Tag: protocol

EmailGate: Blackberries of Abedin and Mills Destroyed. Servers Scrubbed Clean.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

BBerry-Grandma-NRD-6002Regarding the despicable, rapidly-evolving situation involving Hillary Clinton, now popularly known as “EmailGate”…

The plot sickens.

According to thehill.com,

State Department BlackBerry devices issued to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin have likely been destroyed or sold off, the department said in a court filing on Wednesday.

Mills and Abedin “were each issued BlackBerry devices,” department Executive Secretary Joseph Macmanus wrote in the filing.

The department, however, “has not located any such device,” and believes that they would have been destroyed or removed from the department’s control.

“Because the devices issues to Ms. Mills and Ms. Abedin would have been outdated models, in accordance with standard operating procedures those devices would have been destroyed or excessed,” Macmanus added. State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed later on Wednesday afternoon that the two former officials’ devices were returned to the department after they left office.

“They belong to the United States government, and when you leave an agency you just turn it in,” Kirby said. “So yes, they were turned in. Where they are now I couldn’t begin to tell you.

“It’s also likely, because this was a while ago, that those devices may have been destroyed,” he added. “I don’t have the records of it because they were old and outmoded and often times we purchase new devices” in those circumstances.

In the same court filing, the State Department confirmed its previous claim that Clinton used a personal BlackBerry during her time in office that was not issued by the federal government.

The State Department “does not believe that any personal computing device was issued by the department to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and has not located any such device at the department,” Macmanus wrote.

News of the Clinton aides’ devices adds to the growing scrutiny on the Democratic presidential front-runner and two of her top advisors, both of whom have been drawn into the fire surrounding the Clinton email furor.

The criticism has been a major drag on Clinton’s presidential campaign, and has provided a nearly endless supply of ammunition to her critics — including some Democrats. 

Wednesday’s filing came as part of a lawsuit from the conservative organization Judicial Watch, which is looking for documents related to Abedin’s employment arrangement while she served in the State Department.  

“The questions just keep popping up,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “Every time the State Department tries to justify its stonewalling, one more bit of information arises.”

A hearing in the case before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is scheduled for Thursday afternoon. 

What does the leading Republican Presidential Hopeful think about the future of the individual who was supposed to be the Democratic President Candidate?

According to The Daily Mail,

Donald Trump believes Hillary Clinton could face significant jail time – ‘up to 20 years in prison’ – as a consequence of storing classified information on her now-infamous private email server. 

And a law that Clinton herself once voted for while she served in the U.S. Senate could come back to haunt her – and turn Trump into a criminal-justice prophet.

‘If you look at what’s going on with the emails, it’s a fraud if you think about it,’ the Republican presidential front-runner told The Hollywood Reporter in his first magazine interview since launching his unconventional White House bid.

‘This looks like Watergate on steroids, frankly,’ he said.’Watergate was about the cover-up more than the act.’

‘This isn’t something we’re going to solve tomorrow. This could go on for years. You can’t have a nominee who is under investigation. What are they going to do, run and then two nights before the presidential race she gets indicted?’

Trump pointed to the legal saga of Gen. David Petraeus as a cautionary tale for Clinton, saying the former CIA director, who was prosecuted for sharing classified information with his biographer-mistress, was a choirboy by comparison.

‘General Petraeus, for doing 5 percent of what she did, his life has been destroyed,’ Trump said. 

‘And it goes up to 20 years in prison. It’s from one to 20 years for what she did!’

The Hollywood Reporter noted that ‘it’s unclear what penalty Clinton might face if charged and convicted,’ but potential criminal charges could range from obstruction of justice to destroying documents, and even a long-shot bribery charge, according to a former federal prosecutor who asked not to be named ‘for political reasons.’

‘If she deleted a document – any document – “in contemplation of an investigation,” that’s a felony,’ the former prosecutor said. ‘It’s called tampering with evidence.’

‘And if anything in those deleted emails shows Clinton talking to people about donations for the Clinton Foundation in exchange for official acts, that’s bribery.’

The ‘ANTI-SHREDDING’ STATUTE WITH A 20-YEAR PRISON TERM 
‘Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.’ – 18 U.S.C. § 1519

The evidence-tampering statute, known in legal circles as 18 U.S.C. § 1519, carries a potential 20-year prison term.

It was part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate misconduct law, passed in 2002 – with a ‘yes’ vote from then-Senator Hillary Clinton.

