Are The Wolves Closing In On Their Prey?

Federal judge opens the door to Clinton deposition in email case

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By Julian Hattem - 05/04/16 01:54 PM EDT

A federal judge on Wednesday opened the door to interviewing Democratic presidential front-runnerHillary Clinton as part of a review into her use of a private email server while secretary of State.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia laid out the ground rules for interviewing multiple State Department officials about the emails, with an eye toward finishing the depositions in the weeks before the party nominating conventions.

Clinton herself may be forced to answer questions under oath, Sullivan said, though she is not yet being forced to take that step.

“Based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton may be necessary,” Sullivan said in an order on Wednesday. [READ THE ORDER BELOW] Discovery is the formal name for the evidence-gathering process, which includes depositions.

“If plaintiff believes Mrs. Clinton’s testimony is required, it will request permission from the Court at the appropriate time.”

The order, which came in the course of a lawsuit from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, leaves open the possibility that Clinton will be forced to answer detailed questions on the eve of her formal selection as the Democratic presidential nominee about her creation of the server.

Any deposition would surely roil the presidential race and force her campaign to confront the issue, which has dogged her for a year.

“Her legal team is really going to fight that really hard,” predicted Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who has raised questions about Clinton’s email setup.

“You have to take her deposition in this case to fully understand how it was designed and the whys and the what-fors.”

While leaving the door open to Clinton’s eventual deposition, Sullivan on Wednesday ordered at least six current and former State Department employees to answer questions from Judicial Watch, which has filed multiple lawsuits over the Clinton email case.

That list includes longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, under secretary for management Patrick Kennedy, former executive secretary Stephen Mull and Bryan Pagliano, the IT official believed to be responsible for setting up and maintaining the server.

The judge also ordered the State Department to prepare a formal answer about Clinton’s emails. Donald Reid, a senior security official, may also be asked to answer questions, if Judicial Watch so decides.

That process is scheduled to be wrapped up within eight weeks, putting the deadline in the final week of June.

Judicial Watch brought suit against the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in an effort to bring Abedin’s emails to light. The lawsuit has since evolved into a battleground over Clinton’s use of the private server.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called Wednesday’s order “a significant victory for transparency and accountability,” and promised that it would shine a light on Clinton’s email practices.

“Judicial Watch will use this discovery to get all of the facts behind Hillary Clinton’s and the Obama State Department’s thwarting of FOIA so that the public can be sure that all of the emails from her illicit email system are reviewed and released to the public as the law requires,” he said in a statement.

Clinton’s Republican critics have repeatedly accused her of setting up the private server and then deleting roughly half its contents to evade public scrutiny. In the process, her critics say, Clinton may have made government secrets vulnerable to hackers.

The FBI and government inspectors general are conducting separate investigations related to the server, and the prospect that classified information might have been mishandled.

Clinton has said that she has yet to be contacted by the FBI to set up an interview as part of its investigation, despite long speculation that she will be. 

But any deposition in the Judicial Watch case could frustrate that process for Clinton’s camp.

“You only want your client to tell their story once if at all,” said Whitaker, the executive director of a separate watchdog group called the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust. “If you’re going to stake out some ground in a deposition which is under oath, that’s really a dangerous opportunity to lay out a story that you say is true under penalty of perjury and then it might be used against you, ultimately, if you have to take the stand again.”

In his order, Sullivan pointed to revelations from the emails appearing to show officials trying to evade demands of FOIA.

In one email, for instance, Mull told Abedin that Clinton’s emails “would be subject to FOIA requests” if she used a department-issued BlackBerry, even though her identity would remain secret.

Abedin responded that the idea “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

In February, Sullivan ruled that the evidence-gathering process could proceed, and the two sides have been haggling since then.

Sullivan had previously suggested that Clinton could be forced to respond to questions, but his order on Wednesday offered the clearest indication that it remains a real possibility.

In his order on Wednesday, Sullivan denied the organization’s efforts to combine his granting of depositions and a similar decision by another judge in a separate case.

--This report was updated at 5:13 p.m.

Judicial Watch v Dept of State by Julian Hattem

Al-Nusra Soldier Has American Roots. How Many Others Are There?

Al Qaeda Supporter Identified as Son of Hollywood Veteran

Tim Gray

October 24, 2015

An Al Qaeda supporter named Abu Basir Al-Britani, who appears in an online video, is actually the son of Hollywood vet Patrick Kinney, who served as assistant director on such films as “Braveheart,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “Rambo: First Blood Part II.”

The website Intelligence Group posted the video, which shows a bearded man with a British accent slamming ISIS for destroying a village in northern Syria, in the middle of Ramadan. CNN reports that the man is Lucas Kinney, the son of the a.d.

Lucas Kinney is a member of Al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda branch in Syria.

Paul Cruikshank, identified in a CNN interview as a terrorism analyst, said Lucas Kinney “appears to have traveled to Syria because he believed it was his religious duty to fight jihad.” The report said Kinney “could exploit his familiarity with Western culture to deadly effect.” Right now, the group’s focus is on Syria. “The worry is that this could change.”

