The FACTS of the Hillary Email Scandal

The Clinton email scandal may have broken just this past March but the facts surrounding the scandal date back to Hillary’s confirmation as Secretary of State.  Since that time a slow but steady drip of facts, which build a telling case in regards to the inappropriate use of Mrs. Clinton’s private email account and handling of the public record, has amassed.  Here are those facts!

FACT:    Facing certain confirmation as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had a private email server set up in her home to which her private email account would reside on, an email account which she used exclusively to conduct official State Department business throughout her tenure at the State Department.  This meant that no agency within the Federal Government, or anywhere else for that matter, had access to her record and her record was not being archived.

 

FACT:    Hillary Clinton was sworn in as Secretary of State on January 21, 2009.

 

FACT:    In December of 2009 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.”

 

FACT:    On the evening of September 11, 2012, the US consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya was attacked.  4 Americans lost their lives in the 8 hour attack and many more were injured.

 

FACT:    On September 20, 2012 chairman of the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations, Rep. Jason Chaffetz sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Clinton asking for "all information … related to the attack on the consulate {in Benghazi}."

 

FACT:    Just prior to Hillary’s departure as Secretary of State, officials at the National Archives and Records Administration were in communications with the State Department regarding plans on how they were going to go about preserving Hillary’s record during her tenure as Secretary of State.

 

FACT:    In a letter dated December 13, 2012, to Hillary Clinton, from Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he asks “Have you or any senior agency official ever used a personal email account to conduct official business?”  In the letter he also asked, “If so, please identify the account used.”  Hillary Clinton never responded to Issa’s letter.

 

FACT:    Hillary Clinton’s final day as Secretary of State was February 1, 2013

 

FACT:    Upon Hillary’s departure from the State Department, she willfully and consciously did NOT turn over any form of her record to the department or the National Archive, which is required by all senior officials in government.

 

FACT:    On March 27, 2013 the State Department responded to Darrell Issa’s December 13, 2012 letter to Hillary Clinton, which asked several questions pertaining to whether Hillary Clinton had a private email account and Department policies on the subject.  The State Department did not respond to any questions pertaining to private email accounts and gave only general answers to policy related questions.

 

FACT:    On March 29, 2013, in a letter addressed to Darrell Issa {then Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee}, from State official Thomas Gibbons, Gibbons addressed the Chairman’s frustration with the State Department’s failure to provide access to requested documents.  Gibbons wrote that the Stated Department had "provided Congress with access to documents, comprising over 25,000 pages to date, including communications of senior Department officials regarding the security situation in Benghazi,".  The documents Gibbons was referring to where those that oversight was provided only “camera review” access to in a supervised environment.

 

FACT:    On August 1, 2013 congressional oversight committee investigating the attack on Benghazi issued a subpoena to the State Department {addressed to Sec of State John Kerry} demanding that all documents that had previously been made available to oversight only in “camera review” as well as others relating to Benghazi be turned over to oversight so that they could be properly reviewed.

 

FACT:    On September 29, 2013 the House Committee on Foreign Affairs releases its report on Benghazi in which it stated:

“The State Department has refused to provide copies of critical documents to the Committee, including emails and memoranda between key officials. For over a year, it has permitted Committee staff to review them only in camera, which means that the Committee cannot maintain possession of the documents and is not allowed to make photocopies. The Department has further insisted that one of its own employees be present during limited review periods, which constrains the ability of staff to speak openly about the information. These circumstances are unique to the Benghazi investigation, and the Department has refused to offer a legal justification for its behavior.”

 

FACT:    On January 15, 2014 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases its report on Benghazi in which it stated:

                “Disturbing Lack of Cooperation by the State Department  -  As the Committee attempted to piece together key events before, during, and after the attacks, we faced the most significant and sustained resistance from the State Department in obtaining documents, access to witnesses, and responses to questions.”

and

“While the Committee has completed its report, important questions remain unanswered as a direct result of the Obama Administration's failure to provide the Committee with access to necessary documents and witnesses. We believe the Administration's lack of cooperation is directly contrary to its statutory obligation to keep the congressional intelligence committees fully and currently informed and has effectively obstructed the Committee's efforts to get to the ground truth with respect to these remaining questions. Too often, providing timely and complete information to Congress is viewed by the Administration as optional or an accommodation, rather than compliance with a statutory requirement.”

 

FACT:    On October 28, 2014, the State Department, for the first time, asked Hillary Clinton to return her public record to the State Department.

 

FACT:    Sometime after October 2014, but not before scrutinizing and printing out what she and her lawyer(s) determent to be the public record, Hillary Clinton made the decision to have the hard drive of her email server wiped clean thus deleting the only known and complete public record of her time served at the State Department.

 

FACT:    On December 5, 2014, attorneys of Hillary Clinton delivered dozens of boxes containing 50,000 pages of printed emails to the State Department, roughly 900 pages {about 300 emails} of which the State Department later claimed were related to Benghazi.

 

FACT:    On February 13, 2015, from the 50,000 pages provided to the department on December 5, 2014, the State Department turned over approximately 300 of Hillary Clinton’s emails {roughly 900 pages} the department deemed related to Benghazi.

 

FACT:    Sometime in mid-February, while reviewing a group of about 300 emails the State Department turned over to the Select Committee on Benghazi, investigators discovered the private email address that Hillary Clinton had been using while serving as Secretary of State.

 

FACT:    On March 2, 2015 New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt broke the story of Hillary Clinton’s home brewed email server.

