to President Obama: Remove OPM Director Archuleta and CIO Donna Seymour (06/26/2015)

Related:

The Breach We Could Have Avoided (09/30/2015)

Fingerprints of Additional 4.5 Million Individuals Stolen in OPM Breach, Chaffetz Responds (09/23/2015)

Chaffetz Statement on OPM Infrastructure Improvement Plan (09/14/2015)

OPM Data Breach: Part II Hearing (06/24/2015)

OPM: Data Breach Hearing (06/16/2015)

*** For reference and background on Office of Personnel Management

Second OPM Hack Revealed: Even Worse Than The First

from the the-federal-government,-ladies-and-gentlemen dept

TechDirt: Oh great. So after we learned late yesterday that the hack of all sorts of data from the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was likely much worse than originally believed — including leaking all Social Security numbers unencrypted — and that the so-called cybersecurity “experts” within the government weren’t even the ones who discovered the hack, things are looking even worse. That’s because, late today, it was revealed that there was likely a separate hack, also by Chinese state actors, accessing even more sensitive information:

The forms authorities believed may have been stolen en masse, known as Standard Form 86, require applicants to fill out deeply personal information about mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests and bankruptcies. They also require the listing of contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion. Both the applicant’s Social Security number and that of his or her cohabitant is required.

In a statement, the White House said that on June 8, investigators concluded there was “a high degree of confidence that … systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal government employees, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may have been exfiltrated.”

“This tells the Chinese the identities of almost everybody who has got a United States security clearance,” said Joel Brenner, a former top U.S. counterintelligence official. “That makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer. The database also tells the Chinese an enormous amount of information about almost everyone with a security clearance. That’s a gold mine. It helps you approach and recruit spies.”

And yet… this is the same federal government telling us that it wants more access to everyone else’s data to “protect” us from “cybersecurity threats” — and that encryption is bad? Yikes.

Top Cop Says Obama is Spiteful, Schumer

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Politics over policy and politics over safety. Iran gets first billing at all costs when it comes to the Obama administration.

The NYPD Commissioner, Bratton is furious.

Bratton furious over Obama’s anti-terror funding cut

White House slashed NYC terror funding to punish Schumer, former top cop says

WashingtonExaminer: New York City’s former top cop said Sunday that the Obama administration cut funding to fight terrorism in the city to retaliate against Sen. Chuck Schumer for opposing a nuclear deal with Iran.

“There’s a certain amount vindictiveness on the part of Washington aimed at Sen. Chuck Schumer,” Ray Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said in an interview with John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York.

“Apparently they remember very well that Sen. Schumer did not support their Iran deal,” Kelly said, arguing the proposed cut “was aimed at getting a reaction from Sen. Schumer.”

Schumer was the most senior Democrat in Congress last year to oppose an international agreement under which Iran agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

Schumer, a Democrat set to become the party’s Senate leader, joined New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s police and fire commissioners to blast a White House budget plan that would cut annual funding for the city’s Urban Area Security Initiative from $600 million to $330 million.

As the country’s largest city and the only U.S. location repeatedly attacked by terrorists, including the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, New York officials have long sought extra consideration in allocation of federal anti-terror funds.

“New York is an enduring target,” Kelly said. “It always will be.”

Schumer statements drew a pointed White House response, an unusual reaction aimed at a key Democratic ally.

“At some point, Sen. Schumer’s credibility in talking about national security issues, particularly when the facts are as they are when it relates to homeland security, have to be affected by the position that he’s taken on other issues,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

“Sen. Schumer is somebody that came out and opposed the international agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He was wrong about that position,” Earnest said. “And when people look at the facts here when it comes to funding for homeland security, they’ll recognize that he’s wrong this time too.”

Earnest said financing for the program was cut because New York failed to spend the money it had already received.

Kelly, though a de Blasio critic, is a Schumer ally. The senator has unsuccessfully proposed Obama nominate Kelly a head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security.

*** New York Congressman King is not happy either.

Slashed funding for local counterterrorism and other security measures in the White House’s budget proposal is a “punch in the gut” that couldn’t come at a worse time, Sen. Chuck Schumer said Sunday.

From across the aisle, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) agreed the pot shouldn’t be “decimated” with the threat of the Islamic State looming.

President Barack Obama’s fiscal blueprint recommended funding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative grant program — which goes toward NYPD counterterrorism training, FDNY tiered-response training and other first-responder preparedness — with $330 million for the upcoming fiscal year, compared with $600 million in the current year.

“This year, bureaucrats got through a very serious mistake that must, must, must be reversed,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a Manhattan news conference. “Do your homework, bureaucrats, on New York City, on the NYPD, on all the groups on Long Island that have gotten this money. . . . The dollars can save lives.”

The senator said it’s “not an accident” that the region hasn’t seen a successful terror attack since 9/11.

King said security funding across the board was reduced in the budget proposal.

“Here’s time when ISIS has never been more of a threat, when al-Qaida has never been more of a threat,” said King, a former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

He said he would fight alongside Schumer for restoration of the funds.

“This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue,” King said. “In many ways, it’s an issue of life or death.”

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton called the initiative the “lifeblood” for antiterrorism funding in major American cities.

Among those urban areas, New York City is statically the No. 1 terror target, and the “terrorism threat is more complex and layered than any time since 9/11,” Bratton said in a statement.

