GOP lawmaker: Clinton email server key to Benghazi inquiry

[DonViejo]

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — A member of the House committee investigating the deadly attacks against Americans in Benghazi, Libya, says Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email server could help lawmakers answer vital questions.

Among them: Why was security at the U.S. diplomatic compound inadequate? Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana said in the weekly Republican radio address Saturday that gaining access to Clinton’s server is “the only way to truly know” that investigators have obtained all the State Department communications that “rightfully belong to the American people.”

Clinton acknowledged this past week that as the nation’s top diplomat, she relied on a personal email account rather than one operated by the government.

The committee chairman Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, has called on Clinton to turn over the server for an independent review; Clinton so far has rebuffed the request.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2015/03/14/gop_lawmaker_clinton_email_server_key_to_benghazi_inquiry/

[Demeter]

1. I think the hunt for Benghazi turned up the server

and the server holds the key to a whole lot more evil than just Benghazi.

[Fred Sanders]

7. I think folks are serving up speculation as news. Distorting facts to pretend there is news...no?

No one can answer - what difference does it make?

NOT finding any actual evidence is what Republicans want, then you can forever say the evidence is just around the corner or is being hidden....forever. It is about the chase, not the catching, isn't that obvious by now?

"Republican lawmaker" is always a joke of a title.

I am with Clinton....I hate the ambulance chasing media.

Remember the Dixie Chicks.

[still_one]

8. The media is worthless and has been so for some time

[olegramps]

23. Is it any wonder why so many people are so turned off on the government?

It seems to be getting worse. The media has cooperated in turning the whole situation into a ridiculous mess. It is one crisis after another until the citizens have had enough. People wonder why the younger people don't give a damn about the whole affair and don't vote. Why should they take anything about this seriously?

[upaloopa]

27. What a lame excuse. Things are never what

we want but we do our duty and vote .

[olegramps]

31. I have voted in every election since I was able.

Sorry but it is a fact that many people have become apathetic because of the crisis, crisis, crisis, etc. I am in contact with numerous students and they express disdain because of the grid lock. I agree that all the citizens have a duty to vote, but that I wouldn't categorize it as a lame excuse. Is a sad situation.

[CANDO]

37. Gridlock

Well, if they'd get beyond their disdain and fricking VOTE! perhaps gridlock would be gone? Choose the less crazies and voila! gridlock be gone!

[Fred Sanders]

49. Voting gets rid of the despair, rid of the gridlock, corrupt politicians, corrupt police, corrupt courts, corrupt media. Vote.

[George II]

45. You've got it...

...if there is no "evidence", they'll have the out that she deleted it.

[sharp_stick]

9. sure it does

we're going to get all the dirt on HAARP, Area 51 and the Kennedy assasination because of the server. The answer to everything that annoys you on a daily basis will be hidden on that server, I'm sure.

Oh almost forgot...BENGHAZI!!!!

[Demeter]

13. More like: Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Honduras

and those are just the ones that got substantial attention in the media and alternate media.

[mopinko]

25. the truth is out there. nt

[jwirr]

10. That is exactly what happened. When this email thing first came out the media told us that it was

the Benghazi committee that discovered that she was using a non-governmental email service.

My daughter says that almost all emails can be retrieved even after they are deleted. She worked for a major corporation setting up the company computer system so she has some idea of what can be done. I am afraid this is going to continue until Hillary either drops out of the race - which is what they want - or she hands the damned server over to them.

[Thinkingabout]

53. Hummmm, just like getting Romney to turn over his tax returns for ten years, it isnt going to happen

[joshcryer]

65. It'll probably end up with a subpoena of the database.

And the Republicans can scour over it and there will probably be leaks.

If her IT guy gets subpoenaed then you'll know that the Republicans are escalating to that point, because they'll be able to ask him about backups, and to delete backups would be a horrible IT experience, he very likely has them on a drive somewhere, and if he was instructed by Clinton to personally delete them then that would be bad for Clinton.

[jwirr]

69. Yes, and it would hurt us in the general. Hopefully Hillary is aware of this.

[pnwmom]

39. The only "evil" involved in Benghazi was committed by the terrorists. n/t

[DonViejo]

42. I think you're correct...

Congressman Adam Schiff is quoted, a week or so ago, stating the committee not only knew about the server two years ago, they've had all the emails too...for the last two years. In the days just following the announcement of the servers existence, it was reported the leak to the media about its existence, came from the Benghazi committee.

[cynzke]

68. Timing!

Kept it hush so Gowdy and the new committee could use it. Waiting until under two years to election time. Now the GOP candidates can take on the campaign trail!

