"People should and do trust me" - Hillary Clinton

[kscarbel2]

Fed challenged over governor’s Clinton ties

The Financial Times  /  September 28, 2016

Republicans raise new questions over independence of central bank

Janet Yellen was forced to fend off new questions about the Federal Reserve’s political independence on Tuesday as a Republican lawmaker asked her if one of the central bank’s governors was too close to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The Fed chair was challenged by Scott Garrett, a Republican from New Jersey, over donations that Fed governor Lael Brainard has made to the Clinton campaign and over unconfirmed media reports that Ms Brainard is a contender for a senior job in a potential Clinton administration.

The exchanges came only two days after Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, claimed in his debate with Mrs Clinton that the Fed has been keeping short-term interest rates low to help the Obama administration and was sustaining a “big, fat, ugly bubble” in the stock market.

Ms Yellen has categorically denied the Fed is doing anything to suit the White House’s political objectives, saying earlier this month that “partisan politics play no role in our decisions.”

Some analysts argue the Fed is vulnerable at a time of intense pressure from both sides of the partisan divide, however, with some lawmakers seeking to impose tighter legislative constraints on its policy freedoms.

Ms Yellen was testifying on regulatory matters to the House Committee on Financial Services.

Mr Garrett asked: “A Fed governor can be in direct negotiations with a political campaign looking for a future job and that is not a conflict as far as you’re concerned?”

His words referred to Ms Brainard, a former Treasury official who is often listed in media reports as a potential candidate to be Treasury secretary in a Clinton administration.

After a false start and cross talk between lawmakers seeking to end Mr Garrett’s questioning, the Fed chair said: “I would have to consult my counsel. I’m not aware that that’s a conflict, but I would …” Then she was herself cut off by the committee chair.

Shortly beforehand Ms Yellen said she had “absolutely no awareness” of Ms Brainard being in touch with the Clinton camp about a job.

A Fed spokesperson said Ms Brainard had not been in conversations with either political campaign.

Mr Garrett did not put forward any evidence to support his claims about the governor angling for a job.

Pressed on $2,700 in disclosed donations that Ms Brainard has made to Mrs Clinton’s campaign, the maximum permitted for individual contributions in a primary election cycle, Ms Yellen noted that the Hatch Act does not prohibit political contributions by Fed governors.

Ms Yellen has been asked about those donations in the past and has said that legal political campaign donations by central bank employees do not undermine its standing as a non-partisan agency.

Mr Garrett told the Fed chair: “As the saying goes, perception is reality. Whether you like it or not, the public increasingly believes that Fed independence is nothing more than a myth. The Fed has an unacceptable cosy relationship with the Obama administration and with higher ups in the Democratic party.”

Asked if she had ever asked Ms Brainard to recuse herself from monetary policymaking due to her “close involvement” with the campaign, Ms Yellen said: “She’s acting in a way that is permitted by the rules we are subject to. Each one of us has to decide for ourselves.”

Responding later to a separate question from Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, a Democratic lawmaker from Ohio, Ms Yellen said she had “never been pressured in any way by the [Obama] administration” over interest rates. “The administration in my experience … greatly respects the Fed’s independence to make decisions in accordance with our Congressional mandate.”

[41chevy]

 

Now for Valerie Jarretts comment that was replayed on BBC this morning...  " After we win the election, it's our turn, pay back time! Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready, because we don't forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded and the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There will be hell to pay for those not our supporters. Congress will not be a problem this time, no election to worry about after this is over. Plus we have two Judges ready to go and do our bidding"

Valerie Jarrett: Born in Iran, Senor Advisor to President Obama and close confidant of HRC. BBC was told by White House Staff that "she calls all the shots except the drones, because Barack loves his drones"

Edited October 3, 2016 by 41chevy

[grayhair]

Thought you might enjoy...

https://safeshare.tv/x/kXjbXGyQDsE

 

[41chevy]

1 hour ago, grayhair said:

Thought you might enjoy...

https://safeshare.tv/x/kXjbXGyQDsE

 

[kscarbel2]

White House Coordinated on Clinton Email Issues, New Documents Show

The Wall Street Journal  /  October 7, 2016

Newly disclosed emails show top Obama administration officials were in close contact with Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign in early 2015 about the potential fallout from revelations that the former secretary of state used a private email server.

Their discussion included a request from the White House communications director to her counterpart at the State Department to see if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions during media appearances about Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement.

In another instance, a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.

The previously unreported emails were obtained by the Republican National Committee as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records of Mrs. Clinton’s time in office. The RNC provided to The Wall Street Journal only some of the emails, leaving it unclear what was in the remaining documents. The RNC said it released only emails relevant to the communication between the White House and State Department.

Meredith McGehee, chief of policy, programs, and strategy at the nonpartisan advocacy group Issue One and an expert on ethics and campaign finance, said the email exchange would probably raise no legal concerns because federal law permits members of the White House staff to engage in some political activity.

Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement has dogged her campaign for months, with Republicans and other critics saying it shows a carelessness with government secrets and undermines her claim to good judgment. Donald Trump’s campaign posted a statement on his website last month saying the Obama White House knew Mrs. Clinton was using a private email server.

Mrs. Clinton has acknowledged the arrangement was a mistake, but she has rejected the notion that national secrets were placed at risk. Her campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about the new email disclosures.

The emails highlight the revolving door between the State Department, the White House and the Clinton campaign in early 2015 as Mrs. Clinton geared up to run for president.

The New York Times reported on March 2, 2015, that Mrs. Clinton had exclusively used a private email account for government business when she was secretary of state. That set off months of controversy for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, culminating in a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe that recommended against prosecution of Mrs. Clinton.

At the time of the initial report, Mrs. Clinton hadn’t formally declared her intention to mount a presidential campaign, but she had begun hiring staff ahead of her formal announcement on April 12, 2015.

Ten days after the story broke, White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri emailed State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki to ask, “between us on the shows…think we can get this done so he is not asked about email.” That apparently referred to Mr. Kerry, who appeared in an interview on CBS ’s “Face the Nation” three days later.

Ms. Palmieri had previously announced she would be leaving the administration to join Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in mid-2015, but was still at the White House when she sent the email. Other emails show Ms. Palmieri helped arrange for Ms. Psaki to move from the State Department to the White House communications job Ms. Palmieri was vacating. “Agree completely and working to crush on my end,” wrote back Ms. Psaki, who would move to the White House weeks later.

A day later, Ms. Psaki added, “Good to go on killing CBS idea.” She continued, “And we are going to hold on any other TV options just given the swirl of crap out there.” Mr. Kerry wasn’t asked on CBS about the email server, though it isn’t clear how Ms. Psaki could have guaranteed that.

Teased by Ms. Palmieri about her use of the phrase “swirl of crap,” Ms. Psaki wrote back: “Ha I mean—the challenging stories out there.”

CBS spokeswoman Caitlin Conant said the network had made no commitments about what questions Mr. Kerry would face. “No subject was off-limits when this interview was arranged, as is the CBS News standard,” she said. “CBS News’ State Department correspondent was in Egypt with Secretary John Kerry in the home stretch of the Iran nuclear deal negotiations and discussed policy issues of the day with him on this official trip.”

State Department spokesman John Kirby added that there was nothing unusual about the Palmieri-Psaki exchange. “It is common practice for State Department and White House staffers to be in touch when agency officials are potentially conducting television interviews,” he said.

The RNC also obtained an entirely redacted discussion between nearly a dozen top White House communications officials with a subject line referring to Mr. Kerry’s appearance on CBS. A White House official said the internal debate at the time was about whether Mr. Kerry should appear on the shows at all, rather than any attempt to influence what questions were asked.

In another email coming from the State Department, Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management, told Heather Samuelson, one of Mrs. Clinton’s attorneys, about new documents the State Department had posted concerning the former secretary of state.

