Question: Why Did HRC Erase 30K Emails from Her Private Server? Who Gave Her Right to Decide This?

[amborin]

Freedom of Information Act expert: Clinton's email system 'laughable'

By Nick Gass

A top freedom-of-information expert isn’t buying Hillary Clinton’s explanation of why she set up her own email system to conduct official State Department business, calling it “laughable.”

Daniel Metcalfe, who advised White House administrations on interpreting the Freedom of Information Act from 1981 to 2007, told The Canadian Press that the former secretary of state acted “contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the law.”

“There is no doubt that the scheme she established was a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal Records Act,” he said, reviewing a transcript of Clinton’s remarks during her Tuesday news conference. Clinton told reporters she deleted approximately 30,000 personal emails from her private account that she also used as secretary of state.

The FOIA expert said if he had heard of a Cabinet member setting up a personal email system and deciding what gets deleted and what gets kept as government record, “I would’ve said, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’”

“You can’t have the secretary of state do that; that’s just a prescription for the circumvention of the FOIA,” he said. “Plus, fundamentally, there’s no way the people at the archives should permit that if you tell them over there.”’

Metcalfe said that Clinton knows how the Freedom of Information Act works, based on his work with the Clinton administration in his professional capacity.

According to the Canadian Press report, Metcalfe said Clinton’s statements at the news conference were at places impossible to verify, “deceptive” and “grossly misleading.”

“Her suggestion that government employees can unilaterally determine which of their records are personal and which are official, even in the face of a FOIA request, is laughable,” he said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/foia-hillary-clinton-email-daniel-metcalfe-116011#ixzz44RF4lhd3
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This is back when news broke that she deleted the emails. Why should the public trust her word on this?

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clintons-emails-unanswered-questions-deleted-correspondence/story?id=29538638

Why did she delete her personal emails?

Clinton argued that she had a number of emails about personal issues that should not be considered part of the public domain.

"No one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy," Clinton said today.

How do we know what she deleted?

Clinton’s word is really the only check that the public will have on this front. The emails that she chose not to keep included emails "about planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends, as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes," she said.

Will the public ever know what emails she sent?

Yes, but only the emails that Clinton and her team have deemed related to her work as Secretary of State, and then from there, only what the State Department approved. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that once cleared, the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton handed over will be shared publicly on a government website though not for several months.

When it comes to her personal emails, the public will never know. Today, Clinton ruled out an independent review of her server.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/21/us/judge-says-hillary-clinton-didnt-follow-government-email-policies.html?_r=0

[AgerolanAmerican]

1. Divine Right

[Kalidurga]

2. I read the FBI already took them from her Cloud storage.

The fact she stored SOS related emails in Cloud is a whole other issue. She is very likely lying about those emails. Hillary is a texter not an emailer. Seriously she didn't return Jake Sullivan's emails on the Honduras and we are to believe that email is the way she does business. I think she does it only if it's something not easily explained or talked about with LOL's.

[JonLeibowitz]

4. Also emails to Sid Blumenthal which were revealed by a Russian hacker to have been sent.

[Kalidurga]

6. My opinion on Sid Blumenthal is...

That fact alone, that she was in constant contact with Sid and used him as a spy should be enough to trigger a criminal investigation.

[snagglepuss]

7. I've been wondering about her texting on her beloved BlackBerry. Do you think

investigators are searching thru them? IF so, why no word about it?

[Kalidurga]

11. I don't think her BlackBerry is under the scope of the investigation.

I am not even sure it should be. However, if they are looking for all the sneaky stuff she did with Sid, then yes they should be searching those records too.

[tex-wyo-dem]

28. I believe text messages are stored by...

Whatever carrier she was using (AT&T, Verizon, etc), but I'm not sure how long the telecoms are supposed to store those records. In any case, the FBI can supeana those records along with any phone call records, etc.

[TheBlackAdder]

32. At one point, RIM stored every text message at their Canadian Data Center, perhaps archives!

[AzDar]

3. K & R

[tk2kewl]

5. She learned from the best (worst)

“Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer." [laughter] ”
—?Henry Kissinger, United States Secretary of State, (March 10, 1975)

[EndElectoral]

24. Dr. Strangelove himself

[CoffeeCat]

8. Important points

The FBI instructed Clinton to hand over the server. She did hand over the server, but only after Hillary Clinton deleted more than 30,000 emails.

Clinton claims that she deleted the emails because they were personal in nature.

