Tag: Hillary Clinton

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THE Smoking Gun Clinton Email ?

Clinton email scandal

New Hillary Clinton Email Confirms She Used Blackberry Against Security Advice    
June 11, 2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Washington DC, What did the Russians know, and when did they know it? A question for today and President Trump? Actually we should be asking this about the years when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. The illicit system she cobbled together to send and receive emails was essentially transparent to the Russians and, for that matter, anyone else with a smidgen of technical expertise.

As the latest example of this, we have submitted new evidence to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan showing that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly used an unsecure BlackBerry device despite being warned by “security hawks” against doing so.

Judicial Watch  obtained the email record in a response to a court order from our May 5, 2015, lawsuitagainst the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) after it failed to respond to our March 18, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking: “All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov’ email address.”

The new document brings the known total to date to at least 433 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department. These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

The email was sent to Susan Kennedy, presumably former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff. Kennedy wrote Clinton on March 7 2009: “Just in case you are still allowed to carry your blackberry, your friends are watching with great pride.” Clinton responded on March 8, 2009:

Against the advice of the security hawks, I still do carry my berry but am prohibited from using it in my office, where I spend most of my time when I’m not on a plane or in a “no coverage” country.

The email, uncovered by Judicial Watch and written by Clinton, demonstrates that she reviewed or was at least informed about a March 6, 2009, Information Memo from Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric J. Boswell to Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills in which he wrote that he “cannot stress too strongly, however, that any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving email, and exploiting calendars.” [Emphasis added]

In a recent court filing pertaining to the pending motion to compel Clinton to answer interrogatory questions she refused to answer under oath, Judicial Watch argues that interrogatory 14 is particularly important:

Interrogatory 14 seeks to uncover why Secretary Clinton continued using a personal BlackBerry to conduct State Department business after being advised of the risks in doing so. This interrogatory is pertinent because Secretary Clinton’s personal BlackBerry was an integral part of the operation of the clintonemail.com system, a subject squarely within the scope of discovery. It was how she accessed her email. Without her personal BlackBerry, there likely would have been no clintonemail.com system because the Secretary did not use a desktop or laptop and a State Department BlackBerry would have linked to an official “state.gov” email account.

We submitted the questions to her under a court order on August 19, 2016, in a separate lawsuit.

Mrs. Clinton seemingly ignored the advice of “security hawks” and violated numerous laws related to the handling of classified material and government documents. The State Department sat on this document for 18 months. It is a smoking gun that shows why she must held accountable under criminal and civil law.

Clinton refused outright to answer questions about the creation of her email system; her decision to use the system despite warnings from State Department officials; and the basis for her claim that the State Department had “90-95%” of her emails.

In her responses sent to Judicial Watch and the court on October 13, 2016, Clinton refused to answer three questions and responded that she “does not recall” 20 times concerning her non-government clintonemail.com email system. She preceded her responses by eight “general objections” and two “objections to definitions.” The words “object” or “objection” appear 84 times throughout the 23-page document submitted to the court and Judicial Watch.

The Clinton responses to interrogatives were received in the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which was first filed in September 2013 seeking records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin, former deputy chief of staff to Clinton (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). The lawsuit was reopened because of revelations about theclintonemail.com system.

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Judicial Watch: New Clinton Emails Show Classified Information Sent to Clinton Foundation Employees

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Emails also show Abedin providing government plane and hotel reservations to Chelsea Clinton for trip to Germany while employed at Clinton Foundation

 Abedin tells Band that she has ‘hooked up’ people from the Russian American Foundation with ‘the right people’ at the State Department

June 2,2017

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Washington DC,  Judicial Watch today released 2,078 pages of documents revealing more instances of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sending and receiving classified information via an unsecured email server. They also show Clinton’s daughter Chelsea and others involved with the Clinton Foundation receiving special favors from Huma Abedin, the former secretary’s deputy chief of staff.

The records were obtained in response to a court order from a May 5, 2015, lawsuit filed against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) after it failed to respond to a March 18, 2015, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking: “All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-‘state.gov’ email address.”

The new documents included 115 Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to at least 432 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department. These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

On December 6, 2010, Secretary Clinton shared classified information with non-U.S. government employees Justin Cooper, then-aide to President Clinton who helped manage Hillary Clinton’s unsecure email system, and Clinton Foundation director Doug Band (neither of whom held security clearances). The email instructs her aide Oscar Flores to “print for Bill” (presumably Bill Clinton). The email exchange, which involved allegations of the theft of foreign aid by Bangladeshi banker and major Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus, started with an email from an unidentified person to State Department official Melanne Verveer, who forwarded her exchange on to Hillary Clinton, who then sent it on to Flores, Cooper and Band.

