[h=2]State Department Office Removed Benghazi Files After Congressional Subpoena[/h]Release of records delayed over a year due to removal
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BY: Alana Goodman
April 21, 2016 12:05 pm
State Department officials removed files from the secretary’s office related to the Benghazi attack in Libya and transferred them to another department after receiving a congressional subpoena last spring, delaying the release of the records to Congress for over a year.
Attorneys for the State Department said the electronic folders, which contain hundreds of documents related to the Benghazi attack and Libya, were belatedly rediscovered at the end of last year.
They said the files had been overlooked by State Department officials because the executive secretary’s office transferred them to another department and flagged them for archiving last April, shortly after receiving a subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
The new source of documents includes electronic folders used by senior officials under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They were originally kept in the executive secretary’s office, which handles communication and coordination between the secretary of state’s office and other department bureaus.
The House Benghazi Committee requested documents from the secretary’s office in a subpoena filed in March 2015. Congressional investigators met with the head of the executive secretary’s office staff to discuss its records maintenance system and the scope of the subpoena last April. That same month, State Department officials sent the electronic folders to another bureau for archiving, and they were not searched in response to the request.
The blunder could raise new questions about the State Department’s records process, which has come under scrutiny from members of Congress and government watchdogs. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act process as “broken” in January, citing “systematic failures at the agency.”
The inspector general for the State Department also released a report criticizing the agency’s public records process in January. The report highlighted failures in the executive secretary’s office, which responds to records requests for the Office of the Secretary.
Since last fall, the State Department has taken additional steps to increase transparency, recently hiring a transparency coordinator.
But the late discovery of the electronic folders has set back the release of information in a number of public records lawsuits filed against the State Department by watchdog groups.
The State Department first disclosed that staffers had discovered the unsearched folders in a January court filing. Attorneys for the department asked the court for additional time to process and release the documents in response to a 2014 lawsuit filed by the government ethics group Judicial Watch.
Around the same time, the State Department alerted the House Select Committee on Benghazi to the discovery. On April 8, the department turned over 1,100 pages of documents from the electronic folders to the House Benghazi Committee, over a year after the committee’s subpoena. The committee had received other documents from the production in February.
The delay has had consequences. The Benghazi Committee had already completed the majority of its interviews with diplomats and government officials regarding the Benghazi attack before it received the latest tranche of documents.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), chairman of the Benghazi Committee, said in an April 8 statement it was “deplorable that it took over a year for these records to be produced to our committee.”
“This investigation is about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans, and it could have been completed a lot sooner if the administration had not delayed and delayed and delayed at every turn,” Gowdy said.
The decision by State Department officials to transfer the electronic folders to another bureau after receiving the subpoena could also raise questions.
The subpoena requested Benghazi-related documents and communications from 10 of Hillary Clinton’s top aides for the years 2011 and 2012.
The requests included standard language that “Subpoenaed records, documents, data or information should not be destroyed, modified, removed, transferred or otherwise made inaccessible to the Committee.”
The State Department’s attorneys said the executive secretary’s office transferred the folders to the Office of Information Programs and Services for “retiring” in April 2015. Public records officials did not realize for almost eight months that the folders had been moved, and so they were not searched in response to FOIA requests or subpoenas.
“In April 2015—prior to its search in this [Judicial Watch] case—the Secretariat Staff within the Office of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-S”) retired the shared office folders and transferred them to the custody of the Bureau of Administration, Office of Information Programs and Services,” the State Department said in a Feb. 5 court filing.
“The IPS employees working on this FOIA request did not initially identify S/ES retired records as a location to search for potentially responsive records because they were operating with the understanding that, to the extent responsive records from the Office of the Secretary existed, they resided within [the executive secretary’s office].”
According to congressional sources, officials on the House Benghazi Committee had a meeting with the executive secretary’s office to discuss the subpoena and the locations of potentially relevant records on April 10, 2015. Electronic folders of senior staff members were discussed during the briefing.
State Department officials at the meeting included the director of the executive secretary’s office staff, who was responsible for handling the office’s records maintenance, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, and Catherine Duval, the attorney who oversaw the public release of Hillary Clinton’s official emails. The officials gave no indication that electronic folders had recently been transferred out of the office.
The State Department declined to comment on whether the folders were transferred after the meeting took place.
A State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon that personnel did not mislead congressional investigators, and added that no officials at the meeting were involved in transferring the folders.
“The Department personnel who briefed the Select Committee in April 2015 did not play a role in the transfer of these files to State’s Bureau of Administration,” the State Department official said.
The official added that department files are often moved as a routine matter.
“Files that are generated in an office are regularly moved to the Bureau of Administration for storage according to published records retirement schedules,” the official said. “This is a routine action that would not involve a senior supervisor. It also continues to make them available to respond to either Congressional or FOIA requests.”
Duval left the State Department last September. She had previously overseen document production for the IRS during the targeting controversy. Republicans had criticized that process after agency emails were reportedly destroyed and a key IRS official’s hard drive was shredded months after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.
In recent months, the State Department has been working to increase transparency.
“The Department has worked closely with the Select Committee in a spirit of cooperation and responsiveness,” a State Department official said. “Since the Committee was formed, we have provided 48 witnesses for interviews and more than 95,000 pages of documents.”
The efforts drew some praise from the House Benghazi Committee last fall.
“It’s curious the Department is suddenly able to be more productive after recent staff changes involving those responsible for document production,” committee spokesman Jamal Ware said in a Sept. 25, 2015 press release.
Still, it could be months before the public is able to see many of the Benghazi-related documents belatedly discovered by the State Department. The House Benghazi Committee is still completing its investigation and has not released them.
The department’s attorneys have also been granted extensions to produce the documents in response to several public records lawsuits. In one FOIA case, first filed by the watchdog group Citizens United in 2014, a judge has given the State Department until next August to turn over the new materials.
Correction: The original version of this article stated that the House Select Committee on Benghazi had submitted two subpoenas to the State Department. The Committee only submitted one subpoena, on March 4, 2015. The November 2014 request was an official letter from the Committee to Secretary John Kerry.
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Hillary Clinton / AP
BY: Alana Goodman
April 21, 2016 12:05 pm
State Department officials removed files from the secretary’s office related to the Benghazi attack in Libya and transferred them to another department after receiving a congressional subpoena last spring, delaying the release of the records to Congress for over a year.
Attorneys for the State Department said the electronic folders, which contain hundreds of documents related to the Benghazi attack and Libya, were belatedly rediscovered at the end of last year.
