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Monday, October 31, 2016

WikiLeaks Prepares ‘Phase Three’ Data Dump on Hillary Clinton






Got to love Chuck!


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Wikileaks said Sunday evening that the organization will release another data dump this week, in what it described as “phase 3” of its election coverage.

In the tweet, the organisation said that they will “commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week,” while also asking for donations so the organisation can continue its work.


Maybe the FBI should send them a donation since Wikileaks does better investigative work.






WikiLeaks has not revealed what sort of information the latest release will contain.

Further damaging revelations surrounding Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager John Podesta could prove fatal for her campaign, following her already falling polling numbers even before the news that the FBI will re-open the investigation into her use of a private email server.

Previous releases by WikiLeaks have shown details of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches to banks where she expressed her desire for America to have “open borders,” her tactic of pursuing “needy Latinos,” as well as allegations from the Trump campaign of collusion with the Justice Department on managing her email scandal.





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Eric Holder op-ed: James Comey is a good man, but he made a serious mistake




So getting people killed is not a serious mistake?


By

Eric
Holder




This coming from the same guy who conceived the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal which put guns into the hands of the Mexican cartels which ultimately caused the death of Brian Terry not to mention 150 Mexican civilians who were maimed or killed by these guns. Holder should be behind bars with Clinton and he would have been if Barry didn't illegally use Executive Privilege to get him off the hook. A president cannot exercise their right of Executive Privilege to cover up a crime. But as usual he got away with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

 This piece is nothing more than sanctimonious, self-embellishing, bullshit. The reality is Comey never told Lynch because he knew she would bury it until after the election.

Hey Holder, want to get real...how many people did Comey kill?


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I began my career in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section 40 years ago, investigating cases of official corruption. In the years since, I have seen America's justice system firsthand from nearly every angle — as a prosecutor, judge, attorney in private practice and attorney general of the United States. I understand the gravity of the work our Justice Department performs every day to defend the security of our nation, protect the American people, uphold the rule of law and be fair.



That is why I am deeply concerned about FBI Director James B. Comey's decision to write a vague letter to Congress about emails potentially connected to a matter of public, and political, interest. That decision was incorrect. It violated long-standing Justice Department policies and tradition. And it ran counter to guidance that I put in place four years ago laying out the proper way to conduct investigations during an election season. That guidance, which reinforced established policy, is still in effect and applies to the entire Justice Department — including the FBI.

The department has a practice of not commenting on ongoing investigations. Indeed, except in exceptional circumstances, the department will not even acknowledge the existence of an investigation. The department also has a policy of not taking unnecessary action close in time to Election Day that might influence an election's outcome. These rules have been followed during Republican and Democratic administrations. They aren't designed to help any particular individual or to serve any political interest. Instead, they are intended to ensure that every investigation proceeds fairly and judiciously; to maintain the public trust in the department's ability to do its job free of political influence; and to prevent investigations from unfairly or unintentionally casting public suspicion on public officials who have done nothing wrong.

Director Comey broke with these fundamental principles. I fear he has unintentionally and negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI. And he has allowed — again without improper motive — misinformation to be spread by partisans with less pure intentions. Already, we have learned that the importance of the discovery itself may have been overblown. According to the director himself, there is no indication yet that the "newly discovered" emails bear any significance at all. And yet, because of his decision to comment on this development before sufficient facts were known, the public has faced a torrent of conspiracy theories and misrepresentations.

This controversy has its roots in the director's July decision to hold a news conference announcing his recommendation that the Justice Department bring no charges against Hillary Clinton. Instead of making a private recommendation to the attorney general — consistent with Justice Department policy — he chose to publicly share his professional recommendation, as well as his personal opinions, about the case. That was a stunning breach of protocol. It may set a dangerous precedent for future investigations. It was wrong. 

