There is an interesting twist in the Clinton email scandal. One of the most surprising elements of Hillary Clinton’s statements to the FBI was her insistence that it was former Secretary of State Colin Powell who convinced her to use a private email server. Clinton told investigators that Powell not only advised her to use a private email system but made it his one piece of advice when prompted by a third former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Now, Powell has come out with a seemingly angry denial of the account and has said that Clinton’s “people have been trying to pin it on me.”
Clinton used this rationale with the FBI and it has apparently been raised by Clinton aides and close supporters. Author Joe Conason is viewed as a close ally of Clinton’s and wrote in his book, “Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton” recounted the dinner with former secretaries:
“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat. Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer … [Powell] confirmed a decision she had made months earlier – to keep her personal account and use it for most messages.”
Powell has responded that he has absolutely no recollection of such a statement to Clinton and that the system in place at the State Department did not exist when he was Secretary. His office said that “He did write former Secretary Clinton an email memo describing his use of his personal AOL email account for unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department.” However, Powell recently added that “The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”
One of the most common mistakes in Washington for high-level targets is to trip the wire under 18 U.S.C. 1001 in making false statements to federal investigators. Such contradictions can raise that concern but it is likely not a significant risk in this case. The FBI director was clearly not inclined to charge Clinton and this can be answered as simply a difference in recollection of a fact that was not critical to the underlying alleged violations. The Powell story is of more political than legal benefit for Clinton.
What do you think?
I think Clinton and other “leaders” are receiving advice from David Berkowitz old neighbor’s new dog.
It’s almost laughable how far Trump has gone in this campaign. When he first announced, everyone joked about it as a sideshow.
If anyone needs further evidence of how many think Clinton can’t be trusted, look no further than the Republicans’ nominee.
Steve, think about if Trump wins. A major portion of the Washington establishment from the Center for American Progress to the Heritage Foundation, along with The NY Times, CNN and MSNBC will have been either ripped from their roots in DC or they will all become hypocritical leeches to run to the new administration to prostitute their policy wares to his majesty wearing their well worn golden courtesan kneepads.
That is what needs to happen. The FED, the Supreme Court and the US Military and all of their subsidiaries, will all do fine once his eminence takes the helm.
Trump is political Roundup. Kill the weeds but save the grass.
Just thinking. . .
I doubt much will change. Sorosphere subsidiaries will attack him. That’s what they do. The Republican establishment and commentariat will likely have a variegated response. Recall that National Review printed an editorial in 1971 telling their readers that their support for the Nixon Administration was ‘suspended’ and Nixon had among his astringent critics the young George Will, who was hired by the Washington Post Writers Group in 1973. GF Will and C. Krauthammer will remain critics. They’re too old and too personally wealthy and too principled to be intimidated or bought. As long as Trump’s got the key to the candy box, he’ll be able to recruit among the usual crew of Republican office-seekers, some of whom may be worth hiring and some not.
Electing Trump is defensive. I suspect the Republican caucuses on Capitol Hill will block all of his initiatives. AM McConnell has demonstrated that he cares about passing candy to the Chamber of Commerce and he cares about Capitol Hill gamesmanship. He doesn’t care about accomplishment as a committed Republican voter would understand that. As for Paul Ryan, he’s been ineffectual. The one thing he’s principled about is immigration, an issue on which he’s dead wrong.
Lisa N writes, “The same Democrats who insist that the Russians hacked the DNC server are the same Democrats who insist there was no way the Russians could have hacked Hillary’s private email server.
“They want us to believe the Russians are interested in the DNC’s campaign secrets, but not our national security secrets. Lol 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂”
Well put. I believe this, too, and the facts weigh heavily in favor of its accuracy.
This comes full circle to phillyT’s comment the other day to the effect that if Trump is elected we’ll be reliving 1933 Germany. It seems to me that Clinton (who has absolutely no evidence the Russians hacked the DNC servers, let alone her total avoidance of their content and outright assistance in Clinton’s campaign against Sanders) is more like Hitler (who blamed the communists for the burning of the Reichstag) than Trump ever was. It’s true he’s unpredictable and we don’t know what he’ll do as a lot of it is bravado, but we know exactly what Clinton will do.
phillyT, your once rationale arguments have turned into used-car salesmanship for what Spinelli and KCFleming declare (and I agree with them) is a Clinton psychopathy. For you to say that the Syrian crisis is all al-Assad’s fault (while a third of the children born in that country since 2011 have been affected by the insurrection) belies the fact that we’ve spent lots of effort and money supporting the Syrian insurrectionists, and that Hillary Clinton was an active participant in that support.
