Hillary Clinton - Continued
Revelations About Massive Coverup of Incriminating Benghazi Files

In September 2014, former Deputy Secretary of State Raymond Maxwell reported that in late 2012 he had witnessed -- in the basement of the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters -- a Sunday meeting in which Cheryl Mills (Secretary of State Clinton’s chief of staff) and Jake Sullivan (Clinton's deputy chief of staff) were overseeing and directing staffers who were busy culling through boxes and purging documents that might implicate Clinton or her top people in the Benghazi attacks. "When he arrived," reported Fox News, "Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. His [Maxwell's] aide was also there, and though she worked for him, he [Maxwell] was not told of her Sunday file purging duties."

According to Maxwell: "She [the aide] told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light.’" ("Seventh floor" was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisers.) Added Maxwell: “I asked her [the aide], ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”

Following Maxwell's revelations, Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz said that Clinton’s team had clearly scrubbed documents before investigators could examine them. He told Fox News: "They were essentially creating two piles: The things the Accountability Review Board and that Congress would see and anything else that would shed quote ‘bad light’ on Hillary Clinton and her senior management that they were put in a different pile and they were never to be seen." Chaffetz also said that Maxwell had come to him and Congressman Trey Gowdy more than a year earlier to tell them the same story.

Criticizing Israel

Speaking at a forum at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC on December 7, 2012, Mrs. Clinton praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for having worked with her in 2009 toward a moratorium on building new Jewish settlements in the West Bank. She then said the following:

“I’m not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion. So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished.

“And I think that, unfortunately, there are more and more Israelis and Palestinians who just reject that idea out of hand: Why bother? Why try? We’ll never be able to reach an agreement with the other. But in the last 20 years, I’ve seen Israeli leaders make an honest, good-faith effort and not be reciprocated in the way that was needed.”
Clinton also criticized Israel’s newly announced plan to build 3,000 new housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank: “In light of today’s announcement, let me reiterate that this administration — like previous administrations — has been very clear with Israel that these activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace.”

Reports of Immense Sums of Financial-Aid Dollars to Afghanistan Squandered Because of Obama/Clinton Policy

On April 20, 2014, The Washington Times reported that according to internal government documents, "top officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development repeatedly cited former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for setting into motion a policy to waive restrictions on who could receive U.S. aid in Afghanistan, resulting in millions of dollars in U.S. funds going directly into the coffers of Afghan ministries known to be rife with corruption." Added the Times:

References to Mrs. Clinton’s role in the policy first appeared in a November 2012 USAID action memo, which outlined how U.S. officials made a “strategic foreign-assistance decision” two years earlier to provide “at least 50 percent of U.S. Government assistance directly to the” Afghan government.

The decision was “reaffirmed by Secretary of State Clinton” in July 2010, according to the memo, which highlighted her actions as justification for why USAID should waive an internal policy that otherwise would have required the agency to first assess the risk that such “direct assistance” might be lost to fraud, waste or outright theft.

USAID conducted such assessments anyway in recent years and reached sobering conclusions about the overall effects of billions of dollars that the U.S. has spent on nation building in Afghanistan....

A report by the Government Accountability Office [GAO] in July 2011 asserted that Washington “more than tripled its awards of direct assistance to Afghanistan” about the time the USAID memo says Mrs. Clinton was pushing the policy.

The GAO report claimed that, despite concerns over whether the funds would be used “as intended,” total direct assistance from the Defense Department to the Afghan Defense and Interior ministries “grew from about $195 million in fiscal year 2009 to about $576 million in fiscal year 2010.” With regard to USAID, the GAO report said the agency’s “direct assistance” grew from roughly $470 million in 2009 to more than $1.4 billion in 2010....

Potentially more striking, however, is the manner in which USAID’s scathing ministry assessments point to the actions of Mrs. Clinton as a main justification for why the agency channels money directly to ministries known to have management and accountability problems.

A “Background” section at the opening of each assessment includes similar language to that used in USAID’s November 2012 action memo, asserting that the Obama administration made a “public strategic foreign-assistance decision” in 2010 that was later “reaffirmed” by Mrs. Clinton.

Under normal circumstances, USAID officials wrote in documents, the flow of American funds directly into a foreign government’s coffers “must not be authorized” if there is “clear evidence of vulnerabilities to corruption and the partner country government fails to respond or agree to appropriate risk mitigation remedy measures.”

But, the officials wrote, the Obama administration’s policy and Mrs. Clinton’s reaffirmation of it at a July 2010 conference in Kabul replaced the requirement that USAID adhere to an internal guideline known as ADS 220, which would have demanded that the agency assess risks associated with giving money directly to the Afghans.

Resigns As Secretary of State

On February 1, 2013, Mrs. Clinton stepped down from her post as Secretary of State, saying that she looked forward to getting away from the pressures of government life. She was replaced by U.S. Senator John Kerry.

Assessing Clinton's Performance as Secretary of State

By the end of Mrs. Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, America's relations with Russia, Israel, most of Europe, and virtually every Muslim-majority nation in the Middle East haddeteriorated significantly.

Indeed, a March 2013 Gallup poll (measuring attitudes across 130 countries) indicated that the international perception of American leadership had fallen to its lowest point since the start of the Obama administration. The median worldwide approval rate for U.S. leadership was just 41%, down from 49% in 2009. According to The Hill: “The declines were driven primarily by souring opinions of the United States in Europe and Africa.” Among the more noteworthy reults: approval rates were just 13% in Russia, 17% in Egypt, 34% in Spain, 36% in Poland, 37% in France, and 38% in Taiwan.

