Emails: New Congressional Investigations Announced
From The Hill
So, the first news is that Congress caught wind of the Reddit thread we've been following today about Combetta:
House panel looking into Reddit post about Clinton's email server
Mark Meadows who chairs the Government Opperations Subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee says that they are looking into whether Paul Combetta of Platte River Networks is the poster we read about earlier.
From Meadows, we learn two things, a) that there is a Congressional investigation on Combetta (which we could have assumed, but this is the first I've seen it verified), and b) that Stonetear's actions were concurrent with investigations about Benghazi, (which is likely the more compelling issue for the GOP, I'd guess):
Combetta is currently one of the targets of a broader Oversight investigation on whether Clinton ordered the destruction of emails that had been subpoenaed by the Benghazi Select Committee.
“If it is determined that the request to change email addresses was made by someone so closely aligned with the Secretary's IT operation as Mr. Combetta, then it will certainly prompt additional inquiry,” Meadows told The Hill. “The date of the Reddit post in relationship to the establishment of the Select Committee on Benghazi is also troubling.” The Reddit message was sent on July 23, 2014, according to an archive of the page saved by other users. The day before, the Benghazi Committee had reached an agreement with the State Department on the production of related records, according the FBI's investigation into Clinton's use of the server.
As a reminder, it's Combetta who had the 'Oh shit moment,' and at the hearing last week, Combetta took the 5th was about destruction of documents. On Thursday, the Oversight Committee has a hearing about the preservation of State Department documents. The U.S. Attorney for D.C. is investigating deletions from the servers as a criminal matter on referral from the Oversight committee.
Chaffetz’s referral asks that the Justice Department investigate whether Clinton or her aides were involved in the decision to delete the archive when it was under subpoena and a request for preservation of records.
I assume Mills is considered an aide, and wonder if David Kendall is, too...
Here's the video of Mark Meadows:
Comments
That oh shit! Moment
Apparently took place after a conference call with Clinton executive services.
Oh shit! My ass.
I am inclined to give Combetta the benefit of the doubt
We know that someone at PRN was concerned about deleting the emails based on emails which were leaked. While they don't quite make it clear that whichever of them wrote those emails cared about ethics or the law, they did care about their own skins (more than Clinton's) so, even if that's all the appearance of conscience was, I'm still siding with them over her.
I believe we shall learn more about what SPECIFICALLY was meant by that 'oh-shit'...
'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
Timeline that a user over at Reddit
Put together.
https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/53j0bj/computer_tech_who_asked...
I don't think there's a fair use restriction with Reddit
I believe that the call on 3/25 was with Cheryl Mills and David Kendall and that there was a second call on 3/31 - it's been asserted that the latter of those calls was to make sure everything had been deleted.
'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
"Computer tech"
is a fucking moron. Pardon my French.
For a global crime family, the Clinton's seem to be clueless about tech, which is forgivable (one can't master everything and they're too busy learning to launder billions), but how could they not hire competent tech staff? It's the fucking 21st fucking Century. We don't have flying cars but we do have tech, and the world is awash in skilled, overworked, underpaid people who know this stuff backwards and forwards. At the very goddamned least they know how to search for answers instead of posting questions under easily traced aliases. Maybe they thought they could insulate themselves by outsourcing this to clueless morons who would end up taking the fall. Outsourcing might be advisable, but outsourcing to morons is not. I admit to not frequenting such circles, but there must be the equivalent of Swiss banks in the computer security world (if not I think I have my next startup idea) located in countries without extradition to the US. Pay them whatever the fuck they want to keep your crimes and health problems buried and while they're at it keep your routine communications from being broadcast over unsecured wireless connections.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
If you were a smart techie,
If you were a smart techie, would you work for the Clintons? That could easily be a real bus you wind up being thrown under, if it suits their purposes...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I suspect the choice of morons was intentional
After all, a highly qualified tech would immediately know that any request to delete or even worse, alter archived emails was probably due to something illegal and not above board. A high tech person like that would likely refuse, where morons happily do whatever they asked, particularly when it comes from someone as high level as the Clinton's. Going with morons gave the Clinton's at least some hope that they could alter or delete those emails if it became required. And since they chose morons, they can play the, "who would have imagined that they would delete emails" card. And that gives them plausible deniability. After all, who you going to believe, the Clinton team or a bunch of morons?