 

FACT:    On March 10, 2015, while attending a UN Conference, Hillary held a press brief where she for the first time spoke publically on the matter of her private email account and private server arrangement.  Hillary stated “I feel like I've taken unprecedented steps for these emails to be in the public domain", "I went above and beyond what I was requested to do."  Hillary also stated that she did not use the server to send any classified information, and only emailed one foreign leader {from the United Kingdom} during her time at State.  Hillary also stated that her email server would remain private.

 

FACT:    In a letter from Hillary’s lawyer David Kendall to Chairman Trey Gowdy, dated March 27, 2015, in response to Gowdy’s earlier request that the Clinton email server be turned over to an independent 3^rd party, Kendall informed Gowdy that the hard drive had been erased of all emails “Thus, there are no hdr22@clintonemail.com emails from Secretary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized,”

 

FACT:    On June 22, 2015, the Select Committee on Benghazi released emails to/from Hillary, it had obtained during the course of its investigation, that should have but were not included in the documents turned over to the committee from the State Department thus discrediting any claim that the State Department obtains or has turned over the complete record of Benghazi related documents to the committee.

 

FACT:    On July 24, 2015 government investigators release the news that they found classified information on the private email account Hillary Clinton used during her tenure as Secretary of State.

 

FACT:    On August 11, 2015 it was revealed, by investigators, identified two emails, from Hillary’s private email account, which contained “Top Secret” information.

 
These are the facts and nothing but the facts.  What do they tell us?  We’ll that all depends on what a particular person’s interpretation of the fact are and/or, how much fiction is injected in between the facts and how politically motivated one might be to alter the facts to best suit their agenda and how many of the facts are simply ignored.

Hillary Supporters Should Be Ashamed of Themselves

The Democrat’s 2016 Presidential hopeful just can’t seem to shake her little email problem and rightly so, she’s created quite the mess for herself.

Hillary Clinton’s emails have been a point of contention from almost the moment she was sworn in as Secretary of State.  News agencies including the Associated Press and watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch have, through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), made countless document request to the State Department pertaining to the then Secretary’s emails.  Many of these request were made long before the Benghazi tragedy took place and just as has been the case with dozens of similar requests made by congressional oversight, these FOIA requests were never fulfilled.

At the time, it was not known publically that the State Department did not retain custody of the former Secretary’s record {she was in fact still serving as Secretary at the time many of these FOIA requests were made} however, this is no longer the case.  We now know the story behind Hillary’s private email account and home brewed email server.

It was almost two years after Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State ended that she turned over some 50,000 pages of emails to the State Department.  She did not do so out of duty nor to follow policy, she did so only after the State Department, which was coming under mounting pressure to respond to subpoenas, congressional and FOIA requests, encouraged her to do so.

Shortly after turning the emails over to the State Department the story broke of Hillary conducing State Department business using a private email account as well as having a private email server at her personal residence.  Forced to respond to what was quickly growing into a new scandal, at a news conference, following her March 10th speech at the United Nations Forum on Women in Society, Hillary publically admitting to her exclusive use of a private email account and having her own private email server.  Her explanation for using both was nonsensical at best.

Again, it had been nearly two years since her tenure as Secretary of State ended before the State Department finally compelled Hillary to turn over the record of her time serving at State.  During that two year period, the failure of the State Department to produce all of the former Secretary’s documents pertaining to Benghazi made the news hundreds of times.  There were congressional hearings specific to the failure; countless requests made; four congressional oversight reports released that address the failure and even a letter written to President Obama, singed by several congressmen, asking for his assistance in getting the State Department to comply. 

The State Department’s failure to turn over documents, of which we now know were in the sole possession of Hillary Clinton, bounced in and out of the news cycle countless times over those two years.  All the while, Hillary sat and watched quietly. 

But with little choice other than to act on the State Departments request, in October and November of last year, Hillary and her lawyers scoured over the contents of her email server, scrutinizing each email and hand selecting what they saw fit to represent their interpretation of the full account of Hillary's record as Secretary of State.  Some 50,000 pages, representing roughly 30,000 emails were ultimately printed, boxed and turned over to the State Department in early December of 2014.

While Hillary has not done so under oath, she has repeatedly claimed that the 50,000 pages of emails that were turned over to the State Department are in fact the full record of her time as Secretary of State.  However, twice now, emails link to Hillary but not included in the record she turned over to the State Department, have surfaced thus calling to question the completeness of those 50,000 pages.  As well, there appears to be a two month gap in the email string, a gap that covers a critical period of time being scrutinized by the Benghazi Select Committee.

And so, to ensure that the complete record of the period covering the Benghazi investigation is preserved, Trey Gowdy - Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, requested that Hillary voluntarily turn over her private email server to in independent and impartial 3^rd party so that any missing documents pertaining to their investigation could be retrieved.  This request was immediately denied by Hillary’s attorney who also informed Chairman Gowdy that the email server’s hard drive had been scrubbed thus negating the need for anyone to review its contents.

So let us review what we know to this point:

1.  We know that Hillary set up a private email server and email account to which she claims to have used exclusively or all her email correspondence during her tenure as Secretary of State.

2.  At the end of her service as Secretary, Hillary did not turn over her record as is State Department Policy.

3.  For the following two years, Hillary was fully aware of requests being made for her documents {they were being asked for while still serving} yet she stood by silently and watched the State Department make one excuse after another, never revealing the truth which was that they did not have Hillary’s record.

