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!

We Have Lost Sight as to the True Importance of Hillary’s Emails

This whole “classified email” mess that Hillary has gotten herself in to is entertaining enough and of course quite serious but it has for some time now monopolized the news cycle and taken our sights away from what got us here in the first place.

This all started back on September 11, 2012 at 10:07pm EST when, just after getting off of the phone with President Obama, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a press brief stating that the attack on the US Consulate was spurred by an internet video.  The attack was still underway at the time of this press brief release and intelligence was still being gathered however, word on the ground that the Secretary had received indicated that it was an organized attack.   It is also important to note the phone call exchange between the President and the Secretary was originally buried but later revealed, on accident, through a slip of the tongue by then White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.  The Secretary had previously been questioned as to if she had spoken with the President during that attack and her answer was no.

The story as to what happened that night in Benghazi has spiraled out of control from that point forward.  Hillary’s blaming the attack on an internet video came under immediate attack and rightly so.  Nobody could provide anyone with an explanation as to what lead the State Dept. to believe the video was the case and nobody was talking. The circumstances surrounding the press brief (the secret phone call shared with the president moments before) would not be learned until sometime later and again, only because of a slip of the tongue by Jay Carney.

The Sunday following the Benghazi tragedy was the definitive moment/day as Susan Rice made the rounds on all the Sunday morning news shows repeating a highly scripted set of talking points that backed the internet video claim.  The story simply did not add up and left many scratching their heads and wondering what really happened.

As is always is the case with any such tragedy, congressional oversight automatically kicks in and does its part by investigating the actions and activities of the various agencies to which they are responsible for.  Congressional oversight had their hands full on the Benghazi investigations however, as pieces were not fitting right from the beginning.  There were conflicts in reporting, conflicts in statements and most of all the blaming of the internet video and subsequent Sunday morning news show rounds by Susan Rice doing so just did not fit.


Let the Feet Dragging and Obstructionism Began

Some of the very first documents requested by congressional oversight were the string of emails that were used to craft the talking points used by Susan Rice that Sunday morning.  Oversight got the run around and in fact it took a letter directly to the President, and signed by a number of the oversight chairpersons to finally get this string of emails released.

The final release of these emails created more questions than answers which led to the eventual request for ANY AND ALL DOCUMENTS, from the State Department pertaining to Benghazi to be released to congressional oversight.  This request took place while Hillary was still in office and was never complied with.

The failure of the State Department to release requested documents is well documented in several of the oversightcommittees final reports on Benghazi and it is this failure, on the part of the State Department, to turn over Benghazi related documents that prompted the formulation of the Select Committee on Benghazi, a committee that has more tools in its bag to force parties and departments to comply than the standard congressional oversight committees do.  But even at that, this committee is at the mercy of the DOJ if legal action that would lead to some type of enforcement or criminal investigation were needed, such actions are outside the authority of the Select Committee.   But I digress.

Hillary’s emails became an issue when, from the few documents they were able to pry from the State Department, congressional oversight discovered that there were no emails addressed to or from Hillary Clinton.  Of course members of the committee were looking for a { .gov} email address at the time but her personal email address was not surfacing either.  But eventually a few documents passed through the hands of the oversight committee and the discovery was made that Hillary was using a private email account.  Now the State Department had no choice but to compel Hillary to turn over her email record, which up until that point she had sole custody of.


So here we are Today

While the talking point of “classified emails” on Hillary’s server is consuming all the news room discussions, the real reason we are here and digging into Hillary’s emails is because of Benghazi.

Hillary and her team have done an excellent job of hiding and obstruction anyone from getting their hands on her email record.  I’m sorry, correction, “the peoples” email record.  For two years after her departure from the State Department she held her email record in secrecy and only turned it over after being compelled to do so by the State Department which was facing legal action if it did not start producing documents requested through the FOIA and subpoena.

But Hillary did not turn over her record to the State Department, she turned over some 50,000 pages of emails to which she claims to be the full record but there is no way to verify this as she, at the time, refused to turn over the email server to which they resided.  We have no way of knowing if in fact these 50,000 pages represents her full record and Hillary has given us every reason to believe they are not.  She did conceal the record from the public for two full years before being forced to turn it over right?  As well, email documents have surfaced that are clearly part of Hillary’s record yet were not provided in the 50,000 pages that were turned over to the State Department {or the State Department did not provide them to oversite}.  So there is little confidence that Hillary is being forthcoming to her claim that she has turned over her record in full.

