Thread: The Benghazi Hearings

Trey Gowdy asks Hillary Clinton to appear twice on emails, Benghazi

By Lauren French
| 4/23/15 2:31 PM EDT
| Updated 4/23/15 4:12 PM EDT

The House Committee investigating Benghazi is asking Hillary Clinton to appear for two public hearings on the 2012 terrorist attacks and her email use, according to a letter sent to her lawyer on Thursday.

This is a departure from what Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy originally requested from the former secretary of state. The South Carolina Republican wanted a private, transcribed interview on Clinton’s email use and a public hearing on the terrorist attacks.

But Clinton had refused to appear in private to take questions on her use of a private email address while at the State Department. Her lawyer, David Kendall, had insisted that Clinton was prepared to take questions about her emails, the server that stored them and the Benghazi attacks during a single, public hearing.

Gowdy wrote to Kendall Thursday saying the committee plans to schedule a hearing by the week of May 18 on the emails. “If that hearing results in assurances the public record is indeed complete, the Committee will schedule Secretary Clinton’s public hearing with respect to the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi no later than June 18, 2015, with specific date being selected after consultation with you,” Gowdy wrote.

Gowdy added in the letter that he is still willing to hold a private hearing on the emails if Clinton has security concerns about answering sensitive questions in public.

The hearings, if they occur, would generate intense scrutiny on Clinton and the congressional Republicans questioning her. Democrats will be on watch for any overreach on the part of the panel’s seven GOP members. Any Clinton appearance on the Hill would spark a media frenzy; her recent entrance into the 2016 presidential race promises to only exacerbate it.

Gowdy said in the letter he wants to quickly schedule Clinton so her interviews are not a protracted affair.

“With her cooperation and that of the State Department and administration, Secretary Clinton could be done with the Benghazi Committee before the Fourth of July,” said Gowdy. “It is necessary to call Secretary Clinton twice because the committee needs to ensure we have a complete and responsive record and all the facts before we then substantively question her on the Benghazi terrorist attacks.

The letter includes more than 100 questions that Gowdy said remained unanswered.

Democrats on the committee earlier Thursday slammed Gowdy for moving at a “glacial pace” in terms of bringing Clinton in. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the panel, accused Gowdy of intentionally dragging out the proceedings to harm Clinton.

“The Republicans’ multi-year search for evidence to back up their Benghazi conspiracy theories has turned up nothing. The Select Committee has identified no evidence — documentary, testimonial, or otherwise — to support claims that Secretary Clinton ordered a stand-down, approved an illicit weapons program, or any other wild allegation Republicans have made for years,” Cummings said.

Democrats on the committee noted that Gowdy waited nearly 11 months from when the committee was formed last May to send requests to the Department of Defense for documents.

The new request from Gowdy is the latest volley in two months of back-and-forth between Clinton and Republicans on the Benghazi Committee. After the New York Times reported that Clinton used a private email address during her tenure at the State Department, Gowdy insisted he could not move forward with a hearing on Benghazi without assurances from Clinton and the State Department that the committee received all relevant documents.

Clinton has called on the State Department to release the nearly 30,000 emails from her time as secretary.

On Wednesday, Kendall told Gowdy that Clinton is ready now to appear before the panel for a public hearing on her email use and the 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya.

“There is no reason to delay her appearance or to have her testify in a private interview,” Kendall wrote, noting that Clinton has been prepared to testify since November.

Gowdy has argued that he’s put off calling the former secretary of state because the committee was not confident it had all the documents relating to Libya or Benghazi from Clinton and a handful of federal agencies. Earlier this year the State Department sent an additional 300 emails from Clinton.

“Simply put, thank goodness the committee did not schedule Secretary Clinton’s appearance when some asked us to, or else that hearing would have been woefully and now obviously premature,” Gowdy wrote Thursday.


http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...#ixzz3YAsRocM8

Countdown To The Showdown – Will Gowdy Go For The Ultimatum Hillary Just Gave Him?

