Hillary’s Faux Benghazi Anger

It looks like Hillary’s email scandal is finally getting the best of her and her campaign.  While she has tried to laugh the matter off in the past, it seems as though Hillary’s email situation has become serious enough that her advisors have recommended she shift course and play the Four Dead Americans anger card in an effort to save her run for the White House.

Taking advantage of the gaffe House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made last week, Hillary supporters and her campaign staff have moved the discussion as far away from the email scandal that surrounds the former Secretary of State as possible.  Instead of the email scandal, they have turned the focus to Benghazi, a topic of which they have vehemently avoided, for the past three years.  The poorly worded comment, made by Representative McCarthy, created an opportunity for Democrats and they pounced on it.  McCarthy’s comment, which was intended to stress the point that it was the result of, not the reason for, the investigative work of the Select Committee on Benghazi that Hillary’s email indiscretions have surfaced.

Democrats assuredly are aware that how McCarthy’s comment came out was little more than a wording gaffe but in a desperate effort to save their golden girl from a second loss at a run for the presidency, they have twisted the gaffe into what they are pushing in the media as an admission of guilt.  Democrats claim that McCarthy’s statement makes it clear that the sole purpose of Select Committee was to dethrone Queen Hillary.  There is one problem with this accusation however, it does not fit the most fundamental interpretation of facts.

Unless Democrats wish to go on record and claim that the Benghazi tragedy was some kind of sick and twisted Republican conspiracy crafted for the sole purpose of taking down Hillary, the attack can be attributed to nothing more than a failure of US foreign policy.  Stemming from the attack however, was a single event that raised a simple question by those whose task it is to conduct oversight on all such incidents.  A press brief, released by Secretary Clinton, which blamed the attack on an internet video set the wheels in motion which eventually led to the unexpected discovery of a private Clinton email address and server.

The attack on US assets in Benghazi could not have come at a worst time politically for President Obama, whose foreign policy was coming under heavy attack by Republicans and specifically Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney.  And so, it is fair to speculate that when no viable explanation could be provided as to why Secretary Clinton blamed that attack on an internet video, an account that contradicted reports coming directly from the ground, the claim could be viewed as being politically motivated. 

Speculation of political motivation only increased after Hillary Clinton’s surrogate, U.N. Ambassador for the United States Susan Rice, was sent out the following Sunday to five times repeat a prepared set of talking points in an attempt to sell the narrative that the attack was spurred by a group of angry protestors said to be fueled by an internet video.  But now, several days after the incident, we knew a little more about the situation on the ground including the fact that just prior to the attack there were no protestors outside the US Consulate, as reported by Ambassador Stevens himself.


It’s Time To Put the Oversight Investigations Lie to Bed

Maybe the most misunderstood activity performed by the US Congress is congressional oversight.  There are a number of House and Senate committees and subcommittees, each with their own oversight responsibilities.  And as was the case with the Benghazi attack, several oversight committee responsibilities were involved therefor, by default, prompting a large number of targeted investigations.  It must be understood that each oversight committee has a well defined scope of responsibilities and while there may be some overlap in the investigative process, each committee reports only on its specific area of responsibility such as the intelligence community, the Department of Defense, the State Department etc.

In regards to Benghazi, three of the four completed congressional oversight investigations noted in their final report that while it was not in their purview to investigate the State Department, their investigation did require that they request documents from the State Department.  Each of these committees clearly stated in their final report that they received little or no cooperation from the State Department in fulfilling their requests.  A forth congressional oversight committee closed its investigation without conclusion, reporting that due to a complete lack of cooperation from the State Department, to turn over requested documents, became impossible to achieve its oversight goals.

So the narrative repeatedly put forth by Democrats that numerous oversight investigations have found no wrong doing is completely false.  Congressional Democrats, and senior members of the Obama Administration are willfully misleading the American people with their false narrative of the various investigations.  You can find a more detailed explanation to the purpose and findings of each of the Benghazi oversight investigations in my blog titled Congressional Oversight DoesNot Give State Department a Free Pass on Benghazi.


How Did This Become About Hillary?

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was the fifth and most aggressive of all the investigative committees in trying to get to the who, what, why, where and when answers in a broader scope of the Benghazi attack.  It was this committee that came up against the greatest amount of stonewalling, pushback and obstruction, not just from the State Department but from committee Democrats as well.  Public hearings were a sham and the State Department absolutely refused to comply with countless document requests.  It was clear that there was no way that requested information was ever going to be obtained from the State Department using the very limited number of tools available to the oversight committee.  The State Department was simply going to stonewall the committee into submission and the Department of Justice and Executive Branch were not going to intervene.