Ms. Samuelson was one of the attorneys who reviewed Mrs. Clinton’s emails to determine which were government-related and which were personal before providing the official ones to the State Department. She was interviewed by the FBI as part of its probe and granted limited immunity in exchange for turning over her laptop as part of the investigation.

In another exchange, Mr. Kennedy told Ms. Samuelson that Politico was “running [a] story that State official said Secretary Clinton did wrong thing. Wildly inaccurate reporting.”

A Politico spokesman said the organization stood by its reporting. The story reported that Joyce Barr, assistant secretary of state for administration, had said in testimony to Congress that Mrs. Clinton’s record-keeping practices were “not acceptable.” An internal watchdog report later concluded that Mrs. Clinton’s email use wasn't permitted under State policy.

Mr. Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said Mr. Kennedy was “simply offering a reaction to a press article.” He added it wasn’t unusual for State officials to be in contact with former secretaries or their staff.

[kscarbel2]

WikiLeaks brings attention back to Clinton’s Wall St speeches

The Financial Times  /  October 8, 2016

Hacked emails portray candidate as sympathetic to banking sector

Hillary Clinton apparently advocated for “open trade and open borders” and admitted to being “kind of far removed” from the middle class in paid speeches to Wall Street institutions, according to newly released documents from WikiLeaks.

Mrs Clinton has refused to release the transcripts of six-figure paid speeches to Wall Street banks — an issue that became a key point of contention during the Democratic primary. But on Friday, WikiLeaks published the hacked emails of Mrs Clinton’s chairman John Podesta, which appear to shed light on the content of some of those speeches.

In one email sent to Mr Podesta, a Clinton campaign staffer flagged specific remarks Mrs Clinton had made during her paid speeches that the staffer believed might pose problems for Mrs Clinton during the Democratic primary.

In one speech, given to Deutsche Bank in 2014, Mrs Clinton appears to suggest that she believed individuals from the banking sector should play a role in helping to regulate the financial industry. “The people that know the industry better than anybody are the people that work in the industry.”

In another speech, she seemed to throw her weight behind a free-trade society. “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,” she said, according to the email. Mrs Clinton also appeared to admit that she was out of touch with regular voters, saying she was “kind of far removed” from middle class struggles “because [of] the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy”.

The Clinton campaign declined to confirm whether the emails were authentic. The campaign stressed that Mr Podesta’s emails had been “stolen” and suggested that documents could be “faked as part of a sophisticated Russian misinformation campaign”.

The WikiLeaks release came on the same day that the US formally blamed Russia for several hacks on US political institutions, including the Democratic National Committee, and accused Moscow of trying to interfere in the US election.

In total, Mrs Clinton received more than $20m for speeches she made between 2013 and 2015. While Mrs Clinton said during a Democratic primary debate that she would “look into” releasing the speech transcripts, she has yet to do so, even as her campaign has skewered Donald Trump for refusing to release his tax returns.

During the Democratic primary, Mrs Clinton’s primary opponent Bernie Sanders frequently attacked her for being too cozy with Wall Street institutions, and for being unlikely to go after banks and big corporations in the way she was promising to do in her campaign.

In the excerpts of Mrs Clinton’s speeches, the Democratic nominee suggests she might have more sympathy for Wall Street figures than she has suggested on the campaign trail, saying that there was “such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” and that she herself believed it was “very onerous and unnecessary” that successful business people were forced to sell so many assets just to take on roles in the US government.

Mrs Clinton also indicated that her public and private positions on issues did not always add up.

“I mean, politics is like sausage being made,” she said, according to the email. “It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”

WikiLeaks’ release of the hacked emails came Friday evening, not long after the Washington Post published a 2005 video of Mr Trump where the Republic nominee was heard bragging in crude terms about groping women.

On Saturday, US cable networks were referring to the video and WikiLeaks release as “October surprises” for the two candidates. However, the fallout from Mr Trump’s video appeared to have significantly worse repercussions, with numerous Republican leaders condemning his comments, and several elected Republican officials calling for Mr Trump to halt his campaign and let another member of his party lead the ticket.

During the day on Saturday, most networks were devoting full coverage to Mr Trump’s controversy, and only Fox News discussed the video and WikiLeaks release of Mrs Clinton’s speeches in parallel.

However, the WikiLeaks documents could hurt Mrs Clinton among some former Sanders supporters who believe that Mrs Clinton has not been fully transparent about her true views on financial regulation, trade, and the influence of big corporations on US politics.

[41chevy]

If I was running against her I blanket the TV with this.

 

[Tbear]

7 hours ago, 41chevy said:

If I was running against her I blanket the TV with this.

I can't agree with you more . I just hope more people will realize this come November !!!!

[kscarbel2]

8 hours ago, 41chevy said:

If I was running against her I blanket the TV with this.

The first half of this quote is real, the second half is fake.

"She will say anything and change nothing" is a quote from a campaign ad that was endorsed by President Obama and so even though he didn't say it himself, his endorsement of the ad carries with it that these are effectively his words.

However, the second half of the quote is fake.

The words "Hillary can't be trusted and isn't qualified to be President" do not appear in the campaign ad with the first half of the sentence and cannot be found in any other statements from Barack Obama at any time from 2008 until now.

.

 

[HeavyGunner]

1 hour ago, kscarbel2 said:

The first half of this quote is real, the second half is fake.

"She will say anything and change nothing" is a quote from a campaign ad that was endorsed by President Obama.

Wow! A hot place just froze over and pigs are flying! The one time Obama has told the truth!  Sheesh I better go sit down for a minute. 

[41chevy]

1 hour ago, HeavyGunner said:

Wow! A hot place just froze over and pigs are flying! The one time Obama has told the truth!  Sheesh I better go sit down for a minute. 

 And I apologize for slandering Hillary.

[kscarbel2]

We only know what the media tells us.........we have no way to personally confirm it.

Based on what we're told, neither of these individuals should be allowed to head the country.

That the elections are weeks away and Americans have no qualified candidate to choose from, is damning of our system of government.

The candidates behind doors number one and two are indescribably bad, and there is no door number three.

In effect, for America's most important office, at a time when the world is in an extremely dangerous state, there's nobody to vote for.

I can't describe how concerned I am. The average American has no idea how fractured the world is right now. And the world order is changing. Successfully maintaining our position in the new world order is of the utmost importance. It requires a professional, qualified and experienced individual.

Frankly speaking, the elections must be delayed, and new nominees selected. Like anything in life, you don't make a decision until you have the right options before you.

[kscarbel2]

Hillary Clinton 'cannot recall' email server details

BBC  /  October 14, 2016

US Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has said she cannot recall key details about using a private email server while secretary of state, documents show.

She had been asked to give sworn responses to 25 written questions from a conservative legal group.

At least 21 responses used variations of "does not recall", the documents, provided by her lawyer, show.

Mrs Clinton denies handling classified information in her private emails.

Questions over her use of a private email server while secretary of state have dogged her presidential campaign.

Her responses under oath to the Judicial Watch group were provided by her lawyer, David Kendall.

Mrs Clinton also made various legal objections to the wording or formation of 18 of the 25 questions, the documents show.

Correspondents say her answers provide no new information beyond what Mrs Clinton told FBI agents during a recent investigation.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the group's lawyers would be closely reviewing her responses.

"Mrs Clinton's refusal to answer many of the questions in a clear and straightforward manner further reflects disdain for the rule of law," he said.

Judicial Watch has filed multiple lawsuits to try to obtain copies of government documents from Mrs Clinton's time as secretary of state.

[41chevy]

Sadly the elections will not be delayed, Hillary will be the next president. Why? Because she fits into the continuing agenda to change the country into a European style Socialist Democracy Movement started during  WWI and accelerated in the 1960's.