Hillary Clinton will agree to one, but not to two appearances before the House Select Committee on Benghazi that’s chaired by South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy. That’s the word from Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, who has written to Rep. Gowdy saying the former secretary of state will testify on Capitol Hill this month about the 2012 attack in Benghazi as well as her controversial email practices while heading the Obama State Department.

Fox News says that Gowdy, who has insisted that Clinton and the State Department release more emails than have been provided to the committee so far, has not said whether he will accept the one-appearance offer.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...cmp=latestnews

“It remains unclear whether Clinton, a former first lady and U.S. senator from New York, will testify in a closed or open hearing before the special committee, formed to investigate the events surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.”

On the program America’s Newsroom Tuesday morning, former U.N. Ambassador and Fox News contributor John Bolton — who has indicated that he may jump into the GOP race for president — said Hillary Clinton is “afraid of this committee and I think she should be.” By clicking on the video above, you can see why Amb. Bolton said that, and why he began the interview with FNC’s Martha MacCallum by laughing at the news of Hillary’s ultimatum to Gowdy.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/wat...just-gave-him/

Huma Abedin’s Emails Were Not Turned Over To State Dept. Now Facing THIS!

The emails of Huma Abedin, the top personal aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, are now facing a disclosure lawsuit after the State Department failed to turn them over in response to an open-records request.

Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that uses open-records laws to pry information loose, had filed a request to get a look at Ms. Abedin’s emails during her four years at the State Department. News outlets have reported that Ms. Abedin also used the private email server Mrs. Clinton set up to handle government business, but the status of her messages is unclear.

It’s one of a number of open-records requests Judicial Watch filed after the email scandal broke, and Tom Fitton, president of the organization, said they’ve been stonewalled on all of them, so now they’re turning to the courts.

“We’re churning through these,” he said. “The scandal at the State Department is more than about Hillary Clinton. There are others involved.”

The State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit Tuesday afternoon.

http://allenwestrepublic.com/2015/05...w-facing-this/

A Federal Judge Just Threw Jet Fuel On The Firestorm Over Hillary’s Emails,
Judge Nap Explains
Norvell Rose May 12, 2015 at 6:12am

For the first time, a federal court has taken action on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and reopened a case brought by a watchdog group trying to force the presidential candidate to release official communications she claimed were stored on a private email server.

The Washington Times reports that the move by Judge Reggie Walton came in response to revelations indicating that the former secretary of state had improperly “shielded her messages from valid open-records requests.” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...on-email-case/ Ironically, both the U.S. State Department and Judicial Watch are on the same side in this case that seeks to search all of Mrs. Clinton’s emails to see whether any that were not disclosed, should have been.
The Times report quotes the head of Judicial Watch, noting the significance of the court’s action: “’This is the first case that’s been reopened,’ Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said Friday. ‘It’s a significant development. It points to the fraud by this administration and Mrs. Clinton.’”

As Fox News tells us, Judge Walton had previously dismissed the Judicial Watch request to make Mrs. Clinton’s emails public because he had been told the documents simply didn’t exist. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015...email-lawsuit/

By clicking on the video at the link you can see Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano, explain the significance of the court’s reopening of the case and how it could hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances of keeping her official communications out of the public eye.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/wat...-nap-explains/

Trey Gowdy Finally Threatens Hillary With ARREST

Ever since the email scandal broke, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has resisted turning over the personal email server she had used to skirt federal record-keeping regulations.

The former secretary of state and 2016 Democrat presidential front-runner instead had offered her word of honor (for whatever that’s worth) that nothing but personal email remained on the server, in spite of the fact that Clinton had turned over no email from around the time of the 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate.

However, in a letter delivered to Hillary Clinton’s lawyers on Friday, House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy rejected this approach and demanded that Clinton hand over her email server to a third party to see what email remains on it.