According to the U.K. Daily Mail, Kinney’s parents are separated. His mother Deborah in England told the paper she is long separated from Patrick Kinney, but she believed her son was radicalized when living with his father in Vienna.

The CNN report said Lucas Kinney was educated in schools in Cairo, Saudi Arabia and Britain, and was a member of the band Hannah’s Got Herpes. It also said the father and son have not had contact in several years.

More Bad News For Hillary. Servergate Gets More Damaging.

STATE DEPT. TO HILLARY LAWYER: DESTROY CLASSIFIED BENGHAZI EMAIL

'Evident contempt and obstruction of justice by Clinton and Obama administration'

Published: 10 hours ago

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2013/03/gkant_avatar.jpg

 GARTH KANT 

WASHINGTON – Another jolting disclosure in the Hillary Clinton email scandal: The State Department asked her lawyer to destroy all electronic copies of an email with classified information on the Benghazi terrorist attack.

Clinton attorney David Kendall refused the request from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, citing requests by Congress and other investigators to preserve her records, but he suggested the email might be deleted at some point.

This latest revelation was uncovered by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch as part of its lawsuit asking a federal court to protect any emails Clinton has not yet provided, including the ones she and her staff declared were personal.

On Monday, as WND reported, Judicial Watch learned there are gaps totaling five months in the emails sent and received by Clinton on her private server, beginning when she took office as secretary of state in 2009.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the gaps indicate Clinton lied under oath when she said all her emails had been turned over.

In response to a court order prompted by a Judicial Watch lawsuit, Clinton declared in August, under penalty of perjury, “I have directed that all of my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or potentially were federal records be provided to the Department of State.”

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2014/09/fitton.jpg

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton

“Judicial Watch exposed a cover-up with criminal implications. Why on Earth would John Kerry’s State Department tell Mrs. Clinton to delete classified Benghazi records before finding out where and how this material had been disclosed?” asked Fitton.

He added: “That the State Department asked Clinton’s lawyer to destroy federal records shows a level of disdain for the rule of law that goes beyond the pale. These letters should have been disclosed to more than one federal judge. The evident contempt and obstruction of justice by both Mrs. Clinton and the Obama administration will be brought to the attention the courts.”

Fitton’s group announced Thursday it had also obtained documents showing Clinton has ignored an order to provide electronic copies of the 55,000 pages of emails she previously provided only on paper.

A July 2 letter on from the chief records officer at National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, Paul M. Wester Jr., to Margaret P. Grafeld, deputy assistant secretary for global information services at the State Department, shows the records were not turned over, as the department made a second request:

I would like to reiterate our request that the Department contact the representatives of former Secretary Clinton to secure the native electronic versions with associated metadata of the approximately 55,000 hard copy pages of emails.

Judicial Watch reported the State Department apparently didn’t ask again, as a letter Sept. 16 showed it tried to obtain the records from the FBI, which had obtained electronic copies of the 55,000 Clinton emails.

The FBI is investigating Clinton’s use of her private email server for government business and is trying to retrieve 30,000 emails she deleted after her own staff deemed them personal correspondence. Judicial Watch is also trying to obtain the emails.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/09/david-Kendall.jpg

Clinton attorney David Kendall

Also revealed Thursday, the watchdog group said a May 22 letter from Kennedy to Kendall showed the State Department knew Clinton had classified material in her emails two months before the public learned of it July 23, when the intelligence community’s inspector general informed Congress.

That letter reads in part:

I am writing in reference to the following e-mail that is among the approximately 55,000 pages that were identified as potential federal records and produced on behalf of former Secretary Clinton to the Depa1tment of State on December 5, 2014: E-mail forwarded by Jacob Sullivan to Secretary Clinton on November 18, 2012 at 8:44 pm (Subject: Fw: FYI- Report of arrests -possible Benghazi connection).

Please be advised that today the above referenced e-mail, which previously was unclassified, has been classified as “Secret” pursuant to Section 1.7(d) of Executive Order 13526 in connection with a review and release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In order to safeguard and protect the classified information, I ask – consistent with my letter to you dated March 23 2015 – that you, Secretary Clinton and others assisting her in responding to congressional and related inquiries coordinate in taking the steps set forth below. A copy of the document as redacted under the FOIA is attached to assist you in your search.

Once you have made the electronic copy of the documents for the Department, please locate any electronic copies of the above-referenced classified document in your possession. If you locate any electronic copies, please delete them. Additionally, once you have done that, please empty your “Deleted Items” folder.

Several weeks later, on June 15, Kendall replied that would not be prudent:

This will also confirm that, pursuant to your request, we have deleted all electronic copies of this document, with the following exception. I have received document preservation requests pertaining to the 55,000 pages of e-mails from the House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, the Inspector General of the State Department, and the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (DNI). I have responded to each preservation request by confirming to the requestor that I would take reasonable steps to preserve these 55,000 pages of former Secretary Clinton’s e-mails in their present electronic form. I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete, as you request, the above-referenced e-mail from the master copies or the PST file that we are preserving.