The allegation that she was involved in the transfer of the Libyan stockpile of sarin gas to the Syrian rebels after persuading Obama to bomb Qaddafi into irrelevance leaves you little wiggle room here, my friend. You’re supporting a Goldwater Republican who has a lot of Nixonian blood in her lineage. Wake up: of the two, she’s far worse based on her record.
Blame it someone or something. Hillary is a 21st century Eve in the Garden of Eden.
It was the tree of good and evil. If they ate fruit from that tree, they would know what was good and what was bad. They would have to leave the Garden of Eden. If they did not eat it, they could always stay in the Garden of Eden.
One day Satan, the devil, came to the Garden of Eden. He told Eve she should eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Satan said the fruit was very good. He told Eve it would make her wise. She would know good and evil. Eve chose to eat the fruit.
Eve told Adam she had eaten the fruit. She would have to leave the garden. She gave Adam some of the fruit. Adam ate it. They said Satan told them to eat it. So they ate the fruit.
Adam – Eve ate forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Big difference.Prior to Eve’s transgression Adam and Eve were without the knowledge of evil.
The serpent was actually the catalyst.
So blaming it on the third party goes way back.
Roscoe – Satan came is the guise of a serpent. Satan is the catalyst.
I rest my case
I’m writing in Satan
Roscoe – how does one “write in Satan”?
@PaulCS
Actually, there are several common Satanic Alphabets. Here is the most commonly accepted one:
http://www.ioffer.com/img/item/390/084/06/Witches_Alphabet.jpg
Sooo, that is one requirement, a Satanic Alphabet. BUT, someone who wishes to “write in Satan”, should also pay attention to the paper they use. I think we have all heard of “Satan Sheets.” I think they even wrote a song about it, “Satan sheets to lie on! Satan sheets to cry on!” etc.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – berry punny, berry punny!!!
Too bad if it gets tossed.
Write in what you want. Satan, Santa Claus, Spongebob. . .
I think with her inability to remember anything should would have forgotten who said it and just blamed it on someone at a party sometime.
Na, just had to blame someone. But they didn’t think that blaming a black person would backfire.
“Clinton and her mob are still the least of the evils”
You either spelled Trump wrong, or don’t know the definition of ‘evil’.
Really?
I remember the same logic used when Kennedy and Nixon were candidates for President. And we survived.
I don’t think HRC is at all with these efforts to bring some sanity back to America:
>Free from repeat criminal illegal’s and the harm and grief they cause our families,
>To know who is granted permission to come to America, (immigrating to America is not a RIGHT),
>Lower the corporate tax rate to the level that competes with the rest of the world’s corporate tax rate and bring $2 trillion dollars back to the US,
>Attack the attackers of America and freedom,
>Stop the silliness with PC language.
The only hope is voting a split ticket then impeach her.
That means I may have to vote for John McCain.
First they are both liars and murderers so who can really say which one of them is telling the truth in this situation? Nevertheless, Clinton is putting herself forward as a great decision maker, one so excellent, that the WH will never have seen such an amazing decider!
So as the decider is she going to say: Hey, Obama told me to obliterate Iran? Bush told me to depose Putin so I did?
WTF? If a person gives you advice you don’t have to take it. You use your own judgment and you take responsibility for that decision. Why anyone would accept this person as a capable president is beyond comprehension.
She tells big lies, as does her ‘husband’. All the time and about everything.
Lewis Libby was bankrupted defending himself against sketchy perjury charges which resulted from an ‘investigation’ in which Patrick FitzGerald spun his wheels for 3+ years pretending to seek answers to questions he’d been given at the beginning of the investigation. FitzGerald had as his co-conspirator a federal judge ‘presiding’ over the case. So, a busy man whose memory of what he said (about a matter of but modest importance) to reporter x and to reporter y differs from said reporters (while their memories differ from each other) is guilty of a felony while quite willful efforts to evade freedom-of-information laws (while lying to investigators at every stage of the investigation) is something ‘no reasonable prosecutor’ would persuade.
The federal legal system is an utter fraud. It’s time to shut it down and start anew.
“Would persue”.
Yes, but Libby had the temerity to work in a Republican administration. So his memory issues about a trivial non-crime were much more serious than Clinton’s confusion over an actual crime.
The federal system used to work.
What happened? And by whom?
“Clinton and her mob are still the least of the evils . . . ”
This from a member of a party that would vote for a continuation of the most deceitful criminal administration in history.
Now being lead by Hillary Clinton who the FBI determined to be too stupid and incompetent to know better. . . . And believes Trump is egotistical? Lmao 😂😂😂.