Hillary is without a doubt hiding something and that something may not even be related to Benghazi.  Remember, the unique email arrangement she set up for herself took place right at the start of her tenure as Secretary of State.  In regards to Benghazi, her email arrangement became a convenience which potentially has allowed her to hide troublesome documents.  But the only way we will ever know this is if her email records can be recovered from the hard drive of the email server she deliberately had scrubbed of its contents, yet another action that points to an intentional cover-up.

This is why we are here people, this is why the Select Committee pushed so hard to have her email server put in the hands of an independent 3^rd party and made available for forensic analysis so that an attempt cold be made to recover any documents that may not have been included in Hillary’s interpretation of the complete record.   

As it turns out, other entities have now gotten involved and are attempting to restore the record as well, for other reasons mind you, but the end result will be the same.  If the record is able to be restored and there are more documents related to Benghazi, they will be turned over to the Select Committee.  These documents, if any, are the final step in the Benghazi investigation and will either conclude that there is no there there or that something very bad has been covered up by senior members of our government.   We as Americans should want the answer either way.

Regarding the issue of classified information on Hillary’s email server, that’s a whole other issue and looks as though it is being dealt with accordingly. 

And let us not forget, the record of all senior level government officials should be archived for a number or reasons but if for no other, so that we have a historical account of what has gone on in our government that we can always refer back to.

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.

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.

Why Hillary Controlling Custody of Her Emails is a Big Deal!

As hard as democrats try and tamp down the events surrounding the Benghazi tragedy, it is impossible to deny culpability on the part of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the shaping of the failures prior to, likely during and most certainly after that attack occurred.  The question is, to what level of culpability should rest on her shoulders.

No better example as to the importance to recover every single email that ever passed through Hillary Clintons personal email server she used to conduct the people’s business on than what has been revealed in the numerous congressional investigations.  Democrats have attempted time and again to convince “we the people” that these investigations have failed to discovery any wrong doing however, quite the contrary is true, they know it and it scares them to death!

Most of the investigations that transpired as a result of the Benghazi tragedy were aimed at determining the particular role a certain agency played before, during and after the attack.  Of course, conducting oversight on one department whose actions are influence by other departments, there will be some overlap in the oversight process as was very much the case in each of the committees investigating the Benghazi tragedy.  And it was in this overlap where each committee experiences the same fundamental problem, a complete lack of cooperation and in some cases even defiance by the State Department.

While most of the committees were successful in achieve their particular oversight goals, several very important questions were raised in regards to the actions of the State Department in the process.  Answers to these questions were, in most cases, not pursued as they were outside the purview of the particular committee’s scope.  None the less, the troubling issues encountered with the State Department were noted in their final reports.

Following are some of the concerns raised by the various committees.  Read them through then you be the judge as to how important you think the people’s emails that Hillary Clinton is holding hostage are:

From the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Benghazi

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) conducted an extensive investigation which concentrated on the intelligence community’s role in the events surrounding the time before, during and after the attack on the US Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi.

While the committee firmly stated that they found no fault in the actions of the intelligence community (IC) in the months leading up to, during and after the attacks, the committee was very critical of the failures of the State Department over the entire period.  For example, in response to intelligence of increased threats of attack, appropriate measures were taken to increase the security of the CIA Annex in Benghazi while, provided with the same threat reports, the State Department failed to respond to the increased threats leaving its staff at the US Consulate unable to protect itself from such an attack that was experienced on the evening of September 11, 2012.  Two separate agencies/departments responsible for two separate facilities, both provided with the same intelligence and threat information but only one department failed miserably to protect its assets and people.

Again, while the focus of the HPSIC was on investigating the role the IC played in the events surrounding the Benghazi attacks, through the process they turned up some very troubling actions of the State Department which they included in their final report.

An excerpt from the Executive Summary:
 

Fifth, the Committee finds that the process used to generate the talking points HPSCI asked for – and which were used for Ambassador Rice’s public appearances – was flawed.  HPSCI asked for the talking points solely to aid Member’ ability to communicate publicly using the best available intelligence at the time, and mistake were made in the process of how those talking points were developed.

The talking points have been a major point of contention with the IC as, for lack of better terms, the White House threw them under the bus.  From the backlash that ensued after Susan Rice made her highly misleading Sunday talk show appearances where she made some very inaccurate statements about the cause of the Benghazi attack, in their attempt to appear not to be the ones responsible for spreading the false narrative, the White House stated time and again that the talking points were produced by the IC.