Intended as an anti-shredding law, it makes a felon of anyone who ‘knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry’ in an official record ‘with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter … or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case.’

Clinton acknowledged directing her aides to destroy more than 30,000 emails before turning the remaining contents of her private server over to the State Department in late 2014.

At the time, Congress was investigating her actions related to the deadly 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, and Clinton was the subject of a congressional subpoena for documents.

A Clinton spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. 

Trump also told The Hollywood Reporter that he expects the power of his celebrity, his business acumen and his refusal to trade political favors for seven-figure contributions to carry him far into the presidential campaign.

‘If I weren’t a successful person, it wouldn’t work as well,’ he said. ‘Voters have great confidence in me because I really have been successful. I have an income of over $400 million a year. I don’t need anybody’s money.’

So, the first question on everyone’s mind is,

Did Hillary order those Blackberries destroyed?

Also, did Huma Abedin (Mrs. Anthony Weiner) share any of the information on that Blackberry with her relatives in the Muslim Brotherhood?

And, most importantly, how deep does this breach of both protocol and security go?

How many more “lapses” will be discovered?

Finally, when Hillary is called to account for all of this nonchalant malfeasance, will her response be,

It all depends on what your definition of “is” is?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Hillary’s E-mailgate: “Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave…”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

Hillary Ramirez CartoonBack in the early 1980s’, HBO taped a couple of live performances of America’s “Clown Prince of Comedy”, Richard “Red” Skelton. Even though the ol’ redhead was 78 years old, he was still as sharp as a tack…and was still an absolute master of comedic timing. At one point,  he was telling the audience how much he loved his wife, when abruptly, he looked from side to side, got a mischievous grin on his legendary face and said,

But, where that woman spits, grass never grows again.

He could have been speaking about Hillary Clinton.

By now, unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure that you have heard about the latest scandal involving Former First Lady and Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It appears that Mrs. Clinton used her own personal e-mail account exclusively to conduct “business”, while she was Secretary of State under Barack Hussein Obama, which is not only very clandestine in nature, but, also a breach of Government Protocol and time-honored rules and regulations.

According to The New Republic…

The Times doesn’t say why Clinton didn’t turn over all emails. If she and her advisers selectively chose which emails to hand over, we need to at least know the selection process. Otherwise, who knows what she left out?

The Clinton camp adamantly denies that it’s trying to hide anything. “Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any Department officials,” her spokesman, Nick Merrill said. “For government business, she emailed them on their Department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.” Hillary had every expectation, they say, that all of her communications from her time at the State Department would become public.

Clinton herself isn’t speaking. As a still-unofficial presidential candidate, she doesn’t feel compelled to answer questions about this latest damaging report. But she should—because it’s starting to appear that Clinton is far less prepared for a presidential run than anyone expected.

First, she made multiple gaffes about her own wealth, saying her family was “dead broke” after Bill Clinton left office. At the same time, she has given numerous speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And over the past few weeks, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reported in separate investigations that the Clinton Foundation had accepted donations from foreign countries both during and after her time as secretary of state. Many of those countries, like Saudi Arabia, do not have stellar records on human rights.
 
Hillary Clinton’s Worst NightmareFor a would-be presidential candidate with her deep experience in Washington, that’s a lot of unforced errors. The foundation shouldn’t have accepted donations from foreign countries so that no one could ever accuse Clinton of being influenced by that money. She should have stopped giving paid speeches a long time ago. And she should have used a government email address at the State Department. These should all be easy decisions to make, and yet Clinton got them all wrong. (And, in the case of the paid speeches, continues to get wrong.)

This should frighten Democrats. Who knows what other past mistakes might surface, or ones yet to come? It hasn’t taken much digging from journalists to find these stories. Republican opposition researchers are surely going into overdrive now that they smell blood in the water.

The best way for a party to vet a candidate, and get all of the dirt out of the way, is in a primary. But the Democratic Party is not going to have a competitive primary. At best, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and former Senator Jim Webb will be her challengers. That’s not a particularly tough primary.

The wild card is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, whom liberals have long wanted to run for president. Warren has basically ruled out a presidential run. She has made no moves to indicate she is considering one. But as she sees Clinton struggle before even hitting the campaign trail, Warren—and other party leaders—has to be thinking about it more every day. She probably wouldn’t win, but it would still make for a far more competitive primary, take some of the heat and press coverage off Hillary, and make her a far more battle-tested candidate for the general election. That’s exactly what the Democratic Party needs.