They said the files had been overlooked by State Department officials because the executive secretary’s office transferred them to another department and flagged them for archiving last April, shortly after receiving a subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
The new source of documents includes electronic folders used by senior officials under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They were originally kept in the executive secretary’s office, which handles communication and coordination between the secretary of state’s office and other department bureaus.
The House Benghazi Committee requested documents from the secretary’s office in a subpoena filed in March 2015. Congressional investigators met with the head of the executive secretary’s office staff to discuss its records maintenance system and the scope of the subpoena last April. That same month, State Department officials sent the electronic folders to another bureau for archiving, and they were not searched in response to the request.
The blunder could raise new questions about the State Department’s records process, which has come under scrutiny from members of Congress and government watchdogs. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act process as “broken” in January, citing “systematic failures at the agency.”
The inspector general for the State Department also released a report criticizing the agency’s public records process in January. The report highlighted failures in the executive secretary’s office, which responds to records requests for the Office of the Secretary.
Since last fall, the State Department has taken additional steps to increase transparency, recently hiring a transparency coordinator.
But the late discovery of the electronic folders has set back the release of information in a number of public records lawsuits filed against the State Department by watchdog groups.
The State Department first disclosed that staffers had discovered the unsearched folders in a January court filing. Attorneys for the department asked the court for additional time to process and release the documents in response to a 2014 lawsuit filed by the government ethics group Judicial Watch.
Around the same time, the State Department alerted the House Select Committee on Benghazi to the discovery. On April 8, the department turned over 1,100 pages of documents from the electronic folders to the House Benghazi Committee, over a year after the committee’s subpoena. The committee had received other documents from the production in February.
The delay has had consequences. The Benghazi Committee had already completed the majority of its interviews with diplomats and government officials regarding the Benghazi attack before it received the latest tranche of documents.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), chairman of the Benghazi Committee, said in an April 8 statement it was “deplorable that it took over a year for these records to be produced to our committee.”
“This investigation is about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans, and it could have been completed a lot sooner if the administration had not delayed and delayed and delayed at every turn,” Gowdy said.
The decision by State Department officials to transfer the electronic folders to another bureau after receiving the subpoena could also raise questions.
The subpoena requested Benghazi-related documents and communications from 10 of Hillary Clinton’s top aides for the years 2011 and 2012.
The requests included standard language that “Subpoenaed records, documents, data or information should not be destroyed, modified, removed, transferred or otherwise made inaccessible to the Committee.”
The State Department’s attorneys said the executive secretary’s office transferred the folders to the Office of Information Programs and Services for “retiring” in April 2015. Public records officials did not realize for almost eight months that the folders had been moved, and so they were not searched in response to FOIA requests or subpoenas.
“In April 2015—prior to its search in this [Judicial Watch] case—the Secretariat Staff within the Office of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-S”) retired the shared office folders and transferred them to the custody of the Bureau of Administration, Office of Information Programs and Services,” the State Department said in a Feb. 5 court filing.
“The IPS employees working on this FOIA request did not initially identify S/ES retired records as a location to search for potentially responsive records because they were operating with the understanding that, to the extent responsive records from the Office of the Secretary existed, they resided within [the executive secretary’s office].”
According to congressional sources, officials on the House Benghazi Committee had a meeting with the executive secretary’s office to discuss the subpoena and the locations of potentially relevant records on April 10, 2015. Electronic folders of senior staff members were discussed during the briefing.
State Department officials at the meeting included the director of the executive secretary’s office staff, who was responsible for handling the office’s records maintenance, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, and Catherine Duval, the attorney who oversaw the public release of Hillary Clinton’s official emails. The officials gave no indication that electronic folders had recently been transferred out of the office.
The State Department declined to comment on whether the folders were transferred after the meeting took place.
A State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon that personnel did not mislead congressional investigators, and added that no officials at the meeting were involved in transferring the folders.
“The Department personnel who briefed the Select Committee in April 2015 did not play a role in the transfer of these files to State’s Bureau of Administration,” the State Department official said.
The official added that department files are often moved as a routine matter.
“Files that are generated in an office are regularly moved to the Bureau of Administration for storage according to published records retirement schedules,” the official said. “This is a routine action that would not involve a senior supervisor. It also continues to make them available to respond to either Congressional or FOIA requests.”
Duval left the State Department last September. She had previously overseen document production for the IRS during the targeting controversy. Republicans had criticized that process after agency emails were reportedly destroyed and a key IRS official’s hard drive was shredded months after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.
In recent months, the State Department has been working to increase transparency.
“The Department has worked closely with the Select Committee in a spirit of cooperation and responsiveness,” a State Department official said. “Since the Committee was formed, we have provided 48 witnesses for interviews and more than 95,000 pages of documents.”
The efforts drew some praise from the House Benghazi Committee last fall.
“It’s curious the Department is suddenly able to be more productive after recent staff changes involving those responsible for document production,” committee spokesman Jamal Ware said in a Sept. 25, 2015 press release.
Still, it could be months before the public is able to see many of the Benghazi-related documents belatedly discovered by the State Department. The House Benghazi Committee is still completing its investigation and has not released them.
The department’s attorneys have also been granted extensions to produce the documents in response to several public records lawsuits. In one FOIA case, first filed by the watchdog group Citizens United in 2014, a judge has given the State Department until next August to turn over the new materials.
Correction: The original version of this article stated that the House Select Committee on Benghazi had submitted two subpoenas to the State Department. The Committee only submitted one subpoena, on March 4, 2015. The November 2014 request was an official letter from the Committee to Secretary John Kerry.
[h=2]White Lies Matter[/h]Column: Hillary Clinton’s history of deception catches up to her
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BY: Matthew Continetti
April 22, 2016 5:00 am
How bad is Hillary Clinton’s image? This bad:
Fifty-six percent of Americans view her unfavorably, according to the Huffington Post pollster trend.
One-third of New York Democratic primary voters say she is neither honest nor trustworthy.
Her image, writes Dan Balz, “is at or near record lows among major demographic groups.”
Like, all of them.
A lot of the reason is Clinton: her tin ear, her aloofness, her phony eagerness to please, her suspicion of the press and of outsiders, her let us say complicated relationship with the truth, the blithe way in which she dissembles and deceives.
Over the course of three decades in public life Hillary Clinton has misspoke and misled the public and mismanaged herself and her team to such a degree that voters cannot help noticing. Yes, many of her falsehoods are white lies. But white lies accumulate. They matter. Not only do they harm the truth. They are turning Clinton into one of the least popular candidates in history.
