Vincent J. Curtis
8 Sept 2016
Try following this timeline:
On September 20, 2012, the House
Oversight Subcommittee on National Security fired off a request for any records relevant
to the attack in Benghazi to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Hillary was prompted with
additional requests in August 2013 and May 2014. Nothing significant came of it.
On March 2, 2015, The New York Times reported on Hillary
Clinton’s hitherto secret, private email server. The House Select Committee on Benghazi
reacted immediately. On March 3rd,
the Committee sent a letter to Hillary Clinton’s principle attorney, David Kendall, requiring that all emails, electronic documents and other electronic
records created since January 1st, 2009, in Hillary’s possession be
preserved.
Anticipating a Nixonian reaction,
the Committee required of Clinton to “prevent the partial or full destruction,
alteration, testing, deletion, shredding, incineration, wiping, relocation,
migration, theft, or mutation of electronic records.”
The day after that, March 4th,
the House Benghazi Committee subpoenaed Hillary Clinton for all records in
unredacted form related to Benghazi.
Three weeks later, Platte River
Networks, the company that stored Clinton’s server after it was removed from
her house in Chappaqua (reputedly keeping it in a janitor’s closet) had a
conference call with the staff of “President Clinton,” (by which one assumes the reference is to husband Bill). After the call, that is between March 25th
and 31st, a staffer at Platte River deleted the Clinton email
archive from the server, and destructively overwrote everything using a program
called BleachBit.
Because the server was the private property of husband Bill,
he had the authority to say what could be done with the server. He let Hillary use it for her emails as
Secretary of State, and Hillary used Bill’s server to store records of the
United States government – over 2100 of them containing government secrets. And when the continued existence of these
records became a problem for Hillary, husband Bill ordered them removed from his server. Bill wasn't the one under subpoena.
This is like Whitewater, except with Bill and Hillary
exchanging roles.
The “Oh-sh*t” moment that occurred to the engineer who
followed Bill’s orders and BleachBitted the email archive was when he realized
that what he destroyed was the stuff that was likely under Congressional
subpoena. He put two and two together
too late. And that is why the FBI and
the Justice Department granted him immunity rather than prosecute him for
obstruction of justice.
Since husband Bill was not the one under subpoena, he can
escape obstruction of justice charges.
And so can Hillary, since she is not the one who ordered the obstruction to
take place.
Of course, Hillary is married to Bill, and David Kendall is
attorney to both Bill and Hillary.
Kendall first came to national prominence as the lead lawyer defending
Bill in the Starr investigation into Whitewater. And Hillary, Bill, and David are all lawyers,
and all three of them would know that it would be unethical of David to tell
Bill of Hillary’s problem and even more so how to make it go away.
What also fell out of the FBI investigation is the fact that
Hillary used some 15 Blackberrys in the course of her tenure as Secretary of
State. Two were destroyed, and 13 were
lost. The two were
destroyed with a hammer by a member of Bill’s
staff, not Hillary’s.
Blackberry is famous for Blackberry Messenger, a fast and
secure way of transmitting text messages an well as voice and video data. Blackberrys retain in memory the content of
these texts, even if they aren’t visible to the user, and these texts can be
downloaded and archived on a computer.
Since these texts are routed through Blackberry’s own secure servers, a
record of these might still exist in company servers. Losing or destroying the hand-held may only
have destroyed an archive of its secrets, not all of them.
None of the talk of Hillary’s emails covers BBM, and Hillary
has been scrupulous in talking about emails.
Text messages and BBM aren’t emails, though they are electronic
records. And let’s not forget that
Barack Obama was known as a “crackberry” addict at his election, a person
addicted to using his Blackberry. BBMing
may have been a way for Hillary and Obama to stay in touch.
Anyhow, no one in the public eye seems alive to the
potential significance of Hillary’s use of BBM, and the possible existence of a
record of her BBMs with the company.
What is very clear is how Bill and Hillary work hand in glove
to their mutual benefit, be it legal or financial.
The purpose of hiding Hillary's electronic communications was to keep secret Hillary's corrupt dealings with the Clinton Foundation, which sold Hillary's power in exchange for contributions to the Foundation. If Hillary had used secure, government servers and electronic devices for her communication instead of her own (or her husband's) property, the records would still exist and Hillary would be blameless for any lapses in security. It is espionage to place U.S. government secrets in a place where they should not be, and a privately owned server is a place where they should not be. Nevertheless, Hillary was excused by FBI Director Comey.
The U.S. legal system is just not adept enough to deal with a pair as nimble as Bill and Hillary Clinton.
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