Judge Sullivan is showing little tolerance and has taken full control of the email matter and the State Department. There is no way out now, when he orders all parties to completely cooperate with the FBI on all material, devices, people and dates. Beyond the work of the media and the FBI, keep eyes on the White House collusion that ‘executive privilege’ may be applied to Hillary and her inner circle due in part to connectivity and the Benghazi testimony in October. The other point of importance is where is Attorney General Loretta Lynch going to take this matter, when in fact a special investigative team and even prosecutor should have already been named.
It is shameful that after Hillary was hacked in 2013, the State Department, the FBI and even the Justice Department chose not to further investigate. Hummm, the DOJ did issue a criminal warrant on Marcel Lazar Lehel, AKA Guccifer but it did not proceed as Romanian officials chose to advance the case where Lehel is presently serving prison time.
The Hill: A federal judge on Thursday ordered the State Department to communicate with the FBI about Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, and opened the door to additional demands on the former secretary of state.
Judge Emmet Sullivan told the department to “establish a dialogue” with the FBI about the machine, and be prepared to demand that the FBI turn over documents that may be related to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“I’m surprised that State didn’t do that already,” Sullivan told government lawyers.
“If you can get the information as result of a dialogue with the FBI… I think I may be satisfied,” he added. “Let’s see what the investigation reveals, if anything.”
The order comes amid increasing scrutiny on Clinton’s unorthodox email practices while serving as the nation’s top diplomat. Her use of a “home brew” email system has grown into an increasing drag on her front-runner presidential campaign, and forced top campaign officials to grow more aggressive in trying to get out in front of the story.
Last week, Clinton handed the server and thumb drives containing copies of 55,000 pages of her work-related emails over to the FBI, after news broke that classified information may have inappropriately passed through her inbox.
On Thursday, Sullivan raised the specter of demanding that Clinton determine whether a backup of her home server was made either by the company that managed it or by someone else, and prepare for the possibility of turning that over to the government. Those files might contain other messages of interest to the government, he suggested.
“Arguably there were backups of everything that were communicated,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t the same requirement be appropriate” with that private company as with the FBI, he questioned.
However, any additional demands would not be handed down until the FBI had at least 30 days to inspect Clinton’s server.
“Let’s see what the investigation reveals and we’ll go from there,” the judge said.
Sullivan asked for a written status report about the FBI’s progress on Sept. 21.
Thursday’s order came as part of a lawsuit launched by the conservative organization Judicial Watch, which had requested documents from the State Department about the employment status of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
“We believe [additional] records exist,” Judicial Watch lawyer Michael Bekesha said. “Just because the government hasn’t found them doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”
Those records may be among the roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton said were personal and deleted from her server, Bekesha speculated, or else on a computer or other device she had used while in office. On Wednesday, the State Department confirmed that Clinton was not issued a BlackBerry or other device by the government while in office.
“I think the judge was curious and interested in what other copies may be out there and where those backups and copies may be,” Bekesha told reporters after the hearing. “The court decided that let’s first hear from the FBI, see what they have, see what they are doing with it, and then proceed in 30 days.”
“We don’t know what those devices could be,” he added. “All we know is they’re probably out there and the American people are not being told about them, probably because more emails are there.”
Clinton appeared to have wiped the server after deleting them at some point between last December and this March. However, there are signs that investigators may nonetheless be able to recover and search some of that information.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for the morning of Oct. 1.
Peter Wechsler, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the State Department, told the court that it did not need to ask about backups of Clinton’s server or other locations that her communications may be, since the former secretary and her lawyer had already pledged that all work-related documents had been handed over to the department.
Wechsler also urged the judge not to demand that State itself take control of and search the server and USB thumb drives.
That would be an “extraordinary” demand, he said.
“We think the concept of reasonable search here has been met,” he added, while repeatedly expressing a desire not to “interfere” with the work of the FBI.