Yunus was accused of embezzling $100 million from the Grameen Bank he founded and was removed from it, although the charges were never proven, and Yunus reportedly returned the money. Subsequently, Clinton’s State Department was accused of threatening IRS action against the Bangladesh prime minister’s son in an attempt to stop a Bangladesh government investigation of Yunus.

In a similar instance on March 14, 2011, State Department official Maria Otero emailed Clinton information about the Grameen Bank/Foundation that was again deemed classified as Confidential by the State Department and redacted under FOIA exemption B1.4(D) – “Information specifically authorized by an executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy … Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.” Clinton then responds to Otero using her HDR22@clintonemailcom account and copies Abedin on Abedin’s unsecure email account, huma@clintonemail.com.

In May 2010, Ben Ringel, whose donations to the Clinton Foundation Judicial Watch previously documented, asked Abedin to intervene in an employment dispute on behalf of a USAID employee. Abedin agreed, telling Ringel to forward the woman’s documents to her official State Department email account.

In a May 21, 2011, email exchange sent to Abedin’s unsecure account, then- Ambassador Princeton Lyman sent information relating to his conversation with South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit that is also redacted and classified as “Confidential.”

On July 17, 2012, Abedin forwarded to her private email account for printing a call briefing sheet for Clinton’s upcoming call with Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan, which was classified Confidential and redacted under FOIA exemption B1.4(D).

The new Abedin emails also reveal additional instances in which Clinton’s then- scheduler Lona Valmoro forwarded the former secretary of state’s detailed daily schedule to top Clinton Foundation officials.

The new emails also reveal a number of favors that were requested and carried out.

In May 2010, Abedin tells Band that she has “hooked up” people from the Russian American Foundation with “the right people” at the State Department after Abedin received a request from Russian American Foundation Vice President Rina Kirshner, forwarded by Clinton Foundation donor Eddie Trump (no relation to President Trump).

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 9:41 PM, Huma Abedin <Huma@clintonemail.com> wrote:

Hi Rina – wanted to connect on meeting at state department. Eddie trump passed on your email. Will be in touch soon.

From: Rina Kirshner
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:29 AM
To: Huma Abedin
Subject: Re: Eddie Trump/Doug Band

Ms. Abedin,
Just wanted to follow up and express our gratitude. I was contacted today by Ms. Christina Miner who invited us to be part of the US-Russia Cultural Sub-Working Group meeting next week. Thank you very much for all your assistance – if there is any way we can be of assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Rina Kirshner

From: Huma Abedin [Huma@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 12:19:12 PM
To: Doug Band
Subject: FW: Eddie Trump/Doug Band

fyi – we hooked her up with the right people here

The Russia-American Foundation was staffed by Clinton political supporters and operatives, received over $260,000 in grants for “public diplomacy” from the Clinton State Department, and its leadership was supportive of Obama’s Russia policies.

In July 2011, when Chelsea Clinton, using the alias Diane Reynolds and the email addressdreynolds@clintonemail.com, was planning to fly to Germany to see the U.S. women’s soccer team play, her travel agent asked Abedin to confirm that Chelsea’s travel costs could be placed on her parents’ credit card. In response, Abedin tells the agent that she can “stand down” from making arrangements to get Chelsea to Germany, as Chelsea and Bari Luri, Chelsea’s Clinton Foundation chief of staff, would be made part of the “official delegation” going to the match and she would “fly on official govt plane both ways and they will take care of hotels and all transportation.” Chelsea was a fully employed Clinton Foundation executive at this time.

In July 2011, Clinton tells Abedin that she doesn’t wish to fly on the same airplane with Michelle Obama on their way to Betty Ford’s funeral: “I’d be honored to speak. Is it ok that we and Mrs. O take two separate planes?”

A December 15, 2012, email chain shows that a committee of Clinton staffers, including Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan and Philippe Reines, was required to draft a “doctors statement” as to why Hillary supposedly fainted due to “dehydration,” causing her supposedly to hit her head and suffer a “concussion” in December 2012. The same committee then prepared a “discharge statement” when Hillary was released from the hospital.