[hollowdweller]

57. I think your post holds the key to the whole thing.

When they appointed a special prosecutor on Whitewater, and he couldn't find any wrongdoing they dumped him and got Ken Starr.

He couldn't find anything either but being a partisan hack he allowed the investigation to expand to other conspiracy theories about the Clintons and kept it going till they found out about Monica Lewinsky. So Monica had nothing to do with Whitewater but the idea was they would ask him about it, he'd lie, and then they'd have him.

It didn't entirely work out the way they planned but it did use up a lot of time and resources they could have used to help the country.

Now with Clinton they will be using the Bengazi excuse to try to obtain the whole server and retrieve all of her emails. Not really to do anything about Bengazi but more to try to find any emails that are particularly embarrassing or hint at unethical activities. These will then be selectively leaked to the press over time in an attempt to hurt Clintons lead.

So the question is is this a fuck up by Clinton? Or was the whole thing deliberate on her part? I mean what if she didn't even use the email for anything particularly damning, and is just making it hard for them to get it so when they finally do, and there's nothing particularly bad on it they look worse than they did in the 90's??

What if Hillary is setting them up?

[Demeter]

58. Is this another 11-dimensional chess argument?

Because if so, I think you will be disappointed.

I think there is dirt there, because the State Dept. has been doing dirty things. But it would have to be something the GOP is willing to sacrifice to take down Hillary. Given that most of the foreign policy conducted in the past 2-3 years is blowing up in the Administration's faces, the GOP will have lots of material to work with, and there may be multiple sacrifices in the offing.

Let the Silly Season begin....play ball!

[joshcryer]

63. Decades of investigations, $70 million spent...

...and you think the Clinton's are hiding anything?

Hilarious.

I can only hope they get the server databases and start leaking the stupid gossip shit.

The American people are so tired of the witchhunts against the Clinton's it'd be the best thing to ever happen to them.

[joshcryer]

64. This is exactly what is happening.

However, it's unlikely that Hillary is setting things up, the Clinton's want to have control over their personal data and lives. Leaks are not able to be controlled. Anything in the emails can be interpreted any which way. Clinton doesn't want that at all and wouldn't want to go through that again.

[FarPoint]

2. Pure posturing and wishful thinking.

There is no such bread crumb trail to connect Benghazi with the server. This is only planting false speculation into the public's mind regarding Hillary Clinton.

[quadrature]

4. but there should be a trail ...

wiping the hard-drive
is eventually going to look bad

[FarPoint]

5. The investigation is born out of malice intend.

So, there is no need to comply.

[AtomicKitten]

70. Seriously? No need to comply?

Last edited Mon Mar 16, 2015, 04:12 AM - Edit history (2)

Are we or are we not a nation of laws and due process? Cheney blew off subpoenas. Most thought it was absolutely reprehensible that he thought himself above the law. Do we aspire to be like Cheney? Is that the low bar we set for ourselves? Hillary is not above the law no matter how predatory you think the focus on her is. She knew the State Dept protocol regarding emails, but defied it and set up her own servers. Classic Clinton with the knowledge her fan club will defend her no matter what. I'm sick of the incessant drama/chaos the Clintons create and their expectation that their minions will provide them cover to do whatever the hell they want with impugnity.

[leftofcool]

12. +1

[HereSince1628]

3. As always they see absence of evidence as a conspiracy

rather than evidence of absence.

[leveymg]

29. Same principle applies to delete by absence of keyword

rather than to read the messages to determine what was actually written. If you want to talk about the rules of evidence, discovery and disclosure, reading each message is the way it's actually done legally.

[Thor_MN]

6. How much more money are we going to spend on Clinton witch hunts?

Between Ken Starr, Darryl Issa and now Trey Gowdy, we have to have spent over a $100 million on Republican hate.

In my opinion, the GOP needs to pay back the costs of previous useless investigations before launching any new ones.

[mountain grammy]

11. As much as they need too

why? because it works! It turns people off so they won't pay attention and it gives the media something to babble about to conservative viewers, the only ones who count. This will happen times a million with Clinton. We need a different candidate.

[Thor_MN]

17. That makes absolutely no sense. You contradict yourself.

If they do it because it works, they will do it with ANY candidate. For the last several decades, they have been allowed to use public money to fund negative news generating machines.

Why don't we try to fix the problem instead of trying to minimize it? The problem being Republicans using tax money to fund propaganda machines? Force them to either stop or post a bond to cover the costs of the investigations if they fail to produce any prosecutable results?

Your proposed solution is exactly what they want. They will always go after the front runner and by the time of the election rolls around, your solution has the 17th best Democratic candidate running.

