The FBI publicly condemned Hillary Clinton for being careless with her email and national secrets. And the classified information she said wasn’t there … was. Further, the tens of thousands of emails that she deleted are, in some cases, reappearing.
But those scandals all affected Hillary Clinton, mainly.
The newest casts its net over the Obama administration.
According to the Wall Street Journal, emails that were just released show “top Obama administration officials were in close contact with Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign in early 2015 about the potential fallout from revelations that the former secretary of state used a private email server.”
Among the points included: A White House official asked the State Department if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions about the email and “a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.”
The Journal said the emails were obtained by the Republican National Committee under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The RNC gave selected portions to the Journal.
The newspaper cited Meredith McGehee, of the nonpartisan advocacy group Issue One, suggesting that there would be no legal concerns, “because federal law permits members of the White House staff to engage in some political activity.”
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But Republicans and critics cite Hillary Clinton’s handling of official government email as revealing her carelessness with government secrets.
GOP candidate Donald Trump has said Clinton has a lot of experience, but it’s all “bad.”
The private email server that Clinton set up and used for government email while she was secretary of state has been in the headlines almost nonstop for months.
She’s said the setup was a “mistake.”
The Journal reported the emails illustrated a “revolving door” connecting the White House, the Clinton campaign and the State Department, which Hillary Clinton managed during Barack Obama’s first term.
About a week after the story broke that Clinton had set up and used her private system for government documents, White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri emailed State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki to ask, “between us on the shows…think we can get this done so he is not asked about email.”
“That apparently referred to Mr. Kerry, who appeared in an interview on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ three days later,” the Journal said.
The report said Palmieri already had said she would be joining the campaign, but still was in the White House when she sent the email.
“Other emails show Ms. Palmieri helped arrange for Ms. Psaki to move from the State Department to the White House communications job Ms. Palmieri was vacating. ‘Agree completely and working to crush on my end,’ wrote back Ms. Psaki, who would move to the White House weeks later,” the report sait.
As Zerohedge, Tyler Durden pointed out that months after the New York Times revealed the private server arrangement, Barack Obama was on “60 Minutes” to deny “any and all” knowledge of the arrangement..
“Of course, we now know from the FBI’s investigation notes that, in fact, that was a complete lie. As we noted back in September, Huma Abedin’s interview with the FBI on April 5, 2016, revealed an email sent on June 28, 2012, from Obama, using an unknown pseudonym, to Hillary on her private email server. So, either Obama is so incompetent that he didn’t recognize that Hillary wasn’t using a ‘.gov’ email account or he simply lied in the following interview. We’ll let you be the judge.”
The Journal reported on exchanges apparently about a Kerry appearance on CBS, at which he was not asked about certain stories.
“CBS spokeswoman Caitlin Conant said the network had made no commitments about what questions Mr. Kerry would face,” the Journal said.
The report said another email was from Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy to Clinton Attorney Heather Samuelson about new documents the State Department had posted concerning the former secretary of state.
Samuelson was on the team reviewing Clinton emails and deciding which to give to the government.
Zerohedge summarized what was found:
“New emails, obtained by the Wall Street Journal via a FOIA request by the Republican National Committee, reveal communications between the White House and the State Department coordinating over how to minimize the potential fallout from Hillary’s email scandal so as to not impact her nascent presidential campaign. We’re sure Bernie supporters must love that.”
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