I’ll take egotistical over un-indicted felon liar money launderer, all day long.
That’s rich!…Your daily dose of validation that Liberalism is a mental disorder right there!
Trump 2016!
Interesting & important story. SUPPRESS!!
Lisa, GREAT point. You say much more in a few words than the Canadian says in his polemics. He just needs to repeat, “lesser of 2 evils.” When you whittle away the poutine, that’s all he says.
Of course Hillary is blaming her troubles on a black man, and the racist Hillbots join right in w/ her.
The same Democrats who insist that the Russians hacked the DNC server are the same Democrats who insist there was no way the Russians could have hacked Hillary’s private email server.
They want us to believe the Russians are interested in the DNC’s campaign secrets, but not our national security secrets. Lol 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
It takes an exceptional ego to go for the political positions. The person that truly wants to serve his or her country only with no other desires is rare if non existent. We have two enormous egos going for the top spot this time; two egos that have been unmatched in recent history.
What is most disconcerting is the lack of intelligence that comes with these egos. One can point to Trump as an ego first, an ego out of control, and an ego obscuring any other possible reasons why he would wish to be President; in other words regarding the ego issue, Trump is a bottomless pit that refuses to be fathomed.
Clinton, on the other hand, despite her transgressions, is an ego with some degree of understanding of the position she is attempting to achieve. She has a history of public service that eclipses her activities in the private sector, no matter how vile. That being said, accolades such as they are having been given, in this and other recent moves Clinton joins Trump in the mindless and needless activity of slithering out of a position that is not, in the first place, that bad. In other words she is her own worst enemy. If she had simply kept her collective mouthes shut, taken the flack, and apologized-inferring that a lesson had been learned, she would have been alright.
Clinton has now alienated Colin Powell, one of the Republican standards that could have helped her by at the very least saying nothing. This is a stupid move, as stupid as most of Trump’s. Trump is now circling his past nonsensical statements in an attempt to address the more logical voters. If Trump’s main weakness, seen as a strength by some, was to say anything regardless of what it was, then Clinton’s main weakness has been her sleaze level. She just raised her own sleaze level as Trump is attempting to lower his stupidity level.
Clinton and her mob are still the least of the evils, however, her lack of intelligence in this matter will not bode well for her. She just lost a substantial degree of support.
What is most disconcerting is the lack of intelligence that comes with these egos.
You’re not in a position to evaluate anyone’s intelligence.
Art, Ouch!
But isn’t that exactly what Art is doing?
HRC has made hundreds of millions of dollars in public service as a power broker. Of course she’d continue in public service rather than the private sector. That is not a testament to her character.
And let’s look at that job performance. Totally ignoring the mountain of evidence that she gets caught lying at every turn, there is her tenure as SOS.
On the one hand, she was very well travelled, and made many lucrative connections around the world, gathering donors for her private foundation and then, in a completely unrelated coincidence, giving those donors preferential treatment at State.
On the other hand, she placed Ambassador Stevens at what was known as one of the hottest embassies in the world, Benghazi. Then our own military security was withdrawn in favor of the locals. Then 600 separate requests for more security were denied. She claims she never got them, which makes one wonder how she ran State. Then when the inevitable attack on Libya happened, State spent most of the briefing talking about an unrelated video, and wanted to get the video taken off the internet before they acted. Rescue teams were told to get ready, then wait, then get ready, then wait, for a total of 18 hours, long after any window to save Stevens had closed. Then she lied and told the grieving families it was because of a video while she told others via infamous emails that it was a terrorist attack. Then she said the families were lying when they complained about her video story.
People actually died because of her negligence. And it was proven that she lied on multiple occasions.
That’s a pretty bad employment record. In fact, such a record would preclude most people from additional employment in a high level position.
Having a bad record of experience is worse than no experience at all. It’s like my dressage trainer always says, “Bad practice is worse than no practice.”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/more-600-benghazi-security-requests-never-reached-clintons-desk-reports
And let’s not forget that “All four Committee Democrats who were present voted against releasing the report to the American people.”
http://benghazi.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-committee-on-benghazi-releases-final-report-urges-obama-administration-to
But some swimmers lie about a robbery and the media is all over it.
Clinton, it appears, can lie all she wants. She blames Powell. She blames the 300 professionals at the State department. She never takes responsibility for her actions., it’s appalling.
Media genuflects.
Compulsively lying narcissistic sociopath lies compulsively.
Media swoons.
The term, “compulsive liar” is overused in our culture. But, both this woman and her husband are truly compulsive liars.