4.  Once finally compelled to turn over her record, Hillary did not turn over the server but instead, with the aid of her lawyers, reviewed each and every document on her email server and printing out those they collectively decided would become the “official” record of her time serving as Secretary of State.

5.  Hillary has refused to turn over her email server which has been requested to ensure that all documents pertaining to the Benghazi investigation can be retrieved. {Update - she has done so since this blog was first posted}

6.  Hillary’s lawyers have claimed that the email server hard drive has been scrubbed.  {Update - We have learned that the sever was in fact NOT SCRUBBED since this blog was first posted}

Wow, that’s quite the list!

As more and more people look into the circumstances surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails, we may learn that she in fact broke no laws in creating this unique email arrangement with herself.  We may also learn that there were no classified emails sent or received through her private server as many are claiming.  But, none of this matters. 

For whatever reason, Hillary Rodham Clinton willfully and deliberately set up an unorthodox email system, for herself, to be used during her tenure as Secretary of State.  Then, upon her departure from the State Department, Hillary clearly had no intention of turning over her record as is required by all senior government officials.  This should trouble everyone regardless of political affiliation as it is the duty of every elected official to ensure a complete record is kept, both for transparency and historical purposes.

Beyond failing to fulfil her duty and turn over her record, Hillary stood silently and watched a clear division created in our nation over the Benghazi investigation, a division that would have never happened had the requested documentation been handed over to congressional oversight in a timely manner thus allowing the various investigation to reach  a timely conclusion. 

Instead, nearly three years after the attack, congressional oversight is just now getting State Department documents that were in the custody of the former Secretary all this time.  And still, there is no assurance that the full record has been turned over, all we have is the word of the individual who chose to try and keep them out of the public record.  This too should trouble everyone regardless of political affiliation.  But sadly it does not.

The majority of Democrats still rally their support around Hillary Clinton despite the undeniable string of unethical activities that surround her unique email arrangement and her continued defiance to ensure transparency.

For this, Hillary Clinton supporters should most definitely be ashamed of themselves.

The Hillary Clinton Email Scandal Will Put to Test the Morals and Ethics of the Democratic Voter

There is a great deal that we do not nor likely will ever know about the emails Hillary Clinton stored on her private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State however, there are a number of things that we do know for certain about the email scandal.  Let’s review.

We know for certain that, at her own public admission, Hillary Clinton chose to opt out of using a government email account and instead purposely used her own private email server, a Clinton owned domain and a personal email account to which she claims to have conducted all of her email correspondence on while serving as Secretary of State.  We know that this decision was deliberate as she had the email account set up just days before her Secretary of State Confirmation hearing began.  

We also know for certain, and again at her own public admission, that Hillary Clinton consciously and deliberately chose to retain sole custody of the contents on her private email server after her departure from the State Department.

Most troubling, we know for certain that while an endless stream of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and congressional oversight requests for Hillary Clinton’s emails were being made, some even while she was still serving as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton stood by silently, knowing that she held the full record of what was being requested in her basement yet never released them.  She held her silence even knowing that subpoenas were issued for her emails.

What we don’t know for certain is exactly what it was that finally drove Hillary Clinton to provide the State Department with her emails, two years after the fact.  It is reasonable to assume however, that someone within the State Department who was under pressure to turn over Clinton emails to the various agencies requesting them, compelled Hillary to do so.

And we do know for certain that the emails Hillary Clinton turned over to the State Department were handpicked, by herself, and then scrutinized by her team of lawyers before the hard copies were boxed up and delivered to the State Department.  What we don’t, or at least we didn’t know at the time, was if what was turned over to the State Department was a full record of her time served as Secretary of State.

We know for certain that the request from congress for Hillary to turn over her private email server to a third party arbitrator was denied.  At the same time this request was denied it was also disclosed {claimed} that they {the Clinton’s} had the email server’s hard drive “scrubbed” of its contents following the retrieval of the some 50,000 printed pages of emails which were subsequently turned over to the State Department.

And while Hillary Clinton has repeatedly claimed that the hard copy of her emails were the full record of her time served as Secretary of State which existed on her private email server, we know for certain that this is an untruth.  On at least two occasions since the handpicked set of email document were turned over to the State Department, additional email documents, belonging to the former Secretary, have surfaced that were not part of the record she turned over to the State Department.

Now Let’s Summarize!

Hillary Clinton created a personal email system of which she had sole custody of, to be used to conduct the people’s business on while serving as Secretary of State. 

While still in office and during the early stages of the Benghazi investigations Hillary was fully aware of the requests being made to the State Department for her emails yet played ignorant and did not turn them over.

Upon her departure from the State Department Hillary made the conscious decision to withhold all of her email records and for the following two years again played ignorant to the well-publicized news reports {and I’m sure we was being briefed on this matter from the inside} of the State Department failing to turn over documents pertaining to her service as Secretary of State.

Two years after her term ended as Secretary of State and only after coming under pressure from the State Department did Hillary Clinton turn over a handpicked selection of her Secretary of State emails and turn them over to the State Department.

As a result of the Clinton emails being turned over to the State Department, who then were able to respond to at least some of the FOIA requests, it was first discovered that Hillary was using a private email account; that she stored those emails on a private email server of which was under her sole care and custody; and that she had been withholding her emails all this time.

And finally, we have learned that the 50,000 hard copy pages of emails that Hillary Clinton turned over to the State Department in fact is not the full record of her time served as Secretary of State, such as she has claimed them to be a numerous occasions.