 

Social democracy is a political, social and economic ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving collective bargaining arrangements, a commitment to representative democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest and welfare state provisions. Social democracy thus aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes; and is often associated with the set of socioeconomic policies that became prominent in Northern and Western Europe—particularly the Nordic model in the Nordic countries—during the latter half of the 20th century.

Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism. In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model then current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternate path to socialism or to a compromise between capitalism and socialism.  In this period, social democrats embraced a mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with state interventionism, and the welfare state, while abandoning the prior goal of replacing the capitalist system.

Modern social democracy is characterized by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups, and poverty;including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, education, health care, and workers' compensation. The social democratic movement also has strong connections with the labor movement and trade unions, and is supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend democratic decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders.

The Third Way, which ostensibly aims to fuse right-wing economics with social democratic welfare policies, is a major ideology that developed in the 1990s and is associated with social democratic parties, but some analysts have characterized the Third Way as  the most effective movement.

 

Does this list  seem familiar??

Edited October 14, 2016 by 41chevy

[kscarbel2]

WikiLeaks: Clinton avoided criticism of Wall Street in Goldman Sachs speeches

The Guardian  /  October 16, 2016

Transcripts show Clinton said she worked closely with Wall Street as a senator and ‘the jury is still out’ on whether Dodd-Frank reforms were needed

Hillary Clinton avoided direct criticism of Wall Street as she examined the causes and responses to the 2008 financial crisis during a series of paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, according to transcripts released by WikiLeaks.

Three transcripts, released Saturday as part of the hack of her campaign chairman’s emails, did not contain any damning revelations showing she was unduly influenced by contributions from the banking industry, as her Republican opponent Donald Trump has said.

Still, her soft-handed approach in the speeches may remind liberals of fears, raised by her former Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, that the party’s nominee is too close to Wall Street to be an effective check on its excesses if elected.

In October 2013, the transcripts show, Clinton told bankers she had “great relations” and worked closely with Wall Street as New York’s senator, and said “the jury is still out” on whether the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, enacted after the crisis, were appropriate. She said more openness from the start could have prevented the uproar on Wall Street over those reforms.

“What happened, how did it happen, how do we prevent it from happening? You guys help us figure it out, and let’s make sure that we do it right this time,” she told the bankers, according to the transcripts.

Working to relate her speech to her audience, Clinton likened her experience as secretary of state to finance, saying: “It’s like anybody’s balance sheet,” with both opportunities and potential liabilities.

In one exchange, a conference participant from Texas told Clinton that she had “the honor to raise money for you” during her 2008 presidential campaign.

Clinton responded: “You are the smartest people.”

In the hard-fought Democratic primary, Sanders repeatedly called on Clinton to release the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street, some of which earned her hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In an ironic twist, the transcripts ended up becoming public because her campaign aides had distributed them among themselves in an effort to prepare for any attacks she might face. Those internal campaign emails were then leaked in the hack of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

The transcripts, all from 2013, include speeches and question-and-answer sessions with Clinton at a Builders and Innovators Summit, an Alternative Investment Management Summit and a gathering of CEOs, all hosted by Goldman Sachs.

In another speech, Clinton said that after 2010 leak of US diplomatic cables, she had to go on an “apology tour” while serving as Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

In those cables, US officials and diplomats characterized some foreign leaders as “vain, egotistical, power hungry, corrupt. And we knew they were. This was not fiction.”

“I had grown men cry,” Clinton recalled. “I mean, literally. ‘I am a friend of America, and you say these things about me?’”

Clinton said she apologized to world leaders by saying ambassadors “get carried away – they want to all be literary people”.

[Your U.S. ambassadors and consul generals around the world mouthed the truth. Rather than stand by them, Clinton caused them to lose face and stature by apologizing for their comments.]

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, then told Clinton that she had put on “an Italian accent”.

“Have a sense of humor,” Clinton replied.

“And so you said, Silvio,” Blankfein answered, alluding to the then Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

Hillary Clinton praised other leaders, including Chinese president Xi Jinping, who had assumed power in the fall of 2012. Clinton described Xi as “a more sophisticated, more effective public leader” than his predecessor, Hu Jintao, and said that he could “work a room”.

“You can have him make small talk with you, which he has done with me,” she said.

Clinton also told bankers that she would have liked to see the US intervene in Syria “as covertly as is possible” – and complained about reports to the press.

“We used to be much better at this than we are now,” she said. “Now, you know, everybody can’t help themselves. They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: look what we’re doing and I want credit for it.”

[kscarbel2]

Correspondence between Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and Clinton aid Neera Tanden about Hillary, revealed by Wikileaks.

 

[kscarbel2]

A Soap Opera in progress

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wikileaks  /  October 18, 2016

Wikileaks has revealed that Chelsea Clinton accused some of her father's closest aides of taking 'significant sums of money' from her parents, among other allegations, in an email to members of the Clintons' inner circle. 

In an e-mail dated November 4, 2011, Chelsea accused Bill Clinton's aides Doug Band, Justin Cooper and Hannah Rickert of corruption, and articulated a number of transgressions, which she described as “very sad.”

No fan of Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton aide Doug Band described Chelsea in a hacked John Podesta e-mail as “a spoiled brat kid.” 

The new exchange, which occurred several days before, sheds light on the activities of Band and other aides that made Chelsea Clinton suspicious that they were harming the Clinton Foundation, which she had started to take control of, to enrich themselves.

Chelsea Clinton was writing to Podesta, now acting as her mother’s campaign chairman, and Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s State Department chief of staff, along with Victoria Bjorklund and Jennifer Reynoso, two lawyers from the firm Simpson Thacher, who were conducting a Clinton Foundation review, which had commenced the month before.

In the e-mail, Chelsea Clinton listed the issues she had been told of or experienced that past week.

Her complaints began with Band, who she said had contacted her father's speakers bureau, asking for information about how much he was paid for speeches and how many he delivered. Band then told the bureau he was Bill Clinton's primary contact for booking and not the ex-president's scheduler. 

Chelsea Clinton then noted that her assistant Ilya Aspis caught Justin Cooper “reading his [Blackberry] and loading the same spyware onto his computer that he loaded onto Bari [Lurie's] computer”.

A Secret Service agent told Chelsea Clinton's husband Marc Mezvinsky that Cooper had “asked another Secret Service agent to lie about the parking pass absurdity,” she said, adding, “we can talk about this really ridiculous anecdote offline.” 

Multiple people reported to Chelsea Clinton that Cooper had been bad-mouthing her father: “in very derogatory ways sadly.” 

Another aide complained that Cooper had been reading his emails. 

Chelsea Clinton wrote that her father was told of Band and his firm Teneo pushing for free memberships, using Clinton connections. 

Band's firm was also “hustling” for business at the annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), part of the Clinton Foundation where people and companies make commitments to help solve global problems.  

“And of people now having quit at CGI - that Doug told Jon Davidson he was never going to forgive him for not reporting that Dad met with John [Podesta] on Sunday and that how could Jon forget who he really worked for,” Chelsea Clinton wrote. 

Band threatened Bill Clinton's scheduler.

“Doug told Terry Krinivic she would never work again in this town if she didn't back him up on everything,” Chelsea Clinton wrote. 

