2nd FBI Immunity Deal Revealed in Emailgate Scandal

EDIT: Cronewit sent me these with much additional information:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439852/hillary-clinton-obstruction...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439804/clintons-e-mail-scandal-sti...

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One of the un-named Platte River Networks guys has a deal - I toldj'all I suspected as much...

But I'm getting ahead of myself... and apparently there ARE two who were un-named in the FBI notes, as I thought. You'll learn the name of one of them below.

The 'Oh-Shit' moment story we recently learned sure sounded kinda fishy, yes? The un-named Platte River Networks guy (we have seen male articles used, so it's it's a 'he') realized he had apparently forgotten to delete the emails which had been sitting around as instructed, we learned from the FBI notes... he went and deleted them AT SOME POINT between the 25th and the 31st of March.

But here's the thing - That was ALSO the week he had a phone call and a work order, if I understood correctly, from Cheryl Mills and David Kendall. Looks kinda coincidental, doesn't it? Might NOT be, but, there's sure an possibility of overlap between those to events.

Hat Tip to Olinda -EDIT: Am removing Denver Post video b/c the autoplay feature is making my laptop slooooooow. Can't see a way to disable it. You can view the video through Olinda's link in comments.

We got the kids version of the FBI notes, the non-classified stuff. Congress, apparently, got a bit more. Catch this said by Jason Chaffetz:

“These emails are held for newly two years and then within hours of a [Clinton's lawyers] Cheryl Mills-David Kendall call with Platt River, they’re destroyed?” Chaffetz asked. “This is why we need to investigate… [so] we better understand how that happened and make sure it never ever happens again.”

So, Chaffetz confirms that there IS overlap.

Rachel Bade of POLITICO provided us with this today:

Hill Republicans: Clinton investigations won’t stop if she wins

Rachel also tells us Chaffetz is as confused as we are about why this fellow (well, this guy or the other PRN employee - hard to tell which is which at this point) claimed attorney-client privilege in refusing to answer questions from the committee on Homeland Security.

Chaffetz has been trying to get answers, and he's not happy with the tight-lippedness he's been getting. He wants to get to the bottom, she says, of what happened with destruction of evidence, and we learn that there's currently a bill being written to pull the security clearance of anyone who misused confidential information:

In fact, he’s already threatening to. In recent days, Chaffetz asked officials from State, FBI, the Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to come to Capitol Hill for a private briefing on why some Clinton emails and parts of the FBI report are being redacted when he believes they shouldn’t. He also says his panel has noticed “inconsistencies” in what the agencies withholds from Congress. All refused his invitation. So, he scheduled a public hearing, and threatened the "s" word, subpoena.

In a Tuesday letter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Chaffetz asked the Justice Department to review whether Platte River Networks, the IT company that housed Clinton’s server after she left State, destroyed evidence and obstructed justice. The letter points to a section in the newly released FBI files on the Clinton investigation that said an unnamed Platte River IT employee deleted a Clinton email archive a few days after talking to Clinton’s lawyers. The New York Times reported Thursday night that the person, Paul Combetta, was given immunity by the FBI.

Here's the NYT piece:

Justice Dept. Granted Immunity to Specialist Who Deleted Hillary Clinton’s Emails

So, this guy Combetta said early in the year that he had not seen the order to retain the information. Later, he reversed himself. Looks like that's all that is public at this time.

Moving on, we have what I believe is our first direct evidence that this IS an investigation of how Hillary's time at the State Department may have been impacted by what was going on at the Clinton Foundation - this is Senator Cornyn:

“Unfortunately, [FBI] Director [James] Comey's announcement back in July wasn't the end of the story… because last month even more e-mails came to light that revealed the line blurred between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department under Secretary Clinton,” Cornyn said. “It is clear that major Clinton Foundation donors enjoyed great access to Secretary Clinton while she was serving as our nation's premier diplomat. ... I hope, soon, that we all get some answers.”

Brian Fallon believes that the sum of all of this is that we should hate the Republicans. I beg to differ. What I hate is that we have a candidate with so much hubris she's willing to pollute the White House with more than the scent of corruption before she even gets there, guaranteeing us that the two parties will be fighting and focused on something other than the welfare of the nation.

Here's Fallon in the NYT piece saying Combetta went rogue:

“As the F.B.I.’s report notes,” Mr. Fallon said, “neither Hillary Clinton nor her attorneys had knowledge of the Platte River Network employee’s actions. It appears he acted on his own and against guidance given by both Clinton’s and Platte River’s attorneys to retain all data in compliance with a congressional preservation request.”

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Pricknick's picture

Yes you did.
No I didn't.
Yes you did.
No I didn't.
Here's immunity.

Silence is golden.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

k9disc's picture

Yes you did.
No I didn't.
Yes you did.

"... Well kind of, but it doesn't matter. Republicans do it too."