“We would hope, in the aftermath of a series of recent plots against New York, as well as the attacks from Paris to San Bernardino, that any such cuts be reconsidered,” he added.

An official with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget said Sunday night the Obama administration has no higher priority than keeping Americans safe.

The grant program was restructured recently for efficiency, and the new funding level is expected to meet demand, the official said, adding that the proposed budget includes $139 million in other regional and state grants to help prepare and respond to complex terror threats.

Obama released his $4.2 trillion spending plan Tuesday. It requests $40.6 billion in net discretionary funding for the Department of Homeland Security, including $2 billion in grants for state and local governments for terrorism and other catastrophes.

Aside from the Urban Area Security Initiative reductions, the budget cuts state homeland security grants to $200 million from $467 million, port security grants to $93 million from $100 million and transit security grants to $85 million from $100 million.

Schumer said he didn’t get a “good explanation” from the administration on why the money would be withheld.

King said the impression he gets is that “because these programs are working, there’s no need to be giving more money — which makes no sense at all.”

 

U.S. refugee agency put Central American kids at risk

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The problem was identified by the GAO in 2012.

Even more terrifying is this report:

PROPOSED REFUGEE ADMISSIONS

FOR

FISCAL YEAR 2015

REPORT TO THE CONGRESS

 

U.S. refugee agency put Central American kids at risk, GAO report says

WashingtonPost: The government agency tasked with placing thousands of Central American children into communities while they await immigration court decisions has no system for tracking the children, does not keep complete case files and has allowed contractors to operate with little oversight, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office.

“Based on the findings in this report, it’s no wonder that we are hearing of children being mistreated or simply falling off the grid once they are turned over to sponsors,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). “The Obama administration isn’t adequately monitoring the grantees or sponsors whom we are entrusting to provide basic care for unaccompanied children.”

Three senators — Grassley, Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) — asked the GAO in October to review policies of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. The agency provides shelter for unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America and identifies sponsors to care for them while they await hearings in immigration courts. More than 125,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America have been caught at the U.S.-Mexico border since 2011. The 64-page report is being released one day before the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear testimony from Obama administration officials about their handling of the children.

“Their records are incomplete, they are not appropriately checking in on the facilities that house the children, and they don’t even have a dedicated system to follow up on the children once they’ve been placed with sponsors,” Grassley said.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, has come under criticism in recent weeks for its handling of a number of cases involving unaccompanied minors.

Advocates for unaccompanied minors say that the refu­gee office was overwhelmed by the surge of children crossing the border in 2014 but that the system is a much better alternative than longer detention for vulnerable children.

On Jan. 28, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report focusing on cases in which Central American children were victims of abuse by their sponsors, including one case where the agency released several Guatemalan teenagers to labor traffickers who forced them to work long hours at an Ohio egg farm for as little as $2 a day.

“We agree with the GAO’s recommendations, which is why we’ve already implemented some of them and are in the process of implementing the rest,” said Andrea Helling, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services. “This is part of the process of improving the program to care for the children who come into our custody.”

The GAO found that children’s case files were often incomplete, making it difficult for investigators to determine whether they had received proper care such as group counseling and clinical services. Investigators reviewed 27 randomly selected children’s case files. None of them contained all of the required documents.

The report also criticized the agency’s oversight of nonprofit groups that it pays to operate shelters for the children and locate sponsors. In 2014, the agency implemented a new monitoring process, requiring site visits every two years. However, investigators found that the agency didn’t complete the site visits in 2014 and 2015. In 2014, agency staff members visited 12 of 133 sites. By August 2015, they visited 22 of 140 sites.

These monitoring visits revealed several problems at the nonprofit-run shelters. At one site, agency workers discovered that the facility didn’t give children the proper amount of medication, leading them to accidentally overdose.

Helling said the Office of Refugee Resettlement is aware of the issues and has hired additional staff and implemented new policies to ensure that all site visits are completed in fiscal 2016.

 

Once children are released to sponsors, the agency has no system for tracking their whereabouts, according to the report. Some children, including those who have been identified as trafficking victims, are supposed to receive services such as mental- health care. In fiscal 2014, only 9.5 percent of children released by the agency received these services. The agency has established a call center for children who want to report problems with their sponsors and requires its caseworkers to call all children and sponsors after the children are placed.

Grassley sharply criticized the lack of follow-up for released children.

“Beyond the risks to the children created by these shortcomings, our communities are left to cope with the crime and violence from gang members and other delinquents who are not identified or tracked because of HHS’s haphazard and porous practices,” he said.

Helling said the agency is looking at ways to expand post-release services for children, adding that “the overwhelming majority of these children are fleeing violence and chaos, not looking to create it.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who co-chaired the Jan. 28 Senate hearing about problems within the agency, said he will testify at Tuesday’s hearing.

“I’m pleased the Judiciary Committee is following up on the subcommittee’s bipartisan investigation,” he said. “The administration must be held accountable for turning young children over to traffickers and criminals.”

Jennifer Podkul, a migrant rights expert at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said: “Overall, we’re incredibly happy that ORR is the agency that’s been designated to release the kids. What happened when there were incredible numbers was that it showed the strain and the weaknesses in the system. It was like a magnifying glass on the system.”