“I am formally requesting Secretary Clinton make her server available to a neutral, detached and independent third-party for immediate inspection and review,” Gowdy wrote, adding that the State Department’s Office of Inspector General could be a possible third party to examine the email.

“(S)hould Secretary Clinton continue to maintain that the server and its contents are hers alone, I will inform the Speaker of the House of Representatives so that he can use the full powers of the House to take the necessary steps to protect the best interests of the American people,” Gowdy wrote, according to The Blaze. However, in a letter delivered to Hillary Clinton’s lawyers on Friday, House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy rejected this approach and demanded that Clinton hand over her email server to a third party to see what email remains on it.

“I am formally requesting Secretary Clinton make her server available to a neutral, detached and independent third-party for immediate inspection and review,” Gowdy wrote, adding that the State Department’s Office of Inspector General could be a possible third party to examine the email.

“(S)hould Secretary Clinton continue to maintain that the server and its contents are hers alone, I will inform the Speaker of the House of Representatives so that he can use the full powers of the House to take the necessary steps to protect the best interests of the American people,” Gowdy wrote, according to The Blaze. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015...er-her-server/

Keep in mind that the “full powers of the House” include arrest, which is probably why Gowdy threw that phrase out there.

Gowdy has been pressuring Clinton for further details after the former secretary of state revealed that she had deleted more than 30,000 “personal” emails from the account.

“The House of Representatives and the American people are entitled to a complete accounting of the secretary’s official record during her time as secretary of State,” Rep. Gowdy wrote in the letter, alluding to the deleted and redacted emails.

He also rejected Clinton’s approach, in which she would release the email that she believed was relevant.

“Her arrangement places her as the sole arbiter of what she considers private and beyond the review of the public,” he wrote. “Her arrangement allows her to be the sole record keeper of her emails related to official business conducted between two private accounts.”

This is the latest bad news for the former secretary of state, coming on the heels of a discovery that she had not signed a standard exit form stating that all confidential material had been returned to the State Department upon her resignation.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to read full letters packed with legalese delivered to blatantly felonious former first ladies by South Carolina representatives, well, here you go:

( six page PDF ) Go to link http://conservativetribune.com/gowdy...illary-arrest/

Benghazi Docs Contradict Obama In A MAJOR Way! (VIDEO at link)

Fox News has obtained documents which reveal what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about the Benghazi attack and weapons traveling from Libya to Syria back in 2012.

Catherine Herridge reported this morning on “America’s Newsroom” that a Defense Intelligence Agency memo from Sept. 16, 2012, concluded that the Benghazi terror attack was planned at least 10 days in advance to coincide with 9/11 and was in retaliation for a drone strike that killed an al Qaeda strategist. The memo was copied to the National Security Council, the State Department and the CIA.

“The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for the [U.S.] killing of Aboyahiye (Alaliby) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings,” the memo said.

http://allenwestrepublic.com/2015/05...jor-way-video/

Hillary Clinton's RICO trial announced by federal court judge
May 30, 2015

Although presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton wants the current controversies surrounding her emails, her charity's suspicious donors, the Benghazi consulate slaughter and other questionable activities to be in the rearview mirror of her race for the White House, a Florida judge on Friday set a trial date for a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Criminal Organization) lawsuit brought against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a Washington, D.C., watchdog group that specializes in government corruption and criminal enterprise cases.



Hillary Clinton is scheduled to appear in court regarding alleged RICO charges.
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Getty Images

U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks of Florida's Federal District Court in West Palm Beach, officially announced on Friday, May 29, 2015, that the civil RICO trial -- Klayman v. Hillary Clinton et all -- will commence on Wednesday, January 25, 2016, which is also noticeably a major election year. The plaintiff in the case is former Justice Department prosecutor, now public interest attorney, Larry Klayman. Klayman is the founder and former president of Judicial Watch and now the founder and chief attorney of Freedom Watch, a nonprofit organization that uses the federal civil court system to expose government corruption and abuse.

