Perhaps the worst thing (for Hillary Clinton) in the state dept. IG report is the evidence Hillary lied, and then how her SPOX lied about her lies. So much of what she said about the email scandal was simply false, so much about what the Inspector General (IG report) revealed is that she had a disregard for America’s secrets, and so much of what her spokespeople said yesterday after the report seemed to ignore the truth, that it’s a wonder how any American could ever trust her again. This report wasn’t issued by a GOP superPac or congressional committee, this was an Obama appointed IG in the Obama administration state department.
Clinton has said on multiple occasions that her email setup did not violate any rules or laws but throughout the document (embedded below) the IG explains that she not only broke the rules but seemed to have a reckless disregard for them including the fact that every e-mail needed to be printed and filed. Hillary did not comply:
Pg. 23: As previously discussed, however, sending emails from a personal account to other employees at their Department accounts is not an appropriate method of preserving any such emails that would constitute a Federal record. Therefore, Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary. At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.
Her very use of a private server broke department rules:
Pg 27: The Department’s current policy, implemented in 2005, is that normal day-to-day operations should be conducted on an authorized Automated Information System (AIS), which “has the proper level of security control to … ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information.”The FAM defines an AIS as an assembly of hardware, software, and firmware used to electronically input, process, store, and/or output data. Examples include: mainframes, servers, desktop workstations, and mobile devices (such as laptops, e-readers, smartphones, and tablets).
The report (pages 36 and 37) reports that Ms. Clinton totally disregarded state department rules about email but at the same time warned state department staff to follow those rules including the fat that the rules state that she needed to show her server set up with the department Chief Information Officer and Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security to get it approved from a safety perspective…that was never done. If she had it would never have been done.
According to the current CIO and Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, Secretary Clinton had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business with their offices, who in turn would have attempted to provide her with approved and secured means that met her business needs. However, according to these officials, DS and IRM did not—and would not—approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business, because of the restrictions in the FAM and the security risks in doing so.
The email exchange explained below hasn’t been seen it before, did the state department leave this one out or did Hillary hold it back? Hillary has always said the private server was set up for her convenience, but we learn here that it was set up because she was worried about her privacy. She was trying to keep it from the public. page 43 of the report (embedded below) it says:
In November 2010, Secretary Clinton and her Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations discussed the fact that Secretary Clinton’s emails to Department employees were not being received. The Deputy Chief of Staff emailed the Secretary that “we should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.” In response, the Secretary wrote, “Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.
When two State Department staffer express their concern about Hillary’s use of a private server and national secrets, they were told to shut up and never mention the server again.
P43: Two staff in S/ES-IRM reported to OIG that, in late 2010, they each discussed their concerns about Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account in separate meetings with the then-Director of S/ES-IRM. In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal record keeping requirements. According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary’s personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further. As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system. According to the other S/ES-IRM staff member who raised concerns about the server, the Director stated that the mission of S/ES-IRM is to support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.
Hillary and her team have said over and over there was no evidence of hacking. Again this was found to be false. Not only are were there incidents of suspected hacking, but she never reported those issues to security which is the rule:
On January 9, 2011, the non-Departmental advisor to President Clinton who provided technical support to the Clinton email system notified the Secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations that he had to shut down the server because he believed “someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in I didn’t [sic] want to let them have the chance to.” Later that day, the advisor again wrote to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, “We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.” On January 10, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations emailed the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and instructed them not to email the Secretary “anything sensitive” and stated that she could “explain more in person.”
P40: In another incident occurring on May 13, 2011, two of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff discussed via email the Secretary’s concern that someone was “hacking into her email” after she received an email with a suspicious link. Several hours later, Secretary Clinton received an email from the personal account of then-Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs that also had a link to a suspect website. The next morning, Secretary Clinton replied to the email with the following message to the Under Secretary: “Is this really from you? I was worried about opening it!” Department policy requires employees to report cybersecurity incidents to IRM security officials when any improper cyber-security practice comes to their attention. 12 FAM 592.4 (January 10, 2007). Notification is required when a user suspects compromise of, among other things, a personally owned device containing personally identifiable information. 12 FAM 682.2-6 (August 4, 2008). However, OIG found no evidence that the Secretary or her staff reported these incidents to computer security personnel or anyone else within the Department.
Avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests? An Item on page 38/39 explains:
In August 2011, the Executive Secretary, the Under Secretary for Management, and Secretary Clinton’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff, in response to the Secretary’s request, discussed via email providing her with a Department BlackBerry to replace her personal BlackBerry, which was malfunctioning, possibly because “her personal email server is down.” The then-Executive Secretary informed staff of his intent to provide two devices for the Secretary to use: “one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests), and another which would just have phone and internet capability.” In another email exchange, the Director of S/ES-IRM noted that an email account and address had already been set up for the Secretary. and also stated that “you should be aware that any email would go through the Department’s infrastructure and subject to FOIA searches.” However, the Secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff rejected the proposal to use two devices, stating that it “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” OIG found no evidence that the Secretary obtained a Department address or device after this discussion.
Perhaps the most damning thing in the report was on page 7, “Through her counsel, Secretary Clinton declined OIG’s request for an interview.” That’s the same Hillary who said over and over that she was being cooperative…well why didn’t she speak to the inspector general? What was she hiding?
There’s much more in the IG report embedded below, the above are just my “personal favorites.”
Here’s the real fun part. Watch the video below where Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman is interviewed by Bret Baier, and lies about everything in the report. Fallon basically peed on the public’s legs and told us all it is raining:
