Earlier today Steve Hayes reported that Hillary aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills also used the “clintonmail” personal email scheme to communicate and avoid disclosure.  Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Huma and Cheryl were key players in the original plan to set up the communication network.

The “inner circle” around Hillary is comprised of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Philippe Reines, Jake Sullivan, Capricia Marshal and Maggie Williams – in that order.

Huma and Hillary in Tanzania(Via WSJ) Before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, one of her most trusted confidantes approached Bill Clinton’s aides with a plan. Mrs. Clinton wanted to run her private email account through the server her husband set up in the family’s Chappaqua, N.Y., home, people familiar with the matter said.

A private server had obvious advantages. It would give Mrs. Clinton more control over her email, people familiar with her team’s reasoning said. Privately, aides of the former president worried that adding her account would make the system a target for hackers. They also weren’t aware she would use it for all her official correspondence.

That decision has now invited the kind of relentless public scrutiny it was designed to avoid, while also maximizing Mrs. Clinton’s control over sensitive email correspondence that that she might not want to get out.

[…] People in Mrs. Clinton’s circle, seeking to explain her motivation, said she is steeped in a political culture in which combat was the norm. She and her husband were subjects of multiple investigations during their years in the White House, inevitably making them more guarded.

[…] The server at the Clinton home had been set up some years after Mr. Clinton left office. He doesn’t use email, but his aides do, and they wanted a system that was separate from the nonprofit Clinton Foundation for personal correspondence and business dealings.

Mrs. Anthony Weiner – Huma AbedinWhen Mrs. Clinton’s aide, Huma Abedin, approached Mr. Clinton’s staff about piggybacking on the server, they were initially skeptical that it technically could handle the additional load. But requests from Mrs. Clinton were nothing they took lightly and they complied, people familiar with the matter said.

Mrs. Clinton took office in January 2009 and began using her private email system for both work and personal matters.

Her office said the system used “robust protections” and “additional upgrades and techniques employed over time as they became available.” (read more)

Hillary clinton presser 2

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