It's been an exceptionally busy news week, but this story warrants significant coverage, as it brings to light yet another national security-endangering consequence of Hillary Clinton's improper email scheme. As you already know, Sec. Clinton was personally and specifically warned in 2009 and 2011 about the serious IT security risks her unsecure set-up posed. She acknowledged these concerns, then did nothing. Now the Associated Press reports that technical difficulties plaguing her server in 2010 resulted in the State Department temporarily reducing and disabling its official system's anti-hacking protective measures as a work-around. Extraordinary:
State Department staffers wrestled for weeks in December 2010 over a serious technical problem that affected emails from then-Secretary Hillary Clinton's home email server, causing them to temporarily disable security features on the government's own systems, according to emails released Wednesday. The emails were released under court order Wednesday to the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, which has sued the State Department over access to public records related to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's service as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013. The emails, reviewed by The Associated Press, show that State Department technical staff disabled software on their systems intended to block phishing emails that could deliver dangerous viruses. They were trying urgently to resolve delivery problems with emails sent from Clinton's private server.
"This should trump all other activities," a senior technical official, Ken LaVolpe, told IT employees in a Dec. 17, 2010, email. Another senior State Department official, Thomas W. Lawrence, wrote days later in an email that deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin personally was asking for an update about the repairs. Abedin and Clinton, who both used Clinton's private server, had complained that emails each sent to State Department employees were not being reliably received...After technical staffers turned off some security features, Lawrence cautioned in an email, "We view this as a Band-Aid and fear it's not 100 percent fully effective."
In other words, in order to accommodate her not-allowed, malfunctioning arrangement, State deliberately placed its secure system at risk. It's indefensible. And it also exposes another major lie from Clinton, who's sworn under oath that she turned over all work-related emails as required. This was already a known lie, but this week's additional revelation helps illustrate how deep that lie was:
Former Secretary Hillary Clinton failed to turn over a copy of a key message involving problems caused by her use of a private homebrew email server, the State Department confirmed Thursday. The disclosure makes it unclear what other work-related emails may have been deleted by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The email was not among the tens of thousands of emails Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence. Abedin provided a copy from her own inbox after the State Department asked her to return any work-related emails. That copy of the email was publicly cited last month in a blistering audit by the State Department's inspector general that concluded Clinton and her team ignored clear internal guidance that her email setup violated federal standards and could have left sensitive material vulnerable to hackers.
The Clinton campaign declined to comment, but the AP mentions her team's repeated assertions that the server was never breached. First of all, multiple credible, serious former and current Obama administration officials strongly disagree -- and it stands to reason: If sophisticated Russian hackers are breaking into the DNC, and the Chinese penetrated our OPM records, any intelligence service in the world should have been able to access Hillary's woefully-unprotected (and for a time, totally unencrypted) email server. Which, I'll add, contained thousands of classified emails, including top secret-and-above material. Second, not a single email scandal claim made by Clintonworld should be taken seriously. Not one. Meanwhile, the administrator of her bootleg server pleaded the fifth 125 times at a deposition this week. A taste of how totally uncooperative and non-compliant he was during questioning:
This is deposition is surreal. pic.twitter.com/blAireM4yO
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 23, 2016
Pags again takes the fifth on whether he has seen the document sitting right in front of him. pic.twitter.com/ESk17TM3WM
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 23, 2016
The fifth amendment -- coincidentally under assault this week from posturing, hysterical Democrats -- ensures the right of an accused to party to not make self-incriminating statements. In this case, such statements apparently include such damning admissions as "yes, I have seen Cheryl Mills." Perhaps Magliano's lawyers advised him to stonewall every single question from the Judicial Watch attorney because any other strategy might risk compromising a plea deal reached with federal investigators? I'll add this: Donald Trump's penchant toward conspiracy-mongering is very troubling, but one of his least preposterous theories is that Bernie Sanders may be hanging around without conceding just in case this stream of dropping shoes eventually leads to a criminal prosecution. "It doesn't appear that I'm going to be the nominee," he said on Wednesday, yet he remains in the race. And why not hedge your bets, even if you publicly profess to be uninterested in the "damn emails"? I'll leave you with this reiteration of a crucial point above:
Hillary swore under oath that she turned over all work-related emails to State Dep't. A lie:https://t.co/j79qHU22Pi
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 23, 2016
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