The director said in July that he chose to take that extraordinary step in response to intense public interest. During my 12-year service in the Public Integrity Section and as attorney general, I worked on some of the most politically sensitive cases that our country saw. The additional public scrutiny such investigations provoke makes it even more important that we handle those cases consistently and responsibly. That is exactly why guidelines are put in place: so that Justice Department leaders, including FBI directors, will not substitute their own judgments and opinions for reasoned, fair, coherent and time-tested policy.

I am mindful of the unique facts that surrounded the July decision. The airplane meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton led to the perception among some that inappropriate communications occurred. Perceptions matter. But the solution was not for the FBI director to announce the department's decision about whether to proceed. That determination — and how or whether it should have been be publicly revealed — rested with department lawyers, after consultation with FBI counterparts.

If the attorney general determined that she could not participate in the process, the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, a respected, apolitical, career prosecutor, should have stood in her place. Any comments should have come from the attorney general or deputy attorney general, the people who always communicate prosecutorial decisions made by the department. And let me be clear: Far less than that which was shared in the July news conference, and afterward, should have been revealed.

Those of us who have served as stewards of our nation's justice system — from line prosecutors to attorneys general — are tasked with an awesome responsibility. The idea that all Americans are entitled to the same rights and obligations — to fair treatment and due process — is central to who we are and what we stand for as a nation. Whether that idea endures for future generations depends on the actions we take to keep its promise real. 

I served with Jim Comey and I know him well. This is a very difficult piece for me to write. He is a man of integrity and honor. I respect him. But good men make mistakes. In this instance, he has committed a serious error with potentially severe implications. It is incumbent upon him — or the leadership of the department — to dispel the uncertainty he has created before Election Day. It is up to the director to correct his mistake — not for the sake of a political candidate or campaign but in order to protect our system of justice and best serve the American people. 

The truth of the matter is this:




Washington Post

Eric Holder was U.S. attorney general from 2009 to 2015.





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Clinton aide Abedin told FBI she didn't know emails were on laptop




She didn't know?



Let’s cut through the bullshit. Clinton is guilty of: 


1. Mishandling Classified Information


2. Violating The 2009 Federal Records Act


3. In Violation of the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA)


Clinton had a private server for one reason and one reason only. (“I wanted to use only one device” was put to bed by Comey). The truth is she wanted to exempt herself from The Freedom of Information Act. Killary, being a crook, knew she never wanted her emails made public exposed (The CF, Benghazi, Russian uranium, foreign donors pay to play, etc) so she set up a private server to defy the Freedom of Information Act and thereby the law. 

Would you have expected anything less from a Clinton?


BTW…You mean to tell me in this whole email investigation the FBI didn’t go into Clinton’s closest confidant Abedin’s laptop until now!?! 


How could you watch this and vote to put the Clinton's back into the WH?

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Long time aide has told the FBI she was not aware any of her emails were on the laptop investigators seized as part of their investigation into Abedin's estranged husband, . 

The FBI engaged in a back and forth over the weekend with Abedin or her attorney, when Abedin explained the situation. 

"She says she didn't know they were there," a source familiar with the investigation said. 

After obtaining a warrant to examine the data over the weekend, the FBI is now filtering the emails using a software program that will separate out any emails that investigators have not seen before. Those will be kept in a separate file and will be examined by FBI agents to see if they contain classified material or information relevant to the Clinton probe.

It is not clear what FBI Director will do with the information once the FBI obtains it. Standard practice is for the FBI not to comment on investigations — but this is not a standard situation. "We're in uncharted territory," the source said. 

It is possible that Comey could indicate publicly what the FBI finds before Election Day next week, but that decision has not been made yet. 

There are a number of scenarios that would explain how the emails got onto the laptop without Abedin's knowledge, including that they were somehow automatically backed up from the cloud. But investigators will want to know how this happened and if there is any indication that Abedin misled them about the existence of emails. 


It is a large project. Agents determined there were as many as 650,000 emails on the laptop, dating back years. The number of emails related to the Clinton investigation is likely to be much smaller.







