WASHINGTON DC – Sources are reporting that the Russian government is prepared to release private emails that it obtained from Hillary Clinton’s email server, proving Clinton allowed classified information to end up in the hands of foreign adversaries.
Intelligence sources are bracing for the Russian release of Clinton’s intercepted emails, according to a report in the trade publication Oilprice.com:
Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.
These sources echo similar reports that Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has numerous Clinton emails, which it obtained by monitoring the hacker Guccifer, who broke into Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal’s email account.
Thousands of e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s private, unsecured server, created while she served as secretary of state, are reportedly in the possession of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The SVR is said to have gained access to the e-mails, of which it made copies, through its monitoring of a Romanian computer hacker named Marcel Lazăr Lehel (aka Guccifer). Guccifer had learned about the existence of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail account after accessing the e-mails of her close confidante and informal adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, with whom Hillary had extensive correspondence during her term as Secretary of State. A report attributed to Russia’s Security Council indicates that an internal battle has broken out over whether to publicly release the e-mails between the Director of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, and Chairwoman of the Council of Federation, Valentina Matviyenko. The latter had authorized a release of some of the e-mails to Russia Today (RT) back on March 20, 2013. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service director expressed alarm at the release, primarily because of concerns that the release would reveal to U.S. intelligence services how Russia used its monitoring of Guccifer to obtain Clinton’s e-mails. He had good reason to be concerned. U.S. authorities worked with their Romanian counterparts to follow the trail that led to Guccifer’s arrest in Romania.
Clinton exchanged highly classified national defense information on her private server and kept her own State Department IT desk in the dark about her use of private email. Clintoncould be found guilty of violating the Espionage Act if she is found to have allowed that information to be “lost, stolen, or abstracted” through “gross negligence.”
Clinton is still reeling from news that her former staffer Bryan Pagliano’s emails are not in the possession of the State Department. Pagliano, who installed Clinton’s private server, pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination in the growing criminal investigation “The Department has searched for Mr. Pagliano’s email pst file and has not located one that cover the time period of Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” a State Department spokesman said Monday. Pagliano’s missing emails are raising transparency alarms among observers of the case “The whole thing stinks to high heaven,” said Dan Metcalfe, the founding director of the Office of Information and Privacy within the Department of Justice and onetime chief DOJ official for overseeing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) matters As 147 FBI agents work on the investigation, Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills is feeling the heat. Mills and her attorney reportedly left her interrogation by the FBI, regrouped, and later came back when the FBI went off script. According to the Washington Post:
Mills and her lawyer left the room — though both returned a short time later — and prosecutors were somewhat taken aback that their FBI colleague had ventured beyond what was anticipated, the people said…The questions that were considered off limits had to do with the procedure used to produce emails to the State Department so they could possibly be released publicly, the people said. Mills, an attorney herself, was not supposed to be asked questions about that — and ultimately never was in the recent interview — because it was considered confidential as an example of attorney-client privilege, the people said.
Clinton has yet to be called by investigators It’s now been nine months since Breitbart News broke the story that Clinton had multiple classified “Top Secret” emails on her private server, and that she had classified emails on her homebrew server that were classified when “originated.” As America waits to find out if the FBI will recommend indictment, and whether the Department of Justice under Loretta Lynch will indict, the case against Clinton seemingly grows more solid. The case hinges on whether or not Clinton violated the Espionage Act of 1913 (18 U.S. Code & 793 subsection f) by possessing national defense information and allowing it “through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed.”
Here are key pieces of evidence that could lead to a whole lot of trouble for Hillary Clinton:
Exhibit A: The Non-Secure BlackBerry
Hillary Clinton used a BlackBerry to send and receive classified emails during her time as Secretary of State, even though her device was so non-secure that she wasn’t even allowed to use it in her “Mahogany Row” offices on the seventh floor of the State Department.
Clinton did not get her BlackBerry from the Department. It appears that her aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills actually did get their devices from the Department, but those devices were destroyed. The State Department testified in a civil court filing:
“[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……Because the devices issued 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.”
Now here’s where the BlackBerry issue really becomes important. Clinton was warned in 2009 to stop using her BlackBerry because her device suffered a security “vulnerability” when she visited East Asian countries, including China, on her first official State Department trip.
On March 11, 2009, a State Department official, whose name is redacted, sent an email to another State Department official, whose name is redacted. That email, obtained in a lawsuit by Judicial Watch, might be the smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton email case – at least as it pertains to Clinton possibly losing information due to “gross negligence.”
According to the official, Hillary Clinton approached Ambassador Boswell and asked him about BlackBerry use. Specifically, Clinton asked about the fact that the Department had “intelligence concerning the vulnerability during her recent trip to Asia.”
The official wrote:
After this mornings “management meeting” with the A/Secys, Secretary Clinton approached Ambassador Boswell and mentioned that she had read the IM and that she “gets it.” Her attention was drawn to the sentence that indicates we (DS) have intelligence concerning this vulnerability during her recent trip to Asia.Secretary Clinton has asked Ambassador Boswell for this information. Please prepare a short informal paper OR provide the A/Secy with a briefing on this matter. Your assistance is appreciated. The Secretary did not provide a “due date”…BUT the Ambassador would like to close this loop as soon as possible.
But Clinton continued to use her BlackBerry as late as 2011, two years after this warning, according to former State Department official Wendy Sherman. Sherman spoke Clinton’s BlackBerry use in a speech that was quietly recorded on video and released right before the Iowa caucus, which Clinton barely won over Bernie Sanders.
Exhibit B: White House Less Than Supportive
The Obama White House’s refusal to go to bat for Clinton publicly during this ordeal has been one of the most intriguing narratives of the election. Though President Obamahelped her out a bit by saying that he didn’t think Clinton jeopardized national security, the Obama operatives who still remember the vicious 2008 primary season aren’t doing her any favors.
Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett dropped a relevant bombshell when she said that the White House sent official guidance to Clinton telling her to use a government email account. Clinton’s decision to ignore the White House’s warning does not bode well for her defense against the “gross negligence” portion of the Espionage Act.
Remember that brief, bizarre stretch of the campaign right around the February 1 Iowa caucus when Clinton was going out of her way to say nice things about Obama? That might not have been just a ploy to make her seem more electable than Bernie Sanders. It might have also been a ploy to protect her own legal interests by cozying up to a man with pardon power who oversees the Department of Justice.
“She wants to get protected. That’s the only reason she’s nice to him,” Trump said of Clinton’s relationship with Obama.
Breitbart News has led the media in reporting on the espionage investigation into Clinton’s email use. Breitbart News first reported, based on high-level government sources, that “Top Secret” classified emails existed on Clinton’s non-secure private server and that multiple Clinton emails were classified when they were sent. Clinton’s email system was targeted on at least five occasions by Russian-linked hack attempts.
Additionally, Clinton’s non-secure personal Blackberry suffered a security “vulnerability” on her official overseas trip as Secretary of State to China and other East Asian countries. The State Department warned Clinton about the problem and told her not to use her Blackberry anymore for email, but Clinton ignored that warning.
The Clinton campaign is currently reeling from an exclusive Breitbart News reportshowing that she posted and shared the names of CIA-protected covert intelligence sources on her non-secure server. The scandal, which has been picked up by the Associated Press and others, recalls the Bush administration’s Valerie Plame scandal.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has also claimed that his organization is in possession of damaging Clinton emails.
“We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton, which is great, WikiLeaks has a very big year ahead. We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication, that is correct,” Assange said in an interview.
Wikileaks has so far released approximately 32,000 private Clinton emails.
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