“These shocking new Clinton emails show why the Justice Department should reevaluate, reopen, or reinvigorate Clinton, Inc. investigations,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The casual violation of laws concerning classified material and noxious influence peddling show the Clinton State Department was ‘corruption central’ in the Obama administration.  No wonder Clinton’s allies in the State and Justice Departments had been slow-walking and hiding these emails.”

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Hillary Clinton Calls Third Party Voters ‘Crazy,’ Continues Excuses for Election Loss

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‘New York Magazine’ interview displays stunning arrogance

By Michael Sainato • 05/26/17 5:03pm

On May 26, New York Magazine published an interview with Hillary Clinton conducted by Bernie Bros and Obama Boys shill Rebecca Traister. Throughout the interview, Clinton reveled in the various scapegoats and excuses that have been cyclically cited by her and her loyal supporters since her embarrassing loss to Donald Trump. The article cited negative reactions to Clinton stating in a previous interview that she took full responsibility for the election, only to also claim if the election was October 27, she would be president. Those reactions weren’t incited by her invocation of the Comey letter; they were incited by her refusal to reflect on her campaign’s shortcomings. Her campaign largely ignored many of the states that swung the election, and her insistence that the Comey letter killed her chances to win fails to acknowledge that she was under an FBI investigation because of her own conduct. The New York Times‘ Nate Cohn published an article on May 8 noting that there are reasons to be skeptical of the so-called Comey effect. However, for Clinton and her supporters, it’s more convenient to rely on the same pollsters who predicted she would win the election.

https://observer.com/2017/05/hillary-clinton-third-party-voters-loss-excuses/

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WOW a new level of depravity has been reached , the Hill blames the victim in Anthony Weiner sexting/child porn charges in an attempt to push the conspiracy narrative against Hillary Clinton

Clinton email scandal

 

Report: Girl in Weiner sexting case lied to damage Clinton

BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE – 05/22/17 08:37 AM EDT 2,669

The teenage girl who had exchanged sexually explicit text messages with former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) lied about her age and political motivations to harm Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, according to a report by the investigative news site WhoWhatWhy.

In a report published Monday, the website said the girl who exchanged the messages with Weiner was closer to 17 and not 15, as initial reports said. That also puts her above the age of consent in North Carolina, which is 16.

In addition, she and her family were also not Clinton supporters, as the girl claimed in a letter published by BuzzFeed, according to social media posts unearthed by the website. The report also says the girl initiated the contact with Weiner.

The website suggests this could mean that Weiner was the target of a politically motivated plot.

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/334511-report-girl-in-weiner-sexting-case-lied-to-damage-clinton

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Court Rules State Department Must Release Clinton Emails Detailing Obama Response to Benghazi

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May 5,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Washinton DC, Judicial Watch today announced that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has ordered the U.S. Department of State to turn over to Judicial Watch “eight identical paragraphs” of previously redact material in two September 13, 2012, Hillary Clinton emails regarding phone calls made by President Barack Obama to Egyptian and Libyan leaders immediately following the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. Both emails had the subject line “Quick Summary of POTUS Calls to Presidents of Libya and Egypt” and were among the emails stored on Clinton’s unofficial email server. Judge Jackson reviewed the documents directly and rejected the government’s contention that the records had been properly withheld under the FOIA B(5) “deliberative process” exemption.

Judge Jackson ruled: “the two records, even if just barely predecisional, are not deliberative. [The State Department] has pointed to very little to support its characterization of these two records as deliberative, and the Court’s in camera review of the documents reveals that they do not fall within that category.”

The full emails may reveal what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama knew about the September 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Following Judge Jackson’s March 20 ruling, the State Department asked the court to reconsider. The State Department argued that, due to an internal “mistake,” it failed to claim that the emails were classified and, therefore, exempt from production under FOIA Exemption B(1).

In response, Judicial Watch argues that the failure was not a mistake, but instead was part of a deliberate effort by the State Department to protect Clinton and the agency by avoiding identifying emails on Clinton’s unofficial, non-secure email server as classified.