Mrs. Clinton's Self-Assessment of Her Performance as Secretary of State

On April 3, 2014, Hillary Clinton spoke at the Women of the World Summit in New York City and was asked, by the moderator of the event, the following: “When you look at your time as Secretary of State, what are you most proud of? And what do you feel was unfinished, and maybe have another crack at one day?” In her reply, Clinton was unable to provide any specifics regarding what she had achieved:

“Look, I really see my role as Secretary, in fact leadership in general in a democracy, as a relay race. When you run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton. Some of what hasn’t been finished may go on to be finished, so when President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State, I agreed.

“We had the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we had two wars. We had continuing threats from all kinds of corners around the world that we had to deal with. So it was a perilous time frankly. What he [Obama] said to me was, ‘Look, I have to be dealing with the economic crisis, I want you to go out and represent us around the world.’ And it was a good division of labor because we needed to make it clear to the rest of the world, that we were going to get our house in order. We were going to stimulate, and grow, and get back to positive growth and work with our friends and partners.

“So I think we did that. I’m very proud of the stabilization and the really solid leadership that the administration provided that I think now, leads us to be able to deal with problems like Ukraine because we’re not so worried about a massive collapse in Europe and China — trying to figure out [what] to do with all their bond holdings and all the problems we were obsessed with. I think we really restored American leadership in the best sense. That, once again — people began to rely on us as setting the values, setting the standards. I just don’t want to lose that because we have a dysfunctional political situation in Washington. Then of course, a lot of particulars, but I am finishing my book so you’ll be able to read all about it.”
Endorsing Bill de Blasio for NYC Mayor

In 2013, Mrs. Clinton endorsed the New York City mayoral candidacy of far-left DemocratBill de Blasio. Hillary and Bill Clinton both attended de Blasio's swearing-in ceremony as New York City mayor on January 1, 2014.

The Trayvon Martin Killing

In July 2013, Mrs. Clinton reacted passionately when George Zimmerman, a "white Hispanic" neighborhood-watch captain in Sanford, Florida was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges connected to a February 26, 2012 incident in which he had shot and killed a 17-year-old African American named Trayvon Martin in self-defense. Speaking at the 51st annual convention of the black sorority group Delta Sigma Theta, Clinton said: “My prayers are with the Martin family and with every family who loves someone who is lost to violence. No mother, no father, should ever have to fear for their child walking down a street in the United States of America.” Adding that the jury verdict had “brought heartache, deep painful heartache” to many people, she stated: “As we move forward as we must, I hope this sisterhood will continue to be a force for justice and understanding.”

The Voting Rights Act

During the same Delta Sigma Theta speech (in July 2013), Mrs. Clinton denounced the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.


  • Section 5 relegated a number of mostly Southern states and localities to second-class status by presuming that they were too corrupt and racist to administer elections fairly, and thus requiring their governments to get approval (called "pre-clearance") from the Justice Department or a federal court before making changes in their voting procedures. Changes could include such things as relocating a polling place, reconfiguring district lines in a county, or instituting Voter ID laws. To obtain pre-clearance, a state, county, or local government entity was required to demonstrate to federal authorities that the voting change in question did not have a racially discriminatory purpose, and would not have a disparate impact on nonwhites.
  • Section 4 of the Act laid down the criteria under which states and localities were covered by the statute. Initially, the section covered jurisdictions that: (a) had maintained “a test or device” -- e.g., literacy and knowledge tests, good moral character requirements, or the need for vouchers from registered voters -- as a prerequisite to voting as of November 1, 1964, and (b) had experienced a less-than-50% voter registration or turnout in the 1964 presidential election.


Lamenting that the Voting Rights Act was now in “real jeopardy,” Mrs. Clinton said: “The Supreme Court struck at the heart of the Voting Rights Act. For more than four decades this law has helped overcome constitutional barriers to voting. Again and again it has demonstrated its essential role in protecting our freedoms.... [The Supreme Court decision is] going to make it difficult for poor people, elderly people, minority people and working people to do what we should be able to take for granted.”

Striking a similar theme the following month, Clinton told a meeting of the American Bar Association: “In 2013, so far, more than 80 bills restricting voting rights have been introduced in 31 states.” These were generally bills calling for Voter ID requirements at polling places, shortening early-voting periods, eliminating same-day voter registration, and preventing the arbitrary extension of voting hours. Clinton charged that North Carolina’s new electoral integrity law -- which instituted precisely those four provisions -- “reads like the greatest hits of voter suppression.” Such measures, she lamented, were part of a Jim Crow-like effort to “disproportionately impact African-Americans, Latino and young voters” -- i.e., to disenfranchise those groups. Added Clinton: "[A]nyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention." Moreover, she described threat of voter fraud (in the absence of Voter ID requirements) as a "phantom epidemic."[19]

Clinton Says Freed Taliban Terrorists Pose No Threat to Americans

In a June 2014 interview, Mrs. Clinton was asked to comment on the potential consequences of a deal in which the Obama administration had recently freed five senior Taliban commanders and high-value terrorists who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, in exchange for the release of Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who had deserted the military in 2009 and spent the next five years with the Taliban. Said Clinton:

"These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody."

"We Cannot Let a Minority of People Hold a Viewpoint that Terrorizes the Majority of People"

On June 17, 2014, Mrs. Clinton held a staged townhall meeting on CNN television. At one point in the proceedings, the subject turned to the Second Amendment, gun rights, and the National Rifle Association. Said Clinton: "We cannot let a minority of people hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people." Bryan Preston of PJ Media noted that in that statement, Clinton had "directly assaulted the First and Second Amendments simultaneously."

