Hillary's email problem gets worse

In this Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton listens to a home care worker during a roundtable discussion on home care in Los Angeles. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has given the State Department a few months to provide The Associated Press with thousands of documents it sought in a federal lawsuit. The Aug. 7, order means the documents, including schedules and calendars from the former Secretary of State will be released months ahead of the spring presidential primary elections. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

In this Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton listens to a home care worker during a roundtable discussion on home care in Los Angeles. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has given the State Department a few months to provide The Associated Press with thousands of documents it sought in a federal lawsuit. The Aug. 7, order means the documents, including schedules and calendars from the former Secretary of State will be released months ahead of the spring presidential primary elections. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Hillary Clinton’s email has proven to be the gift that just keeps on giving for the Clinton campaign. It has metamorphosed from a right wing conspiracy that was belittled to something that appears to place Hillary Clinton and her closest associates in grave jeopardy. We already know at least 305 emails may contain classified information and of that 305 no less than two contain information classified Top Secret but had classification markings stripped from it before transmission.

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The Philippe Reines emails

Phillipe Reines is a Democrat apparatchik Hillary Clinton brought with her to the State Department as her Press Secretary. He was sort of a Marie Harf but without the charm and good looks. He was famous for attacking any reporter who was insufficiently worshipful of Hillary by barraging their editor with invective. For example, there is this classic:

On Sunday morning, BuzzFeed correspondent Michael Hastings emailed Philippe Reines, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide and personal spokesman at the State Department, asking a series of pointed questions about State’s handling of the Benghazi fiasco, and Reines’ over-the-top attack on CNN. The emails quickly got personal, with Reines calling Hastings an “unmitigated asshole” before an exchange of harsh words on both sides.

The email chain concluded with Reines writing that Hastings should “Fuck Off” and “Have a good life.”

Back in 2013, Gawker filed a Freedom of Information Act asking for access to Reines’s official emails relating to Reines’s contact with 33 named news organization. The State Department claimed there were no emails responsive to that request despite the fact that reporters, like the above mentioned Michael Hastings, had some of them. In March, Gawker sued and now it is revealed that there are actually a lot of emails:

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The Department has conducted its preliminary review of the potentially responsive electronic documents in its possession, custody, and control from Mr. Reines’ state.gov email account (as opposed to records it received from his personal email account). The assemblage comprises approximately 5.5 gigabytes of data containing 81,159 emails of varying length. Based on a review of a portion of these emails, the Department estimates that 22% of the 81,159 emails may be responsive. Therefore, the Department believes that it will need to conduct a line- by-line review of an estimated 17,855 emails for applicable FOIA exemptions. Moreover, some of the responsive records may need to be referred to other agencies for consultation or processing.

These are in addition to the 20 boxes of printed emails Reines has already turned over.

While a Democrat aligned outlet like Gawker is hardly likely to release anything that is damaging to Hillary’s interests, these newly discovered emails will be available to [mc_name name=’Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’G000566′ ]’s Benghazi committee. What is also likely to come out of this are Reines emails sent from his .gov address to Hillary’s account that have not been turned over by Hillary. This brings her damned close to perjury, not that perjury has ever deterred a Clinton.

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Hillary Clinton’s lawyer is now in trouble

David Kendall has been a Clinton soldier since the Monica Lewinsky era and he has been handling this latest unpleasantness for her. Now Kendall, himself, is in legal jeopardy.

Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Clinton attorney David Kendall to explain how he secured three thumb drives containing back up copies of roughly 30,000 emails that Clinton gave to her former agency in printed form last year. Clinton has said that she and her attorney reviewed all of her emails and destroyed ones that they deemed personal.

“It appears the FBI has determined that your clearance is not sufficient to allow you to maintain custody of the emails,” Grassley wrote in a letter sent to Kendall on Friday and obtained Monday by POLITICO. “Reporting indicates that Secretary Clinton may have provided you copies of her emails in December 2014 and that government officials realized that the emails contained classified information in May 2015, yet the Department of State did not deliver a safe to store the thumb drives until July 2015.”

Grassley suggested it was unlikely that a safe — reportedly in Kendall’s law office — would by itself be deemed adequate to hold data classified at the “TOP SECRET/Sensitive Compartmented Information” level.

“It appears that in addition to not having an adequate security clearance, you did not have the appropriate tools in place to secure the thumb drives,” the senator wrote. “It is imperative to confirm when, how, and why you, and any of your associates, received a security clearance in connection with your representation of Ms. Clinton and whether it was active while you had custody of Secretary Clinton’s emails.”

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This creates a problem for Kendall but it creates a larger one for Hillary who now seems guilty of mishandling classified information twice over.

A back-up server exists

So all of that hasty erasure may be for naught:

In another development, Platte River Networks, the Colorado company that set up Clinton’s server, told ABC it’s highly likely a full backup of the server was made, meaning those thousands of emails could still exist in private hands, which the intelligence community is attempting to prevent. The company says it’s cooperating fully with the FBI, which collected the server from them several days ago.

On Friday a spokesman for Platte River Networks said they are trying to determine if a copy exists, but that when they handed the server over to the FBI the company had already wiped it clean.

Platte River Networks was hired by the Clintons five months after Secretary Clinton left her job heading the Department of State to “upgrade, secure and manage their email server for both the Clinton’s and their staff,” spokesman Andy Boian told ABC News in a phone interview.

“We implemented industry best practice,” Boian said. “Our job was to upgrade, secure and manage it. That’s what we did.”

The overwhelming odds are that there are hundreds of official emails on that server that did not make their way onto Kendall’s thumbdrive. And given that secret information has appeared on what they handed over, the odds are that what is on the back-up server is much more damning than yoga lessons or Chelsea’s wedding plans.

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But don’t get your hopes up

One thing our 20 year acquaintance with the Clinton Crime Cartel has taught us is that they will do whatever it takes to survive and they have a lot of loyalists willing to go to prison to save them. Over the weekend, the Obamas and Clintons were hanging out and playing golf on Martha’s Vineyard:

President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton chatted briefly Saturday evening in Martha’s Vineyard, according to a White House official.

The two were both guests at Civil Rights activist and long-time Democratic Party fixture Vernon Jordan’s 80th birthday party.

The Obamas have known Jordan and his wife, Ann, for 20 years. Jordan served as a close adviser to President Bill Clinton, who was also in attendance, during his time in office.

More than 200 guests gathered celebrate the life of Jordan at the Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs, where contemporary music and laughter could be heard ringing through the wooded area until late in the night.

Obama and former President Bill Clinton each offered toasts between courses of salad, surf and turf and birthday cake.

If he lets Hillary go into the 2016 campaign with this stuff percolating an already difficult election becomes nearly impossible. We are already in a position where an exoneration of Hillary will be treated as a whitewash. At some point Obama has to make a move to either quash the investigation or pull a Gerald Ford and issue a pre-emptive pardon.

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