[Chelsea Clinton’s assistant] “Ilya [Aspis]] believes Hannah and Justin have taken significant sums of money from my parents personally, some in expenses, cars, etc.,and others directly,' she wrote.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From:aj66@nyu.edu (Chelsea Clinton)

To: john.podesta@gmail.com, cheryl.mills@gmail.com, vbjorklund@stblaw.com, jreynoso@stblaw.com

Date: 2011-11-04 19:08

Subject:

Hello John, Cheryl, Victoria and Jennifer –

Although I continue to respond to people's sharing of their concerns about the [Clinton] Foundation and/or my father's world by telling them that 1) I hope they will share their experiences/concerns/hopes/fears with Victoria and her team candidly and 2) that it is critical that as we move to professionalize the Foundation for the future that professionalism starts with this process - people continue to share things with me. Although I continue to not respond or engage beyond what I outlined above, I do think - and my mother strongly agreed as a lawyer - that I should pass along to you Victoria and your team and to you John and Cheryl the below as more information (factual or suspected or imagined). Particularly in advance of what I understand will be an intermediate conversation with Doug tomorrow. I continue to want - and to try - to disintermediate myself from this muddle, edify the corporate audit and existential process we are in - while also being a responsible board member, daughter and person. In that vein, I was told or experienced the following since we had our meeting last week Victoria:

- today that Doug reached out to someone at Harry Walker (who represents my father on all speaking arrangements), to ask for a full list of all his speeches, how much he was paid for each speech, and told the contact person at Harry Walker that all speeches should now go through him, not Terry Krinivic (the scheduler)

- that Ilya physically saw/caught Justin a couple of days ago reading his bberry and loading the same spyware onto his computer that he loaded onto Bari's computer

- a secret service agent told Marc (my husband) that Justin had asked another secret service agent to lie about the parking pass absurdity [we can talk about this really ridiculous anecdote offline]

- multiple people shared with me how upset they were at hearing how Justin referred to my father in the last week - in very derogatory ways

- Oscar told my father he knows Justin reads his emails

- my father was told today of explicit examples at CGI of Doug/ Teneo pushing for - and receiving - free memberships - and of multiple examples of Teneo 'hustling' business at CGI - and of people now having quit at CGI

- that Doug told Jon Davidson he was never going to forgive him for not reporting that Dad met with John (ie you John) on Sunday and that how could Jon forget who he really worked for

- Doug told Terry Krinivic she would never work again in this town if she didn't back him up on everything.

- Ilya believes Hannah and Justin have taken significant sums of money from my parents personally - some in expenses - cars, etc. - and others directly.

As ever, on some of the above I am sure there are three sides as my grandmother would say - his, hers and the truth. On others, it seems more clear. All of it makes me very sad. Thank you all for your help. The only people I am sharing the above with are you, my mother and my father. Please let me know as ever if you have any questions or advice. Thank you, Chelsea

[kscarbel2]

Leaked emails reveal how Clinton world spins

The Financial Times  /  October 18, 2016

Hacked messages show how aides sought to insulate Democratic nominee from attack

Hillary Clinton’s aides were worried about how the Clintons’ ties to foreign lobbyists and Wall Street banks might hurt her, and did their best to insulate her from any fallout — even when Mrs Clinton herself did not realise they were a problem.

This is one of the revelations inside more than 17,000 hacked emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, which have been released by WikiLeaks over the past week and a half in 11 separate data dumps.

An additional 33,000 emails are still expected to be released by WikiLeaks before election day.

The slow release of the emails has added to the impression that Mrs Clinton is dogged by the same issues that have followed her since the primary, and contributed to the impression that the candidate is a different person behind closed doors than in public.

According to a CBS News poll released on Tuesday, only one in three voters thinks that Mrs Clinton believes what she is saying, versus two in three voters who think she says what people want to hear. In contrast, nearly three in five voters think that Mr Trump does believe what he is saying, even though Mrs Clinton leads him by 11 points nationally.

Here is what we have learnt from the hacked emails and what they say about how Mrs Clinton’s world operates.

• The line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Clinton donors is not always clear — even to the Clintons

In an April 2015 email chain, Clinton aides deliberated over whether it was a good idea to accept campaign donations from lobbyists who worked on behalf of foreign governments.

Robby Mook, Mrs Clinton’s campaign manager, initially argued against the idea, saying it was too hard to come up with a system to determine which foreign governments were deemed acceptable to lobby (ie. Canada) and which were not.

While he and other aides at one point talked about vetting lobbyists on a case-by-case basis, Mr Mook was eventually persuaded to change his mind, with others arguing that lobbying for a foreign government was in some cases no worse than lobbying for a controversial US corporation, such as Philip Morris.

“In a complete U-turn, I’m OK just taking the money and dealing with any attacks,” Mr Mook wrote.

Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs Clinton’s director of communications, agreed. “Take the money!!” she urged.

• The Clinton campaign tried to move the Illinois primary

In a different email chain with Mr Podesta, Mr Mook suggested that the Clinton campaign should try to convince the Illinois legislature to delay the state’s primary by at least a month, a move he suggested would help make sure the Republican party was stuck with a more extreme nominee who would fare worse in the general election.

 “The overall goal is to move the [Illinois] primary out of mid-March, where they are currently a lifeline to a more moderate Republican candidate after the mostly southern Super Tuesday,” Mr Mook wrote in November 2014.

Mr Mook suggested that Mr Podesta should contact Bill Daley, a fellow Obama administration alumnus, to see if he could convince the Illinois House speaker to move the date of the primary, and emphasise that it was a “Hillary ask”, not an “Obama ask”.

“The Clintons won’t forget what their friends have done for them,” Mr Mook wrote.

The primary date was never moved.

• At times, aides thought it best that Mrs Clinton be left in the dark

In the weeks before Mrs Clinton announced that she would be running for president, aides worried that former President Bill Clinton was continuing to accept large speaking fees from financial institutions, something they correctly assessed might become an issue during the Democratic primary.

Mrs Clinton, however, was insistent: her husband should continue to give the speeches and accept the large fees.

In an email to Mrs Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin, Mr Mook laid out why he believed Mrs Clinton was wrong. “I know this is not the answer she wants, but I feel very strongly that doing the speech is a mistake,” Mr Mook wrote.

After he and other campaign aides went ahead and cancelled a planned Morgan Stanley speech by Mr Clinton, Ms Abedin said that she would have to tell Mrs Clinton that the speech had been cancelled by Mr Clinton himself, and not the aides, in order not to upset her boss.

“HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” Ms Abedin wrote, using Mrs Clinton’s initials. “I will have to tell her that [former president Clinton] chose to cancel it, not that we asked.”

• Mrs Clinton is not as anti-fracking as might seem

In a conversation with the building trade union last year, Mrs Clinton suggested that she was significantly more sympathetic to the fracking and fossil fuels industries than she had stressed during the Democratic primary.

According to a transcript of that meeting, which was included in Mr Podesta’s emails, Mrs Clinton told the group that she wanted to “defend natural gas”.

“I want to defend repairing and building the pipelines we need to fuel our economy. I want do defend fracking under the right circumstances,” she said.

Despite a $30bn pledge to revive Appalachia the Democratic nominee is struggling

She added that she had little sympathy for “the most radical environmentalists” who were backing her primary rival Bernie Sanders.

“They come to my rallies and they yell at me, and you know, all the rest of it. They say: ‘Will you promise never to take any fossil fuels out of the earth ever again?’ No. I won’t promise that. Get a life, you know,” Mrs Clinton said, according to the email.

• Tim Kaine was not a shoo-in for VP

In an email on March 17, a group of Mrs Clinton’s top aides sent the candidate a long list of 40 names for Mrs Clinton to choose from for her running mate.

To make it easier for Mrs Clinton to navigate, they divided the candidates into what appear to be six distinct categories: Latinos, women, white men, African-Americans, military officials and business executives. Bernie Sanders, Mrs Clinton’s primary rival, was placed in a seventh category all of his own.

In addition to Mr Sanders and Mr Kaine, the campaign was also looking at a few more unconventional choices, among them Bill and Melinda Gates, former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, Apple’s Tim Cook and Howard Schultz of Starbucks.

.

[kscarbel2]

Associated Press  /  October 27, 2016

The latest hacked email released by WikiLeaks details how one of Bill Clinton’s closest aides helped rake in millions for the former president.