The Clintons' Immense Wealth

One of the more lucrative activities Mrs. Clinton pursued after leaving the State Department was public speaking, for which she earned approximately $200,000 per speech. In many cases, the contracts Clinton signed prior to making these speeches gave her the authority to approve or reject virtually every element of the proceedings. For example, her contract for a 2014 speech at SUNY-Buffalo stipulated that Mrs. Clinton had to be "the only person on stage during her remarks"; specifically demanded the provision of a "presidential glass panel teleprompter"; gave Clinton the exclusive right to approve "sets, backdrops, banners, scenery, logos, [and] settings"; gave her "sole discretion" over the content of her talk; stated that she "may elect to reschedule or cancel her appearance ... for any reason whatsoever and at any time prior to the engagement"; awarded her 20 complimentary VIP tickets and a university-paid stenographer -- at a price of $1,000 -- solely for her personal records; authorized her speaking agency to veto any potential question-and-answer moderators; and allowed only those moderators -- never members of the audience -- to address Mrs. Clinton directly.

As of mid-2014, Bill and Hillary Clinton's combined net worth was estimated at somewhere between $100 million and $200 million. Among other things, they had earned anywhere from $31 million to $37 million in advance payments for books they had authored since 2003. And, as noted above, Mrs. Clinton routinely earned $200,000 per speech after resigning as Secretary of State. Mr. Clinton, for his part, had earned $106 million in speaker's fees between 2001 and 2013, including $17 million for 72 speeches he gave in 2012 alone; he once charged $750,000 for a single speech.

The Clintons spent this money lavishly. During the summers of 2011 through 2013, for instance, they rented out extremely expensive homes in the Hamptons for their family vacations. One example: The Clintons paid $200,000 per day to rent out a six-bedroom, $11 million mansion in the summer of 2013.

In a June 2014 interview with Britain's Guardian newspaper, Mrs. Clinton was asked whether her condemnation of income inequality in the United States was credible, given her immense wealth. According to the Guardian, Mrs. Clinton emitted a "burst of laughter" and said she found the question "painful." She then answered the question as follows: "But they [Americans] don’t see me as part of the problem, because we [the Clintons] pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work."

A Longtime Supporter of High Estate Taxes, Hillary and Bill Seek to Minimize Their Own

In June 2014, Bloomberg News revealed that Hillary and Bill Clinton's rhetoric in favor of high estate tax rates for the wealthy was entirely inconsistent with their own personal money-management activities. First, some background:

In her failed 2008 presidential run, Mrs. Clinton spoke out in favor of requiring wealthier people pay a higher estate tax by capping the per-person exemption at $3.5 million and setting the top rate at 45 percent. During one campaign stop, she fielded a question from a woman who opposed Clinton's plan to pay for universal retirement accounts by freezing the estate tax at a high level. The woman explained that inherited money had already been taxed when it was earned, and that it should not be taxed again simply to fund Mrs. Clinton's program. In response, Clinton said that high estate taxes were actually consistent with traditional American values:

"People disagree about this, but the estate tax, which came into being by Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and others, and has been part of our tax system for a very long time is there for a real simple reason: In America, we’ve never liked the idea of massive inherited wealth. Part of the reason why America has always remained a meritocracy where you have to work for what you get, where you have to get out there, make your case to people, come up with a good idea, is that we never had a class of people sitting on generation after generation after generation of huge inherited wealth."

During a presidential debate in 2007, Mrs. Clinton expanded upon the theme that "tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans" were unjust. She explained, for example, that tax revenues from the wealthy were vital to the government, which "should be investing [those revenues] in new energy" and "should be investing in college affordability, universal pre-K …”

Against this backdrop came Bloomberg News' report on June 17, 2014:

"Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it. To reduce the tax pinch, the Clintons are using financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth. These moves, common among multimillionaires, will help shield some of their estate from the tax that now tops out at 40 percent of assets upon death. The Clintons created residence trusts in 2010 and shifted ownership of their New York house into them in 2011, according to federal financial disclosures and local property records.

"Among the tax advantages of such trusts is that any appreciation in the house’s value can happen outside their taxable estate. The move could save the Clintons hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes, said David Scott Sloan, a partner at Holland & Knight LLP in Boston. 'The goal is [to] really be thoughtful and try to build up the nontaxable estate, and that’s really what this is,' Sloan said. 'You’re creating things that are going to be on the nontaxable side of the balance sheet when they die.'"

Rationalizing Why Hamas Hides Missiles in Civilian Areas

In a late July 2014 interview, Fusion TV news anchor Jorge Ramos asked Hillary Clinton about the then-raging conflict in Gaza, where Israel was conducting a military operation designed to degrade Hamas's capacity to launch deadly missiles into Israel. When Ramos asked Clinton if she thought that Israel had responded "disproportionately" or "appropriate[ly]," Clinton did not answer directly. She said that "Hamas, which has its back against the wall, decided to once again fire rockets into Israel"; that "Israel has a right to self-defense, but I and everybody who is seeing these terrible pictures on our TV hope there can be a ceasefire"; and that Hamas was hiding rockets in civilian facilities -- at least in part -- because there were few other options, due to Gaza's limited geographic size. Said Mrs. Clinton:

"I'm not a military planner but Hamas puts its missiles, its rockets in civilian areas, part of it is that Gaza is pretty small and it's very densely populated, they put their command and control of Hamas military leaders in those civilian areas."