Then, a big fluke happened. A Ukranian hacker named "Gucifer" hacked into many US email accounts, primarily from famous people. One account was Sydney Blumenthal. Gucifer published many of the hacked emails including some from Blumenthal. What are the chances...but some of those Blumenthal emails were exchanges between Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton.

The FBI noticed that Clinton had not turned over these emails. The FBI ordered Blumenthal to turn over his emails, and it was discovered that there were more Blumenthal/Clinton emails that HRC had failed to turn over to the FBI.

Gucifer was extradited to the US a few weeks ago.

This is very serious. It's also an issue that all Americans--no matter who you support for president--should be taking seriously.

[hrmbaja]

9. Two nits (I love what you post btw)

1) He wasn't Ukrainian, he was Romanian
2) Guccifer, not Gucifer. The pseudonym Guccifer is a portmanteau of Gucci and Lucifer, meaning “the style of Gucci and the light of Lucifer”.

[CoffeeCat]

34. Thank you for the corrections

I am just beginning to read more about this subject--which is quite the labyrinth.

You have a low post count, but you obviously have done some reading yourself. I hope you will share your thoughts and insight.

[Lars39]

13. Did she do Any official State business

via email on her official State computer?
I thought I had read that it was never set up for her?
If she never used it and/or it was never set up and all her other stuff was done through her private email and server, she had to have sent classified info via her private setup.
Or is she saying that as Secretary of State she never sent classified info via email at all? That seems unlikely.

[karynnj]

15. She refused to have a state department computer. NT

[Lars39]

16. Ok, that's what I thought I remembered.

Her goose is cooked!

[snagglepuss]

14. Serendipidity is no friend to Hillary!

Of all the famous people, Sid must be at the botton of the barrel. I'd love to know the odds of some bored Romanian choosing Hill's secret spy to hack and hitting upon not just any ole email but emails to a US SoS? It's unbloody unbelieveable! Just as unbelieveable as birdie! Two serendipitous events pooping on Hill.

[thereismore]

31. Guccifer is Romanian. His extradition is a BFD, IMO.

In one of the email hacked from Blumenthal's AOL email account, he says "wealthy Saudi Sunnis" financed the Benghazi attack. Hillary either did not give this email to FBI, or it is one of the fully redacted ones.

[Cheese Sandwich]

10. It's called destroying the evidence.

[Kalidurga]

12. Except it was uploaded to Cloud

I don't get why this isn't paid more attention to. We already have seen evidence of how hackable Cloud is.

[amborin]

17. and then there's this:

mployee at Clinton's email hosting company feared a cover-up

Platte River Networks said they were asked to limit backups of her server.

By Rachael Bade

10/06/15 07:36 PM EDT


Employee at Clinton's email hosting company feared a cover-up

Platte River Networks said they were asked to limit backups of her server.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/hillary-clinton-emails-server-214487#ixzz44RU1B5Dt
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Updated 10/07/15 12:05 PM EDT

An employee at the tech company that maintained Hillary Clinton’s homemade email server was concerned that instructions from Clinton's representatives would have the tech firm “covering up some shaddy [sic] shit,” according to emails obtained by Senate investigators.

Employees at Denver-based Platte River Networks in a mid-August email chain were trying to find records that showed that the Clinton Executive Service Corp., the company paying the Platte River bill, had instructed them to reduce the length of time backups of Clinton's emails were kept.

“Any chance you found an old email with their directive to cut the backup back in Oct-Feb,” one Platte River employee asked another, according to excerpts of the emails included in a Monday letter from Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “I know they had you cut it once in Oct-Nov, then again to 30day in Feb-ish.”

Such a record, the employee said, would be “golden," and would clear the company of outside criticism and point back to Clinton Executive Service Corp., which “appears to be a Clinton family company,” according to the Johnson letter.

“Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy shit,” the employee continued. “I just think if we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups, and we can go public saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/hillary-clinton-emails-server-214487#ixzz44RTqDYm0
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[Kalidurga]

19. Well that is interesting. I never saw that before.

I hope the employee is taking precautions.

[chillfactor]

18. I erase personal emails every day

Don't you?

[amborin]

20. not if it's against FOIA regulations and hiding from the public

[dchill]

26. I'm SURE you think that's all it was.

[arcane1]

27. Did you privatize the U.S. State Department?

[beedle]

37. No, not on 'company' email systems

Or rather the company I work for, and I assume most companies of any size, require that all email be backed up and preserved for at least the minimum time required by law (7 years I believe.)

Additionally, while I am allowed to use the company systems for some personal business (as long as it's all reasonable and legal) I am not allowed to use personal email accounts (or any other personal service) for business purposes.