Since 1998 Clinton has blamed her poor reputation on the vast right-wing conspiracy. Whitewater, Travel Gate, File Gate, the health care disaster—it was all the fault of the Republicans. What’s forgotten is that Clinton has been lying in the service of her ambitions—most notably by protecting her husband from the truth of his infidelities—since long before Bill ran for president. Nor can she blame conservatives for her failure to win the Democratic nomination eight years ago. Hillary can’t help being secretive and deceptive. It’s her nature.
Think of the transcripts of the speeches she gave to Wall Street audiences. Bernie Sanders would like Clinton to release them. She refuses. Why? “When everybody agrees to do that, I will as well, because I think it’s important we all abide by the same standards.” What baloney. Democratic primary voters see the obvious: Hillary is hiding behind a standard she invented.
What the other candidates have said to bankers isn’t the issue. No one expects Donald Trump to have been anything other than fulsome in his praise of Wall Street. He probably spoke mainly about himself anyway. What Sanders wants to know is if Clinton said one thing to the financial services industry and another to the public. Fair question. Especially considering the lady we’re talking about.
It’s also a question that Clinton could settle rather easily in her favor. Other than the most committed of Bernie Bros, does anyone really think Clinton offered to sell her soul to Lloyd Blankfein, at least on stage? The transcripts won’t contain bombshells but platitudes—thank you so much for having me, it’s great to be here, Bill and I really appreciate the socially conscious investment and work you’re doing for young people around the world, diversity, inclusion, hot sauce, Chelsea built a clinic in Haiti, climate change, I’m a grandma, blah, blah, blah. You won’t be shocked by what she said. You’ll be bored.
The act of concealment transforms the banal into the insidious. I sometimes wonder if Clinton does this just to give her rather humdrum and lackluster public life a frisson of excitement and danger, or to goad her enemies into overreaction.
Take the emails. She built the private server to shield her privacy. But the public learned of the server nonetheless. The public always finds out. A judge ordered the emails released. Thus the result of Clinton’s actions was the very opposite of her intent.
It remains to be seen whether the FBI will indict her for compromising national security, though I rather doubt that will happen. There is no smoking gun. The emails themselves show Clinton to be a tech ignoramus, a workaholic, harried by the pace of events, self-interested, paranoid, dependent on a few close advisers. Nothing we didn’t already know.
But that didn’t stop Clinton from lying about it. Never does. “The secrecy and the closed nature of her dealings generate problems of their own, which in turn prompt efforts to restrict information and draw even more tightly inside a group of intimates,” wrote Sarah Ellison last year in Vanity Fair. “It is a vicious circle.” And the person responsible for keeping the circle going is none other than the candidate herself: circumspect, wary, so damaged by her years in the public eye that she trusts no one. And receives no trust in return.
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BY: Matthew Continetti
April 22, 2016 5:00 am
How bad is Hillary Clinton’s image? This bad:
Fifty-six percent of Americans view her unfavorably, according to the Huffington Post pollster trend.
One-third of New York Democratic primary voters say she is neither honest nor trustworthy.
Her image, writes Dan Balz, “is at or near record lows among major demographic groups.”
Like, all of them.
Among men, she is at minus 40. Among women, she is at minus 9. Among whites, she is at minus 39. Among white women, she is at minus 25. Among white men, she is 17 positive, 72 negative. Her favorability among whites at this point in the election cycle is worse than President Obama’s ever has been … Among African Americans nationally the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows her with a net positive of 51 points. But that’s down 13 points from her first-quarter average and is about at her lowest ever. Among Latinos, her net positive is just two points, down from plus 21 points during the first quarter.
Emphasis mine. No doubt some of this degradation is related to a primary that has turned out to be much more competitive than Clinton imagined. But it’s also worth asking why that campaign has lasted so much longer than we assumed.
A lot of the reason is Clinton: her tin ear, her aloofness, her phony eagerness to please, her suspicion of the press and of outsiders, her let us say complicated relationship with the truth, the blithe way in which she dissembles and deceives.
Over the course of three decades in public life Hillary Clinton has misspoke and misled the public and mismanaged herself and her team to such a degree that voters cannot help noticing. Yes, many of her falsehoods are white lies. But white lies accumulate. They matter. Not only do they harm the truth. They are turning Clinton into one of the least popular candidates in history.
Since 1998 Clinton has blamed her poor reputation on the vast right-wing conspiracy. Whitewater, Travel Gate, File Gate, the health care disaster—it was all the fault of the Republicans. What’s forgotten is that Clinton has been lying in the service of her ambitions—most notably by protecting her husband from the truth of his infidelities—since long before Bill ran for president. Nor can she blame conservatives for her failure to win the Democratic nomination eight years ago. Hillary can’t help being secretive and deceptive. It’s her nature.
Think of the transcripts of the speeches she gave to Wall Street audiences. Bernie Sanders would like Clinton to release them. She refuses. Why? “When everybody agrees to do that, I will as well, because I think it’s important we all abide by the same standards.” What baloney. Democratic primary voters see the obvious: Hillary is hiding behind a standard she invented.
What the other candidates have said to bankers isn’t the issue. No one expects Donald Trump to have been anything other than fulsome in his praise of Wall Street. He probably spoke mainly about himself anyway. What Sanders wants to know is if Clinton said one thing to the financial services industry and another to the public. Fair question. Especially considering the lady we’re talking about.
It’s also a question that Clinton could settle rather easily in her favor. Other than the most committed of Bernie Bros, does anyone really think Clinton offered to sell her soul to Lloyd Blankfein, at least on stage? The transcripts won’t contain bombshells but platitudes—thank you so much for having me, it’s great to be here, Bill and I really appreciate the socially conscious investment and work you’re doing for young people around the world, diversity, inclusion, hot sauce, Chelsea built a clinic in Haiti, climate change, I’m a grandma, blah, blah, blah. You won’t be shocked by what she said. You’ll be bored.
The act of concealment transforms the banal into the insidious. I sometimes wonder if Clinton does this just to give her rather humdrum and lackluster public life a frisson of excitement and danger, or to goad her enemies into overreaction.
Take the emails. She built the private server to shield her privacy. But the public learned of the server nonetheless. The public always finds out. A judge ordered the emails released. Thus the result of Clinton’s actions was the very opposite of her intent.
It remains to be seen whether the FBI will indict her for compromising national security, though I rather doubt that will happen. There is no smoking gun. The emails themselves show Clinton to be a tech ignoramus, a workaholic, harried by the pace of events, self-interested, paranoid, dependent on a few close advisers. Nothing we didn’t already know.