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
George W. Bush
Or they could simply hope to
Or they could simply hope to be mistaken for the moron group and, as seems to occur with stunning regularity, be excused from responsibility on the grounds of gross incompetency and habitual making of 'mistakes. That and not recalling anything about it.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
That may indeed be what they were thinking
but that goes back to my point about not understanding tech. "Oh, that guy did that all on his own, we are shocked that such a thing was going on". Except clueless people leave trails that are easily followed, and those trails may point right back at the Clinton camp. A competent tech guy would know that.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Luckily, evil is stupid.
Luckily, evil is stupid. Otherwise, it wouldn't be evil.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I've been saying PRN was hired b/c they could be manipulated
That's the ONLY conceivable reason to choose such rubes.
'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
I've also heard it suggested
I've also heard it suggested that the reasoning likely was investigators would be less likely to search out all of the small firms of this type than a large one. And I suppose more likely to be vulnerable to being intimidated into silence/set up to take the fall, should anything go wrong. They like attacking much smaller, weaker countries and less powerful individuals, as you'll have noticed. No, you don't really want to know the depths of my disgust...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Mme. Clinton has a history of hiring morons
There is an old saying to the effect that first rate people hire employees who are better than them while mediocre employers look for people who are worse than they are.
I have always thought that Mme. Clinton's reputation for high level intelligence was and is greatly exaggerated. Remember the mini scandal over not paying her ghost writer for "It Takes a Village". Someone who graduated from Wellesley and Yale can't write her own book????
Mary Bennett
Gonna give her a pass on using a ghost writer
All these political books are ghost written. Many of them are capable of writing their own books, but they don't have time (if you could make a quarter mil for giving one speech, would you spend three months in front of a word processor?). Some, like McCain, I'm not sure can even read much less write. They're just part of branding, and may bring in a little money. For the full time grifters, like Gingrich, they're a significant source of income.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
But she does NOT get a pass for not paying the ghostwriter...
So, she's got some of Trump's illness, it would seem.
'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
wow
What a bunch of criminals!
“The first duty of a man is to think for himself”
Reddit post does NOT say Hillary's server
The server in question could have been anyone's server (if Combetta had other clients). Pretty slim lead to go on if you ask me. And he's not talking, taking the 5th - so his "not word" against Reddit's other posters...
Peace
FN
BTW: I wish they COULD prove it but that seems doubtful.
"Democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppressor. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson." Peace - FN
I think your comment is that it's conceivable
he (PRN) had other really VIP clients... I'm pretty sure that the whole nation will know in the foreseeable if this is the case.
If I have my facts in a row, my recollection is that PRN obtained a server for HRC's records (which was different than the ones she had had previously)... so when you say 'Hillary's server,' I believe you likely mean that one they obtained which had her data stored on it.
'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
True, there's only a lot of
True, there's only a lot of circumstantial evidence - but if it were merely some non-Clinton Josephine Citizen being implicated by this, there would be probably be enough for a conviction. The Clinton's Bullshit Mountain only just dwarfs the mountain of circumstantial evidence of routine corruption forming an unmistakable pattern unexplained by habitual 'mistakes' and utter incompetence, since they invariably benefited by it - big-time. Billions, counting the Clinton Slush Fundation.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Platte River Networks
is a small, obscure outfit. How many "VIP" clients do you suppose they attracted?
Even the smallest person can change the course of the future
I believe they may have been run out of someone's apt
My recollection from very early reporting about them was that this was the case, but I haven't seen that detail since more information has come out.