“To now go and request the devices would be the tail wagging the dog,” the told the court.
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NPR: The prediction is the full FBI investigation will go wider and deeper as the media is at least reporting due to some real investigations and interviews on their part.
For now, federal authorities characterize the Justice Department inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s private email server as a security situation: a simple matter of finding out whether classified information leaked out during her tenure as secretary of state, and where it went.
Except, former government officials said, that’s not going to be so simple.
“I think that the FBI will be moving with all deliberate speed to determine whether there were serious breaches of national security here,” said Ron Hosko, who used to lead the FBI’s criminal investigative division.
He said agents will direct their questions not just at Clinton, but also her close associates at the State Department and beyond.
“I would want to know how did this occur to begin with, who knew, who approved,” Hosko said.
Authorities are asking whether Clinton or her aides mishandled secrets about the Benghazi attacks and other subjects by corresponding about them in emails.
For her part, Clinton said she did not use that email account to send or receive anything marked classified.
“Whether it was a personal account or a government account, I did not send classified material, and I did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified which is the way you know whether something is,” she said Tuesday in a question-and-answer session with reporters.
Why is Clinton emphasizing the idea that none of those messages were marked? Because what she knew — her intent — matters a lot under the law. If the Justice Department and FBI inquiry turns into a formal criminal investigation.
Two lawyers familiar with the inquiry told NPR that a formal criminal investigation is under consideration and could happen soon — although they caution that Clinton herself may not be the target.
The Clinton campaign maintains that Clinton did nothing wrong, that the government inquiry would not move beyond a “security-related review” and points a finger at a “culture of classification” within the intelligence community.
“She was at worst a passive recipient of unwitting information that subsequently became deemed as classified,” said Brian Fallon, Clinton campaign press secretary, in a conference call Wednesday with reporters, per NPR’s Tamara Keith. “When it comes to classified information, the standards are not at all black and white, and in the absence of markings that officially designate something classified, reasonable people each taking their responsibilities extremely seriously, can nonetheless disagree on the character of the information they are dealing with — and both could be completely justified in that perspective.
“And that is why we are so confident that this review will remain a security-related review. We think that furthermore this matter is mostly just shining a spotlight on a culture of classification that exists within certain corners of the government, especially the intelligence community.”
Michael Mukasey, who served as attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, recently talked to Newsmax TV about the government’s burden of proof.
“They’d have to show that she was responsible for having the information on that server and essentially knew what was on there,” Mukasey said.
Whether or not the emails were labeled as secret, some other Republicans say Clinton should have known better.
Former NSA Director Michael Hayden told the MSNBC program Morning Joe: “Put legality aside for just a second, it’s stupid and dangerous.”
Clinton said she’s cooperating with investigators. She has turned over 55,000 pages of emails for review. Inspectors general and members of the intelligence community are sifting through them now. And watchdog groups are in court demanding their public release.
But Clinton’s lawyer says she’s already deleted thousands more personal email messages. Republicans in Congress are asking about her motivations and soon federal agents may be, too.
“Then we get to the questions about what did Congress subpoena, when did they subpoena it and what was the intent … if information was deleted or if it was wiped after that time?” Hosko asked.
There’s no evidence to suggest those messages were deleted after Clinton got a subpoena this year from the House Select Committee on Benghazi, something that would raise allegations of obstructing justice.
On the campaign trail this week, a reporter asked Clinton if she had wiped clean the server. Her reply? “What like with a cloth or something? Well no I don’t know how it works digitally at all.”
Clinton later added: “I’m very comfortable that this will eventually get resolved and the American people will have plenty of time to figure it out.”
As the campaign intensifies, the FBI and its director, James Comey, will be operating in an environment filled with political sensitivity. But it won’t be the first time, Hosko said.
“The FBI won’t be ignorant to the political realities,” he said, “but they have a job to do, they know that job, they’ve done it before, they will do it here.”