A large part of the committee’s effort went in to understanding how the talking points were develop and how it was first concluded that the attacks spurred from a protest over an internet video. 

On page 24 of their report the committee writes:

Various witnesses and senior military officials serving in the Obama Administration testified to this Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the Senate Armed Services Committee that they knew from the moment the attacks began that the attacks were deliberate terrorist acts against U.S. interests.  No witness has reported believing at any point that the attacks were anything but terrorist acts.

 

This follows the early reports made public, that members on the ground reported almost immediately that what was being experienced at the Consulate was an organized attack.  Included in these direct reports was a phone call made directly to Secretary Clinton by Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya Gregory Hicks, who confirmed to the Secretary that unequivocally what was taking place at the Consulate and CIA Annex were terrorist attacks.  It needs to be added that this phone call to the Secretary was made while the attacks were still underway and a full two hours prior to the Secretary’s release of the public brief in which she blamed the attacks on an internet video.  It also must be noted that the public brief was released just moments after ending a short phone conversation with the president, a phone call which was kept from public record until an unfortunate slip of the tongue by Press Secretary Jay Carney months later.

Prior to the phone call slip, it had been reported, by the White House, that during the time of the Benghazi attack, the president and Secretary Clinton had not spoken directly until the following day.  Had the slip by Jay Carney not occurred, we may have never learned of the phone call between the President and the Secretary of State and in turn, the troubling timing between the phone call and the release of the public brief.  But what still remains and unknown is the content of that short phone conversation between the two.

Maintaining their story that the attack on Benghazi was spurred by dissent caused from an internet video, days after the attack occurred, the White House pressed Ambassador Susan Rice to be Secretary Clinton’s surrogate in making the Sunday morning talk show rounds which would entail explaining to the American people what transpired in Benghazi.  A reason for replacing the Secretary with Susan Rice has never been provided, but knowing what we know now, it would have been impossible for the Secretary to recite the talking points that were prepared without incriminating herself.

In a frantic exchange of emails between numerous departments/agencies, the CIA originated talking points were manipulated, scrubbed, cleaned and cleansed to suit the best interest of the State Department and the White House.  To support this, in an email from Deputy National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes titled “PREP CALL with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 ET” it stated that one of the goals of Administration public statement should be “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”   

And so that is what she did and on September 15, 2012, despite knowing that the narrative was false, Susan Rice made her rounds on the Sunday talk shows reading from a page of highly flawed talking points.

But what may be more disturbing than what appears to be an attempt to protect the president’s foreign policy are the threat warnings that the committee found were ignored.

On page 13 of their report the committee writes:

These reports and assessments, which were available to senior U.S. policymakers, including those at the State Department and the White House, made it clear that there were serious and credible threats to American interest and facilities in the region and in Benghazi specifically.  This information was also available to U.S. personnel in Libya.  Indeed, CIA’s Chief of Tripoli Station testified that he actually had a long conversation with Ambassador Stevens the Saturday before the Ambassador traveled to Benghazi and reviewed the security situation.

Given the volume of threat information provided by the IC, the Committee concludes that any U.S. official responsible for facilities or personnel in Benghazi had sufficient warning of the deteriorating security situation on Benghazi and the demonstrated intent and capability of anti-U.S. extremists in the region to attack Western and specifically, U.S. targets.

 

In many regards, the members of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board on Benghazi (ARB) routed out many and maybe even all of the departments shortcoming that lead to the failed protection of State Department assets and personnel in Benghazi however, they failed to determine the root cause behind the failure and rightly so.  By design, members of the ARB were not tasked to discover the root cause of failure from within the department, and here lies the problem.

The full HPSCI report on Benghazi can be read HERE:


Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Review of the Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11-12, 2012

Similar to the HPSCI, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) review on the events surrounding the attack on US assets and personnel in Benghazi, Libya focused primarily on the role of the intelligence community however, like the HPSCI, did report troubling actions as well as inactions of other department which were discovered through unavoidable overlaps in their investigation.  Again, much like in the case of the HPSCI investigation, failures of the State Department were abundant and noted in the report.

On page 16 of their report the committee writes:

Despite the clearly deteriorating security situation in Benghazi and requests for additional security resources, few significant improvements were made by the State Department to the security posture of the Temporary Mission Facility.