But that didn’t stop Clinton from lying about it. Never does. “The secrecy and the closed nature of her dealings generate problems of their own, which in turn prompt efforts to restrict information and draw even more tightly inside a group of intimates,” wrote Sarah Ellison last year in Vanity Fair. “It is a vicious circle.” And the person responsible for keeping the circle going is none other than the candidate herself: circumspect, wary, so damaged by her years in the public eye that she trusts no one. And receives no trust in return.
[h=2]Report: Corporations That Paid For Clinton Speeches Lobbied the Government[/h]SHARE
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BY: Natalie Johnson
April 21, 2016 3:18 pm
Nearly all of the corporations that paid Hillary Clinton for speeches have lobbied the federal government in an attempt to advance company interests.
The Associated Press reported Thursday:
The Associated Press noted that more than one-third of the firms disclosed in government documents are government contractors, underscoring that “those corporate interests would follow Clinton to the White House should she win elections this fall.”
Since the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009, 60 of those firms have lobbied the government at some point while at least 30 profited from government contracts. Another 22 lobbied the State Department.
Clinton has received extensive scrutiny throughout her campaign for amassing $2.5 million through paid speeches to Wall Street firms.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.) hit Clinton during a rally in New York City last week for accepting $225,000 to give a speech to Verizon.
The average yearly income of a person in the U.S. was $28,555 in 2014, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Clinton raked in nearly eight times that amount during one gig with Verizon.
“If somebody gets paid $225,000 for a speech, it must be an unbelievably extraordinary speech,” Sanders said. “I kind of think if that $225,000 speech was so extraordinary, she should release the transcripts and share it with all of us.”
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Hillary Clinton/ AP
BY: Natalie Johnson
April 21, 2016 3:18 pm
Nearly all of the corporations that paid Hillary Clinton for speeches have lobbied the federal government in an attempt to advance company interests.
The Associated Press reported Thursday:
Federal records show almost all the 82 corporations, trade associations and other groups that paid for or sponsored Clinton’s speeches have sought to influence the government — lobbying, bidding for contracts, commenting on federal policy or contacting State Department officials or Clinton herself when she was secretary of state…Clinton’s 94 paid appearances over two years on the speech circuit leave her open to scrutiny over decisions she would make in the White House or influence that may affect the interests of her speech sponsors.
It is illegal for presidents to accept briberies or illegal gratuities if either is in any way linked to an official action.
The Associated Press noted that more than one-third of the firms disclosed in government documents are government contractors, underscoring that “those corporate interests would follow Clinton to the White House should she win elections this fall.”
Since the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009, 60 of those firms have lobbied the government at some point while at least 30 profited from government contracts. Another 22 lobbied the State Department.
Clinton has received extensive scrutiny throughout her campaign for amassing $2.5 million through paid speeches to Wall Street firms.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.) hit Clinton during a rally in New York City last week for accepting $225,000 to give a speech to Verizon.
The average yearly income of a person in the U.S. was $28,555 in 2014, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Clinton raked in nearly eight times that amount during one gig with Verizon.
“If somebody gets paid $225,000 for a speech, it must be an unbelievably extraordinary speech,” Sanders said. “I kind of think if that $225,000 speech was so extraordinary, she should release the transcripts and share it with all of us.”
[h=1]Firms that paid for Clinton speeches have US gov't interests[/h]
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.
The AP's review of federal records, regulatory filings and correspondence showed that almost all the 82 corporations, trade associations and other groups that paid for or sponsored Clinton's speeches have actively sought to sway the government — lobbying, bidding for contracts, commenting on federal policy and in some cases contacting State Department officials or Clinton herself during her tenure as secretary of state.
Presidents are not generally bound by many of the ethics and conflict-of-interest regulations that apply to non-elected executive branch officials, although they are subject to laws covering related conduct, such as bribery and illegal gratuities. Clinton's 94 paid appearances over two years on the speech circuit leave her open to scrutiny over decisions she would make in the White House or influence that may affect the interests of her speech sponsors.
Rival presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican critics have mocked Clinton over her closed-door talks to banks and investment firms, saying she is too closely aligned to Wall Street to curb its abuses. Sanders said in a speech in New York that Clinton earned an average of about $225,000 for each speech and goaded her for declining to release transcripts.
"If somebody gets paid $225,000 for a speech, it must be an unbelievably extraordinary speech," Sanders said at an outdoor rally at Washington Square Park last week in advance of the New York primary. "I kind of think if that $225,000 speech was so extraordinary, she should release the transcripts and share it with all of us."
Clinton said again Thursday she will release transcripts of her paid speeches to private groups or companies when other political candidates do the same. She compared such disclosures to the long-standing practice of politicians being expected to release their income tax returns, which she did far earlier and more thoroughly than Sanders in the campaign.
"Now there's a new request to release transcripts of speeches that have been given," Clinton said during a town hall. "When everybody agrees to do that, I will as well because I think it's important we all abide by the same standards. So, let's do the tax return standard first because that's been around for a really long time."
Clinton has said she can be trusted to spurn her donors on critical issues, noting that President Barack Obama was tough on Wall Street despite his prolific fundraising there. But her earnings of more than $21.6 million from such a wide range of interest groups could affect public confidence in her proclaimed independence.
"The problem is whether all these interests who paid her to appear before them will expect to have special access when they have an issue before the government," said Lawrence M. Noble, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based election watchdog group.
The AP review identified at least 60 firms and organizations that sponsored Clinton's speeches and lobbied the U.S. government at some point since the start of the Obama administration. Over the same period, at least 30 also profited from government contracts. Twenty-two groups lobbied the State Department during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. They include familiar Wall Street financial houses such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., corporate giants like General Electric Co. and Verizon Communications Inc., and lesser-known entities such as the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and the Global Business Travel Association.
Clinton's two-year speaking tour, which took place after she resigned as secretary of state, "puts her in the position of having to disavow that money is an influence on her while at the same time backing campaign reform based on the influence of money," said Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission. "It ends up creating the appearance of influence."
Clinton dismissed those concerns in a town hall in Columbia, South Carolina, saying that "the argument seems to be that if you ever took money from any business of any kind, then you can't fulfill your public responsibilities. Well, that's just not the case."
Clinton's spokesman, Brian Fallon, said in a statement, "Hillary Clinton's record shows she has consistently taken on these very same industries, and to suggest she would deviate from that at all as president is completely baseless."
