In the wake of yet another intentional and (allegedly) politically-timed Friday document dump from the FBI about Hillary Clinton's email scandal, go back and read Matt's weekend post for a partial summary of the latest piece of new information the public has gleaned. This round was less revelatory than the early September tranche of investigatory notes, but it still contained some important developments. In a nutshell, (1) the feds offered top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills a controversial immunity deal, which has drawn criticism in light of Mills' sketchy record of "misplacing" important evidence and obstructing ongoing probes. (2) President Obama -- who has publicly claimed ignorance about his Secretary of State's improper emails scheme -- used a pseudonym under which he swapped messages with Clinton, including one exchange about which a shocked Clinton confidante Huma Abedin gasped, "how is that not classified?" when the FBI shared it with her. Obama's team was informed when Hillary "changed her primary email," suggesting that the White House was aware of her server. (3) And then there's this:
A whole bunch of new things in the latest Clinton document dump. https://t.co/qLfew7K9ty pic.twitter.com/g5gwPTcOIl
— David Freddoso (@freddoso) September 25, 2016
During Hillary's time at State, Petraeus led US Central Command, then was director of the CIA -- so obviously most of the emails between himself and America's top diplomat would entail formal government business. The FBI discovered that Hillary's lawyers had unilaterally deleted roughly 1,000 of those messages, most of which were recovered through other means (this does not include any official emails Team Clinton managed to permanently destroy). Mrs. Clinton insisted repeatedly that she had turned over every single email "that could possibly be work-related," going so far as to over-share emails that were later deemed to be personal in nature. This was false. In reality, she and her attorneys withheld thousands of work-related emails, including these correspondences with Petraeus. Clinton didn't simply feed that line to the public. She made the same assertion to Congress under oath, and signed a statement to a federal judge attesting, under penalty of perjury, that all official emails had been surrendered:
August 2015, Clinton declares "under penalty of perjury" that she turned over all work-related emails. https://t.co/CG3NPiIfEK
— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) September 25, 2016
We learned earlier in the month that at least one outsider did penetrate the Clintons' email system. The former Secretary of Defense and the former acting CIA director both agree with FBI Director James Comey that it's very likely hostile foreign intelligence agencies gained access to Mrs. Clinton's emails, including thousands of classified messages -- some of which remain extremely secret to this day. Here's a former NSA official stating that the verdict within the US intelligence community is unanimous:
I don't know a single 1. All who understand SIGINT know -- yes, know -- many spy services were inside HRC's email.https://t.co/A9gpcCf8CW
— John Schindler (@20committee) September 25, 2016
Clinton defenders are still reciting the now-inoperative talking point that there's no definitive evidence that her email was compromised. The professionals virtually all seem to understand otherwise. I'll leave you with the reason this drip, drip, drip will continue all the way into election week, even if Clinton aides keep refusing to testify, and even if this extremely suspicious scenario is never properly vetted and resolved:
FBI release dates for Hillary's emails.
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 24, 2016
• Part I: Oct. 7th
• Part II: Oct. 21st
• Part III: Nov. 4th (??)https://t.co/Oy6PbYSnpm
What do those dates have in common? They're all Fridays.
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