Revelation That Mrs. Clinton and Her State Department Were Responsible for Enabling Hamas to Build Terror Tunnels in Gaza

In the summer of 2014, Israel engaged in a massive military operation designed to weaken the destructive capacity of Hamas terrorists who were launching more than 100 potentially deadly missiles per day from Gaza, deep into Israel. In the course of that military incursion, Israel discovered that Hamas, in recent years, had constructed a massive network of at least 60 underground missile storage-and-transport tunnels throughout Gaza. A number of those tunnels extended, underground, into Israeli territory -- for the purpose of launching terror attacks, murders, and kidnappings aginst unsuspecting Israeli citizens. According to a Wall Street Journal report quoting Israeli military officials, Hamas had spent between $1 million and $10 million to build each of those tunnels, using as many as 350 truckloads of cement and other supplies per tunnel. To frame it another way, the materials used for each tunnel could have built 86 homes, or 19 medical clinics, or seven mosques, or six schools. But Hamas had other priorities.

Then, in a bombshell revelation in August 2014, Dennis Ross, the senior Mideast policy adviser to Secretary of State Clinton from 2009-2011, admitted that it was he who had been assigned the task of pressuring Israel to ease up on its military blockade of Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal from that region in 2005. “I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built,” Ross revealed in theWashington Post. “They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.” Ross’s admission showed that it was Clinton who had sent her personal envoy to push for a policy that ultimately enabled Hamas to build the terror tunnels.

Not that Mrs. Clinton's State Department had been acting independently of the White House on the issue of cement. For example, Vice President Joe Biden had told interviewer Charlie Rose, on Bloomberg TV in 2010: “We have put as much pressure and as much cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them to get building materials” and other forbidden items into Gaza.

U.S. Taxpayers Spend $55,000 on Hillary's Book Tour Expenses in a Single Month

In August 2014 The Daily Mail reported that during the previous month, the U.S. federal government had spent more than $55,000 on travel expenses related to Mrs. Clinton's book tour (for her newly published Hard Choices). Among these expenses were a $3,668 charge for a single night's lodging in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons George V Hotel in Paris; another $35,183 for lodging in Paris; $11,291 for Secret Service protection in Paris; and a $5,100 rental fee for three Mercedes-Benz executive limousine vans during one day in Berlin. Hotel costs for Clinton's stay in the German capital were not known to The Daily Mail. Tim Miller, executive director of the America Rising PAC, said: "Hillary's book tour through Europe was a fiscal double whammy -- lining her pockets with outrageous speaking fees [typically over $200,000 per appearance] and billing the taxpayers for thousands in travel."

Hillary Denies That "Businesses Create Jobs"

Appearing at an October 2014 Boston rally for Democrat gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley, Mrs. Clinton told listeners not to give credence to the notion that “businesses create jobs.” “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses create jobs,” she said, adding: “You know that old theory, ‘trickle-down economics. That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

Chelsea Clinton Indicates That Her Parents Have Never Cared About Money, and That They View the Public Sector as Superior to the Private Sector

In a November 2014 interview with Katie Couric, Hillary Clinton's daughter Chelsea indicated not only that her parents had little interest in money, but also that they understood little about the private sector. Moreover, she gave voice to her parents' belief that the public sector is much better-equipped than the private sector to help needy people. Said Chelsea: “I certainly spent my twenties rebelling, for me, by working in the private sector and trying really hard to care about things that my parents didn't care about. And I'm grateful for those years that I spent, because I learned things I hadn't learned around my dinner table. But ultimately I am my parents' daughter, and I ultimately cared most about what they cared most about -- enabling people to have better lives through our energies and our efforts than thay otherwise would have.

"Black Lives Matter"

In December 2014, Mrs. Clinton spoke out about two recent, high-profile cases where white police officers had been involved in altercations with black suspects who died as a result:


  • One incident occurred on August 9, when a white officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, a black male who had forcibly robbed a convenience store in a St. Louis suburb (Ferguson, Missouri) just 10 minutes before his death.
  • The other incident occurred on July 17, when a 43-year old African American named Eric Garner died in Staten Island, New York, after having resisted several white police officers' efforts to arrest him for illegally selling “loosies,” single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. One of the officers at the scene put his arms around the much taller Garner's neck and took him down to the ground with a headlock/chokehold. While lying facedown on the sidewalk surrounded by four officers, Garner repeatedly said, "I can't breathe." A black female NYPD sergeant supervised the entire altercation and never ordered that officer to release the hold. Garner was pronounced dead approximately an hour later at a local hospital. City medical examiners subsequently concluded that he had died as a result of an interplay between the police officer’s hold and Garner’s multiple chronic infirmities, which included bronchial asthma, heart disease, obesity, and hypertensive cardiovascular disease.


Both of these incidents gained national publicity and sparked massive anti-police protests in cities across the United States, where demonstrators chanted such slogans as "Black Lives Matter," and "Hands Up, Don't Shoot."

While receiving an award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights at a December 16th gala in New York City, Hillary said: "Yes, black lives matter." Wondering aloud what Kennedy would say about "the thousands of Americans marching in our streets demanding justice for all" and "the mothers who've lost their sons," she added: "What would he say to all those who have lost trust in our government and our other institutions, who shudder at images of excessive force, who read reports about torture done in the name of our country, who see too many representatives in Washington quick to protect a big bank from regulation but slow to take action to help working families facing ever greater pressure?"

