Department of Justice officials filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking a 27-month delay in producing correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch.
If the court permits the delay, the public won’t be able to read the communications until October 2018, about 22 months into her prospective first term as President. The four senior Clinton aides involved were Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs, Ambassador-At-Large Melanne Verveer, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin.
The State Department originally estimated that 6,000 emails and other documents were exchanged by the aides with the Clinton Foundation. But a series of “errors” the department told the court about Wednesday evening now mean the total has grown to “34,116 potentially responsive documents.”
During Clinton’s four years as America’s chief foreign diplomat, her aides communicated with officials at the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings where Bill Clinton was formerly both a client and paid consultant, on the average of 700 times each month, according to the Justice Department filing.
David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United, which requested the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, called the delay “totally unacceptable” and charged that “the State Department is using taxpayer dollars to protect their candidate, Hillary Clinton.”
“The American people have a right to see these emails before the election,” Bossie told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, a President Obama-appointed judge, had previously ordered the State Department to release the requested documents by July 21. But Department of Justice lawyers informed Contreras Wednesday night that “the [State] department discovered errors in the manner in which the searches had been conducted in order to capture documents potentially responsive to plaintiff’s request.” The motion was filed by Justice Department attorney Joseph Borson on behalf of the State Department.
Borson also provided new details about how few resources the State Department has devoted to answering 106 separate Freedom of Information Act requests that are pending before it, many of them ordered by federal judges. Only 71 “part-time” retired foreign service officers are being used to review all of the pending FOIA requests.
The State Department also revealed that despite the large number of requests seeking information about Secretary Clinton’s ties to the Clinton Foundation over the last two years, the Obama administration has not requested additional funds for reviewers.
The amount budgeted has remained at about $16 million over the last several years, according to Eric Stein, co-director of the State Department Office of Information Programs and Services. The department claims with its current workforce, it would only be able to release 500 documents each month.
The FBI has a “public corruption” probe underway investigating whether Clinton used her position to benefit or recruit donors to the Clinton Foundation.
Bossie told TheDCNF that “the conflicts of interest that were made possible by the activities of Hillary Clinton’s State Department in tandem with the Clinton Foundation are of significant importance to the public and the law enforcement community.”
In addition to the Clinton Foundation, Citizens United requested communications between the four aides and Teneo Holdings, the firm created by Doug Band, Bill Clinton’s personal aide in the White House and thereafter as a former chief executive. The former President was a paid consultant to Teneo until 2012.
Huma Abedin simultaneously served as an employee for both Teneo and as deputy chief of staff to Clinton at the State Department in 2012, an issue which Congress has raised as a key conflict of interest.
Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff also worked at the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative while she served at the State Department.
Now let's see if I have this right.
Lynch and Bill Clinton met privately in Phoenix Monday
Department of Justice officials filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking a 27-month delay in producing correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch.
I can smell it all the way here on the other side of the world. If odours could travel to outer space you could probably smell it on the moon. Oh, the blind, the blind.....
Any time a holding company is involved you need to follow the "holdings" ...
How much you wanna bet there is a "Smoking Gun" in this batch of emails.....
Once upon a time the progressives in this country used to expose corruption and stood up for the principle that everyone was equal before the law. Those days are long gone.
Even Dems are condemning the visual of the 'meet'. They are asking how anyone could be that stupid. But, these people know no shame.
They have gotten so arrogant that they don't even hide their malfeasance anymore.
That is the democrat way.
I think this is the best explanation for the private visit.
Don’t Be Fooled: Bill Clinton Knew Exactly What He Was Doing With Private Loretta Lynch Meeting
July 1, 2016
Democrats and Republicans alike condemned former president Bill Clinton’s private meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch earlier this week. With Bill’s wife Hillary under federal investigation for her illegal private e-mail use and Lynch heading the Justice Department that is investigating her, this move smacks of collusion and impropriety. But this is Bill Freakin’ Clinton that we are talking about and this was a very calculated move on his part to save Hillary’s presidential hopes.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton used a private e-mail server against State Department rules and discussed top-secret information, which was against the law. The evidence is overwhelming. The FBI has been conducting an investigation into this illegal and treasonous activity and will reportedly recommend prosecution in the next couple of weeks to AG Lynch.
As you know, Hillary is the democratic presidential nominee, so a federal indictment would almost certainly end her chances for winning the White House.
Fear not, Hillary’s husband Bill swooped in to save the day. Earlier this week he was on a private runway at the Phoenix airport. He knew Loretta Lynch was flying in so he delayed his own flight and waited for her on the tarmac. When Lynch’s plane landed, Bill stormed his way in uninvited and had a 30-minute or so private conversation with the woman who holds Hillary’s legal future in her hands.
Politicians and pundits from both sides of the aisle have condemned this move by Bill as pure stupidity, but actually it’s quite ingenious. With Bill’s private meeting, the investigation is now tainted and any legal action against Hillary will be delayed indefinitely, or at least until after the election in November, while things are sorted out.