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

riverlover's picture

offered by the DoJ, not FBI. May have been in WaPo. So confusion reigns. But a new name. Poor guy.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

MsGrin's picture

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Said when news broke about pagliano's immunity that that meant prosecutors from the doj were working with the FBI, as its they, not the FBI, that can grant immunity.

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gulfgal98's picture

Is either Cheryl Mills or David Kendall this guy's attorney? I am confused by this.

Rachel also tells us Chaffetz is as confused as we are about why this fellow (well, this guy or the other PRN employee - hard to tell which is which at this point) claimed attorney-client privilege in refusing to answer questions from the committee on Homeland Security.

As always, thank you for digging deep into this for us MsGrin! Good

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

MsGrin's picture

...dunno what we'll learn.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

riverlover's picture

So there is part of the significance. Who ordered what and when.

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MsGrin's picture

which makes is hard to keep track of who did what, and it *may* mean BOTH have deals. Dunno.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

OLinda's picture

Perhaps they decided to offer an opinion because Platte River Networks is based in Denver. (The Post is right leaning. At least I recall them endorsing George W. twice.)

By The Denver Post Editorial Board

A fishy story in Platte River Networks’ purge of Clinton e-mails

The latest controversy involving Hillary Clinton’s decision to run her State Department e-mail through private servers contains a hard-to-believe shocker that ought to give reasonable people pause.

Her supporters will join her campaign in decrying a “conspiracy” to spoil her presidential aspirations. But really, how can an objective observer not find problems with this latest story, which suggests a dark conspiracy indeed: An errant engineer decides on his own volition to delete e-mails from her private account after a congressional committee orders them preserved?
...

more at link.

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MsGrin's picture

Am adding the video to the essay. Wink

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

OLinda's picture

for the shoutout. I am not sure that video is in my linked story though. Is it? I don't see it.

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MsGrin's picture

It's got some interesting commentary, but also has that darn autoplay, so that it starts over every time the page refreshes, like if one comments, and the advertising takes awhile to load, so it on my wifi, it freezes up.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

who told the PRN employee to claim attorney-client privilege. To me (at this point), this suggests that the FBI negotiated a deal with PRN as a business entity, not with the individual employees (or with both the business and the employees).

It still feels wrong, though. Now, all I know about atty-client privilege is what I've learned from TV (I expect we'll all be learing much more about it soon!). As I understand it, the client always continues to own his/her own information (unless a judge issues a gag order). The attorney (and the practice s/he is attached to) is responsible for for not revealing privileged information, and can be sanctioned for doing so.

The facts as currently reported fit nicely into another TV trope: The immunity-for-information tradeoff wherein law enforcement (for example) gets the guy who was 'just the driver' to inform on the guy(s) who actually committed the felony by offering the driver immunity.

But in this instance, if the Denver Post's reporting is accurate, the FBI negotiated the deal with the business entity PRN through the PRN attorney. The PRN attorney then instructed the employee(s) to refuse to cooperate with other investigators by claiming 'attorney-client privilege' -- when the employees could have claimed the Fifth on their own accounts.

[Edit:]
The NYT article linked above describes the PRN employee as having given two versions of his story to the FBI. In his first testimony (months ago) he claimed that the 'did not recall' seeing the Benghazi-related 'retain all documents' order. His more recent testimony aligns with what the FBI's 58-page report says: That he knew about the 'keep all records order; that he decided not to delete the records, even though he had been instructed to; that Mill's call in March sparked his 'oh shit' moment, at which point he used BleachBit on the drive.

I assume the initial 'don't recall' testimony was false, and just another application of the HRC's crew initial reply of 'don't recall' for any server-related question when it is first raised. But this two-version business now raises questions for me. Was PRN guy pressured into saying 'don't recall' the first time, or did the FBI insert a falsified version of his testimony into the record? Did the FBI suborn the witness into perjury to be able to include 'don't recall' in the record?

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MsGrin's picture

Is that there were email exchanges among PRN employees who were concerned that deleting everything as directed might make them part of a cover-up: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-platte-riv...

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

The report addresses emails among both PRN and Datto, the other tech firm invloved in HRC's out-sourcing of server archives. This report was made almost a year ago (Oct 1015), and it refers to in-house emails expressing concerns and discussing ways they could CYA themselves by showing the emailed HRC-based instructions to delete along with keeping their own records showing no deletions at all, in order to defend themselves. If I am reading this article correctly, these in-house emails took place as early as Oct 2014 - Feb 2015.

In the 2015 CNN report, details about these in-house emails were included in a letter by GOP congresscritter Johnson. So here are more original documents that need to be shown to the public, imo. As reported, they seem to show that that the ordinary at PRN/Datto were worried, as early as two years ago, that they might be being set up, and that they were trying to come up with ways to protect themselves if they became the fall-guys.

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We'll see how much they want to push this whole thing.