 

In a nut shell, the former Secretary of State and now 2016 Democratic hopeful has proven that she can willfully and intentionally hide the people’s records from the people and ignore legal subpoenas.  She has also proven that she is willing to lie to the people, as she did when she claimed that she had turned over all of her email records from her service as Secretary of State.  She only did so two years after the fact and only because she was compelled to do so.

The time and money that has been wasted in congressional oversight due to the obstructions created by Hillary Clinton intentionally hiding the people’s emails from the people is shameful, not to mention the division between the parties it has caused.  But aside from all that, what Hillary Clinton has done is created a moral and ethical issue that each Democratic voter must look square in the face and decided which direction their compass points.

Democrats – Please Answer This One Simple Question

I have just one question for all the Democrats out there and please answer honestly.  It’s a Yes or No question and your answer requires no explanation or validation so this won’t take but a second of your time.  Okay, here is the question!


Are you okay with the fact that Hillary Clinton was never going to turn over any of her emails to the State Department after her departure as Secretary of State?



Let’s forget about the fact that the emails Hillary did eventually turn over were hand-picked by herself and then scrutinized by her team of lawyers before being boxed up and delivered State Department, making it impossible to know if they are a complete record of her time served as Secretary of State.

And let’s not think about the fact that the only reason Hillary turned over these emails was due to the pressure she was receiving from the State Department of which was also being pressured to produce Benghazi related documents of hers.

Also try to block from your mind that Hillary remained silent on the fact that she had sole possession of her emails while she saw one congressional oversight committee after another chastise the State Department for not making available her emails, while she learned of countless FOIA requests for her emails and while she stood and watched the State Department ignore subpoenas for her emails.

And please don’t think about the fact that we did not learn of Hillary’s unprecedented email arrangement with herself {as Trey Gowdy so eloquently put it} until after the Associated Press discovered and revealed the story behind the private Clinton email server earlier this year.  As well, try and pretend you are unaware of the fact the Hillary had since had the email server scrubbed of information and has refused to turn it over to in independent third party for forensic analysis.

Just ignore for a moment that all these troubling issues exist and stick with the fundamental yes or no question of if you are okay with the fact that Hillary Clinton was never going to turn over any of her emails to the State Department after her departure as Secretary of State?

Thanks for your time.

Who Stands to Lose the most from Emailgate?

On Tuesday, Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi, formally invited Hillary Clinton to participate in a private, transcribed interview to be held on a date of her discretion but no later than May 1.

This special invitation to the former Secretary of State stemmed from the reply the committee received to their request that Hillary’s private email server, of which she conducted State Department business on, be turned over to an independent third party for further scrutiny.  In the reply from Hillary’s attorney, it was stated that not only would the Clinton email server not be made available but that it was unnecessary to do so as the period in which the committee was interested in scrutinizing {the period in which Hillary served as Secretary of State} had been scrubbed from the server’s hard drive as well as all back-up sources.

Short of the hard drive being destroyed or coming up missing, extraordinary measure continue to be taken to prevent the emails records of the former Secretary of State from being made available to the various congressional oversight committees, as well as the media and general public. 

The efforts taken to control the custody of her emails, dating back to the creation of a private email account and on to the more recent effort to conceal the contents of what may be on the Clinton’s private email server, are highly troubling to say the least and certainly not they kind of actions one would expect from a person considering to take a run at the White House.  This begs the question as to who might be more interested in keeping the contents of Hillary’s emails out of the hands of the people she served than Hillary herself? 

When the story of Hillary’s private email account and server first broke, it was immediately obvious that the media had only a cursory interested in the story.  This created the opportune time for Hillary to get in front of the spin, to come clean and let the story run its course.  The Clinton’s have been finding their way through political tight spots for decades and this would have been a cake walk for Hillary.  The media would have played soft ball with the grand confessions of the 2016 presidential hopeful and the story would have been over almost before it started.

But something is very different this time and with each poorly played chess move made by Hillary, the situation worsens.  These are not the actions a typically well planned Clinton offense with the quarterback reading the lineup and calling an audible.  Instead what we seem to have is poor plays being sent in from someone on the sidelines with a very different end game in mind than scoring the big “W” for the Hillary.

Of all those who we can speculate might get hurt if something damaging exists on the Clinton email server, Hillary has the least to lose.  Sure, she would find it nice to make history and be the nation’s first woman president but Hillary is also well aware that under the given set of circumstances she would have, at the very least, a troublesome presidency being that she would be follow a failed administration led by someone who democrats wish to portray as a legacy.  There would be a big push from within the party for her to tread lightly and move slowly so as not to make the previous administration look like a total failure.  Hillary also knows she would face a large contingent of liberal democrats who would push hard for her to move more to the left.  And these are just the challenges she would be facing from her own party!  Hillary would be 69 years of age if she were to win the White House in 2016, does she really need all of this?

President Obama has more to lose than Hillary.  If in fact information that resides on the Clinton email server could implicate him in committing or being a part of what could be defined as a higher crime or misdemeanor he could face impeachment.  But if evidence of this nature were to be found, this would merely sets the wheels of impeachment in motion.  A great deal of footwork would be necessary so as to be certain that actions warranting articles of impeachment to be filed truly did exist.  Impeachment is not a matter to be taken lightly as accusing the leader of the free world, of whom was elected “by the people”, will have a significant negative implications both home and abroad, guilty or not!