The 12-page memo was sent by Clinton's former aide Doug Band in 2011 to him, his daughter Chelsea, several board members of the Clinton Foundation and its lawyers as well as its then special advisor John Podesta.

Published on Wednesday after a hack of thousands of emails from Podesta’s account, it details how Band helped run what he called ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’

Band and another aide helped secure more than $50 million from ventures, including speaking fees, according to the email.

Band wrote that, using his role as the president of his own consulting firm Teneo, he worked to raise funds for the Foundation and Clinton personally.

Band also wrote that he helped obtain ‘in-kind services for the President and his family – for personal, travel, hospital, vacation and the like.’

‘Throughout the past almost 11 years since President Clinton left office, I have sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo to support and raise funds for the Foundation.’

‘This memorandum strives to set forth how I have endeavored to support the Clinton Foundation and President Clinton personally.’

Under a section called ‘For-Profit Activity of President Clinton (i.e. Bill Clinton, Inc)’ Brand said he and aide Justin Cooper brought Clinton all four of his advisory arrangements at the time.

These yielded more than $30 million in personal income, with a further $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years should he continue with them.

One of these roles was serving as honorary Chairman of Laureate International Universities, which paid Clinton $3.5 million a year.

Band pointed out in the email that neither he nor Cooper were compensated for the work.

They were not paid a fee or percentage of the income, but only received their Foundation salaries.

Band wrote that Teneo was responsible for negotiating a number of speaking fees for Clinton, including $1.15 million from Ericson and $900,000 from UBS.

He also used his partner role at the company, established in June 2011, to solicit clients to donate to the Clinton Foundation.

This included $4.33 million over six years from The Coca-Cola Company and more than $1 million from Barclays Capital over four years.

Band’s memo was also sent to lawyers who were conducting a review of the charity.

It came as Chelsea Clinton was taking a bigger role in leading the foundation and after she expressed her concerns about Band’s roles at the charity as well as at Teneo, according to the Washington Post.

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Inside ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’: Hacked memo reveals intersection of charity and personal income

The Washington Post  /  October 26, 2016

When top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band wrote the memo, he was a central player at the Clinton Foundation and president of his own corporate consulting firm. Over the course of 13 pages, he made a case that his multiple roles had served the interests of the Clinton family and its charity.

In doing so, Band also detailed a circle of enrichment in which he raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president.

The system has drawn scrutiny from Republicans, who say it allowed corporations and other wealthy supporters to pay for entree to a popular former president and a onetime secretary of state who is now the Democratic presidential nominee.

Band wrote the memo in 2011 to foundation lawyers conducting a review of the organization amid a brewing feud with the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who was taking a stronger role in leading the foundation and had expressed concerns about Teneo’s operations.

The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family’s fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department. It describes how Band helped run what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.,” obtaining “in-kind services for the President and his family — for personal travel, hospitality, vacation and the like.”

Band and his Teneo co-founder, former Hillary Clinton fundraiser Declan Kelly, declined to comment. But Teneo issued a statement saying that “as the memo demonstrates, Teneo worked to encourage clients, where appropriate, to support the Clinton Foundation because of the good work that it does around the world. It also clearly shows that Teneo never received any financial benefit or benefit of any kind from doing so.”

Spokesmen for Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton and the foundation declined to comment.

Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin declined to comment on the memo, calling the material “hacked by the Russian government and weaponized by WikiLeaks.” Caplin declined to authenticate the memo, but he also did not dispute it.

Band, who grew close to Bill Clinton two decades ago as his personal aide in the White House and became the architect of his post-presidential activities, argued in the memo that he and his firm had benefited the former president and his foundation.

“We have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities,” Band wrote. He also said he had “sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo, to support and to raise funds for the foundation.”

Band’s memo provided data showing how much money each of Teneo’s 20 clients at the time had given to the Clinton Foundation, how much they had paid Bill Clinton and, in some cases, how he or Kelly had personally forged the relationships that resulted in the payments.

Band wrote that Teneo partners had raised in excess of $8 million for the foundation and $3 million in paid speaking fees for Bill Clinton. He said he had secured contracts for the former president that would pay out $66 million over the subsequent nine years if the deals remained in place.

For instance, Band wrote that Kelly arranged for the former president to meet the chief executive of Coca-Cola in January 2009 at the Clintons’ home in Washington. In all, according to Band’s memo, Coke had contributed $4.33 million to the foundation between 2004 and 2010.

A Coca-Cola spokesman said the company had supported the Clinton Foundation because it believed “in the great work that can be done when businesses, civil society and governments come together to solve problems.” He said Teneo had been hired to provide “business and communications” consulting.

Band also described how Kelly helped expand a fruitful relationship with UBS Global Wealth Management, introducing Bill Clinton to a top executive at a 2009 charity dinner. In the ensuing years, UBS upped its giving to the foundation, signed on as a Teneo client and agreed to pay Bill Clinton for speeches, Band wrote.

Records show UBS paid Clinton about $2 million in speaking fees between 2011 and 2015 for a series of appearances, generally alongside former president George W. Bush. The company also paid Hillary Clinton $225,000 for a 2013 speech.

UBS declined to comment.

Another achievement cited by Band: Laureate International Universities, a chain of for-profit international colleges, which donated to the foundation and agreed to pay Bill Clinton $3.5 million a year to serve as honorary chancellor.

[ Inside Bill Clinton’s nearly $18 million job as ‘honorary chancellor’ of a for-profit college ]

Clinton has credited Band with conceiving of the Clinton Global Initiative, the glitzy annual meeting where corporate, government and nonprofit leaders gathered annually to talk about the world’s problems. Started in 2005, CGI became the best-known arm of the Clinton Foundation, which also operated education, environmental and health programs around the world. The final CGI meeting took place last month.

By 2011, the longtime Clinton aide was ready to strike out on his own.

That’s when Band and Kelly joined forces to form Teneo. At first, the firm remained closely linked to the Clinton network.

Band described in the memo how he combined his work for CGI and Teneo. He wrote that he had used a hotel room upstairs from the 2011 CGI gathering to meet with Teneo clients. He also acknowledged giving free CGI memberships to “target Teneo clients” being cultivated as potential foundation donors. Memberships generally cost $20,000 a year.

Teneo, meanwhile, named Bill Clinton its “honorary chairman.” Clinton had been initially tapped for a three-year arrangement in which he would provide advice to Teneo “regarding geopolitical, economic and social trends,” according to a separate June 2011 memo that Band wrote to the State Department seeking ethics approval for the former president’s employment.

Bill Clinton was initially paid $2 million by Teneo, according to “Man of the World,” a book written with the former president’s participation by author Joe Conason.

But Chelsea Clinton grew concerned when news leaked in late 2011 that MF Global, the hedge fund owned by former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, had been paying the Clinton-tied firm $125,000 a month just before MF Global went bankrupt.

According to emails released by WikiLeaks, Chelsea Clinton complained in December 2011 to longtime Clinton aide John Podesta, who at the time was serving as an adviser to the Clinton Foundation, that she had been informed that a member of her father’s office staff who answered to Band had been making calls to British lawmakers “on behalf of President Clinton” for Teneo clients, particularly for the chief executive of Dow Chemical.

Chelsea Clinton wrote that the calls were occurring without her father’s knowledge and that the reactions she was hearing to them would “horrify” Bill Clinton. In another email, she wrote she feared Teneo was “hustling business at CGI.”

Chelsea Clinton’s concerns helped spark efforts at the foundation to adopt new policies governing outside consulting agreements designed to erect a more solid wall between Bill Clinton’s private and charitable activities. Emails show that Cheryl Mills, who at the time was serving as Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, was deeply involved in the foundation’s proceedings.

