The Paul McCartney ballad “The Long and Winding Road” must have been playing this week, for Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton keeps repeating that she never handled classified emails on her private email server.
Unfortunately for Hillary, classified emails keep turning up in the FBI investigation, as it travels along that long, winding road.
Clinton says she never received and never sent classified emails through that server. It seems her words are more of what has come to be expected of the former first lady – political spin.
A Judicial Watch report released Wednesday clearly shows, through seventy pages of State Department records, that very important documents had been withheld from them after their March 18 2015 FOIA request.
Judicial Watch subsequently sued The State Department in May 2015, because of the department’s failure to respond. Now the smoking gun is in clear view.
As has been expected – and denied – Hillary Clinton used her private clintonemail.com system to ask Huma Abedin, also using an email account not controlled by the State Department, to print two important emails in March, 2011. Those two emails had been received from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair by Jake Sullivan, another Clinton staff member, also on his non-state.gov email account.
The Obama State Department has redacted the Blair emails under Exemption (b)(1). This exemption allows the administration to withhold classified material from the FOI request.
These communiques from Tony Blair are now classified “Foreign government information” and “foreign relations or foreign activities of the US, including confidential sources.”
In another email, it seems Ms. Clinton was interested in acquiring information about sensitive Washington meetings, including a four-hour meeting about the war on Libya. The former Secretary wasn’t so much concerned about National Security, but how it might spoil her upcoming personal vacation in the Hamptons.
Hillary’s email to Abedin, on August 26, 2011, using their personal email accounts said, “Ok. What time would I get back to Hamptons?”
Amazing! Does this mean that matters of State don’t rate very high on Hillary’s list?
The FOIA response reveals that other top secret transmissions included advice on Libya, from close personal friend Sidney Blumenthal. Clinton considered Blumenthal an “official adviser” on her staff. At that time, Blumenthal was a Clinton Foundation employee, who had conflicting business interests in Libya.
It seems clear that Hillary Clinton knew these emails were a problem, because she asked for them to be printed “without any identifiers.”
Now we hear that the FBI is investigating the multi-million dollar Clinton Foundation for corrupt practices relating to donations.
The plot thickens!