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Sunday, October 30, 2016

Attorney General Lynch objected to FBI director going public with email review







FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to the chairmen of several Congressional committees Friday — and Democrats are especially unhappy. 

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Loretta Lynch objected to the decision by FBI Director James Comey to notify Congress that the bureau was reviewing newly discovered emails that might be related to the previously closed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, according to an official familiar with the matter.





Lynch's views were relayed to Comey just hours before the FBI director transmitted a letter to federal lawmakers indicating that investigators were reviewing the emails that may or may not have a bearing on the Clinton case that was closed in July, said the official who is not authorized to comment publicly.

The official said Lynch was standing by long-held Justice Department policy that federal authorities should not take any action that may interfere with an election. While Lynch made her position clear, the official said Comey acted independently of the attorney general.

A second federal official familiar with Comey's decision said Saturday that the FBI director considered the attorney general's advice during a spirited discussion of the matter Thursday and early Friday but felt compelled to act.

The emergence of the FBI director’s letter to Republican lawmakers has jolted the presidential race in its final 10 days, angering the Clinton camp and giving Donald Trump and Republicans new hope.

Vice President Biden called the situation “unfortunate” and urged the FBI to “release the emails for the whole world to see.” That was the message Clinton sent Friday night when she said, “the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately.”

Until Friday, Clinton appeared to be coasting to a comfortable victory on Nov. 8, with campaign aides talking openly about expanding the Electoral College map to previously safe Republican states such as Arizona, Georgia and even Texas. National polls showed her leading by anywhere from 4 to 12 points.

But Comey’s decision to mention new emails – without any immediate prospect of clarifying their content – created new opportunities for the Trump campaign.

In the letter to congressional leaders explaining his decision, Comey said "the FBI cannot yet assess" whether the information is "significant" nor could he offer a timetable for how long it will take investigators to make an assessment.

An official familiar with the matter said Friday that the new materials, perhaps thousands of emails, were discovered in the ongoing and separate investigation into sexually charged communications between former New York congressman Anthony Weiner and a 15-year-old girl. Comey was briefed on the findings in recent days, resulting in the director's notification to Congress, said the official who is not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.



The emails were discovered in a search of a device or devices used by Weiner, who is separated from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Abedin also had access to the same device or devices.

The official said it was not likely that the FBI's review of the additional emails could be completed by Election Day.

After Comey was briefed on the material discovered in the Weiner inquiry, the official said the FBI director gathered members of the investigative team in the Clinton case and top staffers to discuss how to proceed and whether a notification should be made to lawmakers. Comey had testified as recently as September that no additional information had been presented to investigators involved in the Clinton matter.

The discussion, the official said, continued into early Friday and weighed the view transmitted to the bureau by Lynch. But Comey ultimately believed he needed to act to correct his previous testimony.

Lynch's role in the Clinton email investigation had been fraught since June, when she agreed to accept Comey's recommendation in the case after it was disclosed that she met privately with former president Bill Clinton aboard her plane when the two crossed paths at the Phoenix airport. Lynch, who said the case was not discussed during the meeting, ultimately accepted Comey's July recommendation not to bring criminal charges in the matter.

Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook held a conference call early Saturday afternoon in an effort to cast the FBI revelations as overblown.

“There’s no evidence of wrongdoing, no charge of wrongdoing, no indication that this is even about Hillary,” Podesta said. “It’s hard to see how this amounts to anything, and we’re not going to be distracted.”

The two campaign chiefs blamed Comey for what they both characterized as his “extraordinary step” in releasing the letter to members of Congress. It’s possible, they said, that most or all the emails in question are just duplicates of others already reviewed by the FBI.







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Clinton emails overshadow another liar who is head of the DOJ




Loretta Lynch 'pleads the fifth to avoid answering questions' on $1.7 billion payments to Iran

 This administration wreaks with CORRUPTION! Everyone knows it was a ransom payment. I wonder in Barry’s soon to be library if they will have a separate room for the people pleading the 5th in this administration. If they do it will set a record!

