Free Republic

Hillary Clinton emailed with her top advisers at the State Department about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi on their own personal emails, despite repeated assurances that she contacted employees on their official addresses, The New York Times is reporting. Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, as well as senior aides Huma Abedin and Philippe Reines, all occasionally emailed Clinton with personal email addresses of their own, the newspaper reported. The news comes as Clinton continues to face controversy related to her exclusive use of a private email address while at the State Department. Clinton's...

Ted Cruz is set to announce is candidacy for President of the United States. Rand Paul is apparently going to announce early next month before going on a campaign tour. Until today technically the only candidate was Jeb Bush, who announced late last year his intentions. At the time everyone thought that Bush was going to force everyone else to declare their candidacy early. It doesn’t appear that has happened, Cruz and Paul have appeared in no rush to make a formal announcement. Scott Walker, perhaps the front runner in the race, still hasn’t formally announced his candidacy and there’s...

It has been stated publicly many times that Mrs. Bill Clinton used a private email server based in her Chappaqua house instead of a secure government server. Information about what is on it now shows it running Outlook from a Microsoft Exchange 2010 server. This article provides more technical details concerning the account and what some of its vulnerabilities appear to be.

Back in the Arad penitentiary, I ask Lehel about his heyday. Was it worth it? “I had memos Hillary Clinton got as a State Secretary, with CIA briefings. These were being read by her, two other people from the US Government, and Guccifer. I used to read her memos for six-seven hours and then I’d get up and do the gardening in the yard,” he says.

‘We are keen on a strategic relationship with the U.S. above everything else,’ says Egypt’s new president. ‘And we will never turn our backs on you—even if you turn your backs on us.’ He’s also aware that the most important work will take time. In January Mr. Sisi went before the religious clerics of Cairo’s Al-Azhar university to demand a “revolution” in Islam. The follow-through won’t be easy. “The most difficult thing to do is change a religious rhetoric and bring a shift in how people are used to their religion,” he says. “Don’t imagine the results will be seen...

As Hillary Rodham Clinton moves closer to making her campaign for president official, she now faces a deepening polarization among Jewish Democrats over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and how the United States should deal with his government.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory in this week’s Israeli elections has reverberated through U.S. politics, reinforcing Republican faith in the political wisdom of a hawkish foreign policy, worsening his already bad relationship with President Obama and energizing liberal critics of Israel’s government. But mostly it has complicated the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. As she moves closer to making her campaign for president...

DC political insiders believe that if President Barack Obama truly seeks compromise with Republicans, he should begin by ditching White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett. It goes without saying that Jarrett, the president's longtime trusted confidante, political ally, and family friend, is a divisive figure inside the beltway. Calls for her dismissal have been rampant since the president began his second term -- and even before then. It is a demand still ignored by the White House.

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi continues to reach out to America for help in rallying the forces of good against a rising tide of evil—the ever-spreading virus of militant Islam. And so far we are still snubbing him. As I have written before in this space, Sisi appears to be a surprising successor to the heroic British leader who first rallied his own people, then appealed to the New World to join not only his, but humanity's, cause against the Nazi menace—which is in many ways similar to the Islamist one today. Despite America's declared need for strong Arab allies in...

"They left the country illegally last December for Libya, and they were able to train with weapons there," he told private broadcaster AlHiwar Ettounsi TV. Like Tunisia, Libya saw its longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi ousted during the regional wave of revolutions known as the Arab Spring. But unlike its neighbor to the west, Libya has been fraught with more instability and violence -- much of it perpetrated by Islamist militants, like those behind the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Deep in the Haitian countryside, peanut farmer Wismith Moricette epitomizes the success of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s charitable work: Through an innovative program backed by the Clintons, the 23-year-old has doubled the yield from his one-acre plot. Along with all those peanuts, Moricette said, have come visions of a brighter future for his wife and young son. Fifty miles away on Haiti’s Caribbean coast, Anelle Germinal exemplifies another reality of the Clintons’ work here: disappointment. The 33-year-old mother of four has been standing in the baking sun every day for months waiting for work in the struggling Caracol Industrial...

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff March 20, 2015 8:27 am Haitian activists protested outside of the Clinton Foundation in New York over the loss of “billions of dollars” that was meant to help rebuild after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The activists are claiming the money was stolen through the Haiti Reconstruction Commission that was headed by Bill Clinton. In January 2015, the Clinton Foundation was the target of protests for wasting more than $10 billion and awarding contracts to non-Haitian companies. The activists also said Haiti as a cover for foreign governments to funnel kickbacks of hundreds of millions of...

