I lied. I said the other day I wasn't going to write about Hillary's email issue again, but here we are.
There was an article over the weekend in the New York Post ?
Ok. I know. The New York Post isn't exactly the Tabloid of Record in the Big Apple. As of this writing (Sunday evening) no non-conservative publication - in print or on line - has followed it up.
But, I assume there will be a ton of questions for White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest about this at the Monday briefing so when it becomes big news Monday afternoon you'll have the back story.
in the New York Post with the headline: "Obama advisor behind Leak of Hillary Clinton's email scandal."
The Obama advisor in question is Valerie Jarrett who is listed on the White House website thus:
"Valerie B. Jarrett is a Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama. She oversees the Offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and chairs the White House Council on Women and Girls."
That is a little like saying that Karl Rove was sort of close to President George W. Bush.
The NY Post column was written by Edward Klein who is not exactly a disinterested observer.
At the end of his column the Post says:
"Edward Klein's most recent book is "Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas" (Regnery)"
With that as your warning, Klein writes Jarrett "Leaked to the press details of Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail address during her time as secretary of state," and, in addition, ordered the State Department "to launch a series of investigations into Hillary's conduct at Foggy Bottom, including the use of her expense account, the disbursement of funds, her contact with foreign leaders and her possible collusion with the Clinton Foundation."
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Klein writes that Jarrett was furious over the refusal of Democrat candidates to allow President Obama to campaign with them and, according to him, she retaliated by helping Monica Lewinsky to "suddenly resurface after years of living in obscurity."
Jarrett "discreetly put out word to some friendly members of the press that the White House would look with favor if they gave Monica some ink and airtime.
That's not all the Hillary news this weekend. On Friday, reporter Amy Choznick wrote in the New York Times that a federal judge had sided with Citizens United, which she tagged as a "conservative advocacy group" in its lawsuit against the State Department.
It seems that Citizens United's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests have been ignored by the State Department since last July. Citizens United is asking for the passenger manifests for 47 overseas trips taken by Secretary Clinton while she was Secretary of State.
Why do they want the lists of passengers?
"The group requested the flight manifests to examine whether Clinton Foundation donors had accompanied Mrs. Clinton on State Department Trips."
Possibly a sort of flying Lincoln Bedroom situation.
After the electoral disaster for the President last November, there were calls from many of the Political Intelligentsia in Our Nation's Capitol for Jarrett's head. Reporters and columnists were elbowing each other out of the way to get on cable TV to explain why she was at the center of many - if not all - of the political and policy problems the President was dealing with.
Valerie Jarrett, though, didn't get to be Valerie Jarrett by running from a fight. Just last week, in an interview with Jim Rutenburg for the New York Times Magazine, Ms. Jarrett said about hanging around until the end of the Administration:
"Oh, my goodness, I intend to stay until the lights go off. Why would I want to miss a single second of this?"
In the Politico.com teaser about that interview, they chose an Associated Press photo that shows Jarrett using two phones - at the same time.
This is gonna be good.
On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the NY Post story, the NY Times interview, and that two-device photo from the AP.
Also a curious license plate Mullfoto.
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