[mountain grammy]

28. Who is the 17th best Democratic candidate?

and by fixing the problem you mean what? The 2014 election proved to me there is not much support out there for "fixing the problem." So much outrage that the response was to give the Republicans an even bigger majority in the House and control of the Senate.

Of course the problem is Republicans using tax money to fund propaganda machines, but it hasn't done much good to rage against it. Hell, the Clinton impeachment, the biggest farce of all, led to a farcical election, and a fucking disaster. If that didn't wake the public up the the funding of the propaganda machine with tax money, nothing will.

They go after Clinton, because she's a Clinton and they can. It's outrageous, it's disgusting, but they won't stop. Go ahead, write to your Congressmen and ask them to change the rules. Let me know how that works for you because it hasn't for me. The only thing that will work is a successful election.

I know, I make no sense. Fine, I'll live with that. Maybe I just can't express myself well enough.

[Thespian2]

30. Well said.

So many progressives on this site support HRC who shares almost none of their beliefs. The Democrats are too scared of HRC to make themselves available as candidates. Can a real Progressive get enough polluted donor money to run against her? Probably not. Powerful, GREEDY BASTARDS who own America have already chosen her. Why? Because they own her and all the Republicans who would run against her.

[Thor_MN]

34. No clue. It'd be the person they stop picking on after we run out of "another candidates"

I know that changing the rules is nigh on impossible, but if we just roll over and keep picking "another candidate", we are playing their game, which we will always lose.

Sometimes this "we hold ourselves to a higher standard" stuff just drives me crazy. We should do that, but some times, we need to drop the gloves and go toe to toe.

[tularetom]

36. They've been trying for 7 years to stick something on Obama with no success

He deals with the whole process with poise and dignity. Basically, he ignores all the bullshit. And eventually, since there is no there there, it just dies. It's happened again and again.

As opposed to the Clintons response, which is to deny, deny and deny, and then dispatch an army of their minions to all the pundit shows to attempt to deflect the whole mess by trashing whoever made the allegations in the first place. Which of course is counterproductive since it keeps the controversy in the news.

And the reaction of people who don't follow these things closely? "Oh shit, another Clinton scandal. Do we really want four more years of this?"

[Thor_MN]

38. You are making my point. They are going to go after anyone.

Picking "another candidate" in response to right wing attacks is a never ending game. Show me a person that the right wing won't attack and I'll show you someone who couldn't beat the biggest moron in the GOP. Although finding the biggest moron in the GOP would be a challenge in itself...

I probably look like I'm defending Hillary, but that is not my intention. What I'm trying to say is that we need a way to get rid of this taxpayer funded right wing propaganda. Maybe go with the flow, throw Hillary under the bus and force them to spend so much money, turn this crap into something so ungodly expensive that everyone wants it to stop.

[tularetom]

46. Of course they're gonna go after anyone but not everyone responds the same way

They've been after Obama since before he was elected. He was a Muslim, the pastor at the "Christian" church he attended hates America, he was born in Kenya, blah blah blah. But you don't hear that stuff so much anymore because Obama didn't take the bait. He didn't react, he didn't call a press conference to deny anything, he didn't send stooges to the Sunday morning BS shows to bad mouth the people making the allegations.

The Clintons on the other hand, step right into the trap. An allegation is made and they immediately go into defensive mode. Which of course just makes it look like there is something there to defend. And it keeps the controversy in the news just that much longer.

[Thor_MN]

50. And you are focusing more on the "victim" than the perpetrators.

[JDPriestly]

55. Problem is that the have a headstart with the Clintons.

Insanely, when the name Clinton comes up, the word "scandal" attaches to it in the minds of the poorly informed.

Clinton polls high because of her name recognition. But part of her name recognition is due to the bogus scandals attached to her name.

And then on top of those bogus scandals are the really scandalous stands that Bill Clinton took on numerous issues and the even more scandalous appointments he made for some posts. My favorite Clinton problem today is his appointment of Greenspan to the Fed. Should not have happened. A person with a better sense of what economics was about would have chosen a more moderate individual to head the Fed, not an Ayn Rand buddy.

Apparently, Jeb Bush may have violated Florida law by not handing over his private e-mails. It would not surprise me if the manufactured crisis over Hillary's e-mails was a maneuver to deflect attention away from a more serious problem with Bush's.

I say no way to either a Bush or a Clinton candidacy.

We need to focus on the future and not on the pasts of these two families and potential candidates.

[Thor_MN]

56. Once again, focusing on the victim, rather than the crime.

The GOP is going to do this same thing to anyone. If the Democratic response to to just find another anyone, we will end up with someone as dumb as Bachmann, Cruz, Palin, Gohmert, Farenthold, etc...