Although the Mission facility met the minimum personnel requirements ~or Diplomatic Security agents as accepted by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli at the time of the August 15 EAC meeting (specifically, the three Diplomatic Security agents were assigned to guard the Mission compound), the Committee found no evidence that significant actions were taken by the State Department between August 15, 2012, and September 11, 2012, to increase security at the Mission facility in response to the concerns raised in that meeting. 

 

Although it was not the charter of the committee to identify the shortcomings of the State Department, or any other department for that matter, the committee included certain findings, such as the above in their report.  Different from other oversight investigation however, was the committee’s repeated inclusion of recommendations made by the ARB almost as if to put each of their findings of State Department failure to rest.  Doing so seemed a bit peculiar when the report was first released but now, with a newfound understanding of Secretary Clinton’s emails, it makes perfect sense.  Bear in mind, this committee was chaired by Dianne Feinstein, a staunch defender of the Secretary.

If the tie between the failures of the State Department and the inclusion of the ARB recommendation in this report did not turn on that light in your head or you are unfamiliar with the ARB Report, read on and it will all tie together shortly.

The full Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Benghazi can be read HERE:

From the House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority Staff Report on Benghazi
The House Foreign Affairs Committee was the one oversight body whose attention was focused specifically on the actions of the State Department.  While the investigation we unable to answer the question as to exactly who made the call for Hillary Clinton to blame the attack on an internet video and why, the investigation made clear as to the reason why these answers could not be obtained.  

The committee’s final report lambasted the State Department, pointing out the systemic failures which were largely responsible for the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi.  The committee was also highly critical of the State Department’s ARB report on Benghazi, essentially calling it a joke, pointing out that it was void of any accountability or criticism of its senior members.  Maybe now we know why as it would have been pretty difficult for the ARB members scrutinize the actions of the State Departments senior members without any documentation from senior members to review.

Most alarming however was the complete failure in the State Department’s desire to cooperate with the investigation, which again is all making sense now.  The committee was continually stonewalled by the department making it extremely difficult to do their job and ultimately found the State Department so obstructive that the investigation was concluded without answering many key questions.
   
Excerpts from the Executive Summary:

 

Both before and after the attacks in Benghazi, President Obama promoted a flawed and deeply misleading public narrative in which he claimed that al-Qaeda was ―decimated,‖ ―on the run,‖ and ―on the path to defeat.‖ Yet those on the ground in Libya faced a surge in violence and increasing evidence of terrorist activity; they appealed to Washington for added security.

This written in regards to the failure of anyone to have been disciplined from within the State Department after findings proved gross negligence from within the department and the constant return to the highly flawed ARB report as their defense:

Unfortunately, the Benghazi ARB‘s work was seriously deficient in several respects, most notably in its failure to review or comment on the actions of the Department‘s most senior officials.

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the ARB never interviewed her or her deputies

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Committee investigators believe that these omissions could be related to the fact that Secretary Clinton selected four out of the ARB‘s five members

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Indeed, exoneration of an organization‘s senior-most officials along with reassignment and training for others does not constitute sufficient accountability for the failures that led to the woefully inadequate security posture in Benghazi.

 

This report released some very harsh criticisms of the ARB report, pointing out not only its flaws but also pointing a finger as to why those flaws exist and those fingers are pointed directly at the Secretary of State whose orchestration of the ARB clearly and intentionally avoids investigation and oversight that would implicated her of wrong doing or antagonize anyone who might throw her under the bus for singling them out.

The first paragraph from the Introduction of the committee’s report:

Investigative staff of the five House committees have conducted rigorous oversight of the events surrounding the September 11-12, 2012 terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Oversight efforts have included numerous hearings, briefings, witness interviews, and a protracted and contentious document review by the Committees on Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, Intelligence, Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform. These Committees have worked together to uncover the facts, hold the Administration accountable for its failures, and advance necessary reforms.

A “protracted and contentious document review” or in other words that State Department was obstructive and drug its feet.  Not really the actions of a department that is trying to be transparent and forthcoming.  And maybe we now know why, they were simply unable to produce any of the requested documents pertaining to Hillary Clintons emails as they did not have them in their custody.  Not wanting to admit so, the State Department simply outlasted the investigation in their having to produce such documents.  The committee eventually threw in the towel in order to move things along.    