If I were to be found to be sending business related emails or data through personal or public systems I would at a minimum be give a sever warning, and that would be the last warning (assuming they didn't just fire my ass.)

This requirement is so important everyone in the company has to take a yearly refresher course to make sure this requirement is well understoond and there can be no excuses.

If the SoS and her staff are not given a similar requirement and proper training then that whole department is a security risk ... as it obviously turned out given the known successful hack of government business emails on an unauthorized system.

[DJ13]

21. Because they were incriminating due to their establishing a timeline

... between donations to the Clinton Foundation and arms sales to several countries?

Just a guess.

[tex-wyo-dem]

33. Why else would Hill go to all the trouble...

To Set up a server and email account totally off-grid for personal AND Clinton Foundation AND official SoS communication, including classified material?

The only plausible reason is to have control over the information without oversight and hide shit that's illegal or, at the very least, politically damaging.

[amborin]

42. that's what this article suggests:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-pappalardo/hillary-email-probe-could_b_9579826.html

[timlot]

22. State Dept. rules stated the official "Sec. State" is the one that decides...

During the 11 hour hearing Sec. Clinton did in Oct. that question was asked and she said the policy was the official (meaning her) also her lawyer, decides what email were work related and which were personal. That was Gov. policy.

[amborin]

40. can you link to that rule? I doubt there is one; there is this rule, however, which she broke:

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/state-department-email-rule-hillary-clinton-115804

[HereSince1628]

23. You know the rule, It's easier to get forgiveness than permission.

And every lawyer in the country would rather defend a person who has bent a rule than a person who broke the US Code.

[Corey_Baker08]

29. You Sound Like A Republican WTF

[MadDAsHell]

30. She doesn't have a penis; she can do no wrong. nt

[beedle]

38. stop it

I have as little respect for Hillary as any person, but just as it's wrong to support her simply because she doesn't have a penis, it's wrong, even more so, to be against her simply because she doesn't have one.

[apnu]

35. The Bush White House lost millions of emails on government servers, nobody cares.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy

While we roast Hillary, I don't hear any calls for arrest, trial, and incarceration of W and his staff for violating the Presidential Records Act.

So far there has been zero evidence that Hillary is hiding anything. She's protecting her privacy. She's a highly public figure and has been hounded since before she was FLOTUS. I don't blame her at all for drawing a line on her private conversations.

This is still a witch hunt, the same witch hunt we've seen for decades. And people on the Left keep falling for it, its depressing to see so many easily led by right-wing FUD.

[auntpurl]

39. Exactly; this whole thing is RW nonsense. nt

[Scuba]

36. Give her a break, after all ....

... she has lots to hide!

[amborin]

41. NY Times: "Hillary Clinton Thwarted Record Requests"

Her use of a personal email account at the State Department kept a significant amount of her correspondence from investigators and the public.

WASHINGTON — In 2012, congressional investigators asked the State Department for a wide range of documents related to the attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. The department eventually responded, furnishing House committees with thousands of documents.

But it turns out that that was not everything.

The State Department had not searched the email account of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton because she had maintained a private account, which shielded it from such searches, department officials acknowledged on Tuesday.

It was only last month that the House committee appointed to investigate Benghazi was provided with about 300 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails related to the attacks. That was shortly after Mrs. Clinton turned over, at the State Department’s request, some 50,000 pages of government-related emails that she had kept on her private account.

It was one of several instances in which records requests sent to the State Department, which had no access to Mrs. Clinton’s emails, came up empty.

In 2013, Nitasha Tiku, then a reporter for Gawker, filed a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking all correspondence on Mrs. Clinton’s private email account between her and Sidney Blumenthal, a close adviser and onetime staff member in the Clinton White House. Some of those emails had already spilled into public view and been reported in the news media. But the State Department told Gawker that it could find no records responsive to the request, Gawker reported.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides on Tuesday sought to play down the significance of her exclusive use of a personal email account for State Department business. But an examination of records requests sent to the department reveals how the practice protected a significant amount of her correspondence from the eyes of investigators and the public.

Mrs. Clinton’s exclusive use of personal email for her government business is unusual for a high-level official, archive experts have said. Federal regulations, since 2009, have required that all emails be preserved as part of an agency’s record-keeping system. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, her emails were kept on her personal account and her staff took no steps to have them preserved as part of State Department record.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/us/politics/using-private-email-hillary-clinton-thwarted-record-requests.html?_r=0