[On counsel’s advice, I invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment not to answer, on the grounds I may incriminate myself]

 Name me all the times someone said this and was later proved innocent. 

A Special Prosecutor could have saved the day for us a l-o-n-g time ago. Instead, we have never ending hearings that go nowhere.

What's the difference between Holder and Lynch? 

One's in Contempt of Congress. 



The other soon will be.


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Loretta Lynch is 'pleading the fifth' to dodge questions about $1.7 billion payments made by the United States to Iran, two members of Congress have claimed.

Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Mike Pompeo wrote a letter to Attorney General Lynch Friday, accusing her of refusing to answer 'straightforward questions' about the payments.

The Fifth Amendment keeps people from having to be witnesses against themselves in a criminal case. Commonly, 'pleading the fifth' means refusing to provide information that might incriminate oneself.

The United States gave $.17 billion to Iran in three different payments, the first of which, worth $400,000 was made in January. 


Loretta Lynch (pictured on Tuesday) is 'pleading the fifth' to avoid answering questions about $1.7 billion payments to Iran, Senator Marco Rubio, and Representative Mike Pompeo claimed



Tehran agreed to release four American prisoners the same day, prompting Republicans to denounce the payment as ransom. Rubio has been one of the most vocal voices supporting that claim, which the White House has denied.

Rubio and Pompeo's letter, published by the Washington Free Beacon, a Conservative website, begins by slamming Lynch for failing to answer 'any' of their questions.

'As the United States' chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,' Rubio and Pompeo wrote.

'The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.'




Rubio (left) and Pompeo (right) wrote a letter to Attorney General Lynch Friday, accusing her of refusing to answer 'straightforward questions' about the payments


The United States' payment to Iran settled a decades-long failed arms deal dating back to before 1979.

Iran had ordered and paid $400,000 worth of fighter jets, but the United States froze the delivery when the Shah was overthrown in 1979.

The United States paid back these $400,000 plus $1.3 billion of interest.

Barack Obama announced the payments in January when the Iran deal was struck.

'The United States and Iran are now settling a longstanding Iranian government claim against the United States government. Iran will be returned its own funds, including appropriate interest, but much less than the amount Iran sought,' he said.

Rubio in September became the main sponsor of a bill that would bar similar payments to Tehran until Iran pays the nearly $55.6 billion that US courts say Iran owes to American victims of Iranian terrorism.

Lynch has not replied publicly to Rubio and Pompeo's letter. 





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Friday, October 28, 2016

BREAKING: FBI says it is reopening Clinton email investigation






The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's secret email server has been dramatically re-opened after new messages that 'appear to be pertinent' were uncovered, its director announced Friday.

In a move that sent shockwaves through both presidential campaigns, James Comey said in a letter to Congress that an investigative team is seeking to determine if any of the emails contain classified information and whether any of them are 'significant'. 

With just 11 days until the presidential election, Clinton was on a plane when the announcement was made.

Clinton was in the air, on her way to Iowa when the news of the re-opened investigation broke.




The sense of a new Clinton crisis came as her poll lead collapse to four points in the latest nationwide survey.

Comey said that after learning about the emails he advised the bureau to take 'appropriate investigative steps' to review them.





Comey sent the letter to heads of the of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Judiciary Committees and two Appropriations subcommittees that deal with justice issues, as well as the House's Oversight Committee and the Senate's Homeland Security Committee.

'Although the FBI cannot yet access whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts,' he wrote.

At the top of an early afternoon campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Trump took a victory lap and congratulated the FBI for deciding to take a second look at the case.

Trump cheered as he hailed the FBI for reopening of Clinton email probe.

'The FBI has just sent a letter to Congress informing them that they have discovered new emails pertaining to the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's investigation,' he said, as 1,600 people erupted in a chant of 'Lock her up!'


See what kind of reporting is going to come from this latest development.






















