"FBI Recovers 30 Hillary Clinton Emails Involving Benghazi Attack"

TIME.com:  The State Department says about 30 emails involving the 2012 attack on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, are among the thousands of Hillary Clinton emails recovered during the FBI’s recently closed investigation into her use of a private server.

Government lawyers told U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta Tuesday that an undetermined number of the emails among the 30 were not included in the 55,000 pages previously provided by Clinton to the State Department. The agency said it would need until the end of September to review the emails and redact potentially classified information before they are released.

The State Department has said the FBI provided it with about 14,900 emails purported not to have been among those previously released. Clinton previously had said she withheld and deleted only personal emails not related to her duties as secretary of state.

In a separate development Tuesday, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the FBI is expected to release documents soon related to its investigation, which focused on whether Clinton and her aides mishandled government secrets.

Friday Night Follies

BREAKING: State Department won't provide before Election Day all Clinton schedules of her meetings as secretary of state.

— The Associated Press (@AP) August 26, 2016

Show Hillary the money!

Hillary Clinton has received nearly $75,000 in political contributions from employees at the Department of Justice, the agency that would decide whether or not to act if the FBI recommended charges against Clinton or her aides following its investigation into her private email server.

Justice Department employees have given Clinton far more money than her rivals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Donald Trump, according to a review of federal campaign contributions for the 2016 presidential cycle.

Trending at Facebook is Hillary Clinton, receiving the most donations from Facebook Employees.

Hilary Clinton is the largest beneficiary of donations from Facebook employees this election cycle, having received over $114,000, more than any other presidential candidate.

The Facebook money is on crooked Hillary. "Facebook Manager in Charge of Trending Topics Is Max Clinton Donor"

The person in charge of Facebook’s Trending Topics section, which has come under fire in recent days over accusations that the social media platform deliberately suppressed news articles that were published on conservative websites, is a maximum donor to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Tom Stocky, Facebook’s vice president of product management, issued a response to the report that was first published by Gizmodo by claiming that he has not found any evidence that the accusations within the report are true.

"Immigration officials prohibited from looking at visa applicants' social media"

The Hill: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson decided against ending a secret U.S. policy that prohibits immigration officials from reviewing social media posts of foreigners applying for U.S. visas, according to a report by ABC News.

Johnson decided to keep the prohibition in place in early 2014 because he feared a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations,” according to ABC.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security for intelligence and analysis, told ABC News.

The policy's revelation comes after U.S. officials learned that Tashfeen Malik, one of the San Bernardino shooters, posted a message on Facebook declaring allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; 14 people were killed.

"‘Top Secret’ emails found as Clinton probe expands to key aides"

"As pressure builds on Hillary Clinton to explain her official use of personal email while serving as secretary of state, she faced new complications Tuesday. It was disclosed her top aides are being drawn into a burgeoning federal inquiry and that two emails on her private account have been classified as “Top Secret.”"

“We will follow the facts wherever they lead, to include former aides and associates, as appropriate,” said Douglas Welty, a spokesman for the State Department’s inspector general.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wants Clinton and her aides to “come clean and cough up” information about their personal email use.

“Both the State Department and Intelligence Community inspectors general should be looking into the staff use of the Clinton private server for official State Department business. This means giving both inspectors general access and custody of all emails that haven’t already been deleted,” said Grassley of Iowa. “From what is publicly known, it appears that the investigation thus far has focused so much on the former secretary of state, that it’s gotten lost that high-level staff apparently also used this server too.”

Here is Hillary denying she "sent nor received" classified information 

Rick Wilson: If this doesn't terrify you, nothing will

"Congress Alarmed by Iran Pact's Secret Understandings"

The controversy began on Wednesday when Secretary of State John Kerry told House lawmakers behind closed doors that he neither possessed nor had read a copy of two secret side deals between the IAEA and Iran, according to Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee who was inside the session. Congress hasn't seen those side agreements either.

“Kerry told me directly that he has not read the secret side deals,” Pompeo told us in an interview. “He told us the State Department does not have possession of these documents.”

A statement distributed by the State Department on Wednesday disputed the characterization that the agreements between Iran and the IAEA were "secret." Instead, it described them as "technical arrangements" and said U.S. experts were "comfortable with the contents," which the State Department would brief to Congress if asked.

"It is standard practice for the IAEA and member states to treat bilateral documents as 'safeguards confidential,' " the State Department statement said. "This is a principal the United States has championed throughout the IAEA’s existence to protect both proprietary and proliferation sensitive information. We must be able to ensure that information given to the IAEA does not leak out and become a how to guide for producing nuclear materials that can be used in nuclear weapons, and that countries know their patented or proprietary information won’t be stolen because they are released in IAEA documents."

But while these agreements may be standard operating procedure in the case of other IAEA nuclear inspections, with Iran it's potentially more serious...

