Taking the Fifth in Clinton Email Case
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| June 24, 2016: This Week's
Headlines
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Judicial Watch Uncovers New Smoking Gun Clinton
Emails
This week we learned more about the problems former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s staff faced in keeping her separate email system
running. They were, in fact, wrestling with matters of national
security.
The revelations came thanks to our prying loose the email records referred
to in the May 2016 State Department’s Office of the Inspector General report criticizing
former Secretary of State Clinton’s email practices.
The OIG report makes reference to the emails but they were not
released to the public until now. We obtained them under a June 14, 2016, court
order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in
accordance with an unopposed
motion by Judicial Watch to obtain the records. As an
explosive Associated
Press article makes clear, these new emails raise more
questions:
Former Secretary Hillary Clinton failed to turn over a copy of
a key message involving problems caused by her use of a private homebrew email
server, the State Department confirmed Thursday. The disclosure makes it unclear
what other work-related emails may have been deleted by the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee.
We received these documents in connection with our Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records about the controversial
employment status of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff (Judicial Watch
v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). The full case
history of the Abedin employment lawsuit is accessible on the
Judicial Watch website.
Here are the records:
A. March 17, 2009 memorandum prepared
by S/ES-IRM staff regarding communications equipment in the Secretary’s New York
residence identified a server located in the basement. (This email shows early
on that the Obama State Department was very much aware of Mrs. Clinton’s email
server, down to its very location in her house!)
B. In November 2010, Secretary Clinton and her Deputy Chief of
Staff for Operations discussed the fact that Secretary Clinton’s
emails to Department employees were not being received. The Deputy
Chief of Staff emailed the Secretary that “we should talk about putting you on
state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not
going to spam.” In response, the Secretary wrote, “Let’s get separate address
or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.” (This is
the smoking gun email that Mrs. Clinton evidently withheld, according to
the AP. )
C. In another email
exchange, the Director of S/ES-IRM noted that an email account and
address had already been set up for the Secretary and also stated that “you
should be aware that any email would go through the Department’s infrastructure
and subject to FOIA searches.”
D. OIG reviewed
emails showing communications between Department staff and both
individuals concerning operational issues affecting the Secretary’s email and
server from 2010 through at least October 2012. These records show that State
Department systems were altered to allow Mrs. Clinton special email system to
operate on State Department computer networks. As Investor’s Business
Daily opined, this “accommodation” also put the State
Department computer networks at risk.
E. On January 9, 2011, the non-Departmental advisor to
President Clinton who provided technical support to the Clinton email system
notified the Secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations that he had
to shut down the
server because he believed “someone was trying to hack us and
while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to.”
Later that day, the advisor again wrote to the Deputy Chief of Staff for
Operations, “We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.”
On January 10, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations emailed the Chief of
Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and instructed them not to
email the Secretary “anything sensitive” and stated that she could “explain more
in person.”
These new records show that Secretary Clinton had zero interest
in disclosing her emails to the public as the law requires. And the emails show
that the Obama State Department gave special accommodations to Clinton’s email
system, which the agency knew was unsecure, was likely hacked, and was not
transparent under FOIA.
Clinton
IT Official Takes “The Fifth” In Judicial Watch
Deposition
Earlier this week, we released the deposition transcript of
former State Department IT political appointee Bryan Pagliano, who repeatedly
invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions. Pagliano was the
Clinton State Department IT official who reportedly provided support for the
Clinton email system. The deposition transcript is available here.
Pagliano asserted his Fifth Amendment right to many key
questions about the clintonemail.com system – including whether the system was
set up to thwart the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); any email-related
discussions with Clinton and her top aides; how the system was set up; whether
Clinton deleted government records; and recent discussions he may have had with
Clinton’s lawyers about the email issue. Pagliano made the following statement
in response to these and other questions:
On the advice of counsel, I will decline to answer your
question in reliance on my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States
Constitution.
Pagliano, at the direction of his lawyer, simply did not answer
other questions, such as who was paying for his legal representation.
Pagliano is among seven depositions
of former Clinton top aides and State Department officials that Judicial Watch
has scheduled over the next two weeks. The next witness is Huma Abedin,
Clinton’s then-deputy chief of staff and a senior advisor throughout Clinton’s
four years as Secretary of State and who also had an email account on the
clintonemail.com system. Abedin is scheduled to be deposed Tuesday, June 28.
Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy is scheduled to testify on
Wednesday, June 29.
This discovery arises in a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit
that seeks records about the controversial employment status of Huma Abedin,
former deputy chief of staff to Clinton. The lawsuit was
reopened because of revelations about the clintonemail.com system.
(Judicial Watch
v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-01363)). Judge
Sullivan ordered that
all deposition transcripts be made publicly available.
As you might imagine, the media widely covered this
development. The headlines include As you might imagine, the media widely
covered this development. The headlines include Clinton IT specialist
invokes 5th more than 125 times in deposition, Clinton IT aide who set up
email server asserts 5th Amendment in civil deposition,
and Hillary's secret server
aide invokes Fifth Amendment ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE
times.
You can watch television coverage, featuring interviews of my
Judicial Watch colleagues, here and here.
Homeland Security Chief, Top Aides Were Exempted
from Personal Email
Ban
Secretary
Clinton was not the only top Obama administration skirting email rules and
putting our nation’s security at risk.
A new batch 693
pages of Department of Homeland Security records revealing that
Secretary Jeh Johnson and 28 other agency officials used government computers to
access personal, web-based email accounts -- despite an agency-wide ban due to
heightened security concerns.