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The original story appeared months ago, when the primaries began. Don't remember where I read it (before the great MSM Clinton "I'm With Her" campaign). The jist was: Platte River was ordered to scrub the server(s) by a Clinton toadie, probably Mills or Pagliano, but decided the hard drive contents SHOULD be preserved for the record. Seems that Platte River employee had better instincts than Her Heiness.

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MsGrin's picture

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

sojourns's picture

As an aside. One thing I'm weary of is the quickness with which many people employ the label 'CT' as if there were no such thing as conspiracies. More and more I find that those who dismiss all conspiracies theories are of the camp that prefer to remain willfully ignorant. I think if the evidence is weak or yet underdeveloped they it should be call HT or hypothesis theory.

Grandma Yuppy's entire career has been littered with scandal. Nothing has stuck, but that does not mean she is innocent. I like many believe that a false conviction is worse than a criminal going free, however, there far too many correlations placing her as a likely conspiratorial perpetrator of numerous felonies to be ignored. Yeah, Hillary. It's your time alright.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

MsGrin's picture

Person says what I have stated were pre-conceived notions on my part.

Um, first of all, if I preconceived them, they wouldn't be from the GOP, but nevermind that. I've gotten them by reading a variety of sources, including sworn testimony...

I think there's a great deal of scandal fatigue at this point. And the administration HASN'T EVEN STARTED. Think about THAT, people!!! At least this crap didn't happen with Bill at this level until he'd served most of a term.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

sojourns's picture

Mountains of evidence a preconceived notion?

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

MsGrin's picture

He made the statement (i.e. canned talking point) that all of Clinton's emails were trapped by the FBI server (ok, that's more of a straight lie than a talking point, but the talking heads do repeat it). However, from what I've read, State can't just go do searches on the whole server - they have to search the specific email accounts. Which means they have to either know everyone who communicated with Clinton or hand search thousands of email accounts. Which, of course, would not cover anyone who did not have a state.gov account, or the emails between Clinton and her staff members who also had clintonemail.com accounts.

How on earth could I have 'preconceived' this rubbish? It's pretty well inconpreconceivable, if you will. Wink

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Deja's picture

Watergate? The very current-day Wells Fargo theft/scam?

I'm with you on the "willfully ignorant" part of your comment too. They are very quick to dismiss any critical thinking, and just go with what those dispensing the Koolaid say is fact.

If I had done that years ago, I'd believe that I am cursed by being born female. Now there's a centuries old conspiracy perpetuated by "the church". No theory to it!

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Citizen Of Earth's picture

No IT pro would Ever Ever Ever delete a clients email archive without explicit instructions from the client. I hope the PRN guys are holed up in an undisclosed location because ... or they might get Bleach Bitted themselves.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

mimi's picture

if a person dies and doesn't leave a will, there needs to be a person to be the estate representative declared and accepted by the probate court. If a person falsely can convince, for example, Microsoft that one is the legal estate representative, without that having been accepted by the courts, that person can get full access to all emails of the deceased person. I think Microsoft keeps the emails of person that it got knowledge of to be deceased (via death certificate) not longer than a year.

So, it's possible something is deleted on false claims.

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sojourns's picture

that they know Clinton is not dead.......... yet.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Citizen Of Earth's picture

Damn another CT to chase. I'll add a folder to the file cabinet. Smile

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

mimi's picture

be in denial about that reality ... and... hmm /no more snark here.

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riverlover's picture

personnel who realized that a directive from Clinton camp had told them to shorten the lives of newer emails, and at some point someone realized they still had a wad of old emails (from State days?) that had not been wiped. Also I recall that someone at PRN was aware of House questioning and was uncertain as to their own legal ass.

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Slightkc's picture

is why I was against Hillary as Dem Nominee. Anyone who lived thru Bill's presidency knew the handwriting was on the wall... investigations, scandals, obstructionism, and NOTHING being done in the way of governing our country properly or correctly. Meanwhile, piles of OUR money whirling down the eddy of infinite committee hearings. At this point, IMO, it doesn't matter if she's guilty or innocent as newly fallen snow; the fact she and congress will -never- be able to govern legitimately in so many of their constituents eyes means pain and heartache for the rest of us.... not to mention soul sickness from all the anger, hatred, and violence emanating from the highest of our country's institutions.

Egads... do ya'll remember when we used to think the best in elections was to elect a balance of D's and R's in any given presidential election year? That way, there would be checks and balances and no one party would go bonkers on the country. Those days seem as ancient as I feel most days now!

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Just now read the Politico article linked above. *Tons* of info there!

One key point is that Chaffetz is willing to issue Congressional subpoenas to sources, which will override the various claims of 'info protected by privilege' that have been used to keep info safely locked away.

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Just now read the Politico article linked above. *Tons* of info there!

One key point is that Chaffetz is willing to issue Congressional subpoenas to sources, which will override the various claims of 'info protected by privilege' that have been used to keep info safely locked away.

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