Republicans are calling for a special prosecutor in the case because they believe Bill’s meeting with Lynch shows that Obama’s Justice Department can’t be impartial in this case. That’s exactly what the Clintons want. A special prosecutor will take months or even years to put together a case against Hillary, rather than an FBI recommendation that could come very soon.
Hillary doesn’t have to prove she’s innocent here, because she can’t; all she has to do is delay things until after the November election. If she should win, she can make this investigation go away or simply pardon herself. Bill Clinton may have just made that happen with this supposedly “dumb” move.
There’s a reason why they used to call him “Slick Willy.” Bill can weasel out of anything. He dodged a massive fraud investigation, got away with raping and sexually assault a dozen women, and escaped impeachment with no problem. Do you really believe that a guy this corrupt and slimy can’t help his wife side step a federal probe from a very liberal administration? He does this shit in his sleep.
~Link~
I don't believe sitting presidents CAN pardon themselves , if they could it would have happened with Nixon , or Clinton himself. it would have to come from their successor.
another point to think of , the congress leaders could meet with their respective comittees concerning justice matters and have a decision of no confidence in the AG and put forth a vote she is to be requesed in this matter and it falls to the next person in line in the justice depts. chain of command / responsibility since no report or recommendation has been delivered for consideration ..... yet. wont take months and no wait needed, treat it the same as if the AG had been incapasitated by an illness.
nope , that wont work.... to simple and makes too much sense.
I don't believe sitting presidents CAN pardon themselves , if they could it would have happened with Nixon , or Clinton himself. it would have to come from their successor.
There's no limitation on a presidential pardon so I believe the president can pardon himself. The only way to handle a sitting president is to impeach him, remove him from office, and then convict him like anybody else.
Just a word about what Bill Clinton did at the airport. Bill didn't have to bring up Hillary's situation at all in his discussion and the meeting is still inappropriate. He shouldn't send Lynch a birthday card, or buy her lunch and exchange pictures of the family, or walk her dog, or visit her mother in the hospital or anything else that amounts to subtly greasing the wheel by indirectly suggesting "you know us; we like you; we're good people; good people should help each other; you should feel guilty if you hang us after we were so kind to you."
wont take months and no wait needed, treat it the same as if the AG had been incapasitated by an illness.
I want to call them fans instead of people, those who will be voting for Hillary because I believe there are very few who would let the email investigation get in the way of them voting for her. There is no difference in my mind of any of the voters who are fans of Obama, Hillary or Trump. Each one of them have fans and those fans will not be turned off by their respective heroes no matter what one their hero does, has done, or may possibly do or say.
We have to accept the fact this is one crooked administration and for that matter the entire government on both sides are very corrupt. I don't trust many working within the government especially those who are appointed instead of elected.
I guess we'll see where this whole thing goes from here.
My personal opinion is Hillary was never going to be found guilty of anything that would prevent her from running for president. I think we have a lot of good actors in Washington and they are good at putting on a show for the American public. I don't think anything happens by accident. And if it does they will use the powers they have and even those they don't have to find a solution.
If the Republicans get their way and get a special prosecutor, then it will take beyond the election before anything gets done, thereby not effecting the the voters on either side. I look at it like this. Once the election is over, if Hillary wins and it looks like she will, this will just fade away like the push to charge Bush, Cheney and some others with war crimes. Actually they were convicted in a Malaysian court. Nothing ever came of the push for charges. Obama became President and that's the last we heard of it.
I mean Obama has already said he is with her. If that doesn't give us the answer, I don't know what will.
I'm certainly not defending any of Hillary and the Obama administration's shenanigans but, to me, a delay (maybe not one this long) is reasonable. If the number of estimated emails grew from 6,000 to 34,000, then they have a problem. Somebody has to read every one of these emails and redact information that is not subject to release under FOIA (there are exemptions to disclosure that have to be considered). Anything deemed subject to release then has to be reviewed by an FOIA officer because the state department seems to have augmented its reviewers with foreign service officers (which doesn't make them trained in FOIA disclosure). They need more staff or more time to review a larger FOIA request. Increasing the staff may be a problem because they have to pay for it. They can't just expand a budget that's already appropriated for this fiscal year or spend beyond the appropriated budget without violating the Anti-Deficiency Act -- even the court can't order them to spend money they don't have. The budget for fiscal years 2016 and 2017 has already been approved so they would need a supplemental that has to be approved by Congress. That doesn't happen overnight (especially if Congress is on recess). They may not be able to use other State department staff without bringing the other functions of the State Department to a halt (and an FOIA officer still has to review what anybody does). Their only option may be delay.
I assume the Obama administration didn't drag this out until Congress goes on recess in order to gum this all up. If they did, they should be held in contempt of court.
I agree with your comment 1ofmany. I guess I don't see an other way than what we perceive as delay and it is no different than any other case before the courts. I don't believe these allegations against Hillary Clinton will play any more a part of the election than they have thus far.
There's nothing (that I know of) that requires the State Department to release all of the emails at one time. I'd tell the requester that I have insufficient resources to act on the entire request in one release and then tell him I will do it in batches . . . e.g. one thousand every month or two months or whatever I can handle. If the system permits, I would tell the requester that he can get the most recent emails first and work backwards or take them in chronological order.