Will the FBI find classified information about Hillary’s Libyan debacle on a computer shared by Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner? That is a question raised by careful observers of the disclosures from WikiLeaks.
Abedin has previously explained that she would email State Department documents to her personal email accounts so that she could more easily print them out for Hillary. That could explain how they ended up on the Abedin/Weiner computer, as reporter Tim Johnson explains:
According to FBI interviews, Abedin often used a Yahoo email account to get around a balky State Department computer system. Whenever Clinton, who had an aversion to even basic computer technology, wanted to read something, she’d ask Abedin to print it out — repeatedly, according to the Clinton emails that have already been released by the State Department.
Abedin then would forward the requested item to her Yahoo account, and print it from there.
And that could well be how State Department emails, which The Wall Street Journal says may number some 650,000, ended up on Abedin’s home computer — depending on how the computer had been configured. Many computers use an email client program, such as Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, that accesses email sent to private accounts on Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or any other service.
“If you set up Yahoo on Apple Mail or Outlook or any of the other services, it will store a copy of your email on the hard drive,” said Matthew D. Green, an assistant professor in the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
In an email released in Thursday’s batch of WikiLeaks disclosures, one of Hillary’s aides takes “note” of a Byron Tau item at the “WSJ live blog.”
The Tau item references an email forwarded by Huma to Hillary that contains information about the logistics of a 2011 mission by Chris Stevens (before he became U.S. ambassador), which contradicts a previous Hillary claim: “The former secretary of state has maintained that the real-time operational details of diplomatic security were handled below her level. But information on the logistics around a 2011 visit to Benghazi were forwarded to Mrs. Clinton, according to emails released Friday.”
If Abedin sent emails like that one to her Yahoo account and they stuck to her computer with Weiner, the FBI may find plenty of classified information stored on it.
The Thursday disclosures contain other nuggets. One email exchange between Josh Bolten, former chief of staff to George W. Bush, and John Podesta captures the collusion between Bushworld and Clintonworld. Bolten writes Podesta in 2013 to ask him if it is helpful to praise him in an upcoming Wall Street Journal article for which he had been asked to comment. He even asks Podesta what the exact content of the praise should be:
I generally don’t comment to press, but am glad to do where there’s an opportunity to praise a distinguished public servant. Just checking to ensure my saying nice things wouldn’t be detrimental and whether there’s any particular point it’d be helpful to mention. Needless to say, apart from minor press commentary, if I can ever reasonably be of assistance, please let me know.
That captures the modus operandi of the “bipartisan” ruling class in a nutshell.
Another curious email mentions a name I haven’t heard in some time, Mandy Grunwald, who enjoyed brief stardom during the Bill Clinton years for her spirited defenses of his womanizing. She is now part of Hillary’s dupe-the-Catholics operation. In one email exchange with Hillary’s ghostwriters, who were drafting an op-ed for the National Catholic Reporter about how Hillary and Pope Francis share a mutual hatred of supposed planet-destroying capitalists, Grunwald chips in: “I’ve always heard environmentalists in the faith community talk about being ‘stewards of the earth’ or ‘caretakers.’ I wonder if you could use a little of that language.”
In another exchange among Hillary’s aides about an “HRC Op-Ed on Gun Violence,” Huma Abedin wonders why Hillary’s work with the families of victims of gun violence doesn’t mention Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who died during an NYPD arrest. “Erica garner isn’t here?” she writes. Hillary’s communication’s aide Jennifer Palmieri responds: “Not a gun death.”