The chairman of a House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi has formally requested that Hillary Rodham Clinton turn over her email server for an independent review. [Snip] Gowdy said that while Clinton "is responsible for causing this issue" by using a private email server, "she alone does not get to determine its outcome."

The GOP frenzy over Benghazi is primarily a political attack (13 attacks similar to Benghazi took place against U.S. consulates during the Bush years), however it's fair to ask certain questions about anyone who uses personal emails as a public official. Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and everyone else in the GOP who've used private emails and servers should have their emails audited by a third-party. Furthermore, since Jeb Bush discussed security issues and troop deployments, he should have his email security analyzed by the Department of Defense. Anyone in government using a private email address should be subject to the...

The committee investigating Benghazi formally requested Friday that Hillary Rodham Clinton turn her email server over to an independent third party so it can be scrutinized to determine whether she and the Obama administration complied with open-records laws. Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy sent a letter to the former secretary of state’s personal lawyer making the request, which he said only comes after “exhaustive efforts” to get a look at her communications during the time of the 2012 terrorist attack on the diplomatic post in Libya’s second-largest city.

Cruz is introducing his own Iran sanctions proposal. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)Just days before a deadline for an update on a potential announcement of a nuclear agreement with Iran, one Republican senator likely to run for president is renewing a sanctions push.Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is poised to introduce an updated version of legislation Thursday that would revive all sanctions previously loosened by the Obama administration, as well as expand petrochemical sanctions. Companion legislation is expected to be filed in the House of Representatives.Among the provisions is a requirement that the Iranian government renounce state sponsorship of terrorist activities.According to...

Senator Chuck Grassley has sent two letters to the State Department to ask about Huma Abedin's special government status when she was a government employee--and for information on Abedin's email use while working for the government. Abedin is a close aide to Hillary Clinton, and worked for the consulting firm Teneo (under a special government employee status) while working for Clinton. "I am writing to follow up on inquiries I have been making since June 13, 2013 and August 15, 2013 regarding the State Department’s use of Special Government Employee (SGE) designations, and in particular, what steps the Department took...

The Clinton camp is probably feeling like they need to do something to turn the corner on all of the bad press they’ve been getting. Sure, the fallout hasn’t been too bad yet. Even when pollsters say that her support is “softening” this month, that still translates into a fifty point lead over Biden. But the real race is going to be kicking into gear eventually and she doesn’t need to be spending her days testifying before some House committee when she could be out on the trail giving $200K speeches. So what to do?Seth Lipsky at the New...

mailgate: Spokesperson Jen Psaki now says that the State Department has no record of Hillary Clinton signing Form OF-109, and it could find no record of Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice signing it either. Why check that? 'We have reviewed Secretary Clinton's official personnel file and administrative files and have no record of her signing the OF-109," Psaki said Tuesday, not bothering to explain why that seemingly simple check wasn't done earlier. Of course, there's no evidence or statement from Hillary that she did not sign the form, though Psaki added, "I think we are fairly certain she did not...

Monica Crowley raised the question today of whether Hillary Clinton was using her private email server in order to run a rogue intelligence operation while she was secretary of state. Crowley told Martha MacCallum this morning that Clinton must answer questions about the contents of emails between her and Sidney Blumenthal. Crowley described Blumenthal as the Clintons' longtime "political hitman." She explained that President Obama denied Clinton's 2009 request to bring Blumenthal into the State Department. Crowley explained that a hacker called "Guccifer" then unearthed messages in 2013 from Blumenthal to Clinton's email account. The screenshots of Clinton's inbox were...

I'll even admit he's on the exact same page as me, re. Ukraine/Kremlin...  Trouble is: 1) I DO NOT trust him to do anything he says- there's something about the Jebster that seems shiftier and less genuine -at least to me- than Dubya. And there appears to be more of a sense of entitlement politically. 2) Jeb Bush is no conservative- he's denounced Ronald Reagan's legacy of practical common sense and towering achievement as somehow irrelevant, an unforgivable sin. 3) The Jebster is about as popular as a fart in an elevator... even within the Republican Party. 4) Others with actual conservative credentials/achievements/principlesoffer the same...