And if such evidence that would warrant articles of impeachment were uncovered, the question would then have to be answered if enough time remains to impeach a sitting president and if so, does the will of congress exist to do so?  Considering the time it will take to finally learn what might be on the Clinton email server, assuming we ever do, and then the time it would take to do all the necessary investigative work and build a case sellable to congress, the odds of impeaching President Obama, while still in office, is pretty slim and grows smaller with each passing day.  While the expiration of service from office does not put an automatic end to impeachment proceedings, it does make them a moot point as other than to be used as an entry in history books, the only action of impeachment is to remove someone from office.

Keeping all this in mind, if in fact President Obama did engage in some form of wrong doing, the secrets of which are hidden on the Clinton email server, what the president does have to lose is how he will be portrayed in the history books.  If the president were to be impeached there would be chapters, even entire books written on his failed and corrupt presidency while if he were to leave office prior to the completion of the impeachment proceedings, which would most likely be the case, the impeachment process would foster little more than a paragraph.

So Hillary Clinton might have to forfeit a run for the presidency and President Obama might have a harsh paragraph written about him in the history books if in fact there were something on the Clinton email server that implicated either of them of wrong doing.  Initially, conservative media outlets would be demanding prosecution and jail time while the liberal media outlets would spin a story that he or she {or both} made a “poor choice” and then drop the story from the news cycle before weeks end.  And within a few months, the fallout would be over and a lucrative speaking career would commence.

But there is in fact a big loser in all of this if damaging information from the Clinton email server does manage to surface that implicated either Obama or Hillary and that loser would be the entire Democratic Party!

Over the two and a half years since the Benghazi tragedy, congressional democrats, democratic pundits and millions of self-proclaimed political experts from the left have been unrelenting in their efforts to create the perception that “There is no there there”, but it has proven difficult for their efforts to gain any traction due to the constant drip drip drip of new events that contradict the “There is no there there” argument.  These continued drips of new events gives the clear appearance that the State Department is hiding something, the most recent and certainly the most compelling of course being the concealing of emails and email server by the former Secretary of State.  This coupled with the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) complete lack of interest in looking in to any of the apparent wrong doings and the Chief Executive’s failure to compel the DOJ to do so, has put the Democratic Party in a very precarious position if a cover-up or scandal is ever  exposed. 

Protecting President Obama and his scandal ridden administration has created a very difficult situation for the Democratic Party.  The party has so deeply invested itself in this effort and done so for so long that any truth brought to any of the scandals and cover-ups surrounding the administration will have a long and lasting negative impact on the democratic brand.  The number of times leading democrats have gone on-record in defense of questionable actions of this administration are too numerous to count as well as are the number of times they have demonized republicans, claiming they are on a witch hunt in an effort to cause harm to the president.  In far too many cases, the demonization of republicans by these democrats has included a racial component to them, making their situation even worse. 

If their effort to protect the president and his administration fails, any democrat that has jumped on the “There is nothing there” bandwagon will be void of any credibility as well as will have opened themselves up to what will no doubt be a great deal of public scrutiny that will follow them for the rest of their political careers.

And if Emailgate breaks and has legs to a Benghazi cover-up, this will be just the tip of the iceberg as once it is learned that one cover-up is real, Republican’s will be relentless in their efforts to expose the truth behind the countless other scandals and cover-ups that surround the Obama Administration and this time they will not have to push back against democratic lawmakers or the liberal media as they will have all been silenced.  If Emailgate breaks, it could get really ugly for Democrats.

So what is this all about anyway, what could anyone possibly be hiding that makes it worth the risk of damaging the party so deeply?  Nobody knows for certain, with exception of Hillary and possibly some of her closest confidants, exactly what digital secrets lie embedded on the hard drive of the Clinton email server, but for the betting man or woman, the answer to the question is Benghazi!

From all the congressional investigations that have taken place, we know with a high level of certainty, of the failures that took place within the State Department during the months, weeks and even days before the Benghazi attack.  There is also a reasonable level of knowledge of what took place in the days and weeks after the Benghazi attack with exception of a few remaining unanswered questions.  But what is still a great mystery is what took place between the White House and the State Department during the critical eight hours of the attack itself.

No reasonable explanation has ever been given as to why neither the President nor the Secretary of State ever found their way to the Situation Room at any point during the entire eight hours of the Benghazi ordeal.  The President was in the White House the entire time, spending some time at his residence and the majority of his time in the Oval Office.  Some of the President’s time in the Oval Office was filled by a lengthy scheduled phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and a 30 minute meeting with a few of his staff.  Beyond that, the president is believed to have been alone in his office for most of the attack.  There were no other scheduled meetings or phone calls on his schedule and no account of the remainder of his time has ever been provided.

The Secretary’s story is similar.  During the entire Benghazi ordeal, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, she remained in or near her State Department office, just a few blocks away from the White House and Situation Room where the attack was being monitored and where the real time information is received.  No explanation has ever been provided as to why neither of them made their way to the Situation Room at some point during the lengthy attack.

Initially, it was reported, by the White House, that the President and the Secretary never spoke directly until just before the Rose Garden speech and then had their first formal meeting shortly after.  It was not learned until a few months later, and only due to an accidental slip of the lounge by then Press Secretary Jay Carney, that the President and the Secretary had a brief phone conversation just minute before Hillary released the public brief which included the first blaming of the attack on an internet video.  Prior to this slip by Jay Carney, it had been denied that the President and Secretary had spoken or corresponded directly, at any time during the attack.