The documents also reveal that Homeland Security officials
misled Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) when Perry specifically asked
whether personal accounts were being used for official government
business.
Moreover, the practice continued even after the Clinton
email revelations.
We received the records in response to a February 2016 court
order by a U.S. District Court following our Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch
v. Department of Homeland Security (No.
1:15-cv-01772)).
We filed the lawsuit in
October 2015 after the DHS failed to comply with a July 2015 FOIA request
seeking the following:
- All requests (in any form) submitted by senior DHS officials
for waivers to use personal Web-based email accounts on government-owned
computers.
- Copies of all waivers granted to senior DHS officials to use
personal Web-based email accounts on government-owned
computers.
We initiated this inquiry after a Bloomberg
News report revealing
that 29 high-level Homeland Security officials, including Johnson, obtained
exemptions from a February 2014 agency-wide ban on the use of web-based email
systems due to increased security concerns. The waivers were granted despite
security officials’ warning of the risks of malicious attacks and data
exfiltration from webmail use.
Included among the records is a February 19, 2014
memorandum from security officials at the Department of Homeland
Security strongly warning: “According to the Office of the Chief Information
Officer, access to webmail using DHS networks is responsible for almost half of
all attempts to compromise DHS network security.” The memo explains
that webmail use resulted in 14 Trojan-Horse attacks in August 2013 and 25
attacks in December 2013 on Homeland Security computer networks.
As a result, in the same memo, Department of Homeland Security
officials imposed a total ban on employee use of web-based email
systems:
New restrictions are being implemented that will no longer
allow employee access to personal webmail sites from government
computers [Emphasis added]. This action is being taken to strengthen
cybersecurity and enhance protection of the Department’s computer networks.
Effective tonight, access to webmail sites like AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, Gmail,
Yahoo, and other email services will be prohibited.
The records
reveal that despite this strict prohibition, Johnson was given an
exemption from the ban on the first day of its implementation simply because he
liked to check his personal email from the office everyday. In an April 7,
2014, email,
DHS Deputy Director for Scheduling and Protocol Mary Ellen Brown wrote to DHS
Chief of Staff for the Under Secretary for Management Vincent Micone: “Hi Vince
– I wanted to flag that S1 [Secretary Johnson] accesses his [redacted] account
every day and I didn’t know if we could add his computer to the waiver list? Let
us know at your convenience. Thanks! ME”
Micone responds several minutes later: “ME, This will be done…
no problem. Thanks, Vince”
The documents
also reveal that on April 29, 2014, Connie LaRossa, then-director
of legislative affairs for Homeland Security, was granted a waiver to use her
web-based email account for official government business. The justification
LaRossa used for requesting access to Yahoo email was that some congressional
staffers wanted to send her “political information” that they “do not want to
transmit via government mail.”
Despite LaRossa’s waiver, in answers prepared in April 7, 2014,
for Rep. Scott Perry, in response to his query about the use of personal email
accounts for official business, Homeland Security explicitly denied it was being
done. In one
question, Rep. Perry asked:
“Are DHS officials permitted to maintain private email accounts
that are used to conduct official business? If so, who and under what
circumstances?”
Homeland Security officially responded:
“To date, no requests have been approved to use a private email
account for official business.”
Other top Homeland Security officials receiving waivers
permitting them to use personal, web-based email on government computers
included:
ANMS2 [Alejandro N. Mayorkas, deputy secretary]
Bunnell, Stevan E. [general counsel]
Chavez, Richard [director of the Office of Operations
Coordination]
Gottfried,
Jordan [Chief of Staff]
JCJ [Jeh
Charles Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security]
Kronisch,
Matthew [associate general counsel (Intelligence)]
Marrone, Christian [chief of staff]
Meyer, Jonathan [deputy general counsel]
Rosen, Paul [deputy chief of staff]
Shahoulian, David [deputy general counsel]
Silvers, Robert [deputy chief of staff]
Taylor, Francis X [undersecretary for intelligence and
analysis]
Veitch,
Alenandra [acting deputy assistant secretary]
Waters, Erin
[director of strategic communication]
The use of personal email accounts on Homeland Security
computers continued for more than a year after the official ban was put in place
in April 2014, until July 2015 – over four months after revelations about
Hillary Clinton’s controversial email practices.
In a July 20,
2015, email, Luke McCormack, then-Chief
Information Officer of the Justice Department, ordered Jeanne Etzel, Executive
Director of Homeland Security’s Next Generation Program, to “pull down” the
personal “webmail” email accounts of the 29 Department of Homeland Security
executives previously approved to use personal email accounts, except for that
of Secretary Jeh Johnson [“S1”].
McCormack ordered this at the “DUSM’s direction” (Deputy
Undersecretary for Management, Charles Fulghum). This order came the same day
a Bloomberg
story was published regarding Homeland Security officials “bending the rules”
on personal email use on government computers. The next day, Secretary
Johnson’s webmail access also was blocked.
Last October it was widely reported that
the personal email accounts of both Jeh Johnson and CIA Director John Brennan
had been hacked.
Jeh Johnson and top officials at Homeland Security put the
nation’s security at risk by using personal email despite significant security
issues. We know now that security rules were bent and broken to allow many
these top Homeland Security officials to use “personal” emails to conduct
government business.
This new Obama administration email scandal is just getting
started. If the waivers were appropriate, they wouldn’t have been dropped like
a hot potato as soon as they were discovered by the media.
Until next week...
 Tom FittonPresident
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 425 3rd St, SW Suite 800
Washington, D.C. 20024
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