Scandal of the Clinton Foundation's Foreign Donors

In an effort to prevent foreign governments, organizations, and individuals from influencing the policy decisions of American national leaders, campaign-finance laws prohibit U.S. political candidates from accepting money from such sources. But as the Washington Postnoted in February 2015, the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation “has given donors a way [i.e., an avenue by which] to potentially gain favor with the Clintons outside the traditional political [donation] limits.” Most notably, as of February 2015, foreign sourcesaccounted for about one third of all donors who had given the Clinton Foundation more than $1 million, and over half of those who had contributed more than $5 million to the Foundation.

While all donations from foreign sources raised ethical red flags, contributions that were made during Mrs. Clinton's tenure (2009-13) as Secretary of State may have been even more significant, given the possibility that such funds could have been used to buy immediate political influence.

For details about these foreign donors and the implications of their contributions to the Foundation, click here.


Clinton's Improper Use of Personal, Rather Than Government, Email Account

In March 2015, it was reported that throughout her entire four-year tenure as Secretary of State (SOS), Mrs. Clinton had never acquired or used a government email account, and instead had transmitted -- in violation of government regulations -- all of her official government correspondences via a personal email address that she registered on the very same day as her confirmation hearings for SOS began. The personal email address --hdr22@clintonemail.com -- traced back to a private email server which was housed inside Mrs. Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York. That server was registered under the namesof: (a) "Eric Hothem," the same aide who, at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, had wrongfully carted off furniture from the White House, claiming that it was "Clinton’s personal property"; and (b) Justin Cooper, another former Clinton staffer.

On March 4, 2015, the Daily Mail reported: "Jonathan Mayer, a PhD candidate in computer science & law lecturer at Stanford University, said that Mrs. Clinton may have told her Internet service provider that she was starting a small business to allow her to set up the server. He said that Internet companies like Time Warner are wary about allowing individuals to do so as they might be hackers looking to send spam."

Following the revelations regarding Mrs. clinton's emails, author and columnist Ben Shapiroobserved: "In other words, Hillary knew she would be secretary of state conducting official business, and coincidentally opened a private email account at the same time to guard her from Freedom of Information Act requests." Matt Devost, the president & CEO of the global cybersecurity firm FusionX, told Bloomberg News that by maintaining her own server, Clinton had the ability to wipe all of her data without a trace. "You erase it and everything’s gone," said Devost.

The circumstances under which Mrs. Clinton's wrongful use of the personal email account first came to light, were not entirely clear. Some news reports indicated that Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett had leaked the story to the press, in retribution for what she viewed as Mrs. Clinton's political disloyalty to president.

Other reports said that the revelations grew out of a House Committee probe into the Benghazi terrorist attacks of September 11, 2012. The New York Times explained in March 2015: "As State Department lawyers sifted last summer through a new batch of documents related to the Benghazi attacks, they repeatedly saw something that caught their attention: emails sent to and from a personal account for Hillary Rodham Clinton. The lawyers, according to current and former State Department officials, were working to respond to a request from a specially appointed House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Libya. But they noticed that among the 15,000 documents they examined, there were no emails to or from an official departmental account for Mrs. Clinton. 'This all raised the question to us: What else are we missing, and what do we need to comply' with the request, said one official briefed on the matter."

But Clinton and her advisors deceptively stated that the revelation about the former SOS's emails had arisen in response to a mundane State Department request (in October 2014)—as part of a Department initiative to find ways to improve its own record keeping. Clinton claimed that all former secretaries dating back to the late 1990s had been asked to turn over records of all their correspondences -- not under a cloud of suspicion or scandal, but merely as part of an effort to improve transparency.

Rather than comply with the demand that all of Clinton's emails be turned over to the state Department and, in turn, the House Committee investigating Benghazi, Clinton's advisersreviewed her emails and decided which ones to make available and which ones to delete. According to Clinton, she and her staff deleted more than 30,000 of the emails in question, calling them "personal" and not "work-related."

In response to the disclosures regarding Mrs. Clinton's four-year breach of protocol and regulations, National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton said, “Personal emails are not secure. Senior officials should not be using them.” Jason Baron, ex-director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, said that Clinton's transgression was “inconceivable,” adding: “It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario—short of nuclear winter—where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level-head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business. I can recall no instance … when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business.” The use of such an email address would effectively shield her from subsequent Freedom of Information Act requests.Ari Fleischer, who served as White House spokesman under George W. Bush, told Newsmax TV he was certain that foreign agents had routinely read Mrs. Clinton's emails dealing with sensitive government business. "If it's done from a personal account, I guarantee you China, Russia and Iran have them." Asked if Mrs. Clinton had violated federal law, Fleischer replied: "If you or I get subpoenaed, we have no choice, we turn everything over. You're not supposed to have a team around you who decides what you turn over, what you don't and what people are told exist and what doesn't exist. The sleaziness of this aside and the fact that you have a government official who is doing business in the way that was designed to hide their business, there's another issue here that is terribly serious.... If it's a personal email, it's simple for it to get hacked by a foreign adversary. Think of a Secretary of State for every day that she's in office, is cc'ing Iran, Russia, China and other adversaries on every single email that she sends and every one that she receives."Clinton's use of a personal email account for her State Department business was in direct contradiction to a 2011 State Department cable in which, citing security concerns, she had instructed Department employees to “avoid conducting official Department from your personal e-mail accounts.”Clinton's effort to keep all of her emails private was particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that she had previously -- during her days as First Lady -- gone on record saying that she tried not to leave any sort of paper trail, given the possibility that anything she wrote might one day be subpoenaed. Indeed, in a 1996 interview with Jim Lehrer of PBS, Clinton made it explicitly and emphatically clear that she avoided documenting official White House business in writing, for that very reason:

LEHRER: “Are you keeping a diary, [are] you keeping good notes of what’s happening?”
CLINTON (laughing): “Heavens no! It would get subpoenaed! I can't write anything down.”
After remaining silent on the email issue for several days, Mrs. Clinton addressed it for the first time on March 10, 2015, in a hastily arranged press conference at the United Nations. There, she claimed that her reason for having used a personal email account was that she found it “easier,” “better,” “simpler” and more convenient to “carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.” “Looking back, “ she added, “it would've been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts. I thought using one device would be simpler and, obviously, it hasn't worked out that way.”

