Sunday, June 26, 2016

Clinton Email Scandal: Latest Batch Exposes Two Big New Problems For Hillary!

The latest batch of emails from Hillary Clinton's term as Secretary of State exposes two new troubling developments in the long-running scandal.
First, it turns out that Clinton managed to avoid turning over one key email, despite her repeated promises that she gave the State Department every single work-related email from her private email server. As the Associated Press reported, in the missing email, Clinton admits that her private setup was a problem.
"Let's get separate address or device but I don't want any risk of the personal being accessible," Clinton wrote to her deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. That was in response to an email from Abedin in November 2010, in which she advised Hillary that she should get on the state.gov email system or consider "releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam."
That exchange turned up only because it was in a batch of emails Abedin provided the government from her own private account. And it directly contradicts statements Clinton has made about the reason for her having a private setup, as well as her claim that she provided all her work-related emails.
Another email released this week reveals that State had set up an official government email account for Clinton to use, and then gives a clue as to why Clinton never used it.                              
"You should be aware," the email says, "that any email would go through the Department's infrastructure and subject to FOIA searches."
Meanwhile, other emails show that not only did Clinton's unsecured private email system risk exposing sensitive and at times highly classified information to outsiders, it forced the State Department to compromise its own security to accommodate her.
The new batch of emails was uncovered by Judicial Watch, which had asked for them to be released after a scathing inspector general report referenced them.
As the AP reports, "the emails ... show that the State Department technical staff disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses."
The staff members did so, the emails show, because "they were trying urgently to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Clinton's private server."
In one email, a senior technical official, Ken LaVolpe, told IT employees that "this should trump all other activities." The emails also describe the IT staff's frustration at trying to figure out what is blocking Clinton's emails.
Other emails uncovered by Judicial Watch highlight how vulnerable Clinton's email setup was to outages and attacks.
Clinton's tech person twice had to report that he had to shut down Clinton's private server because it was being hacked.  Another email notes that "clintonemail.com is down due to an outage with our ISP."  Clinton chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, says in another that "hrc email coming back -- is server OK?"
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton summed it all up by saying that "the emails show the Obama State Department gave special accommodations to Clinton's email system, which the agency knew was unsecure, was likely hacked and was not transparent under FOIA."
The State Department not only made "special accommodations," they put the security of their own communication systems at risk to appease Clinton's recklessness.

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