But Kendall also suggested the information might still be deleted at some point:

Once the document preservation requests referenced above expire, we will proceed to make the requested deletions. This present arrangement would cover the single document recently classified “Secret”. Should there be further reclassifications during the Department’s FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] review of former Secretary Clinton’s e-mails, it also would cover any such additional documents.

Kendall is a longtime Clinton confidant who represented President Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

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Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/state-dept-to-hillary-lawyer-destroy-classified-benghazi-email/#fRmjxX62tDYYFepE.99

State Department Buying Explosives And Fighting Not To Explain

KABOOM! STATE DEPT. FINALLY GIVES EXPLOSIVE ANSWER

Bureau boss overseeing shipments has Benghazi connections

Published: 12 hours ago

 STEVE PEACOCK About | Email | Archive

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The State Department bureau tasked with secretly sending to embassies plastic and liquid explosives operates under the guidance of Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, whom a congressional panel last year separately found to be largely responsible for security lapses in Benghazi, WND has learned.

A series of WND articles recently exposed the purchase and international transport of many hundreds of pounds of plastic, sheet and linear explosives along with thousands of containers of high-energy liquid explosives.

Weeks after a State official laughed in response to WND’s inquiry, the department belatedly reacted to a follow-up request for information about how, where and by whom the blasting equipment will be used.

The inquiry sought to determine whether, as contracting documents indicate, State will ship the bombing equipment globally through its Sterling, Virginia-based Diplomatic Pouch and Mail facility, or DPM. It’s the primary government facility by which secure pouches and crates are sent to U.S. embassies and consulates.

Since department guidelines explicitly prohibit the unit from shipping explosives, State’s Public Affairs Office was pressed to clarify whether DPM, U.S. Despatch Agencies or “some other mode of delivery” will be used to deliver the explosives and related equipment.

State neither confirmed nor denied it was transporting explosives, tens of thousands of feet of blasting wire and thousands of blasting caps via DPM.

Bureau of Diplomatic Security Public Affairs spokeswoman Gale L. Smith, responding specifically to the question about DPM’s potential role in the delivery, said the Department’s Bureau of Administration “provides secure global delivery of customer materials to the foreign affairs community in support of their mission.”

Kennedy’s oversight

The Bureau of Administration, which Smith said is responsible for diplomatic shipments, is one of several bureaus operating under the umbrella of Under Secretary Kennedy’s authority.

His authority includes oversight of “the people, resources, budget, facilities, technology, financial operations, consular affairs, logistics, contracting, and security for Department of State operations,” according to the bureau website.

The Accountability Review Board, or ARB – which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assembled to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the Benghazi compound that killed four Americans – did not hold Kennedy accountable for decisions about Benghazi’s status as a diplomatic facility.

The Obama administration lauded ARB for investigative thoroughness.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, however, rejected the notion that ARB conducted a comprehensive investigation.

Indeed, Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., lambasted ARB for casting blame for the Benghazi compound’s poor security on several mid-level bureaucrats rather than on Kennedy.

“Documents and testimony obtained by the committee show that the exemption of the Benghazi special mission compound from department physical security guidelines was not the result of a decision made by any of the four individuals singled out for ‘accountability’ by the ARB,” the committee said in “Benghazi Attacks: Investigative Update Interim Report on the [ARB].”

“In fact, the Under Secretary for Management [Patrick F. Kennedy] approved the decision to allow U.S. diplomats to move into an ‘as-is’ facility.”

Where is it going?

State recently awarded two contracts totaling $350,000 to the Arkansas-based Omni Explosives. The department has not yet awarded contracts in two other bid-requests for blasting equipment.

Smith said the explosives “will be used exclusively for training in support of the Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program,” or ATA.

ATA, she explained in the email response, “fosters cooperative efforts between U.S. law enforcement officers and those of our partner nations engaged in the front lines of the global war on terrorism. ATA provides advanced counter-terrorism training and equipment grants to maintain and increase our partners’ capabilities to find and arrest terrorists.”

Ukraine currently “is not a partner nation,” she emphasized in response to questions about third-party speculation that the embattled nation is a destination for the blasting gear.

WND also asked how the purchase of the explosives fits with the State Department’s mission to “shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere.”

Smith reiterated that the blasting materials are for exclusive use in ATA cooperative training efforts “between U.S. law enforcement officers and those of our partner nations engaged in the front lines of the global war on terrorism.”

“ATA provides advanced counter-terrorism training and equipment grants to maintain and increase our partners’ capabilities to find and arrest terrorists,” Smith said.

“ATA uses explosives to train partner nation law enforcement to identify, neutralize and safely dispose of explosive devices to keep their communities safe.”

President Obama’s FY 2015 request for ATA is $165.8 million, down from $200 million in FY 2012.

“The requested funds will build upon productive, strategic, and crucial existing partnerships with countries including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines and a number of other partners,” according to a State Department budget-request summary.

“The funds are also intended to address emerging counter-terrorism needs in countries like Syria.”

A potential $375 million, five-year contract in June 2011 had been awarded to the McLean, Virginia-based Science Applications International Corporation to help State carry out global ATA training.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/05/kaboom-state-dept-finally-gives-explosive-answer/#UColzA3PoLP3ipDx.99