But in an interview at the Silicon Valley Conference for Women just two weeks earlier, Mrs. Clinton had told Re/code’s Kara Swisher that she carried more than one device with her:

SWISHER: “I want to ask the big question: iPhone or Android?”
CLINTON: “iPhone. OK, in full disclosure –”
SWISHER: “BlackBerry?”
CLINTON: “And a BlackBerry.” (Later in the conversation, Clinton said, “I don’t throw anything away, I’m like two steps short of a hoarder. So I have, you know, an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and blackberry.”)

Also at the March 10 press conference, Mrs. Clinton explained that she had decided which emails were of a “personal” nature and discarded them, before sending the rest to the State Department: “[A]fter I left office, the State Department asked former secretaries of state for our assistance in providing copies of work- related emails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totalled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work- related emails and deliver them to the State Department. At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails — emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes. No one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy.”

Below are the transcripts of a few exchanges Clinton had with reporters at the press conference:

QUESTION: Can you explain how you decided which of the personal e-mails to get rid of, how you got rid of them and when?...

CLINTON: … In going through the e-mails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. About half [i.e., approximately 30,000 emails] were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work. I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision because the federal guidelines are clear and the State Department request was clear. For any government employee, it is that government employee’s responsibility to determine what’s personal and what’s work-related. I am very confident of the process that we conducted and the e-mails that were produced.

QUESTION: Did you or any of your aides delete any government- related e-mails from your personal account? And what lengths are you willing to go to to prove that you didn’t? Some people, including supporters of yours, have suggested having an independent arbiter look at your server, for instance.

CLINTON: We did not. In fact, my direction to conduct the thorough investigation was to err on the side of providing anything that could be possibly viewed as work related.... The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private and I think that the State Department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that were provided. (NOTE: In other words, she refused to turn over the server to authorities. Moreover, her reference to “personal communications from my husband and me” contadict's Mr. Clinton's earlier claim that he had sent a grand total of only two emails in his entire life, both during his days as president.)

QUESTION: Madam Secretary.... This wasn’t Gmail or Yahoo or something. This was a server that you owned. Is that appropriate? Is it — was there any precedent for it? Did you clear it with any State Department security officials? And do they have — did they have full access to it when you were secretary?...

CLINTON: Well, the system we used was set up for President Clinton’s office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches. (NOTE: The Secret Service has nothing to do with protecting email accounts from hackers.)

QUESTION: Were you ever — were you ever specifically briefed on the security implications of using — using your own email server and using your personal address to email with the president?

CLINTON: I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material. (NOTE: In response to this claim by Clinton, a former senior State Department official who served before the Obama administration said: “I would assume that more than 50 percent of what the secretary of state dealt with was classified. Was every single email of the secretary of state completely unclassified? Maybe, but it’s hard to imagine.”)

Another major question related to Mrs. Clinton's email scandal was whether or not she had signed an exit statement (Form OF-109) from the State Department affirming that she had turned over all public information to the government. (All high-ranking government officials are required -- when they come into office -- to sign a statement ensuring that 100% of their government-related records will remain with the government, and when the officials leave office, they sign an exit statement (OF-109) affirming that they have complied with this requirement.) When Fox News reporter Ed Henry asked Clinton (on March 16, 2015) if she had signed the exit statement, the former SOS merely waved while walking quickly past Henry and said, “Hi everybody, nice to see you.” At a press briefing that same day, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked the same question and replied: "I don't have an update on this … We're still working on it." This was at least the third time in a week that Psaki had been asked whether Clinton had signed the exit statement. Finally, on March 17, Psaki said, “[W]e have reviewed Secretary Clinton’s official personal file and administrative files and do not have any record of her signing any of the 0F-109.”

On March 23, 2015, Mrs. Clinton unveiled a new strategy for dealing with the email scandal: she publicly joked about it. Speaking at a political journalism awards ceremony at Syracuse University, she said: "I am well aware that some of you may be a little surprised to see me here tonight. You know my relationship with the press has been at times, shall we say, complicated.... But I am all about new beginnings. A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account -- why not a new relationship with the press? So here goes. No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy -- after all, what good does that do me? But first of all, before I go any further, if you look under your chairs, you’ll find a simple non-disclosure agreement. My attorneys drew it up. Old habits ... last."

Also in March 2015, the House select committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, subpoenaed Mrs. Clinton's server, asking her to hand it over to a third party that could determine which emails were personal and which were government records. But on March 27, Clinton lawyer David Kendall told the committee that the server no longer contained copies of any emails Clinton had sent during her time in office. According to the New York Times: "After her representatives determined which emails were government-related and which were private, a setting on the account was changed to retain only emails sent in the previous 60 days, her lawyer ... said. He said the setting was altered after she gave the records to the government."