Additionally, theoretically, any non-RINO Republican Candidate, who is willing to get down in the trenches and slug it out, should have a field day citing Hil’s notorious past along the 2016 Presidential Campaign Trail.

Because, the fact of the matter is, the Hildebeast has traveled a “long and winding road” of prevarication.

For example…

On Jan. 8, 1996, in a commentary titled “Blizzard of Lies,” New York Times columnist William Safire described Hillary Clinton as “a congenital liar.”

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.

1. Remember the story she told about studying The Wall Street Journal to explain her 10,000 percent profit in 1979 commodity trading? We now know that was a lie told to turn aside accusations that as the Governor’s wife she profited corruptly, her account being run by a lawyer for state poultry interests through a disreputable broker.

She lied for good reason: To admit otherwise would be to confess taking, and paying taxes on, what some think amounted to a $100,000 bribe.

2. The abuse of Presidential power known as Travelgate elicited another series of lies. She induced a White House lawyer to assert flatly to investigators that Mrs. Clinton did not order the firing of White House travel aides, who were then harassed by the F.B.I. and Justice Department to justify patronage replacement by Mrs. Clinton’s cronies.

Now we know, from a memo long concealed from investigators, that there would be “hell to pay” if the furious First Lady’s desires were scorned. The career of the lawyer who transmitted Hillary’s lie to authorities is now in jeopardy. Again, she lied with good reason: to avoid being identified as a vindictive political power player who used the F.B.I. to ruin the lives of people standing in the way of juicy patronage.

3. In the aftermath of the apparent suicide of her former partner and closest confidant, White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, she ordered the overturn of an agreement to allow the Justice Department to examine the files in the dead man’s office. Her closest friends and aides, under oath, have been blatantly disremembering this likely obstruction of justice, and may have to pay for supporting Hillary’s lie with jail terms.

Again, the lying was not irrational. Investigators believe that damning records from the Rose Law Firm, wrongfully kept in Vincent Foster’s White House office, were spirited out in the dead of night and hidden from the law for two years — in Hillary’s closet, in Web Hubbell’s basement before his felony conviction, in the President’s secretary’s personal files — before some were forced out last week.

Why the White House concealment? For good reason: The records show Hillary Clinton was lying when she denied actively representing a criminal enterprise known as the Madison S.& L., and indicate she may have conspired with Web Hubbell’s father-in-law to make a sham land deal that cost taxpayers $3 million.

Why the belated release of some of the incriminating evidence? Not because it mysteriously turned up in offices previously searched. Certainly not because Hillary Clinton and her new hang-tough White House counsel want to respond fully to lawful subpoenas.

One reason for the Friday-night dribble of evidence from the White House is the discovery by the F.B.I. of copies of some of those records elsewhere. When Clinton witnesses are asked about specific items in “lost” records — which investigators have — the White House “finds” its copy and releases it. By concealing the Madison billing records two days beyond the statute of limitations, Hillary evaded a civil suit by bamboozled bank regulators.

Another reason for recent revelations is the imminent turning of former aides and partners of Hillary against her; they were willing to cover her lying when it advanced their careers, but are inclined to listen to their own lawyers when faced with perjury indictments.

Therefore, ask not “Why didn’t she just come clean at the beginning?” She had good reasons to lie; she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.

No wonder the President is fearful of holding a prime-time press conference. Having been separately deposed by the independent counsel at least twice, the President and First Lady would be well advised to retain separate defense counsel.

Safire was being too kind.

Vince Foster and the Benghazi 4 remain unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Petulant President Pantywaist’ s Protocol Pity Party

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

americanisraelilapelpinIt was announced recently that Speaker of the House John Boehner had invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a Joint Session of Congress.

I wrote about this subject in a blog earlier this week.

Since then, the 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, his administration, and his mindless minions in the Main Stream Media, have reacted as if John Boehner had taken a hunting rifle and killed Barack Hussein Obama’s Family Dog, Bo.

Obama got his knickers in a twist and threw an unparalleled Presidential Temper Tantrum all this last week over this.

First, of course, he and his minions all decried the action, saying that it was a breach of protocol, for the president not to have been informed before the public of such an event.

Of course, that was just them whining because John Boehner actually showed some intestinal fortitude and went around the president by inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu, in order to learn more about the Iranian Nuclear Program, that President Obama is basically doing nothing about.