In addition to the Florida RICO suit, Klayman is requesting that both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) turn overcopies of Clinton's emails they allegedly, surreptitiously intercepted. "It's a known fact that the U.S. intelligence agencies under orders from the Obama White House has played loose-and-fancy-free when it comes to electronic eavesdropping. To believe that the NSA or CIA would skip monitoring [Hillary] Clinton's emails and cell phone activity would cause a person to accept the absurdity of such a situation. They've got her emails and cell phone calls or transcripts," said former law enforcement officer Stephen Kablonsky, an expert in electronic surveillance.

Several requests have previously been filed by Klayman and he has a number of notable cases against the U.S. government over Clinton's alleged leaking of classified information about Israel war plans, her family's foundation that's suspected of accepting questionable donations, and the crash of a U.S. military helicopter that killed dozens of American servicemen including members of Seal Team Six.

One advantage of the January court date is the fact that it give the Clintons time to assemble their political allies -- Lanny Davis, John Podesta, David Kendell and others -- as well as their covert "goon" squad that harasses and denigrates anyone considered a Clinton foe, according to political strategist Mike Baker.

While Mrs. Clinton may get away with her excuses and lies with the water-carriers in the news media, Klayman in essence is saying "not so fast." His group's investigations require examination of the contents of the emails on Clinton's unauthorized server she claimed was operating in her home while she held the secretary of state post.

According to reports already known, foreign individuals and organizations donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and gave former President Bill Clinton extravagant fees for his speeches. His wife at the time served as President Barack Obama's Secretary of State. She in turn is accused of granting favors from her State Department, all the while transacting business using a private email account and a Clinton owned and controlled Internet server.

Former police inspector Joseph Gilgrade, an expert in forensic accounting, claims that the Clintons' scheme appears to have worked: leaders of companies or governments who are on one of the U.S. State Department restriction lists are told to make their contributions to the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership in Canada, and then the money is transferred from Clinton's Canadian front-group to the U.S.-based Clinton Foundation.

"Clinton's defenders claim this is nowhere near a criminal conspiracy, however they are wrong. First off, the right hand doesn't have to know what the left hand is doing for there to be a criminal conspiracy. The fact that laws were broken when individuals took certain criminal actions that benefited the conspirators is what prosecutors and their investigators seek," said Insp. Gilgrade.

While Mrs. Clinton may get away with her excuses and lies with the water-carriers in the news media, Klayman in essence is saying "not so fast." His group's investigations require examination of the contents of the emails on Clinton's unauthorized server she claimed was operating in her home while she held the secretary of state post.

http://www.examiner.com/article/hill...al-court-judge

Issa escorted out of Benghazi deposition
By Martin Matishak - 06/16/15 03:13 PM EDT

http://media.thehill.com/services/pl...yZzf130eU-6On5

http://media.thehill.com/services/pl...yZzf130eU-6On5

Former House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) tried to crash former Hillary Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal’s deposition before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Tuesday.





Issa marched into the closed-door deposition and remained inside for about a minute before he was escorted out by the panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).

The pair briefly exchanged hushed words in a nearby hallway before Issa stormed off, throwing an empty soda can into a nearby trash bin.

NBC News producer Frank Thorp posted a video showing Gowdy and Issa.

Gowdy returned to the private session after the incident.

“Sorry about that,” he said as he went back into the interview.

Gowdy brushed off a question about the interruption during a brief break in the proceedings later on Tuesday.



"You'll have to ask Chairman Issa," he said.

Issa conducted his only lengthy investigation into the deadly siege in Benghazi, Libya when he was chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. At one point, he called the former secretary of State to testify.

Issa earlier in the day had stopped by the Capitol Hill briefing room where Blumenthal is being interviewed, but the proceedings were adjourned for lunch.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/24...azi-deposition