The House committee’s chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, complained: “Not only was the secretary the sole arbiter of what was a public record, she also summarily decided to delete all emails from her server, ensuring no one could check behind her analysis in the public interest.” Added Gowdy:

“After seeking and receiving a two-week extension from the Committee, Secretary Clinton failed to provide a single new document to the subpoena issued by the Committee and refused to provide her private server to the Inspector General for the State Department or any other independent arbiter for analysis. We learned today, from her attorney, [that] Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server. While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department.”

On March 30, 2015, it was learned that in fact Mrs. Clinton -- contrary to her claim that she preferred to conduct all her email correspondences via a single device -- had actually emailed her staff on an iPad as well as a BlackBerry during her time as secretary of state.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDACY
Hillary Announces Her Presidential Campaign

In a video announcing her candidacy on April 12, 2015, Mrs. Clinton said:
“Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion. So you can do more than just get by, you can get ahead and stay ahead, because when families are strong, America is strong.”
Hillary Lies About the Immigration Status of Her Grandparents

During an April 16, 2015 talk in Norwalk, Iowa, in which she promoted the idea that immigrants had always come to the United States in pursuit of economic opportunity, Mrs. Clinton repeated a claim she had made in a 2014 speech as well – that all four of her grandparents had immigrated to the United States. Said Clinton:

“We are turning down people [immigrants] who really want to work. I mean, they are here to work. And a lot of them now have children who are American citizens and they are doing the best they can to try to make a good life for themselves and their families. And you know, I think if we were to just go around this room, there are a lot of immigrant stories. All my grandparents, you know, came over here, and you know my grandfather went to work in a lace mill in Scranton, Pennsylvania and worked there until he retired at 65.... So I sit here and I think, well, you’re talking about the second, third generation. That’s me, that’s you. And we are saying to all these other people who want the same dreams and the same aspirations and the willingness to work hard just like our families did that no, we’re not going to make it easy for you, we’re not going to make it legal for you. And I just think that’s such a short term, unfortunate outcome for us and well as for you.”
But in fact, only one of Mrs. Clinton's grandparents – her paternal grandfather, Hugh Rodham Sr. – was born outside outside of the United States (in England). Her paternal grandmother was born in Pennsylvania in 1882; her maternal grandmother was born in Illinois in 1902; and her maternal grandfather was born in Illinois in 1918.

In an effort to subsequently explain away Mrs. Clinton's lie, her spokesperson said that “her [Clinton's] grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result, she has always thought of them as immigrants.”

Pledging to "Topple" the Top 1 Percent

During her first week as a 2016 presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton spoke of the wealthy and powerful, saying: “The deck is stacked in their favor. My job is to reshuffle the cards.” She spoke about the importance of "toppling” of the wealthiest 1 percent.

Depicting Women As Victims of a Sexist Society

In an April 23, 2015 speech at the "Women in the World" summit in New York City, Mrs. Clinton emphasized the need to overhaul “religious beliefs” in order to protect women's rights to birth control, abortion and "health care." She also spoke of the need to help illegal-immigrant woment become U.S. citizens, and of how women are victimized by widespread discrimination in the workplace. Asserting that "far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth," she stated that "deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed" in order to give women full access to "reproductive health care and safe childbirth." Defending illegal immigrants, she impugned “those who offer themselves as leaders who would deport mothers working to give their children a better life, rather than risk the ire of talk radio.... We move forward when women who came to this country in search of a better life can earn a path to citizenship." She also derided the Christian-run company Hobby Lobby for waging a legal battle designed to evade the Obamacare mandate that would have forced the company to provide its employees with health insurance that covered the costs of contraception and abortifacients. "There are those who offer themselves as leaders," said Clinton, "… who see nothing wrong with denying women equal pay, who offer themselves as leaders who would de-fund the country’s leading provider of family planning [a reference to Planned Parenthood, America's leading abortion mill] and want to let health insurance companies once again charge women [for abortifacients] just because of our gender.”

Clinton Demands an End to "Mass Incarceration" of Blacks; Calls for Criminal-Justice Reforms

In April 2015, as the city of Baltimore was being overrun by black riots in response to the death of a black criminal suspect while he was in police custody, Mrs. Clinton -- in a keynote speech at the David N. Dinkins Leadership & Public Policy Forum, took the occasion to call for an end to "mass incarceration," and for reforms to the criminal-justice system. Her remarks included the following:

[Y]et again, the family of a young black man is grieving a life cut short. Yet again, the streets of an American city are marred by violence. By shattered glass and shouts of anger and shows of force. Yet again a community is reeling, its fault lines laid bare and its bonds of trust and respect frayed. Yet again, brave police officers have been attacked in the line of duty. What we’ve seen in Baltimore should, indeed does, tear at our soul.

And, from Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable.
Walter Scott shot in the back in Charleston, South Carolina. Unarmed. In debt. And terrified of spending more time in jail for child support payments he couldn’t afford.

