Audacity, thy name is….
(Via The Hill) A federal judge has rejected the State Department’s proposal to not release thousands of pages of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until next year, instead calling for them to be released on a rolling basis.
[…] Jeffrey Light, the lawyer for Vice News, which filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the emails, said the judge had given the Obama administration one week to provide a schedule for the public release of all the emails, including those pertaining to Benghazi, Reuters reported.
The State Department had proposed releasing the emails sometime before Jan. 15, 2016, in court documents filed Monday night.
Those emails, which were submitted to the State Department in paper form, will be viewable in redacted form on the department’s website, according to John F. Hackett, who handles FOIA requests for State. (more…)
The New York Times has a new article outlining the relationship between Hillary Clinton, the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, and her pal Sidney Blumenthal. However, they somewhat bury the lede regarding the impression that Blumenthal was leveraging Hillary for a group of business partners (he led) who wanting to invest in Libya.
New York Times […] as Hillary Rodham Clinton embarks on her second presidential bid, Mr. Blumenthal’s service to the Clintons is once again under the spotlight. Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr. Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview.
Mr. Gowdy’s chief interest, according to people briefed on the inquiry, is a series of memos that Mr. Blumenthal — who was not an employee of the State Department — wrote to Mrs. Clinton about events unfolding in Libya before and after the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
According to emails obtained by The New York Times, Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously, forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were often unreliable. (more…)
IRAQ – The Iraqi city of Ramadi has fallen to Islamic State (IS) after government forces abandoned their positions, officials say.
The police and military made a chaotic retreat after days of intense fighting. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had ordered troops to stand their ground, saying he was deploying Shia militia to the city.
Ramadi is the capital of Iraq’s largest province, Anbar, and is just 70 miles (112km) west of Baghdad.
A statement purportedly from IS said its fighters had “purged the entire city”. It said IS had taken the 8th Brigade army base, along with tanks and missile launchers left behind by troops. (more…)
Today Fox News is reporting confirmation that weapons from Benghazi were shipped to Syria. This affirms one of the essential elements outlined in our Benghazi Brief.
Documents Reveal Obama Admin Knew Terrorists Had Planned #Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance: http://t.co/nPGPakVBKH via @JudicialWatch
— Judicial Watch ⚖️ (@JudicialWatch) May 18, 2015
The “Benghazi Brief” remains the most controversial research report we have ever produced. The brief contains over two years of research and hundreds of very specific citations supporting it.
The Brief has also been challenged and with extensive vetting factually withstood all scrutiny. The report, while exhaustive in detail, remains the strongest summary of events surrounding the two years leading up to the Benghazi Libya attack on 9/11/12.
We have repeatedly stated The Benghazi Brief, and ALL of the cited information contained therein, is available for use by anyone who has a goal of communicating the truth surrounding the controversial events. (more…)
(Via Politico) Former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell said that he believes some foreign intelligence agencies possess the contents of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
“I think that foreign intelligence services, the good ones, have everything on any unclassified network that the government uses,” Morell said Friday in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
“I don’t think that was a very good judgment,” he added of Clinton’s decision to use the private server for official State Department business. “I don’t know who gave her that advice, but it was not good advice.” (more…)
On April 26th we wrote:
Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer appeared on This Week and faced a very skeptical George Stephanopoulos, who argued that his accusations that Hillary Clinton exchanged favorable treatment from the U.S. State Department for multimillion dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation were unsubstantiated.
However, what ABC doesn’t tell YOU is that Stephanopoulos has a SEVERE conflict of interest about this story as it relates to its 2005 origin and his former Boss Bill Clinton. (link)
After being busted by WFB: “Stephanopoulos, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, confirmed the donation to POLITICO’s Dylan Byers after the Free Beacon contacted ABC News for comment“, today tries to apologize for his lack of disclosure…
(Via Politico) ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos has given $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent years, charitable contributions that he did not publicly disclose while reporting on the Clintons or their nonprofit organization, the On Media blog has learned.
In both 2013 and 2014, Stephanopoulos made a $25,000 donation to the 501 nonprofit founded by former President Bill Clinton, the foundation’s records show. Stephanopoulos never disclosed this information to viewers, even when interviewing author Peter Schweizer last month about his book “Clinton Cash,” which alleges that donations to the foundation may have influenced some of Hillary Clinton’s actions as secretary of state. (more…)
If, like many of us, you are deep in the weeds in your understanding of the issues around Benghazi, the 2010 Arab Spring (Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen), or the CIA operation “Zero Footprint” in Libya and the follow-up operation in Syria, you will enjoy this interview with former Panetta/Petraeus replacement Mike Morell.
Or, if you have a cursory understanding of events, this interview might spur you toward further research. “The Benghazi Brief” – Regardless of your current level of understanding behind events of the past 7+ years, this interview is well constructed.
Bret Baier has done his homework, and in a refreshing and surprising manner you can see how Baier is able to cut through the distracting ‘talking points’ (no pun intended), and draw out the reality of what lies behind Morell and his foundational motives.
A letter from Hillary Clinton’s legal team (embed below)to the House Committee On Benghazi. The attorney’s agree to one appearance, but refuse a second.
Originally committee chairman, Trey Gowdy, wanted Secretary Clinton to appear first to address the email and communication issues to gain a better understanding of what documentation issues surround her tenure as Secretary of state; and a second appearance to address the structural questions about Benghazi as they relate to the issues not yet reconciled:
[scribd id=264119537 key=key-vjhTb1vfneMeKO0ARary mode=scroll]
You might remember that John “Skippy” Podesta was inserted by Hillary Clinton into the White House when she left the State Department. Podesta was put in place to protect Hillary’s interests.
Podesta recently left the White House to focus again on her campaign, and hosted the media at a dinner party. However, now it surfaces that his firm lobbied the State Department while Hillary was Secretary of State. Yeah, that’s just about the final straw in the scandal wagon.
(via Daily Caller) Chalk it up to a small world or to a tangled web, but Uranium One, the Russian-owned uranium mining company at the center of a recent scandal involving the Clintons and a close Canadian business partner, has lobbied the State Department through a firm co-founded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman.
Senate records show that The Podesta Group has lobbied the State Department on behalf of Uranium One — once in 2012, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, and once in 2015.
Uranium One paid The Podesta Group $40,000 to lobby the State Department, the Senate, the National Park Service and the National Security Council for “international mining projects,” according to a July 20, 2012 filing.
Clinton left the State Department on Feb. 1, 2013 (more…)