Bill Clinton also separated from Teneo, returning to the company all but $100,000 of the money he had been paid, tax returns show.

Emails show how the dispute between Chelsea Clinton and her father’s longtime aide led to personal hostility.

“I don’t deserve this from her and deserve a tad more respect or at least a direct dialogue for me to explain these things,” Band wrote to Podesta at the time. “She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she’s doing because she, as she has said, hasn’t found her way and has a lack of focus in her life.”

Band complained that no similar scrutiny was being applied to Bill Clinton himself. Band noted that he had previously signed a conflict of interest document for CGI.

“Oddly, WJC does not have to sign such a document even though he is personally paid by 3 cgi sponsors, gets many expensive gifts from them, some that are at home etc.,” he wrote.

The Band memo disclosed by WikiLeaks on Wednesday made no direct reference to Hillary Clinton.

But Band outlined that Kelly, his Teneo co-founder, had served simultaneously between 2009 and 2011 as an unpaid economic envoy to Northern Ireland appointed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and as head of a separate consulting company whose clients included Coke, UBS and Dow. Band wrote that the arrangement was consistent with Kelly’s State Department ethics agreement.

Kelly’s multiple roles came together during one State Department event in 2010, when then-Secretary Clinton recognized Dow, among other companies, for creating jobs in Northern Ireland and thanked Kelly for his work on the issue.

Dow became one of Teneo’s first major clients. According to Band’s memo, Dow chief executive Andrew Liveris had been introduced to Bill Clinton over a round of golf with Kelly in August 2009.

The company then increased its Clinton Foundation support, contributing $705,000 in 2010 and 2011. A Dow spokeswoman said that the company’s participation in the foundation dated to 2007 and that the charity was “aligned to core business and citizenship strategies that have positively leveraged the resources and capabilities of our company.”

Dow paid Teneo $2.8 million in 2011, payments that then jumped to $19.4 million in 2012, according to internal Dow documents made public as part of a whistleblower complaint. The company later said in public filings that the increase reflected a cost-saving decision to consolidate several consulting contracts with one firm.

But the spike raised red flags for an internal company fraud investigator, who expressed alarm that it may be linked to Bill Clinton’s work with a charity founded by Liveris — a charge the company denied.

“It appears Dow is paying Teneo for connections with Clinton,” the investigator wrote.

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Clinton Foundation’s Fundraisers Pressed Donors to Steer Business to Former President

The Wall Street Journal  /  October 26, 2016

Hacked email memo published by WikiLeaks details lucrative arrangements made for Bill Clinton

Two chief fundraisers for the Clinton Foundation pressed corporate donors to steer business opportunities to former President Bill Clinton as well, according to a hacked memo published Wednesday by WikiLeaks.

The November 2011 memo from Douglas Band, at the time a top aide to Mr. Clinton, outlines extensive fundraising efforts that Mr. Band and a partner deployed on behalf of the Clinton Foundation and how that work sometimes translated into large speaking fees and other paid work for Mr. Clinton.

The memo, part of a cache of emails stolen from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, resurfaces an issue that she has had a hard time shaking: questions over the relationship between the Clintons’ charity work and their personal business.

Mr. Band and an associate introduced top corporate executives to the former president, on the golf course and elsewhere, and then asked them to contribute money to the Clinton Foundation or attend the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual foundation event.

Mr. Band wrote the memo to lawyers at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP who were reviewing the Clinton Foundation’s activities and links to Mr. Band. The Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, had sought the review because she worried that Mr. Band was “hustling business” for his consulting firm, Teneo Holdings, at the Clinton Global Initiative, according to a 2011 email by Ms. Clinton.

In the memo, Mr. Band explained how he helped the foundation and former president, and found donors among his own firm’s clients. Mr. Band responded to the review by writing: “We appreciate the unorthodox nature of our roles, and the goal of seeking ways to ensure we are implementing best practices to protect the 501(c)3 status of the Foundation.”

The Clinton campaign has refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of any of the hacked emails and, along with top U.S. intelligence officials, blamed Russia for stealing them from the account of Mrs. Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.

In 2009, according to the memo, Declan Kelly, an Irish-American businessman and ally of the Clintons, introduced a senior UBS Group AG executive, Bob McCann, to Mr. Clinton at a charitable event. “Mr. Kelly subsequently asked Mr. Mccann to support the foundation … [and] also encouraged Mr. Mccann to invite President Clinton to give several paid speeches, which he has done,” according to the 12-page memo. Mr. Clinton earned $1.5 million from those speeches.

UBS said last year that the speeches by Mr. Clinton and the donations were part of a program to respond to the 2008 financial crisis. Former President George W. Bush also spoke to the Swiss bank as part of the program.

In another example, Mr. Band wrote that he and another Clinton aide persuaded a Dubai-based company, Gems Education, to establish a relationship with the foundation. “That relationship has grown into a business relationship for President Clinton and a donor relationship for CGI,” the memo said. Representatives of Gems couldn’t be reached for comment.

Messrs. Band and Kelly launched their consulting firm in 2011. By that November, partners of Teneo had raised more than $8 million for the Clinton Foundation and also arranged for Mr. Clinton to deliver more than $3 million worth of paid speeches, according to the memo.

A spokesman for Mr. Clinton didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. After a falling out with Chelsea Clinton, starting in 2012, Mr. Band no longer works for the former president and isn’t as involved in Clinton Foundation activities as he once had been.

Teneo spokesman Stephen Meahl said in a statement: “As the memo demonstrates, Teneo worked to encourage clients, where appropriate, to support the Clinton Foundation because of the good work that it does around the world.” He added, “It also clearly shows that Teneo never received any financial benefit or benefit of any kind from doing so.”

When he founded Teneo, Mr. Kelly was serving as the U.S. economic envoy to Northern Ireland, appointed by Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state. A public-relations specialist, he also had been a top fundraiser in her bids for the Senate and, in 2008, the White House.

Mr. Kelly had three major clients in 2009, Coca-Cola Co. , Dow Chemical Co. and UBS Wealth Management. He asked all three to give money to the Clinton Foundation.

The memo said that Mr. Kelly introduced Mr. Clinton to Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola, during a meeting at Mr. Clinton’s home in Washington in 2009. Mr. Kelly asked Mr. Kent to give $5 million to the foundation, which he pledged in early 2010, the memo said.

The memo said that Mr. Kelly arranged for Mr. Band to serve on Coke’s International Public Policy Advisory Board. Mr. Band said in the memo that he then used that post to push Coke to sponsor foundation initiatives and to support political candidates whom Mr. Clinton was supporting.

A Coke spokesman said the board didn’t engage in political activities.

Teneo, which markets itself as a one-stop shop for CEOs to get advice on a wide range of issues, including mergers and acquisitions, handling crises and managing public relations, has grown to more than 575 employees. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Teneo was exploring an initial public offering or sale of the firm as early as 2017.

Mr. Clinton initially served as Teneo’s honorary chairman when the firm opened in 2011, but he stepped down the following year. Of the $3 million he stood to collect, he was ultimately paid $100,000.

In the memo, Mr. Band explains that he frequently negotiated personal income for Mr. Clinton at the same time that he served as a primary fundraiser for the Clinton Foundation. Mr. Band wrote that he and another aide to Mr. Clinton “have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals.”

Mr. Band said they had secured “more than $50 million in for-profit activity” for Mr. Clinton but received no fee or cut of it. The two aides also arranged another $66 million of potential future payments from speaking and other engagements for the former president.

Teneo regularly used its access to Mr. Clinton to introduce its clients to the former president. In 2009, Mr. Kelly invited one of his longtime clients, Dow Chemical Chief Executive Andrew Liveris, to play golf with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Band. Afterward, Dow paid $500,000 as a sponsor of the Clinton Global Initiative. Dow also paid another $150,000 to the Foundation to have Mr. Clinton attend a dinner the chemicals company was hosting in Davos.