But that all changed in May of 2014, when the House of Representatives approved the formation of the Select Committee on Benghazi.  The reason for this new committee was to untie the hands of those investigating the events surrounding the Benghazi attack. The Select committee has significantly more investigative tools at its disposal and far fewer restrictions than congressional oversight.  It was through the use of these enhanced capabilities that the Select Committee hoped it could break the investigative stalemate between the State Department and the investigative body, and it worked!

For the first time the State Department was made to answer as to why they were not cooperating with document request and as the investigation pressed on, more was learned about how obstructive the State Department had been and continues to be.  It was not without the help of watchdog groups, such as Judicial Watch, that progress was finally being made in obtaining massive amounts of missing documents pertaining to Benghazi, documents which had repeatedly been requested over the prior two years.  And as a result of the persistence of the Select Committee, and the added legal pressure created by these watch dog groups that the Clinton email scandal surfaced.  The State Department was ultimately forced to release long awaited documents which lead to the Clinton private email account and email server discovery.  Now it was clear as to why the State Department had been withholding the release of documents pertaining to Benghazi.


So What’s With the Faux Anger Hillary?

A full two years after the Benghazi attack and a year and a half after Hillary Clinton left the State Department was it first learned by the Select Committee that the former Secretary held full possession of her email record as Secretary of State.  And shortly after this discovery it was learned the she housed those personal emails on a private home brewed server.  Since these discoveries, Hillary Clinton has been under constant scrutiny as her email scandal grows larger almost daily. 

Clearly the discovery of Hillary Clinton’s private email and server was not the result of a partisan witch hunt intended to take the former Secretary down as Democrats are wanting us all to believe.  The focus of the Select Committee has been to obtain the facts and answer the long pending list of unanswered questions, the objective has never changed.  And the Select Committee has made major headway in doing so, having recovered some 50,000 formerly unreleased documents pertaining to Benghazi, only a fraction of which have any ties to Hillary Clinton.  As well, the Chairman just advised that his committee has interviewed more than 40 new witnesses all of which had never before been interviewed by any of the past Benghazi committees.

Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, the Select Committee, nor any of the other oversight committees related to Benghazi for that matter, was formulated to target and destroy Hillary’s political aspirations.  Hillary Clinton’s name is rarely even mentioned by the likes of Trey Gowdy, other than when Hillary or Democrats running cover for her happen to bring her name up.  

Hillary is in trouble at her on accord.  She can direct her anger at anyone or anything she wishes but at the end of the day it has been her actions and her actions alone which have put her in the situation she is in, a situation that is not only killing her political aspiration of being the first woman to serve as President of the United State but also may help her find her way in front of a Federal Judge or worse.

And to think, this all stemmed from a single lie Hillary told about an internet video!

Why are we calling it the “Clinton” Email Scandal?

Had it not been for the trail of bread crumbs the various committees investigating the Benghazi tragedy followed, we likely would have never learned about Hillary Clinton’s unique email arrangement she had with herself, an arrangement she set up at the start of her tenure as Secretary of State.  But we did learn about her private email account and server and since that time the Clinton Email Scandal has been in the news cycle almost 24/7. 

At the very least, Hillary is responsible for doing some very stupid and possibly even illegal acts pertaining to the handling of her emails and the use of a private server, but should Hillary be the one to bare the burden of her email indiscretions? 

Sworn in as the 67^th Unite States Secretary of State on Jan 21, 2009, Hillary on that same day began to use her newly installed email server and account to conduct all of her official government business on.  Senior officials inside the State Department were most certainly aware of her unique email arrangement, it would have been impossible for them not to be.

At no point during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State did she use a government email account to conduct State Department business, in fact, she was never even issued a state.gov email account, the issuance of which is assumed to be normal protocol for any new staff members joining the State Department.  Normal protocol was likely to also include someone responsible for distributing Hillary’s email address to the appropriate officials and aids inside the State Department and other individuals who would be in the Secretary’s normal chain of communication, including the President, Vice President and the president’s Chief of Staff just to name a few.  Distribution of her email address may have included foreign officials as well.  The email that would have been distributed would of course have been Hillary’s clintonemail.com email account.