Judicial Watch’s filing cites an interview of an FBI employee who told federal investigators that top State Department official Patrick Kennedy pressured the FBI to keep Clinton’s emails unclassified. The employee told the FBI he “believes STATE ha[d] an agenda which involves minimizing the classified nature of the CLINTON emails in order to protect STATE interests and those of CLINTON.” [Emphasis in original]

Judicial Watch’s filing also cites an interview of a State Department employee who told the FBI that the State Department’s Office of Legal Counsel interfered with the FOIA processing of email from Secretary Clinton’s server, instructing reviewers to use Exemption B(5) (deliberative process exemption) instead of Exemption B(1) (classified information exemption). According to the FBI interview:

STATE’s Near East Affairs Bureau upgraded several of CLINTON’s emails to a classified level with a B(1) release exemption . [Redacted], along with [Redacted] attorney, Office of Legal Counsel, called STATE’s Near East Affairs Bureau and told them they could use a B(5) exemption on a upgraded email to protect it instead of the B(1) exemption. However, the use of the B(5) exemption, which is usually used for executive privilege-related information, was incorrect as the information actually was classified and related to national security, which would be a B(1) exemption.

Judicial Watch argues:

An agency’s deliberate withholding of a FOIA claim, either to gain a tactical advantage or, as appears to be the case here, to protect the agency’s interests and those of its former head, is “a motive undoubtedly inconsistent with FOIA’s broad remedial purpose …” It “counsels denying the Government’s request.”

The emails in question were sent to then-top administration officials, including Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff Jacob Sullivan, Special Assistant Robert Russo, and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough.

“Does President Trump know his State and Justice Departments are still trying to provide cover for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “An extraordinary court ruling that could result in key answers about the Benghazi outrage is being opposed by the Trump administration. This may well be an example of the ‘deep state’ trying to get away with a cover up – if so then the Trump administration must put a stop to it.”

Judicial Watch obtained the original documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01511)). The lawsuit was filed on September 4, 2014, after the State Department failed to respond to a June 13, 2014, FOIA request seeking:

All records related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes, but is not limited to notes taken by then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or employees of the Office of the Secretary of State during the attack and its immediate aftermath.
The timeframe for this request is September 11-15, 2012.

Judicial Watch’s numerous FOIA lawsuits have forced the State Department to release hundreds of Benghazi-related documents.

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Democrats say they now know exactly why Clinton lost

wicked-witch

WASHINGTON — A group of top Democratic Party strategists have used new data about last year’s presidential election to reach a startling conclusion about why Hillary Clinton lost. Now they just need to persuade the rest of the party they’re right.

Many Democrats have a shorthand explanation for Clinton’s defeat: Her base didn’t turn out, Donald Trump’s did and the difference was too much to overcome.

But new information shows that Clinton had a much bigger problem with voters who had supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but backed Trump four years later.

Those Obama-Trump voters effectively accounted for more than two-thirds of the reason Clinton lost, according to Matt Canter, a senior vice president of the Democratic political firm Global Strategy Group. In his group’s analysis, about 70 percent of Clinton’s failure to reach Obama’s vote total in 2012 was because she lost these voters.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/democrats-say-they-now-know-exactly-why-clinton-lost/ar-BBAz1Gn

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Democrats begin to wonder: When do we win?

pelosi_the-wizard-of-oz-house-on-witch

For all the roiling anger and energy at the grassroots, the party still fell short in Georgia and Kansas. And Democratic prospects in upcoming elections aren’t promising. (??????????????? grassroots anger …nice try)

By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI

04/19/17 05:06 AM EDT

As it became clear late Tuesday evening that Jon Ossoff would fall just short of the 50-percent mark in the first round of voting in a suburban Atlanta special election, Democrats back in Washington started leafing through their calendars and asking: When does the winning start?

Ossoff’s moral victory — capturing 48 percent of the vote in a conservative-oriented district — was welcome, but after two successive close-but-no-cigar finishes in House special elections in Georgia and Kansas, a new worry is beginning to set in.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/democrats-georgia-ossoff-237348

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Joe Piscopo laughs off reports of Russian hacking

BORIS

BY JUDY KURTZ – 03/23/17 05:32 PM EDT

Joe Piscopo, currently mulling a New Jersey gubernatorial bid, is laughing off reports of Russian-backed hacking during the 2016 elections, calling them “comical.”

“It’s a ruse. It’s a joke. They got nothing. The Russia thing is comical because it won’t go away,” the “Saturday Night Live” alum told Mediaite on Thursday when asked what he makes “of all this Russia business.”

“I ask this with respect, with respect to the Russian theorists — you talk about conspiracy theories, I mean, this is what this is — did the Russians come to my county in Jersey in the middle of nowhere and did they hack into my mechanical voting both so when I switched — I voted for somebody, they switched my vote?” Piscopo told the site.