Nobody has ever ascertained just exactly who was in charge, here at home, during the Benghazi attack.  White House spokespersons have been very elusive when ask the question and answer by saying that “the president’s team” kept him abreast of the situation.  There has never been a direct tie to who the Secretary or the President spoke with, during the attack nor who was making critical decisions.  And of course, no answer has ever been given as to who directed, or even suggested to Hillary to float the claim that the attack was a result of an internet video.

Answering all the unanswered questions surrounding the eight hours of the Benghazi attack was the goal of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  This committee encountered tremendous pushback and a lack of cooperation during their investigation, not just from the White House and State Department but from the Democrats on the committee.  While this committee’s investigation is still open, it has been placed on hold in lieu of the more able Select Committee on Benghazi being formed.

And it is the result of the work from the Select Committee on Benghazi that has led to the discovery of the Secretary’s private email addresses and the Clinton email server, which now has become the focal point of the investigation, only because of the refusal by the former Secretary to turn the email sever over to a third party for scrutiny.

Based on the extreme effort being put forth to keep the contents of the Clinton email server secret, one can only conclude that it contains something very damaging to someone, something so damaging that they are willing to protect the contents of the server by any means possible.

And to think, all this because of someone’s bad decision to blame a terrorist attack on an internet video!

It’s Getting Harder to Look Democrats in the Eye

Undeniably, politics has been marred by more than its fair share of wrong doings by participants from both sides of the isle over the years, but never has a single administration been so callous and shown such an indifference to right and wrong as has the Obama Administration.   And just when you think that they can’t possibly come up with another scandal or cover-up there they go again!

While it may seem inconsequential to most democrats, to the administration the Hillary Clinton email scandal is significant and reaches far beyond the possibility of damaging the party’s golden girl and her prospects of running for the presidency in 2016.  When put into perspective, the Hillary email controversy could prove to be a much larger scandal than Nixon’s Watergate and undeniably a much greater cover-up.  If the truth behind Emailgate, as it has been so aptly named, is ever learned, it could be the scandal that brings down the entire administration, unless of course, democrats happen to let them get away with it!

As you read the progression of events regarding Hillary Clinton’s private email account used during her time as Secretary of State, it becomes abhorrently clear to any rational thinking person that Hillary’s actions were deliberate and with premeditated purpose.  From creating the email accounts to making the choice not to turn them over to the State Department and then on to the scrubbing of her email server’s hard drive, each action was a necessary escalation driven by events occurring during her service as Secretary of State.

Here is a recap of what has gone on with Hillary and her private email she used to conduct her business as Secretary of State on:

·         Just days before being confirmed as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has a private email account set up on her in-home private email server.

 

·         During her four years as Secretary of State, Hillary uses two different private @clintonemail.com email addresses exclusively, for all State Department business, including communications with some of her aids, who had also used private email accounts, as has just recently been learned.

 

·         During her time serving as Secretary of State, the State Department failed to respond to numerous FOIA requests for documents pertaining to the Secretary, submitted by various media outlets and watchdog groups.

 

·         Just days after the 9/11 attack on the US Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, the first congressional oversight request for documents from the Secretary of State was made to the State Department.  The request was never fulfilled.

 

·         Upon departure from the State Department, Hillary does not turn over an electronic or a hard copy of any emails generated through her private email server and from her private email account covering her time as Secretary of State.

 

·         John Kerry takes over as Secretary of State and vows him and his Stated Department’s full cooperation in the Benghazi investigations.

 

·         Numerous congressional oversight committees, investigating various departments and their actions as they pertained to the events surrounding the Benghazi attack, stated clearly in their final reports that the State Department was non-cooperative in releasing requested information.  This in turn hampered the particular committee’s investigation and in some cases their final conclusions.

 

·         State Department agrees to allow congressional oversight to review some 25,000 documents but would not turn custody of the documents over to the committees.  Oversight had to meet in a room where the documents were made available, were allowed to review and take notes and at the end of the day the documents were boxed up and secured.  This process made it near impossible to create a time line or string documents together for proper oversight.  Also, no emails addressed to or from Secretary Clinton were amongst any of these 25,000 documents that were reviewed by oversight.

 

·         After numerous failed requests for documentation pertaining to Benghazi, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Darrell Issa, issued two subpoenas to the State Department.  Neither subpoena was ever responded to and they still remain active today.

 

·          Republicans gain full control of congress which changes the complexion of congressional oversight and their {republican’s} ability to fend off democratic stonewalling and obstruction of their duty to conduct oversight.

 

·         The State Department made its last production of materials to the House Oversight Committee on April 17, 2014.  In all the time spanning from the very first document request made by any oversight committee on the subject of the Benghazi attack, the State Department had never turned over a single email to or from Hillary.

 

·         Select Committee on Benghazi was formed, chaired by Trey Gowdy, on May 8, 2014.

 

·         A renewed demand for documents, pertaining to Benghazi, fell upon the State Department.

 

·         At some point the State Department reaches out to Hillary Clinton for emails.  Despite the countless FOIA requests, congressional oversight document requests and at least two subpoenas, the State Department has never disclosed to anyone that they did not have physical custody of Hillary’s emails from her tenure as Secretary of State.

 

·         At her sole discretion, Hillary sorts through her private emails on her private server and prints those documents that she chooses to hand over to the State Department.

 

·         August 11, 2014, State Department turns over fewer than a dozen documents to the Select Committee which, for the first time ever, included emails to/from Hillary Clinton.  It was in these documents that oversight first discovered that Hillary was using private @clintonemail.com email addresses to conduct official State Department business.

