Free Republic

In my column on the plea agreement the Obama Justice Department allowed David Petreaus to enter after it was discovered that he mishandled classified information, I noted that he had been required to sign a separation agreement when he left the CIA. It is called a “Security Exit Form” and is obviously the CIA version of the State Department departure form described in Jim’s post (and linked in Shannen’s column) that Secretary Clinton should have signed upon leaving government service. The prosecutors’ outline of the evidence against Petraeus includes the following (at pages 11-12, paragraph 27): [O]n or about November...

Hillary Clinton was in violation of State Department rules governing the use of non-governmental email accounts during her entire tenure as secretary of state and for nearly two years after she left the job, ABC News has learned A senior State Department official tells ABC News that under rules in place while Clinton was secretary of state, employees could only use private email accounts for official business if they turned those emails over to be entered into government computers. They were also forbidden from including sensitive but unclassified information on private email, except under some very narrow exceptions.

Author James Michener famously said of Hawaii’s nineteenth century New England missionaries that they went to the islands to do good and ended up doing very, very well. Washington commentator Mark Shields has likened those missionaries to many people who come to Washington—all starry-eyed with idealism upon their arrival but later fixated on the ongoing Beltway stampede for a share of the largess bestowed upon the city’s insiders as they combine government service with often-grubby private pursuits. Which calls to mind Huma Abedin, wife of the disgraced former congressman, Anthony Weiner, and a darling of former secretary of state Hillary...

When Michele Bachmann picked on Huma Abedin a year ago — claiming she had some convoluted connection to the Muslim Brotherhood — there was a rush to defend the longtime Hillary Clinton aide. The Minnesota congresswoman quickly got a scolding from House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. John McCain, House Intelligence Committee chair Mile Rogers. But now that her husband, Anthony Weiner, is running for New York City mayor, the attacks on Abedin aren't so ridiculous, and Abedin herself is not quite so untouchable.

Huma Abedin, the wife of New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, AKA Carlos Danger, is facing an ongoing Senate investigation into the consulting fees she earned while also working as a State Department employee for then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has been investigating Abedin’s activities as a paid consultant while she was still working for Clinton toward the end of her tenure. In June, 2012, Abedin changed her employment status at the State Department from being a full time employee with the title of deputy chief of staff to being a “special government employee,” a...

The offices of a Dallas law firm representing a high-profile State Department whistleblower were broken into last weekend. Burglars stole three computers and broke into the firm's file cabinets. But silver bars, video equipment and other valuables were left untouched, according to local Fox affiliate KDFW, which aired security camera footage of the suspected burglars entering and leaving the offices around the time of the incident. The firm Schulman & Mathias represents Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at the State Department's Office of the Inspector General. In recent weeks, she raised a slew of explosive allegations against the department and...

You wouldn’t know it from the media, but Clinton’s efforts to smash the last glass ceiling has come crashing down around her as the result of a devastating report by CBS News about cover-ups of rampant sex crimes and drug abuse at the State Department under her watch. The report, based on an Inspector General’s memo, included charges of cover-ups of sex assaults on foreign nationals by a State Department security officer in Beirut, an ambassador reprimanded for soliciting prostitutes in his host country, members of Clinton’s own security detail’s “endemic” use of prostitutes while on official trips in foreign...

Both chambers of Congress are now looking into claims that the State Department covered up allegations of misconduct. Reports that indicated the State Department dropped or influenced investigations into State employees’ alleged involvement in sexual assaults and engaging with prostitutes “are very serious and require a dispassionate investigation of the facts,” said Adam Sharon, a spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

With apologies to Sheriff John* and “The Birthday Party Polka,” it’s time to sing the Scandal Song: Put another candle on the scandal cake … another week starts today. CBS News reports that the State Department has interfered in internal investigations into criminal conduct and wrongdoing by high-ranking officials, including one ambassador who prowled public parks for prostitutes. A very familiar name appears in this exposé, too:

State Department memo reveals possible cover-ups, halted investigations (CBS News) CBS News has uncovered documents that show the State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal and inappropriate behavior within their ranks. The Diplomatic Security Service, or the DSS, is the State Department's security force, charged with protecting the secretary of state and U.S. ambassadors overseas and with investigating any cases of misconduct on the part of the 70,000 State Department employees worldwide. CBS News' John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General's memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The...