Piscopo has repeatedly floated running for governor of New Jersey as a Republican. With a filing deadline looming, he now says he’s “more serious” about running as an independent.

The 65-year-old comedian and radio show host said, “I mean, get to the — there’s no way they could hack it! If they hacked into the Democratic Party, if indeed they did, who cares? They think, like, the voters are dumb.”

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There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble

wicked-witch

Groupthink produced a failure of the “wisdom of crowds” and an underestimate of Trump’s chances.

By Nate Silver

Filed under The Real Story Of 2016

Published Mar. 10, 2017

This is the ninth article in a series that reviews news coverage of the 2016 general election, explores how Donald Trump won and why his chances were underrated by most of the American media.

Last summer, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in what bettors, financial markets and the London-based media regarded as a colossal upset. Reporters and pundits were quick to blame the polls for the unexpected result. But the polls had been fine, more or less: In the closing days of the Brexit campaign, they’d shown an almost-even race, and Leave’s narrow victory (by a margin just under 4 percentage points) was about as consistent with them as it was with anything else. The failure was not so much with the polls but with the people who were analyzing them.

The U.S. presidential election, as I’ve argued, was something of a similar case. No, the polls didn’t show a toss-up, as they had in Brexit. But the reporting was much more certain of Clinton’s chances than it should have been based on the polls. Much of The New York Times’s coverage, for instance, implied that Clinton’s odds were close to 100 percent. In an article on Oct. 17 — more than three weeks before Election Day — they portrayed the race as being effectively over, the only question being whether Clinton should seek a landslide or instead assist down-ballot Democrats:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-really-was-a-liberal-media-bubble/

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Gender-swap experiment shows Hillary even less likable as a man

hillary-what-difference-420x215

Amber Athey Investigative Reporter@amber_atheyon Mar 09, 2017 at 8:26 AM EDT

An experiment designed to reveal gender bias by reenacting the presidential debates with the candidates’ genders reversed found that Hillary Clinton would have been even less likeable as a man.

The two NYU professors who designed the experiment were “unsettled” to discover that audience members actually found Trump’s style more endearing when it came from a woman.

One female audience member even remarked that she found the male version of Clinton “very punchable” because he smiled so much.

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8889

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Democrats in the Wilderness

elizabeth-warren

Inside a decimated party’s not-so-certain revival strategy.

DOVERE January 19, 2017

Standing with some 30,000 people in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia the night before the election watching Hillary Clinton speak, exhausted aides were already worrying about what would come next. They expected her to win, of course, but they knew President Clinton was going to get thrashed in the 2018 midterms—the races were tilted in Republicans’ favor, and that’s when they thought the backlash would really hit. Many assumed she’d be a one-term president. They figured she’d get a primary challenge. Some of them had already started gaming out names for who it would be.

“Last night I stood at your doorstep / Trying to figure out what went wrong,” Bruce Springsteen sang quietly to the crowd in what he called “a prayer for post-election.” “It’s gonna be a long walk home.”

What happened the next night shocked even the most pessimistic Democrats. But in another sense, it was the reckoning the party had been expecting for years. They were counting on a Clinton win to paper over a deeper rot they’ve been worrying about—and to buy them some time to start coming up with answers. In other words, it wasn’t just Donald Trump. Or the Russians. Or James Comey. Or all the problems with how Clinton and her aides ran the campaign. Win or lose, Democrats were facing an existential crisis in the years ahead—the result of years of complacency, ignoring the withering of the grass roots and the state parties, sitting by as Republicans racked up local win after local win.

“The patient,” says Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, “was clearly already sick.”

As Trump takes over the GOP and starts remaking its new identity as a nationalist, populist party, creating a new political pole in American politics for the first time in generations, all eyes are on the Democrats. How will they confront a suddenly awakened, and galvanized, white majority? What’s to stop Trump from doing whatever he wants? Who’s going to pull a coherent new vision together? Worried liberals are watching with trepidation, fearful that Trump is just the beginning of worse to come, desperate for a comeback strategy that can work.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/democrats-trump-administration-wilderness-comeback-revival-214650

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The real reasons for Russian electoral meddling

putin-czar

The money quote:

“And even if Putin did favor one candidate, I’m skeptical that he would prefer Trump. After all, it was President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who were repeatedly outplayed and embarrassed by Putin on Ukraine, Syria and the Baltics. At the very least, Putin’s preference would seem debatable.”

President Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were played so expertly by Putin that it was if he had programmed them to always do the wrong and stupid thing.

By REP. CHRIS STEWART • 12/15/16 12:04 AM

Did Russian intelligence officials attempt to interfere in our election? Almost certainly they did. Did they attempt to tip the scales in favor of Donald Trump. Very clearly, they did not.

Several outlets reported last weekend that the CIA recently told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia interfered in the U.S. elections for the purpose of helping to elect Trump. To quote from one report: “‘It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,’ said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. ‘That’s the consensus view.'”

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I can say unequivocally that such an assessment has not been briefed to me. To the contrary, the claims in the press conflict with recent statements to the public and our committee characterizing alleged Russian activities. For example, on Nov. 17, 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the committee in an open hearing that the intelligence community lacked “good insight” into the connection, if any, between Russian hacking and WikiLeaks.

Last weekend’s reporting was based on an anonymous official who claimed to be familiar with the supposed CIA assessment. Whether this source was confused or deliberately misleading is less important than the fact that the current media uproar advances Vladimir Putin’s goal to sow chaos and distrust in our electoral system.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-real-reasons-for-russian-electoral-meddling/article/2609683#.WFam_w-q9i0.facebook

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Russian President Vladimir Putin Says Put Up or Shut Up

vladimir-putin-4

Kremlin slams ‘extremely scurrilous’ US hacking accusations

AFPDecember 16, 2016

Tokyo (AFP) – The Kremlin on Friday slammed Washington for pointing the finger at President Vladimir Putin over cyber attacks targeting the US election, after Barack Obama pledged to retaliate against Russian hacking.

“At this point they need to either stop talking about this or finally present some sort of proof. Otherwise this looks extremely scurrilous,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists during a visit to Japan.

Obama on Thursday warned that the United States would take action against Moscow after the White House accused Putin of direct involvement in cyber attacks designed to influence the US election.

“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action,” Obama told NPR radio.

“And we will, at a time and place of our own choosing.”

The outgoing US president’s remarks dramatically upped the stakes in a dispute between the world’s leading nuclear powers over interference that may have swayed last month’s tight election in which Republican billionaire Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s threat came after the White House ratcheted up allegations over the Russian hacking by personally tying Kremlin strongman Putin to the attacks.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kremlin-slams-extremely-scurrilous-us-hacking-accusations-100047216.html

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Democratic donors call for Clinton campaign post-mortem

Hillary Clinton

The wealthy Democrats who helped pump over $1 billion into Hillary Clinton’s losing effort want answers.

By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI

12/15/16 06:15 PM EST

NEW YORK — When Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine greet the very top fundraisers and donors to their failed campaign at New York’s Plaza Hotel on Thursday evening, many of them will have one question in mind: Where’s the autopsy?

The call for a deep and detailed accounting of how Clinton lost a race that she and her donors were absolutely certain she’d win didn’t begin immediately after the election — there was too much shock over her defeat by Donald Trump, and overwhelming grief. Her initial conference call with top backers, which came just days after the outcome, focused primarily on FBI Director Jim Comey’s late campaign-season intervention.

But in the weeks since, the wealthy Democrats who helped pump over $1 billion into Clinton’s losing effort have been urging their local finance staffers, state party officials, and campaign aides to provide a more thorough explanation of what went wrong. With no dispassionate, centralized analysis of how Clinton failed so spectacularly, they insist, how can they be expected to keep contributing to the party?

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/hillary-clinton-campaign-donors-post-mortem-232715

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Trump’s incoming chief of staff suggests Hillary Clinton is backing away from a deal worked out between the two presidential campaigns

Clinton vs Trump 2016

Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff suggests Hillary Clinton is backing away from a deal worked out between the two presidential campaigns on how the loser would concede to the winner.

Reince Priebus tells “Fox News Sunday” that Clinton’s team “cut a deal” with Trump’s team specifying that once The Associated Press called the race in favor of one candidate, the other would call within 15 minutes to concede.

Priebus says that’s just what happened election night.

But now he’s questioning whether Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias is backing down from that deal by announcing Clinton will participate in a recount in Wisconsin and may do the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The push is being led by the Green Party’s Jill Stein.

AP’s director of media relations, Lauren Easton, says AP “calls races when it is clear that one candidate has prevailed over the other. We have no knowledge of what the candidates do with that information until there is a public claim of victory or a concession.”

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