Despite months of controversy over her speeches to Wall Street patrons, Clinton's biggest rewards came from Washington's trade associations, the lobbying groups that push aggressively for industry interests. Trade groups paid Clinton more than $7.1 million, the review showed.
The National Association of Realtors spent $38.5 million on government contacts in 2013, the same year it paid Clinton $225,000 to appear at the group's gathering in San Francisco. A group spokesman said Clinton was among former U.S. officials invited to share their experiences but said she was not paid as part of its lobbying activities.
The Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents biotech and pharmaceutical firms, spent between $7 million and $8.5 million annually on lobbying since 2008, including contacts with the State Department — during Clinton's tenure — on the agency's biotech discussions with foreign governments. The trade group, which hosted Clinton for $335,000 at its event in San Diego in June 2014, has won more than $425,000 in federal payments since 2008 in work for the National Science Foundation and other agencies. The group did not respond to phone calls or emails for comment from AP.
The financial services and investment industry accounted for about $4.1 million of Clinton's earnings. Its ranks included not only Wall Street powerhouses like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp., but also private equity and hedge funds like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP and Apollo Global Management LLC and foreign-owned banks such as Deutsche Bank AG and the Canada Imperial Bank of Commerce. Goldman Sachs, which gave Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in 2013, and Morgan Stanley, which paid her $225,000 for one speech the same year, both spent millions lobbying the U.S. during Clinton's term at the State Department.
Nearly three dozen of Clinton's benefactors spent more than $1 million annually on contacts with officials and Congress during the same year they paid her to appear at their corporate or association events, according to federal lobbying records. Many earned millions more in government contracts — indications of the regulatory and policy stances the groups might advocate during a Clinton presidency.
General Electric, which paid her $225,000 for a speech in Boca Raton, Florida, in January 2014, has the most extensive government portfolio. GE has spent between $15.1 million and $39.2 million annually on lobbying. The company has won nearly $50 million in government work since 2008, including $1.7 million from the State Department for lab equipment and data processing during Clinton's tenure. The firm also lobbied the State Department all four years under Clinton on issues including trade and Iran sanctions.
As secretary of state, Clinton visited a GE aviation facility in Singapore and touted the State Department's role aiding GE industrial and military deals abroad. Clinton met with GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt once about the agency's efforts to salvage a planned business exposition in Shanghai and also talked with him by phone, according to her calendars.
A GE spokeswoman said, "GE works closely with the U.S. government and State Department, which often advocates for U.S. exporters."
Clinton sought to defuse the issue of her Wall Street speeches during a February debate with Sanders by explaining that she "spoke to heart doctors, I spoke to the American Camping Association, I spoke to auto dealers, and, yes, I spoke to firms on Wall Street."
Even the sponsors Clinton cited in her defense engaged in public advocacy — an indication of how many might seek favors if Clinton were elected.
The Cardiovascular Research Foundation, a fundraising group for cutting-edge heart medicine, paid Clinton $275,000 for a speech in Washington in September 2014. That same year, the organization joined other medical and health care groups in urging the Federal Drug Administration to reconsider its generic labeling rules. Foundation spokeswoman Irma Damhuis said Clinton was invited as a "recognized thought leader," adding that "decisions on keynote speakers are made without a political agenda."
The National Automobile Dealers Association paid Clinton $325,000 for a convention speech in New Orleans in January 2014. That same year, the trade group spent $3.2 million lobbying federal officials on taxes, automotive and trucking issues, labor and finance. A spokesman said the group's lobbying and convention activities were separate.
The camping group also paid for lobbying in recent years, including $40,000 in 2015 on Transportation Department administrative actions, according to federal records. The group's New York and New Jersey affiliate paid Clinton $260,000 for a March 2015 speech in Atlantic City.
Deirdre Petting, an executive with the national group, said its lobbying was separate from the affiliate's decision to invite Clinton for the event.
By STEPHEN BRAUN
| Apr. 22, 2016 3:58 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.
The AP's review of federal records, regulatory filings and correspondence showed that almost all the 82 corporations, trade associations and other groups that paid for or sponsored Clinton's speeches have actively sought to sway the government — lobbying, bidding for contracts, commenting on federal policy and in some cases contacting State Department officials or Clinton herself during her tenure as secretary of state.
Presidents are not generally bound by many of the ethics and conflict-of-interest regulations that apply to non-elected executive branch officials, although they are subject to laws covering related conduct, such as bribery and illegal gratuities. Clinton's 94 paid appearances over two years on the speech circuit leave her open to scrutiny over decisions she would make in the White House or influence that may affect the interests of her speech sponsors.
Rival presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican critics have mocked Clinton over her closed-door talks to banks and investment firms, saying she is too closely aligned to Wall Street to curb its abuses. Sanders said in a speech in New York that Clinton earned an average of about $225,000 for each speech and goaded her for declining to release transcripts.
"If somebody gets paid $225,000 for a speech, it must be an unbelievably extraordinary speech," Sanders said at an outdoor rally at Washington Square Park last week in advance of the New York primary. "I kind of think if that $225,000 speech was so extraordinary, she should release the transcripts and share it with all of us."
Clinton said again Thursday she will release transcripts of her paid speeches to private groups or companies when other political candidates do the same. She compared such disclosures to the long-standing practice of politicians being expected to release their income tax returns, which she did far earlier and more thoroughly than Sanders in the campaign.
"Now there's a new request to release transcripts of speeches that have been given," Clinton said during a town hall. "When everybody agrees to do that, I will as well because I think it's important we all abide by the same standards. So, let's do the tax return standard first because that's been around for a really long time."
Clinton has said she can be trusted to spurn her donors on critical issues, noting that President Barack Obama was tough on Wall Street despite his prolific fundraising there. But her earnings of more than $21.6 million from such a wide range of interest groups could affect public confidence in her proclaimed independence.
"The problem is whether all these interests who paid her to appear before them will expect to have special access when they have an issue before the government," said Lawrence M. Noble, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based election watchdog group.
The AP review identified at least 60 firms and organizations that sponsored Clinton's speeches and lobbied the U.S. government at some point since the start of the Obama administration. Over the same period, at least 30 also profited from government contracts. Twenty-two groups lobbied the State Department during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. They include familiar Wall Street financial houses such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., corporate giants like General Electric Co. and Verizon Communications Inc., and lesser-known entities such as the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and the Global Business Travel Association.
Clinton's two-year speaking tour, which took place after she resigned as secretary of state, "puts her in the position of having to disavow that money is an influence on her while at the same time backing campaign reform based on the influence of money," said Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission. "It ends up creating the appearance of influence."
