Reddit cooperating with congressional investigation of 'smoking gun'

The social-media website Reddit has agreed to cooperate with a congressional order to preserve copies of posts to determine whether an IT employee asked for advice on how to strip Hillary Clinton's email address from her emails.

The Hill reported late Wednesday that Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, confirmed the committee issued a preservation order to Reddit and that the company was "cooperating."

The order carries "the weight of law," he explained.

WND reported earlier in the week that some were describing the discovery of a request for procedures to strip IDs from email archives as a "smoking gun" in Hillary Clinton's email scandal.

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The request, traced to an employee working at the company hosting her private server, Platte River Networks, was posted only a day after Congress demanded the email records.

Talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh credited the Reddit community for the discovery of what he called the "smoking gun on Hillary's email deletion."

"Apparently somebody working IT for Hillary went to Reddit and ask[ed] Redditors if any of them knew how to do this! 'Do you know how to strip/remove content from very VIP emails?' This request was made on July 24, 2014," he said Tuesday.

"You know what happened? You know what happened the day before? On July 23, 2014, a congressional committee chaired by Trey Gowdy confirmed a deal to get Hillary Clinton's records and emails.

"After that is when somebody from her IT team, it is suspected, got hold of Reddit and said, 'Is there anybody here who can tell me how to mass, to in bulk delete, and remove content of very VIP email?'"

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Guy Benson at Townhall wrote: "'Smoking gun' may be a slight exaggeration, but the circumstantial case here looks pretty strong. Bravo to the Internet sleuths who ferreted out this virtual paper trail, which leads back to a techie who was granted immunity by U.S. officials in the course of their criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's email scandal."

He cited the blogger Allahpundit's explanation as about the clearest of a complicated issue.

Allahpundit said there's "compelling circumstantial evidence" that a poster who was identified as "stonetear" could be Paul Combetta, the Platte River Networks tech who worked on Hillary Clinton's email.

He recently was granted immunity from the feds for his testimony.

The blogger's explanation continues, with the reference to the dates, the July 23 House Select Committee on Benghazi agreement on the production of Clinton's records and emails, and the subsequent request for advice on stripping emails on the 24th.

"Oddly enough, stonetear seems to have been interested in precisely the same recordkeeping issues that Paul Combetta would have been interested in with Hillary Clinton as his client at precisely the same times that he would have been most interested," the blogger pointed out.

"Equally oddly, all traces of stonetear seem to be disappearing from reddit this afternoon, now that members there are sifting through his archive of posts."

The questions continued, "Assuming stonetear is in fact Paul Combetta, why was Combetta looking at ways to 'strip out' a certain unnamed VIP's email address from archived emails after a congressional committee had expressed interest in those emails?"

The blogger wrote that there was speculation that Combetta "might have wanted Clinton's address off certain emails in order to avoid discovery requests related to the investigation. If the House Benghazi committee demanded every email sent to or by Hillary Clinton, then one easy way to avoid producing a particular email would be to simply scrub her address from it."

Summarized Limbaugh, "So the very day after the Gowdy committee confirms it's going to get her records, a Hillary IT tech asks Reddit how to strip VIP email and email addresses from the archives of what she's gonna send."

He warned the email issue is not anywhere near going away.

"A lot of people on the left think we've seen the end of it, but this continues to be a drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. And as, you know, Hillary says, 'I've done everything! I've been as open as honest as I can. I have not held back! I have …' And then she faints, seizes up, and they revive her and she continues the denial."

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On Thursday, Hill reported Chaffetz explained the allegations "fit the pattern of what we think was happening."

He said the committee is reviewing the details, including suggestions the posting online came from Combetta.

"I'm very confident that the amount of circumstantial evidence certainly points in one direction," Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the panel's Government Operations subcommittee, said in the report by The Hill. "We're just trying to make doubly sure that we can authenticate that in a real way, because if not it will be challenged on a number of fronts."