 

·         November 18, 2014 the committee sent a request to both the State Department and to Hillary Clinton demanding all her emails from her personal eclintonemail.com email addresses.

 

·         Email server is “wiped clean” sometime between Oct and Dec. 2014.

 

·         December 2014 – boxes containing 50,000 printed pages of Hillary’s emails were delivered to the State Department.   Hillary would some time later publically claim that these 50,000 pages make up the full record of emails which resided on her private server, during her time as Secretary of State.

 

·         State Department reviews the 50,000 pages of emails and produces roughly 900 pages pertaining to Benghazi, to be turned over to the Select Committee.

 

·         After 2 1/2 years of request and subpoenas, on Feb. 11, 2015 the State Department delivers the first substantial number of Clinton documents {850 pages of Clinton emails} to the Select Committee, emails which originated from two separate private @clintonemail.com email accounts.

 

·         Select Committee discovers a hole in the emails provided by State Department.  The hole {missing emails} covered the most critical time period of the Benghazi investigation.

 

·         In early March 2015, the Select Committee first learns that Hillary’s private email account resided on a private email server owned and in the custody of the Clinton’s.

 

·         Hillary speaks publically of her private email server and email account she used during her time as Secretary of State.  She claimed she use as single email address for both personal and State Department business out of convenience of having to use only one device. Hillary also stated that she believed her emails were being archived as she communicated with others only using their government email addresses.  Hillary also discloses that all her personal emails have been deleted from the server and that the server would remain in her custody.

 

·         Select Committee Chairman attempts to compel Hillary to turn her email server over to an independent third party for review to avoid having to do so through legal channels.

 

·         Speaker Boehner suggests that they may take legal action to obtain the Clinton email server as it is the only record of her time as Secretary of State and must be preserved.

 

·         March 27, 2015 a letter from Hillary’s attorney, stating that they would not be turning over the email server as the hard drive and all backup devices and been “wiped clean” of the period that encompassed Hillary’s time served as Secretary of State and therefore contained no useful information to the committee.

 

·         Just yesterday the Associated Press reported that, contrary to Hillary’s claim of choosing to use single email and device out of convenience, she used both a Blackberry and an iPad to communicate with her staff even prior to the Benghazi attack.  Also, Hillary still remains unchallenged, by democrats, as to how she can only manage a single email account on one device.

 

After reading through Hillary’s private email chronology, two things become very apparent:

First; controlling access and custody of her emails while serving as Secretary of State was a deliberate and intentional act pre-conceived by Hillary Clinton or an advisor.  The reason for doing so most likely being that Hillary had thoughts of taking a run at the presidency again and in the position of Secretary of State, was trying to limit the chance of any of the tens of thousands of her Secretary of Stated email correspondences from ever facing public scrutiny.  Operating her own email server gave her exclusive control of her electronic correspondence “just in case”.

Second; at some point during her time as Secretary, an event took place that, if the truth were to be learned by the public, would be highly damaging to herself and/or others, making it imperative that she maintain full control and custody of her emails, as well as, deny access of them to anyone, at any cost.

And it is the “at any cost” where it grows harder and harder to look democrats in the face.

What has transpired over the past few weeks makes it beyond impossible to deny something is being covered up.  Whether one wishes to believe the cover-up extends beyond the Secretary herself is their personal choice however, Hillary’s actions to conceal the contents of emails, which belong to the people, is a clear indictment of her guilt to a crime which is defined in the very emails she is purposely concealing from the people she once served.

And yet, Hillary Clinton’s popularity amongst democrats remains virtually unwavered, the latest polls showing that she is still the top candidate to capture the democratic presidential nomination by a very large margin, if she so chooses to run.

Listening to democrats defend the indefensible has left a sour taste in the mouths of those who have simply grown tired of the party’s ease and willingness to endorse wrong over right in their “at any cost” effort to expand and protect their parties brand.  Another perfect example of the democrats “at any cost” approach came just recently from an interview with Harry Reid where, when questioned on his 2012 election cycle fabricated declaration that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes for over a decade, Reid’s undignified response to the question was nothing more than “Romney didn’t win did he?”   

And be it Hillary Clinton’s email cover-ups; Harry Reid’s blatant willingness to fabricate lies; President Obama’s national fear mongering platform of the doom and gloom that would befall all of American if the 2013 sequester were allowed to happen; or of course, the very event that led us to Emailgate, the tall tale told of an internet video being the cause for the attack on US assets in Benghazi which left four American’s dead, the democratic response is the same  ……  “There is nothing to see here”.

Clearly, the moral compass of the majority of democrats is severely broken.  With their willingness to overlook the countless wrongdoings of the leadership in their party, it makes it very difficult to engage in a civil exchange of thoughts and ideas much less trust in anything they say or do.  It’s even getting hard to look a democrat in the face without complete contempt.

Hillary is Defining Democrats

If it were left up to democrats, they would skip all the formalities and name Hillary Clinton as their party’s 2016 Presidential nominee right now.  Even amongst all the controversy that surrounds her, she continues to pole as the overwhelming favorite in what continues to be a presidential nominee party of one.

While there are other well qualified and capable democrats to represent the party, none have bothered to show any sign of interest.  Even with the continued prodding from the more liberal faction of the party, Elizabeth Warren has refrained from providing any indication at all that she might be interested in the nomination.  Simply put, no democrat stands a chance against Hillary, the party favorite for 2016.

So what is it exactly that democrat’s find so intriguing about Hillary Clinton, what does she bring to the table that gains her superstar status?  And what exactly is it that makes her so presidential to the left?