The memo says Mr. Liveris provided Dow Chemical’s corporate plane to fly Mr. Clinton and his staff from California to North Korea, and back, saving the foundation more than $100,000.

A Dow spokeswoman said that the company’s senior executives have participated in Clinton Global Initiative events because their efforts are aligned with aspects of Dow’s business.

Teneo’s proximity to the Clintons appears to have been mutually beneficial. Mr. Band notes that Gems Education became a Teneo client after the company sought Mr. Clinton’s services as an adviser.

The charitable arm of Gems has given the Clinton Foundation between $1 million and $5 million. The for-profit education company has paid Bill Clinton about $6.2 million since 2010 for consulting work, according to tax returns released by the campaign of Mrs. Clinton.

[j hancock]

Apparently both Bill and Hillary have weiners that get them in trouble.....

[kscarbel2]

Associated Press  /  October 28, 2016

Hillary Clinton's email controversy roared back to the forefront of the presidential campaign Friday when FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers the bureau is reviewing new emails related to her personal server.

The revelation -- 11 days before the election and nearly four months after Comey said he wouldn't recommend criminal charges because of Clinton's use of the server -- shook the Democratic nominee's campaign.

Hillary Clinton She forcefully called on the FBI to release the "full and complete facts" about its review [She’s up to something].

"Voting is underway, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately," Clinton said at a brief news conference in Des Moines, Iowa, adding it was "imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay."

In a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen Friday, Comey said investigators are examining newly discovered emails that "appear to be pertinent" to the email probe.

"In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation," Comey wrote the chairmen. "I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation."

The newly discovered emails are part of an investigation into Anthony Weiner. Weiner, the disgraced former congressman, recently separated from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin after he exchanged sexually explicit text messages with an underage girl.

The emails in question were sent or received by Abedin. There were a "considerable number" of emails being reviewed from at least one device shared by Abedin and Weiner. One FBI official said there were thousands of messages.

The FBI is looking at whether any of the newly discovered emails will have an impact on the now-closed investigation into Clinton's server.

In his letter to lawmakers, Comey said he was not sure how long the additional review would take and said the FBI "cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant."

Comey is under criticism from the Clinton campaign and congressional Democrats for releasing the letter so close to the election.

Earlier Friday, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said "it's extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election."

Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said she was "shocked" to read Comey's letter.

The FBI chief felt he had no choice but to tell Congress now or risk being accused of hiding relevant information before the election, law enforcement officials said in explaining the timing.

House speaker Paul Ryan condemned Clinton’s behavior. “Yet again, Hillary Clinton has nobody but herself to blame. She was entrusted with some of our nation’s most important secrets, and she betrayed that trust by carelessly mishandling highly classified information.”

"This decision, long overdue, is the result of her reckless use of a private email server, and her refusal to be forthcoming with federal investigators," speaker Paul Ryan said. "I renew my call for the Director of National Intelligence to suspend all classified briefings for Secretary Clinton until this matter is fully resolved."

“The FBI’s decision to reopen their criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret email server just 11 days before the election shows how serious this discovery must be,” said RNC chairman Reince Priebus.

“This stunning development raises serious questions about what records may not have been turned over and why, and whether they show intent to violate the law.

“What’s indisputable is that Hillary Clinton jeopardized classified information on thousands of occasions in her reckless attempt to hide pay-to-play corruption at her State Department,” he added. “This alone should be disqualifying for anyone seeking the presidency, a job that is supposed to begin each morning with a top secret intelligence briefing.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Associated Press  /  October 29, 2016

Huma Abedin, who served as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and held a top-secret security clearance, disclosed she had access to four email accounts while working at the State Department.

These accounts, Abedin said, included an official State Department email account, but also an account on Clinton’s private email server that Abedin used to communicate with Clinton and her top aides, as well as a personal Yahoo account. She used both the Clinton email account and the Yahoo account to “routinely” forward State Department emails and documents so she could more easily print them, she said [good luck with that]. In addition, she told the agents, she had a separate email account that she had previously used “to support her husband’s political activities.”

Abedin’s interview — conducted by agents at the FBI’s Washington field office last April 5 — was the first tip-off that the longtime Clinton aide might have circulated official State Department material among her multiple accounts. At one point, agents even confronted Abedin on one apparently sensitive email about U.S. policy towards Pakistan that had been forwarded to her State Department account from an aide to the late Richard Holbrooke, then a special State Department envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Abedin had forwarded the email to her Yahoo account in order to print it, but told agents she was “unaware of the classification of the document and stated that she did not make judgments on the classification of material she received. Instead, she relied on the sender to make that assessment and to properly make and transmit the document.”

[kscarbel2]

Hillary Clinton - Undone by a Weiner ?

.

[41chevy]

No problem, people really don't care anymore. Bill will talk to Comey just like he talked to Loretta and Bush  Trump and Putin will get the blame.

Edited October 29, 2016 by 41chevy

[kscarbel2]

This is all very interesting. An Obama appointee taking an action that could sink Clinton. Add to that, tones of J. Edgar Hoover. The plot to the show has thickened indeed with significantly more mystery and suspense.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Guardian  /  October 29, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair on Saturday led a chorus of Democratic party fury over the FBI’s decision to review a new batch of her staff’s emails, which was announced just 11 days before the presidential election in a striking break with law enforcement tradition.

The Clinton campaign launched an extraordinary criticism of James Comey, the director of the FBI, who faced anger for his dramatic and late intervention in the race, which deviated from FBI protocol. Comey stood accused of betraying the bureau’s political neutrality, and came under growing pressure to make public everything he knows.

The latest twist in a topsy turvy election arrived on Friday afternoon, when Comey said in a letter to Congress the FBI would review whether there was any classified information in new “emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation”. In a carefully worded letter, the director said he wanted to “supplement my previous testimony” about the original Clinton email investigation, which he told Congress had closed this summer, and said: “The FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant.”

On Saturday, Clinton campaign chair John Podesta said: “By providing selective information, he’s allowed partisans to distort and exaggerate in order to inflict maximum political damage and no one can separate what is true from what is not because Comey has not been forthcoming with the facts.

“What little Comey has told us makes it hard to understand why this step was warranted at all.”

It is “entirely possible” that the emails are duplicates of those already studied by the FBI in its earlier investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server while secretary of state, Podesta told reporters on a conference call, adding that Clinton would not be distracted in the final days of the campaign.

In July, the FBI closed that investigation. Comey said at the time that Clinton and her aides had been “extremely careless” but not criminal with their email practices.

“Director Comey was the one who decided to take this unprecedented step,” Podesta said, “we now learn, against the advice of senior justice department officials who told him it was against longstanding department policy of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

“Director Comey was the one that wrote a letter that was light on facts, heavy on innuendo, knowing full well what Republicans in Congress would do with it.

“It’s now up to him, who owes the public answers to the questions that are now on the table, and we’re calling on him to come forward and give those answers to the American public.”

Law enforcement sources speaking anonymously told news outlets the new emails came from devices belonging to Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and estranged husband of Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s closest aides. Agents uncovered the emails during an investigation into whether Weiner sent sexually explicit text messages to a teenage girl.

Podesta said Abedin had fully cooperated with the FBI investigation from the start. “She’s been fully cooperative. We of course stand behind her.”

Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said: “The more information that comes out, the more overblown this entire situation seems to be. That in turn has raised more questions about director Comey from his colleagues in law enforcement circles, to take this extraordinary step just 11 days out from a presidential election.”

Mook highlighted a “startling” Washington Post report that senior officials in the justice department had warned Comey not to go public but he ignored their advice [???]. He also claimed that, based on anecdotes from the ground, Clinton’s supporters were intensifying their efforts to get out the vote.