Clinton dismissed those concerns in a town hall in Columbia, South Carolina, saying that "the argument seems to be that if you ever took money from any business of any kind, then you can't fulfill your public responsibilities. Well, that's just not the case."
Clinton's spokesman, Brian Fallon, said in a statement, "Hillary Clinton's record shows she has consistently taken on these very same industries, and to suggest she would deviate from that at all as president is completely baseless."
Despite months of controversy over her speeches to Wall Street patrons, Clinton's biggest rewards came from Washington's trade associations, the lobbying groups that push aggressively for industry interests. Trade groups paid Clinton more than $7.1 million, the review showed.
The National Association of Realtors spent $38.5 million on government contacts in 2013, the same year it paid Clinton $225,000 to appear at the group's gathering in San Francisco. A group spokesman said Clinton was among former U.S. officials invited to share their experiences but said she was not paid as part of its lobbying activities.
The Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents biotech and pharmaceutical firms, spent between $7 million and $8.5 million annually on lobbying since 2008, including contacts with the State Department — during Clinton's tenure — on the agency's biotech discussions with foreign governments. The trade group, which hosted Clinton for $335,000 at its event in San Diego in June 2014, has won more than $425,000 in federal payments since 2008 in work for the National Science Foundation and other agencies. The group did not respond to phone calls or emails for comment from AP.
The financial services and investment industry accounted for about $4.1 million of Clinton's earnings. Its ranks included not only Wall Street powerhouses like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp., but also private equity and hedge funds like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP and Apollo Global Management LLC and foreign-owned banks such as Deutsche Bank AG and the Canada Imperial Bank of Commerce. Goldman Sachs, which gave Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in 2013, and Morgan Stanley, which paid her $225,000 for one speech the same year, both spent millions lobbying the U.S. during Clinton's term at the State Department.
Nearly three dozen of Clinton's benefactors spent more than $1 million annually on contacts with officials and Congress during the same year they paid her to appear at their corporate or association events, according to federal lobbying records. Many earned millions more in government contracts — indications of the regulatory and policy stances the groups might advocate during a Clinton presidency.
General Electric, which paid her $225,000 for a speech in Boca Raton, Florida, in January 2014, has the most extensive government portfolio. GE has spent between $15.1 million and $39.2 million annually on lobbying. The company has won nearly $50 million in government work since 2008, including $1.7 million from the State Department for lab equipment and data processing during Clinton's tenure. The firm also lobbied the State Department all four years under Clinton on issues including trade and Iran sanctions.
As secretary of state, Clinton visited a GE aviation facility in Singapore and touted the State Department's role aiding GE industrial and military deals abroad. Clinton met with GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt once about the agency's efforts to salvage a planned business exposition in Shanghai and also talked with him by phone, according to her calendars.
A GE spokeswoman said, "GE works closely with the U.S. government and State Department, which often advocates for U.S. exporters."
Clinton sought to defuse the issue of her Wall Street speeches during a February debate with Sanders by explaining that she "spoke to heart doctors, I spoke to the American Camping Association, I spoke to auto dealers, and, yes, I spoke to firms on Wall Street."
Even the sponsors Clinton cited in her defense engaged in public advocacy — an indication of how many might seek favors if Clinton were elected.
The Cardiovascular Research Foundation, a fundraising group for cutting-edge heart medicine, paid Clinton $275,000 for a speech in Washington in September 2014. That same year, the organization joined other medical and health care groups in urging the Federal Drug Administration to reconsider its generic labeling rules. Foundation spokeswoman Irma Damhuis said Clinton was invited as a "recognized thought leader," adding that "decisions on keynote speakers are made without a political agenda."
The National Automobile Dealers Association paid Clinton $325,000 for a convention speech in New Orleans in January 2014. That same year, the trade group spent $3.2 million lobbying federal officials on taxes, automotive and trucking issues, labor and finance. A spokesman said the group's lobbying and convention activities were separate.
The camping group also paid for lobbying in recent years, including $40,000 in 2015 on Transportation Department administrative actions, according to federal records. The group's New York and New Jersey affiliate paid Clinton $260,000 for a March 2015 speech in Atlantic City.
Deirdre Petting, an executive with the national group, said its lobbying was separate from the affiliate's decision to invite Clinton for the event.
By STEPHEN BRAUN
| Apr. 22, 2016 3:58 AM EDT
Billionaire Republican megadonor Charles Koch is pictured. | Getty
[h=1]Charles Koch: 'It's possible' Clinton is preferable to a Republican for president[/h]By KRISTEN EAST
04/23/16 07:38 PM EDT
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Billionaire businessman Charles Koch said in an interview airing Sunday that “it’s possible” another Clinton in the White House could be better than having a Republican president.
Koch, the CEO of Koch industries, made the comment to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl for an interview airing on ABC’s This Week.
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Koch and his brother, David, and their associated groups plan to spend nearly $900 million on the 2016 elections.
The comment came after Karl asked about former President Bill Clinton’s term, to which Koch said Clinton was “in some ways” better than George W. Bush.
“As far as the growth of government, the increase in spending, it was two-and-a-half times under Bush that it was under Clinton,” he said.
Karl followed up by asking about whether or not Koch could see himself supporting Hillary Clinton.
Koch hesitated before giving an answer that didn’t rule out the possibility.
“We would have to believe her actions would have to be quite different than her rhetoric, let me put it that way,” he said.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/...n-republican-white-house-222349#ixzz46hkkxGPa
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[h=2]Clinton IT Staffer Still Refuses to Testify Before Congress[/h]SHARE
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BY: Morgan Chalfant
April 22, 2016 2:57 pm
A lawyer for Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department computer staffer who set up Hillary Clinton’s private email server, recently informed Congress that he will not testify before Senate committees investigating Clinton’s email setup.
The Associated Press obtained a letter sent by Mark MacDougall, Pagliano’s lawyer, on March 11 indicating that his client would “respectfully decline” the offers from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee to testify before congressional lawmakers.
Pagliano declined to testify before the committees even after he was granted immunity by the Justice Department and has been cooperating with the FBI in its investigation into Clinton’s email setup.
The former State Department IT staffer asserted his Fifth Amendment right in September in response to a subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi to testify before congressional lawmakers. The Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees had also reached out to Pagliano then to testify.
After reports in March that Pagliano had accepted the immunity grant, the leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees again reached out to the ex-Clinton aide asking him to testify. They informed Pagliano that the immunity grant should alleviate the concerns he had about doing so.