The Clinton name has a long history of scandal and controversy surrounding it, both of which the Clinton political power couple have not only managed to survive but also have managed to maintain the dedication and support of democrats over the years.  There is no better example of this love affair shared between democrats and the Hillary herself than what took place in the days, weeks and months following the 9/11 attack on the US Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya. 

In particular was the disturbing public display of affection shared between Congressional Democrats and Hillary that took place during the January 2013 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.  Throughout the hearing, committee democrats divided their allotted time between criticizing committee republicans and kissing the Secretary’s back side.  Committee democrats were so vested in protecting Hillary that they did not ask the Secretary a single question on accountability throughout the entire hearing.  Four brave men had fallen and another 31 wounded on her watch over what appeared at the time and later confirmed as a complete failure of policy from within the State Department.  Yet, democrats on the committee could not muster up a single serious question to direct towards the Secretary.  It was an appalling and disgraceful sight to witness how partisan the process of oversight had become.

From this display of unconditional support she had just experienced, the message was clear to Hillary, and all democrats for that matter, that she was politically untouchable.  At the close of the hearing, Hillary emerged as the new “Teflon” Clinton, more emboldened now than ever.

Then there is the most recent controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton regarding the discovery that she used a private email account while serving as Secretary of State.

A product of the persistence of republican oversight, tasked with answering a the litany of unanswered question pertaining to the Benghazi tragedy, after having received a small number of long awaited emails from the State Department, a troubling pattern quickly emerged.  In reviewing the State Department documents provided, for the first time ever, committee members came across emails from the Secretary of State.  In this group of documents committee members also discovered that all of the Secretary’s correspondence were generated from a private email account.  Further investigation revealed that the source of this private email account was from a private email server which, upon even further investigation was found to be owned and in the sole custody of the Clinton’s. 

Considering that it took over two years for the State Department to produce its first email correspondence tied to Secretary Clinton and the fact that committee members were just learning of both the private email account and homebrewed server, it should have come as no surprise to anyone when committee members found these discoveries to be, at the very least, alarming!  Well alarming at least to republicans on the committee who were still seeking answer to so many unanswered questions surrounding that fateful night in Benghazi.

The troubling discovery only grew worse as the committee discovered that none of the Secretaries emails were retained by the State Department during Secretary Clinton’s tenure nor did the Secretary turn over her emails to the State Department upon her departure.  And as for those emails released to the committee, it was also learned that these originated from 50,000 pages of emails turned over to the State Department by the former Secretary of State.  It was at her sole discretion as to which emails she chose to share with the rest of the nation.  And one final twist, the former Secretary also indicated that over 30,000 “personal” emails have been deleted from the server, again at her sole discretion. 

With no assurance that the State Department has custody of all of the former Secretary’s official email correspondence, other than her word of course, in Hillary Clinton’s one and only public appearance on the matter, she stated that her private email server would remain so and would not be made available to others for scrutiny.  Ironically, from the 50,000 pages of the Secretaries emails turned over to the State Department, not a single correspondence covering the most critical days in question were included in the small batch of emails proved to the Selected Committee.  About the only thing missing from this story is a lost hard drive and someone pleading the fifth. 

And with a string of requests, lawsuits and pending subpoenas being used to compel the former Secretary to turn over her email server came the predictable pushback from democrats who of course are claiming this is just another scandal created by republicans to attack democrats.

But how can this be a scandal?  Did Hillary not admit to using a private email account to conduct her official State Department business on and did Hillary not admit that this email account was managed on a her private email server and did Hillary not confess to withholding those emails from the State Department beyond her tenure as Secretary when she admitted she turned over 50,000 pages of emails just this past December?  Of course she did, she stood before an international press and made all these admissions.

No, there is no scandal but there is a great deal of wrong doing going on on the part of the former Secretary, a well-educated, practiced attorney and long standing political figure who certainly knows the difference between right from wrong.

Having been involved in politics dating back to the Nixon Administration where she cut her teeth on government cover-ups and corruption during her participation in the Watergate hearings, Hillary Clinton also served as the First Lady of Arkansas, the First Lady of the United States and eight years in the US Senate.  Make no mistake, Mrs. Clinton knows full well the importance of retaining records, both for historical purposes as well as for maintaining both transparency and the integrity of our government process.  It is this very knowledge of the importance to retain records that makes her actions highly suspect and puts the moral integrity of the likely 2016 democratic presidential nominee in question.

And in the most recent news of Hillary’s email controversy, it was learned yesterday that the former Secretary has refused to turn over her private email server to a third party and as well, it has also been learned that the server has been “wiped clean” of all emails, an action that took place sometime after the October 28, 2014 request to turn over all documents pertaining to her tenure as Secretary of State, documents that still resided on the server on the date of the request.  None of this is coincidence.

But despite the documented string of leadership failures of her State Department and what can be viewed as nothing less than a blatant and undeniable effort to hide her emails from congressional oversight, democrats seem to have no issue with Hillary Clinton.  At this point, I am not really sure there is anything that Hillary can do wrong that would turn democrats against her, it is as if the people of the party have lost their moral compass.

For those on the right, it is difficult to comprehend how an individual with so little to show for a political career that spans over four decades and has such a checkered past as well as present can capture the unwavered support and affection of so many on the left, but here Hillary is.

This is what democrats have become.  They can’t run from it, they can’t hide from it and they certainly cannot deny it, but god willing, they can change it.