The New York Times reported yesterday that two government inspector generals looked at Clinton’s claim and found an investigation is warranted.
There was no permanent inspector general at the State Department during Clinton’s four-year tenure.
Earlier this month, former Barack Obama advisor David Axelrod claimed he did not know that Hillary Clinton had a private email:
However, two new emails show that Axelrod actually emailed Clinton on her private server. On both June 25, 2009 and July 26, 2009, Axelrod sent messages to Clinton’s private email account:
Yesterday, the State Department released 3,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private sever.
The New York Times Michael Schmidt reported that the State Department had to go back and classify about two dozen of Clinton’s emails, despite claims that the former-sectary hadn’t sent any emails that would be considered sensitive.
Over the weekend, the Washington Examiner highlighted a State Department Inspector General report that found then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, “played a role in covering up allegations that an ambassador had solicited prostitutes on the job.” Initially the executive summary of the report, which was made public in October 2014, downplayed Mills’ role in the investigation into Belgian Ambassador Howard Gutman’s actions. The full report however, obtained by America Rising through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, found Mills played a much bigger role. The Washington Examinerreports:
Multiple news reports coming out of the testimony of longtime Clinton associate Sid Blumenthal provide further insight into Clinton’s poor judgment and bad
leadership as Secretary of State. For example:
Bloomberg‘s Josh Rogin writes that Hillary Clinton forwarded information about Libya that was “based on often … outright erroneous information”: The e-mail adds to the impression that the intelligence reports that Blumenthal was sending to Clinton about the situation inside Libya – and that she was distributing for comment to top State Department officials – were based on often flimsy or outright erroneous information.
Washington Examiner‘s Sarah Westwood on Clinton forwarding ” demonstrably false” Blumenthal memos: The demonstrably false claim sent by Blumenthal underscores the main concern that lawmakers have expressed in regards to his informal intelligence memos: that Clinton may have relied on his unvetted intelligence as fact.
National Review‘s Joel Gehrke uncovers a previously-undisclosed email sent to Clinton from Blumenthal that shows the two were collaborating on “a most delicate matter”: The e-mail, which Blumenthal provided to Benghazi Committee investigators earlier this week, shows him advising Clinton on a most delicate matter: How she should respond to the fall of Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi.
Perhaps most damaging for Clinton, National Review‘s Gehrke notes the new Blumenthal email “makes explicit the degree to which her advisers misjudged the situation on the ground in Libya and the Middle East, and shows that her team wasn’t above making foreign-policy statements with an eye on President Obama’s looming reelection bid – and her own political future.”
With a record like this, no wonder Clinton spent so little time during last weekend’s 5,000 word campaign re-launch speech talking about her time at the State Department. AsThe Hill notes this morning, “even people sympathetic to Clinton expressed some concern that there is no signature achievement” at Foggy Bottom.
It was reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton’s longtime family friend and Clinton Foundation adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, was providing memos to the then-Secretary of State that included analysis and other information about Libya. Blumenthal’s testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi revealed he copied and pasted unverified information before forwarding the memo directly to Clinton.
In a shocking example of mismanagement and poor judgment, Clinton not only received multiple memos from Blumenthal, “who has never been to Libya and is not an expert on the country,” but also forwarded these memos onto top State Department staffers. Clinton’s missteps as the head of the State Department are only worsened when considering the situation on the ground in Libya today, which, as “the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya,” is also part of Clinton’s dismal record at Foggy Bottom. Libya is pulled between two governments and also faces threats from terrorist groups, such as Islamic State.
Blumenthal, who was banned from working in Clinton’s State Department by the Obama administration, said yesterday that he was only forwarding emails to Secretary Clinton as a friend, but Blumenthal was paid $10,000 a month by the Clinton Foundation. For Secretary Clinton to blindly forward around the State Department her crony’s unverified analysis demonstrates horrendous judgment in the stewardship of our nation’s security, and is another example of her poor leadership at Foggy Bottom.
Today, at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, Bill Clinton reiterated that he has only sent two emails in his life because he didn’t want to be one of those people sending “embarrassing stuff on email.”
This completely contradicts Hillary Clinton’s claims from March of this year that her private email server contained “personal communications from my husband and me.”
A year ago today, Hillary Clinton released her memoir Hard Choices. The day of the book’s release, Time declared: “Hillary Clinton avoids hard choices in Hard Choices.” Despite claiming in October 2014 that “it should be disqualifying” for a candidate to not answer questions, here are the hard choices Clinton still refuses to make:
CNN reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton’s Libya problems are not going away, noting that Clinton’s biggest challenge, confronting the aftermath of post-Gadhafi Libya, is yet to come. The aftermath not only includes two rivaling governments, but also the presence of terrorists, such as Islamic State.
Hillary Clinton has another Libya problem.
She’s already grappling with the political headaches from deleted emails and from the terror attack that left four Americans dead in Benghazi.
But she’ll face a broader challenge in what’s become of the North African country since, as secretary of state in 2011, she was the public face of the U.S. intervention to push out its longtime strongman, Moammar Gadhafi.
Libya’s lapse into the chaos of failed statehood has provided a breeding ground for terror and a haven for groups such as ISIS.…
So Clinton must be ready to explain why she backed a military operation in a region laced with extremism without effective planning for the aftermath. … Clinton has little choice but to own what happened in Libya.
Clinton’s ownership of the situation in Libya today is unavoidable. A top Clinton staffer said she had “leadership/ownership/stewardship” of U.S. policy in the country and that Clinton was also “the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya.”
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hillary Clinton will give a series of policy speeches in the near future, but foreign policy will largely be excluded. According to Clinton advisers, she will not “focus on foreign policy in the coming months,” likely “devoting one speech to the subject”.
This is a curious development given Clinton served as Secretary of State for Obama’s entire first term, and because Clinton’s advisers reportedly point to her tenure as providing “credibility with voters on foreign affairs.”
But Clinton’s State Department was responsible for the botched Russian reset, which Clinton called a “brilliant stroke,” was seemingly voiceless during Iran’s Green Movement, refused to add Boko Haram to the foreign terrorist list, and failed to ever really pivot to Asia. In thewords of her own senior staffer, Clinton was the “the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya,” a country that is now pulled between two governments, while simultaneously facing the threat of Islamic State.
These are just a few of the concerning choices made by Hillary Clinton’s State Department, but they make clear why Clinton would want to avoid defending her decisions as the nation’s top diplomat.