Pagliano’s attorney wrote in the letter that the former staffer had “not waived his rights under the Fifth Amendment as a matter of fact or law.” The letter did not contain details about the immunity granted to Pagliano.
“With all appropriate respect, whether and when a citizen may assert a Fifth Amendment a constitutional right is not up to your legal staff,” MacDougall wrote. “Whatever agreement Mr. Pagliano may have reached with the Department of Justice in no way constitutes a waiver of his Fifth Amendment rights.”
Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential campaign, set up her personal server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, in 2009. He worked in the State Department’s information technology department during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
Clinton’s server has been found to hold more than 2,000 emails containing information that is now classified, though none of the messages were marked classified when they originated on her email. Clinton has maintained that she never sent nor received information marked classified on her personal email.
The FBI is reportedly looking into whether classified information was mishandled, though Clinton has repeatedly described the probe as a “security review.” FBI agents may move to question former Clinton aides and even the former secretary of state herself as they complete the investigation, reports have indicated.
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Hillary Clinton / AP
BY: Morgan Chalfant
April 22, 2016 2:57 pm
A lawyer for Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department computer staffer who set up Hillary Clinton’s private email server, recently informed Congress that he will not testify before Senate committees investigating Clinton’s email setup.
The Associated Press obtained a letter sent by Mark MacDougall, Pagliano’s lawyer, on March 11 indicating that his client would “respectfully decline” the offers from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee to testify before congressional lawmakers.
Pagliano declined to testify before the committees even after he was granted immunity by the Justice Department and has been cooperating with the FBI in its investigation into Clinton’s email setup.
The former State Department IT staffer asserted his Fifth Amendment right in September in response to a subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi to testify before congressional lawmakers. The Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees had also reached out to Pagliano then to testify.
After reports in March that Pagliano had accepted the immunity grant, the leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees again reached out to the ex-Clinton aide asking him to testify. They informed Pagliano that the immunity grant should alleviate the concerns he had about doing so.
Pagliano’s attorney wrote in the letter that the former staffer had “not waived his rights under the Fifth Amendment as a matter of fact or law.” The letter did not contain details about the immunity granted to Pagliano.
“With all appropriate respect, whether and when a citizen may assert a Fifth Amendment a constitutional right is not up to your legal staff,” MacDougall wrote. “Whatever agreement Mr. Pagliano may have reached with the Department of Justice in no way constitutes a waiver of his Fifth Amendment rights.”
Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential campaign, set up her personal server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, in 2009. He worked in the State Department’s information technology department during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
Clinton’s server has been found to hold more than 2,000 emails containing information that is now classified, though none of the messages were marked classified when they originated on her email. Clinton has maintained that she never sent nor received information marked classified on her personal email.
The FBI is reportedly looking into whether classified information was mishandled, though Clinton has repeatedly described the probe as a “security review.” FBI agents may move to question former Clinton aides and even the former secretary of state herself as they complete the investigation, reports have indicated.
[h=2]White Lies Matter[/h]Column: Hillary Clinton’s history of deception catches up to her
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BY: Matthew Continetti
April 22, 2016 5:00 am
How bad is Hillary Clinton’s image? This bad:
Fifty-six percent of Americans view her unfavorably, according to the Huffington Post pollster trend.
One-third of New York Democratic primary voters say she is neither honest nor trustworthy.
Her image, writes Dan Balz, “is at or near record lows among major demographic groups.”
Like, all of them.
A lot of the reason is Clinton: her tin ear, her aloofness, her phony eagerness to please, her suspicion of the press and of outsiders, her let us say complicated relationship with the truth, the blithe way in which she dissembles and deceives.
Over the course of three decades in public life Hillary Clinton has misspoke and misled the public and mismanaged herself and her team to such a degree that voters cannot help noticing. Yes, many of her falsehoods are white lies. But white lies accumulate. They matter. Not only do they harm the truth. They are turning Clinton into one of the least popular candidates in history.
Since 1998 Clinton has blamed her poor reputation on the vast right-wing conspiracy. Whitewater, Travel Gate, File Gate, the health care disaster—it was all the fault of the Republicans. What’s forgotten is that Clinton has been lying in the service of her ambitions—most notably by protecting her husband from the truth of his infidelities—since long before Bill ran for president. Nor can she blame conservatives for her failure to win the Democratic nomination eight years ago. Hillary can’t help being secretive and deceptive. It’s her nature.
Think of the transcripts of the speeches she gave to Wall Street audiences. Bernie Sanders would like Clinton to release them. She refuses. Why? “When everybody agrees to do that, I will as well, because I think it’s important we all abide by the same standards.” What baloney. Democratic primary voters see the obvious: Hillary is hiding behind a standard she invented.
What the other candidates have said to bankers isn’t the issue. No one expects Donald Trump to have been anything other than fulsome in his praise of Wall Street. He probably spoke mainly about himself anyway. What Sanders wants to know is if Clinton said one thing to the financial services industry and another to the public. Fair question. Especially considering the lady we’re talking about.
It’s also a question that Clinton could settle rather easily in her favor. Other than the most committed of Bernie Bros, does anyone really think Clinton offered to sell her soul to Lloyd Blankfein, at least on stage? The transcripts won’t contain bombshells but platitudes—thank you so much for having me, it’s great to be here, Bill and I really appreciate the socially conscious investment and work you’re doing for young people around the world, diversity, inclusion, hot sauce, Chelsea built a clinic in Haiti, climate change, I’m a grandma, blah, blah, blah. You won’t be shocked by what she said. You’ll be bored.
The act of concealment transforms the banal into the insidious. I sometimes wonder if Clinton does this just to give her rather humdrum and lackluster public life a frisson of excitement and danger, or to goad her enemies into overreaction.
Take the emails. She built the private server to shield her privacy. But the public learned of the server nonetheless. The public always finds out. A judge ordered the emails released. Thus the result of Clinton’s actions was the very opposite of her intent.
It remains to be seen whether the FBI will indict her for compromising national security, though I rather doubt that will happen. There is no smoking gun. The emails themselves show Clinton to be a tech ignoramus, a workaholic, harried by the pace of events, self-interested, paranoid, dependent on a few close advisers. Nothing we didn’t already know.
But that didn’t stop Clinton from lying about it. Never does. “The secrecy and the closed nature of her dealings generate problems of their own, which in turn prompt efforts to restrict information and draw even more tightly inside a group of intimates,” wrote Sarah Ellison last year in Vanity Fair. “It is a vicious circle.” And the person responsible for keeping the circle going is none other than the candidate herself: circumspect, wary, so damaged by her years in the public eye that she trusts no one. And receives no trust in return.
