Quote of the Day:
Hillary Clinton has made a career of stiff-arming Congress, inspectors general and the press. So it looks like it’s up to the courts and law enforcement to get to the bottom of her email scandal. That’s the real meaning of this week’s news in the email case, as the Clinton stonewall becomes harder to sustain.
–the Wall Street Journal in a piece headlined "All the Secretary's Women"
Have you been hearing all week that Mrs. Clinton had certified under penalty of perjury and in writing to a federal judge that she has handed over to the State Department all work-related documents?
Apparently, this is not the case. Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan has verified, according to the Wall Street Journal, that she has not done this.
And now it appears that the tech company patronized by the Clintons for her email (and email properly belonging to the public record) may not be entirely above board.
The increasingly indispensable U.K. Daily Mail reports:
The Internet company used by Hillary Clinton to maintain her private server was sued for stealing dozens of phone lines including some which were used by the White House.
Platte River Networks is said to have illegally accessed the master database for all US phone numbers.
It also seized 390 lines in a move that created chaos across the US government.
Among the phone numbers which the company took – which all suddenly stopped working – were lines for White House military support desks, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, a lawsuit claims.
Others were the main numbers for major financial institutions, hospitals and the help desk number for T2 Communications, the telecom firm which owned them.
A lawsuit filed on behalf of T2 claims that the mess took 11 days to fix and demands that Platte River pay up $360,000 in compensation.
Oh–and the Clinton server appears to have been professionally wiped clean.
Meanwhile, Judge Sullivan asked Hillary for the certification because of a Freedom of Information suit brought in 2013 by Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog. He reopened the case upon learning that there were emails that had not been turned over by Mrs. Clinton.
Judicial Watch had been seeking information on the interesting employment arrangements of Mrs. Clinton's alter ego, Huma Abedin. Ms. Abedin had dual employment at the State Department and with a private employer. She reportedly was also being paid by the Clinton Foundation at one point.
He also ordered that Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Abedin, and Cheryl Mills, another top Clinton aide, confirm under penalty of perjury that all documents have been surrendered. The deadline was last Friday and reportedly none of them have certified.
The reaction from the former secretary was purely Clintonian:
Mrs. Clinton’s reaction to the deadline was a classic. “While I do not know what information may be ‘responsive’ for purposes of this law suit, I have directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody, that were or potentially were federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done,” she wrote in a declaration submitted to the court. Translation: If everything wasn’t turned over, it’s not her fault.
Her two aides were similarly dismissive.
The Journal piece points out something interesting in the way Mrs. Clinton's lawyers speak of the emails:
Mrs. Clinton and her lawyers have been careful to never use the word “delete” regarding her emails. Mrs. Clinton said that she “chose not to keep” her yoga diary and the rest. Her lawyer, David Kendall, has said emails no longer exist on the server. But do those emails still exist in another location—on a hard drive or thumb drive—or in someone else’s possession? The FBI has the forensic ability to retrieve the emails if they still exist, assuming that the agency isn’t merely going through the pro-forma motions.
The Clinton campaign is dismissing latest developments as just politics. But that is inaccurate. This move is coming from a federal judge. That this matter has become entangled with the federal courts probably means that Mrs. Clinton has lost a great deal of control over what, if anything, is left of her emails. She is in a difficult situation:
They play by their own rules, and when they’re caught they stonewall and obfuscate and blame it all on partisanship. Maybe her sinking poll numbers mean that voters are finally catching on.
A nice historical piece in the Weekly Standard recalls that candidates with questionable ethics have run for president before but that Mrs. Clinton "ranks way up there."