Tamir Rice shot in a park in Cleveland, Ohio. Unarmed and just 12 years old.
Eric Garner choked to death after being stopped for selling cigarettes on the streets of this city.
And now Freddie Gray. His spine nearly severed while in police custody.
Not only as a mother and a grandmother but as a citizen, a human being, my heart breaks for these young men and their families.
We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.
There is something profoundly wrong when African American men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than are meted out to their white counterparts.
There is something wrong when a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes. And an estimated 1.5 million black men are “missing” from their families and communities because of incarceration and premature death.
There is something wrong when more than one out of every three young black men in Baltimore can’t find a job.
There is something wrong when trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve breaks down as far as it has in many of our communities.
We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance. And these recent tragedies should galvanize us to come together as a nation to find our balance again....
[L]et’s remember that everyone in every community benefits when there is respect for the law and when everyone in every community is respected by the law. That is what we have to work towards in Baltimore and across our country....
We must urgently begin to rebuild the bonds of trust and respect among Americans.... The inequities that persist in our justice system undermine this shared vision of what America can be and should be.
I learned this firsthand as a young attorney just out of law school... Then, as director of the University of Arkansas School of Law’s legal aid clinic, I advocated on behalf of prison inmates and poor families. I saw repeatedly how our legal system can be and all too often is stacked against those who have the least power, who are the most vulnerable.
I saw how families could be and were torn apart by excessive incarceration. I saw the toll on children growing up in homes shattered by poverty and prison....
We also have to be honest about the gaps that exist across our country, the inequality that stalks our streets. Because you cannot talk about smart policing and reforming the criminal justice system if you also don’t talk about what’s needed to provide economic opportunity, better educational chances for young people, more support to families so they can do the best jobs they are capable of doing to help support their own children....
The second area where we need to chart a new course is how we approach punishment and prison.
It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago, despite the fact that crime is at historic lows.
Of the more than 2 million Americans incarcerated today, a significant percentage are low-level offenders: people held for violating parole or minor drug crimes, or who are simply awaiting trial in backlogged courts.
Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime. But it is does a lot to tear apart families and communities.
One in every 28 children now has a parent in prison. Think about what that means for those children.
When we talk about one and a half million missing African American men, we’re talking about missing husbands, missing fathers, missing brothers.
They’re not there to look after their children or bring home a paycheck. And the consequences are profound.
Without the mass incarceration that we currently practice, millions fewer people would be living in poverty.
And it’s not just families trying to stay afloat with one parent behind bars. Of the 600,000 prisoners who reenter society each year, roughly 60 percent face long-term unemployment.
And for all this, taxpayers are paying about $80 billion a year to keep so many people in prison.
The price of incarcerating a single inmate is often more than $30,000 per year—and up to $60,000 in some states. That’s the salary of a teacher or police officer.
One year in a New Jersey state prison costs $44,000—more than the annual tuition at Princeton.
If the United States brought our correctional expenditures back in line with where they were several decades ago, we’d save an estimated $28 billion a year. And I believe we would not be less safe. You can pay a lot of police officers and nurses and others with $28 billion to help us deal with the pipeline issues.
It’s time to change our approach. It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration. We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population while keeping our communities safe.

Clinton Favors Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants

In May 2015, Mrs. Clinton announced that she favored “a full and equal path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants in the United States. This was a dramatic departure from her stated position in 2008, when she did not even support the mainstream Democratic position of permitting illegals to have driver’s licenses. She pledged that if she were to be elected president, she would extend the Obama executive orders (DACA and DAPA) that protected millions of illegal aliens from deportation for a period of two years. "I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship," Clinton told a Las Vegas roundtable of illegal immigrant high-school students. "I want to do everything we can to defend the president's executive orders ... As president I would do everything possible under the law to go even further." In addition, she said:


  • "We should put into place a simple, straightforward and accessible way for parents of DREAMers ... to make their case and to be eligible for the same deferred action as their children. But that's just the beginning."
  • When they [Republicans] talk about [granting] 'legal status' instead of 'citizenship,' that is code for second-class status."
  • "It's foolish to talk as though we're going to deport 11 or 12 million people. That is not going to happen. It's beyond absurd."


These remarks were a stark contrast from Mrs. Clinton's position in 2003, when she had told the John Gambling Radio Show: "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.Certainly we’ve got to do more at our borders. And people have to stop employing illegal immigrants."


NOTES:

[1] Barbara Olson, Hell to Pay (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1999), p. 59.

[2] Ibid., p. 37.

[3] Ibid., pp. 59-61.

[4] Ibid., pp. 56, 62.

[5] Ibid., pp. 102-104.

[6] Ibid., pp. 105-107.

[7] Ibid., pp. 120-122.

[8] Ibid., p. 128.

[9] Ibid., pp. 128-129.

[10] Ibid., pp. 129-130.

[11] Amanda B. Carpenter, Dossier on Hillary Clinton (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2006), p. 162.

[12] Ibid., pp. 162-163.

[13] Ibid., p. 56.

[14] Ibid., p. 125.

[15] Ibid., p. 126.

[16] Ibid., p. 131.

[17] Ibid., pp. 131-132.

[18] Cited in David Horowitz and Richard Poe, The Shadow Party, p. 53.

[19] The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted that Mrs. Clinton “must have missed the May 2013 Census Bureau study on ‘The Diversifying Electorate—Voting Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent Elections).’” That government report showed that minority voter turnout nationwide had been surging in recent years. Black Americans, for example, had a voter turnout rate of just 53 percent in 1996. But that rate increased in each of the next four presidential elections. Said WSJ:


“In 2012, black turnout as a share of all eligible voters exceeded the turnout of non-Hispanic white voters—66.2% to 64.1%. Nearly five million more African-Americans voted in 2012 (17.8 million) than voted in 2000 (12.9 million). In both 2008 and 2012, black voters even exceeded their share of the eligible black voting age population. In 2012, blacks made up 12.5% of the eligible electorate but 13.4% of those voting.”
“Voters without an ID can get one free at the Department of Motor Vehicles and they can also cast a provisional ballot pending confirmation that they are legally registered,” WSJ alsonoted, adding that even though Georgia, Indiana, and Tennessee had “some of the strictest voter ID laws of the more than 30 states that have such laws,” black turnout had recently exceeded that of non-Hispanic whites in 2012 in all three states.

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