Obama threw a temper tantrum because he is being shown to be exactly who and what he is.

He is what an older lady, who happened to be a Director of Medical Records in a world-renowned hospital, whom I used to work with, called a “lightweight”.

A “lightweight” is someone who has the title but does not bring the knowledge, experience, and gravitas needed to an important position.

This petulance and immature behavior, which Barack Hussein Obama has shown in the last 6 years, is more reminiscent of a picked-on school boy than it is of a world leader.

Let’s face it, folks. Obama is an embarrassment.

Later in the week, Obama, still fuming from this “breach of protocol”, had his Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, pitifully explain that the president would not be meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister when he visits Washington, as it was too close to the Israeli elections, which will be held within three weeks of the visit, and the President does not want to make it look like he is backing Netanyahu.

Whatever helps you sleep better at night, Scooter.

The hard, cold fact of the matter is that every time the president of United States, Barack Hussein Obama, and the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, meet, Netanyahu makes Obama look like a punk.

It is a sad situation, to say the least.

Obama knows this. That is why he does not want to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Obama also knows, that Netanyahu will chew him up and spit him out, over his coddling of the rogue Iranian state.

As I have written previously, Obama’s pussyfooting around with Iran is not only disrespectful to Israel, but very stupid, to say the least.

Since Israel was born, they have been a friend of the United States. Our previous presidents have respected that friendship, or at least acted like they did, in the case of Jimmy Carter.

Our current president, Barack Hussein Obama, does not even put up the pretense of liking Israel. Oh sure, he says the words, when he makes his speeches, but as he himself said,

Words. Just words.

Actions speak louder than words. And Obama’s actions, including his mollycoddling of Iran, and the generally wimpy and ineffective Foreign Policy effort that he has put forward, known as Smart Power!, has not only put that friendship at risk, but it has made the world a more dangerous place, as well.

As I have said before, when President Obama meets with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the difference between the two leaders is stark. Netanyahu, on the one hand, is self-assured, bold, eloquent, and is deeply concerned for the safety of his nation. Obama, on the other hand, always appears bored, petulant, and distracted, as if he’s trying to figure out when he can get his next golf game in.

If you ask the Radical Muslims, you know, the guys that Obama refuses to call Islamic terrorists, who they fear more, the President of the United States of America or the Prime Minister of Israel, who do you think they would say?

There are a couple of reasons that the little country of Israel is still standing, even while they are surrounded by Radical Muslims, who wish to destroy them.

The first reason has to do with its leadership and the resolve of its people.

The second reason?

12 Now the Lord had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
2 I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” – Genesis 12: 1-3

Obama can jump up and down and hold its breath until it turns blue, but getting the best of Israel is beyond his capabilities.

Someone has already decided that. Someone Who is way above his pay grade.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Ebola and the Obama Administration: A Deadly Incompetency

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

AFBrancoObamaEbola1092014First and foremost, I want the American people to know that our experts, here at the CDC and across our government, agree that the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low. We’ve been taking the necessary precautions, including working with countries in West Africa to increase screening at airports so that someone with the virus doesn’t get on a plane for the United States. In the unlikely event that someone with Ebola does reach our shores, we’ve taken new measures so that we’re prepared here at home. We’re working to help flight crews identify people who are sick, and more labs across our country now have the capacity to quickly test for the virus. We’re working with hospitals to make sure that they are prepared, and to ensure that our doctors, our nurses and our medical staff are trained, are ready, and are able to deal with a possible case safely. – President Barack Hussein Obama, “Remarks by the President on the Ebola Outbreak,  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, 9/16/2014

…The dangers of a serious outbreak are extraordinarily low in the U.S.. But we are taking this very seriously at the highest levels of government.

…We are monitoring, supervising, overseeing in a much more aggressive way exactly what has taken place in Dallas initially and making sure that the lessons learned are then transmitted to hospitals and clinics all across the country. – President Barack Hussein Obama 10/15/2014

In January of 2,000, the NIC published a report titled, “The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States”.

The report stated that

Sub-Saharan Africa will remain the region most affected by the global infectious disease phenomenon–accounting for nearly half of infectious disease-caused deaths worldwide. Deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, cholera, and several lesser known diseases exceed those in all other regions. Sixty-five percent of all deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa are caused by infectious diseases. Rudimentary health care delivery and response systems, the unavailability or misuse of drugs, the lack of funds, and the multiplicity of conflicts are exacerbating the crisis. According to the AFMIC typology, with the exception of southern Africa, most of Sub-Saharan Africa falls in the lowest category. Investment in health care in the region is minimal, less than 40 percent of the people in countries such as Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DROC) have access to basic medical care, and even in relatively well off South Africa, only 50 to 70 percent have such access, with black populations at the low end of the spectrum.