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WATCH: Look What Happens When He Tries To Vote Republican… Media SILENT



On a tip from Ed Kilbane





“It’s not rigged,” they say.

“Voter fraud doesn’t exist,” they say.

“The voting machines are fine,” they say.

Well, “nope” is the proper answer to all of these. In a stomach-churning video, a man tries to vote for Republican Congressman Scott Rigell, but selects Democrat Suzanne Patrick each time — this happened in Virginia.

As per usual, the media is quiet as can be.




Watch the clip:






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Forget the polls


AI system finds Trump will win the White House and is more popular than Obama in 2008


An artificial intelligence (AI) system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House. 

MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, the founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions. 

The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democrat and Republican Primaries. 

Data such as engagement with tweets or Facebook Live videos have been taken into account. The result is that Trump has overtaken the engagement numbers of Barack Obama's peak in 2008 – the year he came into power – by 25 percent.


We have to rely on a computer because we can't trust the government or the MSM to tell us the truth. Pretty pathetic when Wikileaks has now become our source for news.




Rai said that his AI system shows that candidate in each election who had leading engagement data ended up winning the elections. 

"If Trump loses, it will defy the data trend for the first time in the last 12 years since Internet engagement began in full earnest," Rai wrote in a report sent to CNBC. 

Currently most national polls put Clinton and the Democrats ahead by a strong margin. Rai said his data shows that Clinton should not get complacent. 

But the entrepreneur admitted that there were limitations to the data in that sentiment around social media posts is difficult for the system to analyze. Just because somebody engages with a Trump tweet, it doesn't mean that they support him. Also there are currently more people on social media than there were in the three previous presidential elections. 

"If you look at the primaries, in the primaries, there were immense amount of negative conversations that happen with regards to Trump. However, when these conversations started picking up pace, in the final days, it meant a huge game opening for Trump and he won the Primaries with a good margin," Rai told CNBC in a phone interview. 

Using social media to predict outcomes of elections has become increasingly popular because of the amount of data available publically. In September, Nick Beauchamp, an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University, published a paper about his experiment applying AI to more than 100 million tweets in the 2012 election. He found that this closely mirrored the results seen in state-level polling. 

"These results provide not just a tool for generating surveylike data, but also a method for investigating how what people say and think reflects, and perhaps even affects, their vote intentions," Beauchamp said. 

Rai said that his system would be improved by more granular data. He said that If Google was to give him access to the unique internet addresses assigned to each digital device, then he could collect data on exactly what people were thinking. For example, Rai said if someone was searching for a YouTube video on how to vote, then looked for a video on how to vote for Trump, this could give the AI a good idea of the voter's intention. He added that there would be no privacy concerns as these internet addresses would be anonymized. 

"Granularity of data will determine progressively lesser bias despite the weightage of negative or positive conversations," Rai wrote in his report, explaining how to improve the system. 

MogIA is based on Mogli, the child from Rudyard Kipling's novel "Jungle Book". Rai said this is because his AI model learns from the environment. 

"While most algorithms suffer from programmers/developer's biases, MoglA aims at learning from her environment, developing her own rules at the policy layer and develop expert systems without discarding any data," Rai said.






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Thursday, October 27, 2016

Sources: Clinton emails would have been 'whitelisted' for Obama BlackBerry






By Catherine Herridge, Pamela K. Browne
Published October 26, 2016


President Obama’s high-security BlackBerry used a special process known as “whitelisting” that only allowed it to take calls and messages from pre-approved contacts, two former senior intelligence officials with knowledge of the set-up told Fox News – pointing to the detail as further proof the White House knew Hillary Clinton’s private account was used for government business. 

As the administration now acknowledges, Obama and Clinton emailed each other while she was helming the State Department. If received on his BlackBerry, the “whitelisting” safeguard means Clinton and other contacts would have had to be approved as secure for data transmission – covering everything from emails to texts to phone calls. The Obama BlackBerry would have also been configured to accept the communications. 

