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COMPILED BY LUCY MANESS WARNER
SEPTEMBER 8, 2016


THIS REALLY IS GETTING TIRESOME TO ME. SO FAR THERE’S NO EVIDENCE FROM WHAT I’VE HEARD, THAT HER USE OF A PRIVATE SERVER WAS RADICALLY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT POWELL DID, AND SOME OTHERS IN ANOTHER DEPARTMENT AS WELL (I CAN’T REMEMBER WHO. SORRY.). IT ALSO DOES NOT FAIRLY REPRESENT AN ILLEGAL ACT, OR AS COMEY SAID “A PROSECUTABLE CASE.” SO ALL THAT BUSINESS ABOUT HILLARY GOING TO JAIL IS RIDICULOUS. HIS FULL QUOTATION IS WORTH READING FOR FUN: “DESPITE ALL THE CHEST BEATING BY PEOPLE NO LONGER IN GOVERNMENT…” IT IS ALSO INTERESTING THAT COMEY IS NO LONGER REGISTERED AS A REPUBLICAN. THAT'S GOOD NEWS TO ME. HE SEEMS TO HAVE SOME GOOD COMMON SENSE!



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-director-comey-defends-decision-not-to-prosecute-hillary-clinton-over-email-servers/

FBI Director Comey defends decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over email servers
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
September 8, 2016, 10:57 AM

Photograph -- FBI Director James Comey testifies before a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the “Oversight of the State Department” in Washington U.S. July 7, 2016. REUTERS/GARY CAMERON - RTX2K63D


FBI Director James Comey told his employees on Wednesday that the decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her use of private email servers as secretary of state was not a tough decision.

“At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff-hanger; despite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn’t a prosecutable case,” Comey said in a memo obtained by CNN.

Comey explained that the tougher decision was whether to offer “unprecedented transparency about our thinking,” which he said he struggled with.

“I explain to our alums that I’m okay if folks have a different view of the investigation (although I struggle to see how they actually could, especially when they didn’t do the investigation), or about the wisdom of announcing it as we did (although even with hindsight I think that was the best course), but I have no patience for suggestions that we conducted ourselves as anything but what we are -- honest, competent, and independent,” Comey said.

People who have called the FBI political, Comey said, “either don’t know us, or they are full of baloney (and maybe some of both).”

Comey announced in July that the FBI was recommending to the Justice Department that no charges should be brought against Clinton for using private emails servers as secretary of state.

The memo Wednesday came the same day that Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released a 2009 email exchange between Clinton and her predecessor, Colin Powell, in which Powell explained how he evaded State Department servers by using a private computer hooked up to a phone line.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/colin-powell-defends-personal-email-set-up-while-secretary-of-state/

Colin Powell defends personal email set-up while secretary of state
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
September 8, 2016, 2:46 PM

Photograph -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is interviewed by CBS News’ David Martin


Colin Powell defended himself Thursday after the disclosure a day earlier of an email exchange between him and Hillary Clinton in 2009 showing how he talked about skirting State Department servers.

In a statement, the former secretary of state, who served under President George W. Bush, said that he wasn’t trying to influence Clinton when he emailed her advice.

“As noted by the FBI and Congressman Cummings in his comments about my exchange of emails with Secretary Clinton in 2009, Secretary Clinton has stated that she was not influenced by my email in making her decisions on email use. I was not trying to influence her but just to explain what I had done eight years earlier to begin the transformation of the State Department’s information system,” Powell said.

He then explained that emails he sent to a public email account from his public email account did not go through State Department servers.

“With respect to records, if I sent an email from my public email account to an addressee at another public email account it would not have gone through State Department servers. It was a private conversation similar to a phone call. If I sent it to a state.gov address it should have been captured and retained by State servers. I was not aware at the time of any requirement for private, unclassified exchanges to be treated as official records,” Powell said.

He added that he stands by his decisions and is “fully accountable.”

The department’s regulations regarding email at the time Powell served as secretary of state, however, were much looser and more vague than they were during Clinton’s tenure.

His statement comes a day after Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released an email exchange between Clinton and Powell from two days after she took over the cabinet position in 2009.

Clinton wanted to continue using her Blackberry in her new position and Powell responded saying he didn’t have one and developed another system instead that allowed him to communicate with people without it going through servers at the State Department.