Not long after Hillary’s arrival to the State Department the National Archives and Records Administration issue regulations requiring agencies which allowed employees to conduct official business on nonofficial email accounts to ensure those records were preserved “in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.”  Certainly the appropriate department within the State Department received notice of this new regulation however, no record of Hillary’s email correspondence, outside of her private server, was ever preserved.  Someone within the State Department made the conscious decision keep the Secretary’s emails out of the department’s archives.  Even if it were Hillary Clinton herself that made this decision, others within the State Department would have been well aware of this fact.  Hillary did not do her own secretive IT work, heck, according to her, she can hardly manage two portable electronic devices at once.

Then there are the FOIA requests.  Throughout Hillary Clinton’s time served in the State Department, and beyond, there have been countless FOIA requests pertaining to email records of the Secretary’s, that have all gone unanswered.  These requests have come from a number of news agencies including one from the Associated Press which dates back over 4 years and the subject of a pending lawsuit.  As it turns out, these FOIA request were ignored by the State Department due to the simple fact that they did not have any of the requested documents in their possession.  Officials within the Stated Department knew exactly where they were however.

Congressional oversight faced a similar fate as many news agencies did, in collection emails from the former Secretary.  One such account was that of the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations which after failing to receive any requested documents pertaining to Benghazi and linked to Hillary, the chairman of the committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, sent a letter directly to Secretary Clinton asking for "all information” related to the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi.  At the time of her departure from the State Department on February 1, 2013, Secretary Clinton had not responded to the chairman’s request.  And in the final reports released by three of the congressional oversite committees tasked with investigating certain aspect of the Benghazi tragedy, they each included harsh criticism of the State Department for their lack of cooperation in providing requested documents.

As Hillary neared the end of her tenure as Secretary of State, the National Archives and Records Administration took a second shot a preserving her email record.  Officials from the National Archive were in communication with the State Department discussing a plan on how they were going to go about obtaining a copy of the Secretary’s email record, so that they could be preserved in the archive.  The evolution of preserving the former Secretary’s email records never came to fruition.
And nearly two years after Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State ended, on October 28, 2014, the State Department finally requested that Hillary turn over her email records pertaining to her time served as Secretary of State.  However, this request came only after facing legal action, against the State Department, for failing to respond to a number of FOIA request.

Not intending to suggest any lack of culpability on the part of Hillary Clinton but it seems as though the major cuprite in this email scandal is actually the State Department.  Judging from the department’s willingness to ignore countless FOIA requests and demands from congressional oversight for documents pertaining to Benghazi, the State Department has been less than forthcoming with the fact that they never possessed the Clinton record nor is there any indication that they ever attempted to collect the record prior to the October 2014 request to which Hillary Clinton complied. 

This also raises the question as to whose idea it was to turn over hard copies of the email record rather than electronic copies.  Providing electronic copies of her emails would have been a simpler evolution.  As well, electronic copies of her mails it would have made the efforts to “key word” search documents much simpler.  Keyword searches of Hillary’s emails is now a manual and incredibly timely process.  Just imagine the effort it would take to search through 50,000 pages of email document to weed out a particular key word or phrase.  The difficulty created by providing hard copies of the record seems almost intentional and falls in line with the past history of the State Departments efforts to make compliance to requests of the former Secretary’s records as difficult as humanly possible.

We should also keep in mind that this obstructionist behavior of the State Department continued on after the changing of the guard.  Secretary of State John Kerry is fully aware of the accusations of feet dragging and obstructionism made against his State Department, in regards to the Clinton emails, and has done absolutely nothing to remedy the situation.

It still remains uncertain as to why Hillary Clinton chose to operate her own private email system but it certainly was not done without the knowledge and consent of the State Department.  This is not to suggest some type of grand conspiracy exists and certainly there is no link to the private server and Benghazi other than the existence of the server may have providing both Hillary and the State Department the ability to keep the Secretary’s record of the Benghazi incident out of public record. 

All this begs that question, “Has Hillary Clinton become the media’s sacrificial lamb?” 

Has the purpose which prompted Hillary to install a private email system grown in to something much more sinister?  Has the main stream media thrown Hillary under the bus in order to keep a lid on the greater failures from within the State Department?  It was in fact the media who originally named Hillary’s email woes the “Clinton” Email Scandal.  But as we learn more, it is clear that the State Department is deeply entrenched in whatever has and is going on with Hillary’s emails making it seem more fitting to be calling this mess the “State Department Email Scandal”.