'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
VIP Client is relative
Even if Platte River had a city council as its client, VIP could be anyone in the town - it's all relative to what you think of as a VIP. It surely gives Platte River a lot of room to deny that the questions to Reddit applied to Hillary. And I'm sure Platte has a lot of legal advice from the Hillary camp - they are professionals at warding off these types of accusations. Look, unless there is first hand testimony from something like a Platte employee turning whistle blower this too will fade into history as a non-event. In any regard, Competta can claim the 5th until the temperatures in hell reach 32 degrees. Competta evidently did not have great googling skills if he had to resort to Reddit, as one who has worked with Outlook PSTs, there is not much you can do with a PST file - they are designed for security. You surely can not edit a PST globally without resurrecting the email and re-saving it - and this would create tracks in an admin log somewhere.
Peace
FN
"Democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppressor. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson." Peace - FN
and on the OTHER side of this argument
we know that Clinton Executive Services whatever was their client, AND that this request for assistance came out right when Benghazi hearings were ongoing. So, even if the guy's mother was his client (or a city councilperson), there's a chance that the GOP (or the FBI) can make a convincing case that this was about Clinton and not Mom or the city councilperson.
'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
A "very very very" VIP
can most likely mean a Cabinet
Minister, oops Secretary or thePM herselfPresident himself.YMMV.
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
The PRN involvement in the cover-up, which is now apparent,
still does not nail Clinton herself. In the first place as fake news pointed out it could be any "important" person's computer, e.g. a CEO of a major corporation. But for argument's sake, let's agree that this was the Clinton Mafia emails network, there is no direct tie-in to Medusa herself. She has "plausible deniability". Yeah, yeah, none of us believe anything Hiding Hillary says but...
At some point
there has to be the straw that....
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
Tue, 09/20/2016 - 1:33am —
Tue, 09/20/2016 - 1:33am — sojourns
we stick into our hair to signify having been driven mad? Not sure why straw in the hair, but I suppose the point of being mad in that sense means not making sense at all. Sort of like this election and the Clinton excuses.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I am sure that the straw reference was to camel backs.
I used the same allusion this week about the same detail. Someplace else.
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.
Sorry, was attempting to make
Sorry, was attempting to make a small joke (lying on its face over right there) using what's now an old and, I gather, rather obscure reference...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Hillary is going
D
O
W
N
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
From your mouth to FSM's
From your mouth to FSM's cauliflower side-dish ears!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Is anyone else here old enough to remember Watergate?
I ask because the resemblances between Watergate and the email scandal are quite pronounced.
The Watergate story broke I think it was the spring of 1972. It remained a kind of low grade rumble in the news throughout the summer and fall of 1972, while President Nixon was accumulating his landslide victory against Senator McGovern--a feat which Mme. Clinton assuredly will NOT be able to duplicate.
Of course, Congress of today is not the Congress of 1972. Today's Republicans are, if anything, so blinded by ideology as to render them even more incompetent than Mme. Clinton, and those who are not blind ideologues are bought and paid for corporate shills. Meanwhile the DSCC, DNC and DCCC have been doing everything they can to stack the Democratic bench with compliant conservadumb nonentities--see the site Down With Tyranny for the details.
Nevertheless, the email scandal has every appearance of being a story with legs. For one thing, it is easy to understand the essential point, the Secretary of State, an official charged with doing the public's business, intentionally destroyed public records, a federal offense, or allowed them to be destroyed, and the same official negligently compromised sensitive government information.
Mme. Clinton may not spend time in jail or house arrest for this, but it is also beginning to look like the Clinton's won't be moving into the White House again.
Mary Bennett
Clinton really does seem to be modeling herself on Nixon
I'm sure you've caught that Hill's very first professional gig out of law school was working for the House committee which ran the impeachment. If you haven't, I'll dig up the essay I did here about it. Clinton actually worked on the team which created the 'roadmap' for the impeachment, itself.
And then when Bill was impeached, GOP members thanked Hill for having participated in helping them go after Bill. A photocopy of that article was in a Snopes piece I found...
Again and again and again, Nixon references come up with respect to Clinton. I believe she thinks she can out-Nixon him. I don't believe she'll get away with it.
'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
I remember it well.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole. It is complete."
---Barbara Jordan, a/k/a The Voice of God", speaking at the impeachment hearings.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Do you also
see similarities with the present email affair?
Remember how the breakin was at first dismissed. So what? Like they don't all spy on each other?
Mary Bennett
Yep.
I think she is toast.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981