And here is a disturbing piece of information that was brought out during the investigation.  During Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, there was no Inspector General (IG) appointed to the State Department Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a critical position in any governing agency to ensure accountability and proper oversight.

during President Obama‘s tenure the State Department‘s OIG has been hampered in its mission. In what constituted the longest vacancy ever for any of the 73 Inspector General positions across the federal government, President Obama failed to nominate a permanent Inspector General for the State Department for an inexcusable 1,989 days – the entirety of Secretary Clinton‘s tenure

How convenient it must have been for Hillary, and the president for that matter, to not have someone looking over her and her department’s shoulder the entire time she served as Secretary of State.

The first line in the “Conclusion” of the committee’s report reads:

Systemic failures at the State Department during Secretary Clinton‘s tenure resulted in a grossly inadequate security posture in Benghazi.

No different than any of the other committees investigating various aspects of the Benghazi tragedy, The House Foreign Affairs Committee has come upon one road block after another in their attempts to obtain documents from the State Department.  The list of correspondence on this matter goes on and on but are probably best summarized in a letter sent by the Chairman of the committee to Secretary of State John Kerry back in May of last year.

This letter addressed the chairman’s concerns as to why after 19 months of unsuccessful  attempts to obtain certain records and documents from the State Department, they were released to a non-government group through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and at about the same time, some of the same documents were in fact provided to the committee, mixed amongst a large number of other requested documents however, the documents received by the committee contained a higher number of redactions than those provided to the non-government organization through the FOIA request.  You can read the full letter HERE.

The “talking points” were an obvious point of contention and clearly re-written for political protection rather than to relay facts.  The email exchanges between the many players involved in the crafting of the talking points were numerous and no player was more involved and outspoken as to the content and exact language to be projected in the talking points than the State Department.  But it took a letter to the president, signed by the chairpersons from all 5 investigating committees to finally gain access to the string of emails.  The letter was delivered to the president’s desk on April 23, 2013.  You can read the letter HERE.

Finally some results and in a letter dated May 20, 2013, from Thomas Gibson of the State Department, the 103 pages of emails relating to the crafting of the Sunday show talking points were provided to the committees.  Though a bit difficult to wade through, with a little time and effort you can sort your way through the string if emails traded amongst the various parties and in doing so it will become grossly apparent as to the role the Stated Department played in the “cleaning” (their word not mine) of the talking points.  The letter and entire string of emails can be viewed HERE.

This is quite a bit of bad light being shed upon Hillary Clinton’s State Department and numerous questions remain unanswered due to the inability to obtain requested documents from the State Department which were undoubtedly part of or related to documents that were not in their possession but instead in the possession of Hillary Clinton, on her private email server.

The full House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority Staff report on Benghazi can be read HERE:


The Accountability Review Board Report on Benghazi

The Accountability Review Board (ARB) report came under tremendous criticism as many claimed it failed to dig deep enough nor did it hold anyone accountable.  But the reality is that the members of the ARB conducted its investigation precisely as devised and directed by Secretary of State Clinton, and here lies the problem.

The primary objective of the ARB was to review internal procedures and practices of the State Department as they related to Benghazi, ferret out any shortcomings and make recommendations on fixes to prevent any future missteps. 

Democrats praised the actions of the ARB and where quick to accept the findings of the ARB as closure to the State Department involvement in what they had deemed a witch hunt by Republicans.  Republicans on the other hand stood in dismay as they reviewed the ARB report finding it completely void of any accountability at any senior level and at closer review realized that senior players inside the State Department were given a free pass, their actions never scrutinized nor where they ever interviewed. 

Those who received a free passes pass included Secretary Clinton who played the most significant role in Benghazi of anyone in the State Department.  But again, the ARB followed the guidelines put forth to them by the Secretary and therefore the members that made up the ARB, as well as the report should not be held at fault.  The same cannot be said for Secretary Clinton who intentionally excluded herself from her department’s accountability process and maybe now we understand why. 

Having included herself in the accountability process would have forced the State Department to produce documents that, up until August of last year, Secretary Clinton has been able to keep away from those conducting congressional oversight as well as the American people.

The question still remains as to why Hillary Clinton has taken such extreme measures to make her emails private and keep it so from the people she served.  But what we do know is that whatever the reason may be, the Obama Administration is on-board with her doing so as to date, they have made zero effort, on the part of the administration to push the State Department into comply with congressional oversight requests, FOIA requests and subpoenas issued to the department.  Obviously, the White House has a vested interest in keeping Hillary’s emails under wraps just as she does.

So is it clear now as to why Hillary controlling custody of her emails is such a big deal?