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BY: Matthew Continetti
April 22, 2016 5:00 am
How bad is Hillary Clinton’s image? This bad:
Fifty-six percent of Americans view her unfavorably, according to the Huffington Post pollster trend.
One-third of New York Democratic primary voters say she is neither honest nor trustworthy.
Her image, writes Dan Balz, “is at or near record lows among major demographic groups.”
Like, all of them.
Among men, she is at minus 40. Among women, she is at minus 9. Among whites, she is at minus 39. Among white women, she is at minus 25. Among white men, she is 17 positive, 72 negative. Her favorability among whites at this point in the election cycle is worse than President Obama’s ever has been … Among African Americans nationally the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll shows her with a net positive of 51 points. But that’s down 13 points from her first-quarter average and is about at her lowest ever. Among Latinos, her net positive is just two points, down from plus 21 points during the first quarter.
Emphasis mine. No doubt some of this degradation is related to a primary that has turned out to be much more competitive than Clinton imagined. But it’s also worth asking why that campaign has lasted so much longer than we assumed.
A lot of the reason is Clinton: her tin ear, her aloofness, her phony eagerness to please, her suspicion of the press and of outsiders, her let us say complicated relationship with the truth, the blithe way in which she dissembles and deceives.
Over the course of three decades in public life Hillary Clinton has misspoke and misled the public and mismanaged herself and her team to such a degree that voters cannot help noticing. Yes, many of her falsehoods are white lies. But white lies accumulate. They matter. Not only do they harm the truth. They are turning Clinton into one of the least popular candidates in history.
Since 1998 Clinton has blamed her poor reputation on the vast right-wing conspiracy. Whitewater, Travel Gate, File Gate, the health care disaster—it was all the fault of the Republicans. What’s forgotten is that Clinton has been lying in the service of her ambitions—most notably by protecting her husband from the truth of his infidelities—since long before Bill ran for president. Nor can she blame conservatives for her failure to win the Democratic nomination eight years ago. Hillary can’t help being secretive and deceptive. It’s her nature.
Think of the transcripts of the speeches she gave to Wall Street audiences. Bernie Sanders would like Clinton to release them. She refuses. Why? “When everybody agrees to do that, I will as well, because I think it’s important we all abide by the same standards.” What baloney. Democratic primary voters see the obvious: Hillary is hiding behind a standard she invented.
What the other candidates have said to bankers isn’t the issue. No one expects Donald Trump to have been anything other than fulsome in his praise of Wall Street. He probably spoke mainly about himself anyway. What Sanders wants to know is if Clinton said one thing to the financial services industry and another to the public. Fair question. Especially considering the lady we’re talking about.
It’s also a question that Clinton could settle rather easily in her favor. Other than the most committed of Bernie Bros, does anyone really think Clinton offered to sell her soul to Lloyd Blankfein, at least on stage? The transcripts won’t contain bombshells but platitudes—thank you so much for having me, it’s great to be here, Bill and I really appreciate the socially conscious investment and work you’re doing for young people around the world, diversity, inclusion, hot sauce, Chelsea built a clinic in Haiti, climate change, I’m a grandma, blah, blah, blah. You won’t be shocked by what she said. You’ll be bored.
The act of concealment transforms the banal into the insidious. I sometimes wonder if Clinton does this just to give her rather humdrum and lackluster public life a frisson of excitement and danger, or to goad her enemies into overreaction.
Take the emails. She built the private server to shield her privacy. But the public learned of the server nonetheless. The public always finds out. A judge ordered the emails released. Thus the result of Clinton’s actions was the very opposite of her intent.
It remains to be seen whether the FBI will indict her for compromising national security, though I rather doubt that will happen. There is no smoking gun. The emails themselves show Clinton to be a tech ignoramus, a workaholic, harried by the pace of events, self-interested, paranoid, dependent on a few close advisers. Nothing we didn’t already know.
But that didn’t stop Clinton from lying about it. Never does. “The secrecy and the closed nature of her dealings generate problems of their own, which in turn prompt efforts to restrict information and draw even more tightly inside a group of intimates,” wrote Sarah Ellison last year in Vanity Fair. “It is a vicious circle.” And the person responsible for keeping the circle going is none other than the candidate herself: circumspect, wary, so damaged by her years in the public eye that she trusts no one. And receives no trust in return.
[h=2]Exasperated Hillary Clinton tells Rachel Maddow she doesn't need to adopt any of Sander's policies to get more votes because: 'I am winning!'[/h]
A visibly frustrated Hillary Clinton wanted to make known the exact state of the Democratic race as she was asked if she planned to adopt some of Bernie Sanders' policies to bring his voters on board.
A visibly frustrated Hillary Clinton wanted to make known the exact state of the Democratic race as she was asked if she planned to adopt some of Bernie Sanders' policies to bring his voters on board.[h=2]Hillary the private jet hypocrite as she hits Trump for his vast wealth - but she travels private herself and owns two mansions[/h]
Hillary Clinton used Donald Trump's enormous wealth against him at a campaign event today, casting the brazen billionaire as out of touch as she powers up for the general election.
Hillary Clinton used Donald Trump's enormous wealth against him at a campaign event today, casting the brazen billionaire as out of touch as she powers up for the general election.[h=2]Susan Sarandon warns Sanders supporters to be 'super vigilant' at the polls tomorrow and keep their eyes out for corruption[/h]
New York City's Board of Elections threw more than 125,000 Democratic voters off the rolls in Brooklyn ahead of last Tuesday's primary. Sarandon suggested tonight in Philadelphia that Pennsylvania could be plagued with the same problems as New York and said they should come prepared. 'I'm counting on you all to be super vigilant when you go, to carry a number o
New York City's Board of Elections threw more than 125,000 Democratic voters off the rolls in Brooklyn ahead of last Tuesday's primary. Sarandon suggested tonight in Philadelphia that Pennsylvania could be plagued with the same problems as New York and said they should come prepared. 'I'm counting on you all to be super vigilant when you go, to carry a number o[h=2]Trump attacks Clinton's appearance as he calls himself 'handsome' and asks: 'Does Hillary look presidential?' - to shouts of 'No!' from thousands at college rally[/h]
Putting Clinton's appearance in play suggests Trump is looking past the GOP convention to the general election - and that there will be no holds barred if he faces the for
Putting Clinton's appearance in play suggests Trump is looking past the GOP convention to the general election - and that there will be no holds barred if he faces the for
