Saturday, March 7, 2015

White House Suggests Obama Found Out About Hillary Email Scandal From ‘Reading The Newspaper’

link - Charlie Spiering/Breitbart Big Government

Aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest indicated that President Obama probably found out about the Hillary Clinton email scandal from “the newspaper.” Earnest admitted he had “no idea” when Obama learned that Clinton was exclusively using a private email account based on a home server but that he “wouldn’t be surprised, however, if he had learned about that by reading the newspaper.”

Valerie Jarrett: ‘I Don’t Know’ if Obama Officials Ever Received Emails from Hillary - Mediaite

White House knew about Clinton´s e-mails in August - The Hill
The White House learned in August that House Republicans knew Hillary Clinton had been using her personal email to conduct official business as Secretary of State, Politico reported Friday.

It was then that officials at the State Department first noticed the personal email appeared in a document being provided to Republicans has part of their investigation of the Benghazi attacks, according to the report.
A Hillary Clinton Email the State Department Couldn´t Find - Atlantic
Hillary Clinton supporters have defended her use of a private email account to conduct official State Department business by arguing that she emailed colleagues at their government addresses, ensuring that a copy of the correspondence would be retained on government servers and available to archivists. As it turns out, some aides to Hillary Clinton also used private email addresses. But even if Team Hillary's initial claim had held together, it wouldn't matter. Public records laws encompass not just correspondence with other government employees but also emails with third parties about government business.

That's why a particular email flagged by J.K. Trotter is important. Back in 2013, a hacker secured access to the private email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a staffer in Bill Clinton's White House. The hacker sent screenshots of his inbox to various news outlets, including Gawker. "According to those screenshots, Blumenthal was regularly sending Clinton what appeared to be freelance intelligence reports—including information and advice about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya—all of which clearly fell under the rubric of official State Department business," Trotter writes. "At the time, Gawker noted that Clinton’s apparent use of the non-official account likely violated federal regulations governing records retention, and sent inquiries directly to Clinton and to the White House asking if messages to the clintonemail.com address were being retained."

Gawker also "filed a FOIA request with the agency for all correspondence to date between Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal," Trotter continues, "specifically including any messages to or from the hdr22@clintonemail.com account." We now know that email address did, in fact, belong to former Secretary of State Clinton. Had she been following the rules and forwarding all email about official business to government servers, the State Department would've found the Blumenthal email. They found nothing.