For the Obama administration, not having copies of the side agreements between Iran and the IAEA is convenient. The law requires it to give Congress all the documents it possesses and only those documents. If the side agreements are outside the reach of Kerry, they are outside the reach of Congress and the American people.

"15 emails missing from Clinton cache"

"The State Department cannot find in its records all or part of 15 work-related emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that were released this week by a House panel investigating the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, officials said Thursday."

The emails all predate the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. diplomatic facility and include scant words written by Clinton herself, the officials said. They consist of more in a series of would-be intelligence reports passed to her by longtime political confidant Sidney Blumenthal, the officials said.

Nevertheless, the fact that the State Department says it can't find them among emails she provided surely will raise new questions about Clinton's use of a personal email account and server while secretary of state and whether she has provided the agency all of her work-related correspondence, as she claims. (read more)

Perfect time to release this information.

The State Department "regrets"

"State Department will not review Clinton ethics pledge breaches"

"The State Department has not and does not intend to initiate a formal review or to make a retroactive judgment about items that were not submitted during Secretary Clinton's tenure," Rathke told reporters.

The charities never told the State Department about the new and increased donations. In two instances, the charities said this was the result of "oversights"; for the other six, they said those donations were exceptions to the agreement for various reasons.

The charities also stopped publishing full donor lists from 2010 onwards; the annually updated list omitted donors to the foundation's flagship health initiative.

Rathke, the State Department spokesman, said the department was not aware of donations having an undue influence on U.S. foreign policy. When reporters asked how the department could know this without reviewing the belated disclosures, he declined to comment further.

Ted Cruz claims White House may have used FAA against Israel

“What is ridiculous is the Obama administration refusing to answer simple questions about whether this was dictated by politics and why the FAA is singling out Israel while not focusing on other areas around the world,” the Texas Republican said Wednesday night on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
“Was this politics from the White House? Or was this an airline safety decision? And I think the facts strongly suggest it was politics and an effort to strong arm the nation of Israel.”

The State Department vehemently objected to Cruz’s comments.

“It’s ridiculous and offensive, quite frankly,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said during a press briefing. “The FAA takes its responsibilities very seriously. … They make these decisions based solely on the safety and security of American citizens, period. For anyone to suggest otherwise is just ridiculous.”

Late Wednesday night, the FAA ended the ban on flights to Israel.

Do we see any improprieties here, did any White House interference on behalf of the presidents foreign policy, if indeed there was interference, rise to the level of illegality? Should there be a congressional oversight hearing?

I was going to ask, should there be an investigation, but with Holder at the helm, there are more chances of 20 IRS hard drives failing, around the same time, than Holder appointing an independent investigator.

Via Instapundit

Hashtag diplomacy

The State Department Is Getting Ruthlessly Mocked For Tweets Of 'Hashtag Diplomacy'
Businessinsider

This took me far too long to figure out what twitter users were on about. The logic on twitter is fractured and scattered, what there is of logic. To our tremendous embarrassment our State Department imagines twitter hashtags will have any affect whatsoever on Russian actions. This is their sense of enlightened diplomacy.

The State Department's idea is to spread awareness of the situation in Ukraine, this while Russia masses on Ukraine's eastern border.

That would be spread awareness among Twitter users, no?

Jen Psaki, spokesperson for U.S. State Department tweeted this:

Igniting a snark riot.

My favorite:

Although I'm not sure how Dewey/Truman newspaper error has anything to do with it, that was the confusing part, but sill kind of funny. Others more apposite than this and more snarky. Here are a few in plain text stripped of confounding Twitterese:

I hear laughter in the #Kremlin -> John Kerry Just Gave #Russia A Final Warning

2016 Barack Obama wins the Nobel Hashtag Prize.

"We will Hashtag you !" Khruschev at the UN.

Khruschev pounded his shoe. Obama State Dept pounds...a pound sign. Cuz #hashtagdiplomacy y'all!=>

Has the hashtag been voxsplained yet?

(Ew, good one -- a twofer.)

Maybe it's just time to defriend Russia and ignore their texts?

The right to bear #hashtags shall not be infringed.

Jay, Adams, Seward, Hay, Acheson, Dulles... Our great past Secretaries of State wish they could come back to pimp slap Kerry right now.

The hashtags are going out all over Europe - English Sec Grey at the start of WWI.

at least Kerry can say he accomplished a #hashtag attack on #russia   #hillarynotsomuch

if you outlaw #hashtags, only outlaws will have #hashtags

Obama promised that we would beat our blogs into ploughshares; now he wants to escalate into a flame war.

We shall have peace. We shall have peace when Saruman honors his hashtags. - Theoden King.

And so on. I am so proud to be American right now. That whole 'world's policeman' thing was getting old. Our legacy squandered.