“Think of whitelisting like a bouncer in the VIP line at the party. If you are on the list you get in, if you are not, you get bounced to the pavement,” said Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer (CTO) for the DIA, and now a partner with strategic consulting and engineering firm Cognitio.

“Whitelisting happens by design. The IT professionals who whitelist devices at places like the White House only add the email addresses authorized by management. To do otherwise would be to violate policy in ways that could introduce threats to the system,” he added.

A second former intelligence official, who asked to speak on background, described the same process for the president’s BlackBerry, adding the timing is important. If clintonemail.com were “whitelisted” before March 2015, it would further undercut administration statements.

President Obama initially claimed in March 2015, when the details of Clinton’s secret server were first made public by the New York Times, that he only learned about the system from news reports, along with everyone else. Press Secretary Josh Earnest later walked that back, but maintained at the time that while Obama knew about Clinton’s email address, he was not aware of how the address and server had been set up. 

Remember this?





So we can expect the MSM to be all over this latest development right?






While there is a difference between a private server and email address, if the president's BlackBerry were configured to accept the Clinton address, it would have been clear to those handling the request that clintonemail.com was not a government account.

Both Gourley, and the second former intelligence official said typically these request comes from the White House Chief of Staff or a deputy, and are directed to the Secret Service and the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), which is a military unit assigned to the task.

Earnest dismissed questions Wednesday about their March 2015 statements. 

"The president's explanation in March of 2015 and my explanation of what the president knew in March of 2015 hasn't changed, and the truth is this is just critics of Secretary Clinton and President Obama recycling a conspiracy theory that has already been debunked," Earnest said.
  
(Debunked translated: Swept under the rug by the MSM)

Emails hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s account and posted by anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks have provided additional details about the problems Obama’s initial statements caused in March 2015. 

One of Clinton's top aides urged colleagues to "clean this up" after Obama claimed he only learned of Clinton's private email system from news reports. According to one March 7, 2015 email, Cheryl Mills challenged the president’s statement to CBS News. 

"We need to clean this up - he has emails from her - they do not say state.gov," Mills wrote to Podesta just before midnight.

In emails released by the State Department earlier this year, Mills also asked Lewis Lukens, who was the executive director of the State Department’s executive secretariat, about getting one of the highly secure BlackBerrys for then-Secretary Clinton. 

“so I have now read up more on POTUS bb which appears not really to be a bb but a different device) is there any solution to her being able to use encrypted bb like the NSA approved one he has in the vault, and if so, how can we get her one,” she wrote. The request was never granted.

Less than a month after Clinton became secretary of state, and the personal email domain that she would use exclusively for government business was registered, Hillary Clinton's team aggressively pursued changes to existing State Department security protocols so she could use her BlackBerry in secure facilities for classified information, according to new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

"Anyone who has any appreciation at all of security, you don't ask a question like that," cybersecurity analyst Morgan Wright told Fox News. "It is contempt for the system, contempt for the rules that are designed to protect the exact kind of information that was exposed through this email set up."




Current and former intelligence officials grimaced when asked by Fox News about the use of wireless communications devices, such as a BlackBerry, in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) -- emphasizing its use would defeat the purpose of the secure facility, and it is standard practice to leave all electronics outside. 

A former State Department employee familiar with the Clinton request emphasized security personnel at the time thought the BlackBerry was only for unclassified material, adding their concerns would have been magnified if they had known Clinton's email account also held classified material.

"When you allow devices like this into a SCIF, you can allow the bad guys to listen in," Wright added.

FBI records show that President Obama used at least one pseudonym to exchange emails with then Secretary of State Clinton. The State Department withheld eight email chains that totaled 18 messages between the president and Clinton which remain confidential under the Presidential communications privilege.

Why would he use a pseudonym unless he knew?



ViaVia: 

Asked if the President’s BlackBerry was configured to accept the clintonemail.com address, a spokesperson for the Secret Service referred questions to the White House Communications Agency and the White House Military Office. Fox News is attempting to follow up with both. 










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