So, our government has known that Sub-Sahara Africa has been a disease incubator for all these years…and, yet, now President Barack Hussein Obama has decided that their plight is an emergency, sending 3,000 of our Brightest and Best into the midst of that diseased land, risking the possibility that they will be come infected and bring their infection back home with them.

Given this fact, my question is:

Why have we not stopped travel to and from our Sovereign Nation, as regards these diseased countries?

Rush Limbaugh said the following about the situation on his program yesterday.

The motivation for the people in charge here is politics, politics, politics. First, second, third.  Because it always, always, always is.  The substance of whatever they’re dealing with is way down on the list.  The politics, the ramifications.  The opportunity that politics presents. 

“Never let a crisis go to waste,” as Rahm Emanuel said.  Here it is.  I still maintain that it would have been much easier to just ban flights from Africa than whatBush had to deal with during Katrina.  Yet these same people, they’re praising themselves for being so smart, doing the right thing, having so much compassion and care and love for their fellow man and so forth.

They just couldn’t wait to hammer Bush and browbeat everybody else that they wanted to accuse of totally botching Katrina, and they were throwing charges of racism around. Bush didn’t care because there were black people in New Orleans, and he especially didn’t care because  more black people leaving New Orleans and going to Houston would be better for the Republicans because that would mean fewer blacks voting in Louisiana. 

That’s the way they were thinking.  That’s what they were charging.  Those were the accusations they were leveling at Bush.  All the while the Bush administration was leading a nationwide mobilizing effort to get supplies, repairs, assistance into New Orleans.  They’d told them to get out of the city.  Meanwhile, School Bus Nagin is over there blameless.  That governor, Kathleen Blanco? She was blameless. 

Those two were the culprits in this for not being prepared.  Want to talk about not prepared?  How about all the school buses.  I don’t want to focus on Katrina.  But my focus is the same people leveling all these baseless, centrist, mean-spirited, extreme political charges at Bush and his regime with administration Katrina. How hard would it have been to ban airplanes from landing in this country from Africa? 

That’s all they had to do, folks! 

That is the first failure in their precious protocol was not closing our airports to people from Ebola countries, and we know why.  “That would have been really mean, because we couldn’t turn our backs on Liberia, especially because of slavery! Yes, because we had slavery! Liberia was set up so people who had been slaves could escape the horrors of this country and set up in their own paradise in Liberia, and we can never turn our backs on them.” 

That’s why we didn’t shut down flights from Ebola countries in Africa.  So far we have at least two more people who are at risk of dying because we refused to take that single precaution, and we refused to take that single precaution all because it wouldn’t look nice and it wouldn’t seem fair.  You see, it’s just not fair that they have Ebola in Africa and we don’t.  That’s not fair. 

No, I’m not saying that they define fairness as us then getting Ebola.  No, no, no. Don’t misunderstand.  I’m saying their preoccupation with diversity, equality and fairness and all this other stuff, leads them to not taking correct protective measures for the United States of America.  Pure and simple.  Whatever happened to that old argument? What if a Republican had come out and said: “If stopping flights from west Africa might just save one child…”? 

Remember the Democrats used to say that? Remember there was a presidential debate in ’96, Bob Dole and Clinton?  It was Dole, right? He was the nominee. Right.  Dole actually mounted a very substantive charge at Clinton based on his catting around, his immorality, lying under oath and all that sort of stuff.  Clinton’s reply was to smile and to say (impression): “No attack, especially on me, ever fed a hungry child.” 

The audience and media started crying. “Oh my God, he’s so good!” Well, what if somebody had stood up and said, “If stopping flights from Africa might save just one child…”? I don’t know. The Centers for Disease Control? If you didn’t know, if you just landed here from Mars you might want to call them the Centers for Disease Redistribution.  Because that’s what’s happening: CDR. 

Could our Administration be that callous and manipulative? Probably, but I hope not. However, even if they are “only” incompetent, that is still scary enough.

Whatever the reason for this incompetency, this is quickly turning out to be reminiscent of the closing chase scenes of the Benny Hill Show…without the comedy.

May God protect us all.

Until He Comes,

KJ