“What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers,” Powell wrote. “I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels.”

CBS News’ Steve Chaggaris contributed to this report.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/democrats-release-email-exchange-between-colin-powell-hillary-clinton/

Democrats release email exchange between Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
September 7, 2016, 8:27 PM

Play VIDEO -- New details in Clinton email probe


House Democrats late Wednesday released a full email exchange in which Colin Powell advised Hillary Clinton just after she was sworn in as secretary of state on the use of personal email and devices.

The exchange, released by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, occurred two days after she took over the cabinet position in 2009.

“I hope to catch up soon [with] you, but I have one pressing question which only you can answer! What were the restrictions on your use of your blackberry?” Clinton asked Powell, who served as secretary of state under President George W. Bush.

Clinton wanted to continue using her Blackberry in her new position and Powell responded saying he didn’t have one and developed another system instead that allowed him to communicate with people without it going through servers at the State Department.

“What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers,” Powell wrote. “I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels.”

He then explained that the real issue when he ran the State Department was PDAs, which he said Diplomatic Security wouldn’t allow into secure spaces.

“When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite,” Powell told Clinton.

Powell said he used an “ancient version” of a PDA.

He then warned Clinton, “However, there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a Blackberry and [the] government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law.”

“Be very careful,” he added. “I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.”

The last part was disclosed in an FBI report released Friday that contained dozens of pages of documents of its investigation into Clinton’s use of private email servers as secretary of state.

Cummings said in a statement that the email exchange shows “the longstanding problem” that no secretary of state ever used an official unclassified email account and that Powell himself tried to circumvent the rules.

“This email exchange shows that Secretary Powell advised Secretary Clinton with a detailed blueprint on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records, although Secretary Clinton has made clear that she did not rely on this advice,” Cummings said.

Powell recently said in an interview with People magazine that Hillary Clinton’s aides have been trying to blame her use of private email servers on him even though he claimed she had been using them for a while before he even advised her to use a private email.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-colin-powell-advice-for-private-email-server/

Clinton responds to Navy vet who confronts her on handling classified info
CBS NEWS
September 8, 2016, 9:00 AM


A new email, released just as she Hillary Clinton took the stage at the “Commander-In-Chief Forum” Wednesday night, indicates that she and former Secretary of State Colin Powell shared similar motivations for using a private account.

When Clinton asked Powell in early 2009 for advice about her emails – before she used private servers for State Department business -- Powell told her he used a system that avoided government servers and warned: “…There is real danger, be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.”

Questions about Clinton’s emails ended up consuming about a third of her time on stage at the forum that should’ve been more about national security, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Impact of Clinton's email discussion with Powell on campaign
Play VIDEO
Impact of Clinton's email discussion with Powell on campaign
“Had I communicated this information, not following prescribed protocols, I would have been prosecuted and imprisoned,” said Navy veteran Lt. John Lester John Lester.

Clinton told the veteran that the material she sent and received on an unclassified private system was not sensitive enough to merit the punishment he described.

“There were no headers, there was no statement, top secret, secret, or confidential,” Clinton said. “I communicated about classified material on a wholly separate system. I took it very seriously.”

It came on the same day that House Democrats released a long 2009 email to Clinton from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, describing an approach to email Clinton would go on to emulate.

“What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers,” Powell wrote.

Clinton has always argued that she was following the lead set by her predecessors.

Just one new Benghazi-related email found in trove of FBI documents
FBI releases documents from Hillary Clinton email investigation
“Secretary Powell and close aides to former Secretary Rice used private email accounts,” she said in Durham, North Carolina in February.”

“My predecessors did the same thing and many other people in the government,” she said in Miami a month later.

Powell sought to distance himself from the controversy last month, telling People magazine, “Her people have been trying to pin it on me” and insisting Clinton was using her private server “for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”

But the newly released email was sent just days after Clinton started her new job.

In a statement, Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings said, “If Republicans were truly concerned with transparency… they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powell’s emails from AOL.”

Powell has said he didn’t save those emails, but there are a few key differences between his actions and Clinton’s. The State Department was a technological backwater when he arrived in 2001, with a clunky email system. By the time Clinton arrived in 2009, the system had improved and the rules governing the preservation of emails were much more rigorous.