“Our volunteers are rallying behind Hillary,” he said. “They know what a fighter she is … They’re as upset and concerned as we are here … This has only increased the momentum that we’re feeling among our activists on the ground.”

A jubilant Donald Trump, meanwhile, seized on a potential lifeline for his faltering campaign – on Friday describing Clinton’s handling of classified information as a scandal “bigger than Watergate”.

With barely disguised anger, Clinton herself demanded the FBI explain itself on Friday. “The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” she told reporters in Des Moines, Iowa. “The director himself has said he doesn’t know whether the emails referenced in his letter are significant or not.”

The content of the messages is unknown – and may well remain so beyond election day. “Right now, your guess is as good as mine, and I don’t think that’s good enough,” Clinton said.

Comey is a Barack Obama appointee who was deputy attorney general for George W Bush.

As well as the Washington Post, the New Yorker reported officials speaking on condition of anonymity saying that Comey was warned by the justice department before sending his letter to Congress.

“He is operating independently of the justice department. And he knows it,” one official told the Post. “It violates decades of practice,” another told the New Yorker. “It’s aberrational.”

Matthew Miller, who served at the department under attorney general Eric Holder, told the Guardian: “I think it was an unacceptable breach of years of department of justice practice and precedent.

“The department goes out of its way not to take any action close to an election that could influence the outcome of that election. The FBI’s reputation for independence and integrity is really at the core to their ability to do their job effectively.”

Miller described Comey’s decision to provide an unprecedented televised statement at the end of the Clinton investigation in July as “the original sin here”. The director then felt able to answer questions from Congress in more detail than usual, but this is “by far the most serious breach of all”, Miller added.

The former justice department staffer said J Edgar Hoover, the original and controversial FBI director, had done worse than Comey, “but not even Hoover did anything publicly in the closing day of an election that could be seen as tipping the scales.”

Republicans and Democrats alike expressed bafflement at Comey’s timing and ambiguous letter. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a senior Democrat with a history of support for the security agencies, condemned Comey’s conduct. “The FBI has a history of extreme caution near election day so as not to influence the results,” she said. “Today’s break from that tradition is appalling.”

Charles Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, said Comey’s letter to Congress “was unsolicited and, quite honestly, surprising”. He too said it created more questions than answers.

“Congress and the public deserve more context to properly assess what evidence the FBI has discovered and what it plans to do with it,” Grassley said.

Some analysts speculated that Comey felt caught in a bind: if he waited until after the election, or if the new review leaked through back channels, he would have been accused of a cover-up. In an internal email sent to FBI employees, he said he was concerned about balance: the need to inform Congress and the American people versus the danger of a misleading impression about emails.

“In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it,” he wrote.

Early voting is under way in 37 states, nearly 17m votes have been cast, and Clinton has a healthy lead in most polls. “I think people a long time ago made up their minds about the emails,” she said at her press conference. “And now they are choosing a president.”

Though his own campaign has been plagued by one scandal after another, Trump has regularly berated Clinton over the emails, and his supporters at rallies frequently chant: “Lock her up! Lock her up!” On Friday he accused Clinton of corruption “on a scale we have never seen before”.

“We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the oval office,” he told a rally in New Hampshire. “Perhaps, finally, justice will be done.”

On Saturday, campaigning in Colorado, Trump made an about-face from his months of criticising the FBI and justice department. “You have amazing people at the Department of Justice, and you have amazing people at the FBI,” he said. “I’ll bet you, without any knowledge, that there was a revolt in the FBI.”

The FBI began investigating Weiner in September, after a Daily Mail report that a 15-year-old girl had exchanged explicit messages with him. By then, Abedin had already announced a separation from her husband.

Trump himself has been accused by several women of sexual assault or inappropriate conduct. He has argued that Clinton “enabled” her husband’s infidelities, and brought three women who accused the former president of wrongdoing to a presidential debate.

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FBI Director James Comey’s internal memo to FBI staff explaining his decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation.

To all:

This morning I sent a letter to Congress in connection with the Secretary Clinton email investigation. 

Yesterday, the investigative team briefed me on their recommendation with respect to seeking access to emails that have recently been found in an unrelated case. 

Because those emails appear to be pertinent to our investigation, I agreed that we should take appropriate steps to obtain and review them.

Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. 

I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record. 

At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression. 

In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.

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For those who missed the beginning of this mini-series, the story of Hillary Clinton private server:

June 2008: An Apple Power Mac server, purchased by Bill Clinton's aide Justin Cooper in 2007, is installed in the basement of the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, New York. It initially handles traffic for Bill Clinton but soon is used by Clinton and her staff as well

Fall: Computer equipment from Clinton's presidential campaign is tapped as a replacement - a Dell PowerEdge 2900 Windows Server and Microsoft Exchange and a 1950 running a BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Clinton aide Bryan Pagliano starts work on building the system, believing it will be used by Bill Clinton's staff

January 2009: It is decided that the Apple server must be replaced as it is having problems with the volume of traffic

March: Pagliano installs the server he has built in a rack in the Chappaqua house basement, with the help of Cooper. Pagliano, who is administrator for the new device, transfers the Apple server emails onto the new device. The new server is backed up once a week onto a Seagate external hard drive. The FBI has never obtained the Apple server for examination

January 2013: Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryll Mills, recommends Denver, Colorado-based IT firm Platte River Networks (PRN) to manage the server to help with user limitations and reliability concerns

June 23: A Platte employee removes the server from the Chappaqua home to a data center in Secaucus, New Jersey, run by Equinix, to migrate it to a new server

June 30: The Clintons' email accounts are migrated to the Platte server

July 18: Platte signs an agreement to manage the new, third server, a Dell PowerEdge R620. Platte subsequently configure a backup device from Datto, Inc, a Connecticut-based company, to take multiple snapshots of the system daily and to store the information for 60 days. The device also takes copies of the Pagliano server between June 24-December 23

December 2013: The Pagliano server is fully decommissioned

December 2014: Clinton and Abedin begin using the domain hrcoffice and stop using clintonemail.com  

October 3, 2015: The Pagliano server is voluntarily handed over to the FBI  

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The Clinton Email Timeline

January 13 2009: Hillary Clinton's aide Justin Cooper sets up clintonemail.com domain. Huma Abedin signs off on it 

January 21: Clinton is sworn in as Secretary of State

18 March: Clinton stops using her BlackBerry email account and switches to the newly created hdr22@clintonemail.com account. The domain is hosted on her own private email server, set up by her aide Bryan Pagliano

September 11, 2012: Four Americans are killed in attack on a U.S. base in Benghazi, Libya including Ambassador Chris Stevens

February 1, 2013: Clinton steps down as secretary of state 

October 28, 2014: State Department demands Clinton's work-related correspondence as part of a congressional investigation into Benghazi

Fall 2014: Clinton's lawyers deletes 33,000 emails which they claim are 'personal' 

December 5, 2014: Clinton's legal team provide roughly 30,000 emails to the State Department when they are demanded by a congressional investigation into Benghazi. 

March 2 2015: The New York Times breaks the news that Clinton used a personal email account to conduct government business while secretary of state

July 25: Clinton says she is confident none of the emails on her private email server were classified at the time of sending and receiving

August 4: The Washington Post reveals the FBI has begun looking into the security of Clinton's private email set-up

September 10: Bryan Pagliano formally asserts his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer questions from a Republican-led House committee on her email arrangements

July 6, 2016: The Justice Department closes Clinton email probe and FBI Director James Comey announces the FBI won't prosecute. The decision was made by Comey because Attorney General Loretta Lynch had to recuse herself after a secret meeting with Bill Clinton

October 7: WikiLeaks begins release of thousands of emails hacked from the Gmail account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair

October 28: FBI reopens its investigation into Clinton's server

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[kscarbel2]