[JDPriestly]

62. If this were the only problem with Clinton, I might agree with you.

But the fact is that Bill Clinton signed too many horrible bills and privatized too much -- NAFTA, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, welfare reform, the Telecommunications Act, bill after bill and then reappointed Greenspan to the Fed. Many of the bills that Clinton signed have led to our current problems.

I don't think that Hillary Clinton is our candidate. If we choose a different candidate, we may be able to get a campaign focused on our current problems and on building a future for our country rather than on fighting once again the battles that are part of the past.

The entire country needs candidates who can lead us into the future.

[Thor_MN]

67. Still not seeing THE problem,

It's fine that you hate the Clintons. I get it.

The problem is that we are allowing the GOP to use tax payer money to fund these witch hunts. Tens of Millions of dollars and hundreds of hours, all for the sole purpose of discrediting Democrats. They don't even care if they ever find any prosecutable offenses, the sole goal is to keep generating negative news for Fox.

We are paying for it.

And you are helping them.

[Demeter]

14. Democracy is neither cheap nor easy

but politicians are. Hence, there will always be a need and a hunger for checking up on them. Did Jimmy Carter incite investigations? No, but his sleazy brother did.

[Thor_MN]

16. You seem to be a fan of Republican invented "scandals" of Democrats.

Which is odd.

I am tired of seeing tax money wasted on "investigations" that inevitably turn up nothing other than right wing propaganda.

[pnwmom]

40. Going after his brother was a way of attacking Jimmy. n/t

[joshcryer]

66. Wow, just, wow.

You call spending $70 million going back to decades of faux scandals "democratic"?

The "hunger" for "checking up on the Clintons," the most investigated politicians in American history (by far and away the most scrutinized), is purely a right wing tactic.

[drm604]

15. They'll tie Whitewater, Vince Foster, and Monica Lewinsky into this if they can.

That server probably contains proof that the moon landings were fake and global warming is a hoax!

[groundloop]

22. The only reason Monica became relevant was because Whitewater wasn't damning enough.

And yes, Benghazi and email-gate will simply disappear from the face of the Earth after 2016. Until then the bastards in the GOP will keep pulling whatever strings it takes to keep those in the media.

I'll add that up until the entire Monica Lewinsky affair I was just as comfortable voting for republicans as Democrats. It was quite an awakening for me to see the length the republican party would go to attempting to find something to embarrass Bill Clinton with when they couldn't dig up enough dirt on Whitewater. That the special prosecutor for Whitewater would waste taxpayer money investigating an alleged sex act between two adults was the last straw for me.

[quadrature]

32. Monica and Huma(spelling?) were interns at the same time ...

or maybe Monica and somebody else?
whatever.
lots of scandal to go around

[Iliyah]

18. AP is full of s**t

GOPers cut funding for "protection" of many of the Embassies. They don't care about the lives that were lost.

War = profits

[Dr Hobbitstein]

41. Ben GAWZIIII!!! n/t

[quadrature]

43. the time to settle these issues is now ...nt

[Dr Hobbitstein]

44. Ben GAWZIIII!!! n/t

[Shrike47]

19. We have to deal with the media we've got. They seem to want to focus on Benghazi.

I would appreciate a big and constant media push about how there is no scandal about what happened in Benghazi. It was awful, it was sad, but you can't blame some American for it!

[samsingh]

20. the server is the key to answers on alien life and who killed jfk

[They_Live]

21. How about Sheldon Adelson's email?

Anybody check that yet? Remember Romney's cheap shot (that totally fell flat) about Benghazi during the election campaign? I have always thought that Benghazi (and the anti Muslim "movie" story) was manufactured by either Kochs or Adelson, just for marketing purposes to be used during the election cycle. I mean how much would that have cost? Not much to a big mean Mr. Moneybags. Just a casual investment with huge possible returns.

[mopinko]

26. ^^this, and bush and cheeeeney.

maybe they will find out who brewed up the yellow cake letter.

[TheCowsCameHome]

24. I half-listened to her this morning while waking up.

She wasted her air time droning on and on and on about Hillary and how Gowdy's Goonsquad was going to get to the bottom of it.

Actually, the GOP is already at the bottom, only they don't know when to stop digging.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

33. I find it interesting that the biggest critics

of Democrats on this site are the ones siding with this Republican witch hunt on this non-issue.

Things that make you go

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

48. It's been that way since Obama was elected

A lot of sock puppets who eventually unpeel like an onion

[Sick_of_TP]

47. This reminds me of deflategate.

Plenty of hateful opinions but no real facts. Trying to stop their competition any way they can. With deflategate, people in the media that had never even watched a football game had all the answers when in fact they are clueless. Sounds like Gowdy and his lynch mob trying to eliminate competition!!...

[BeyondGeography]

51. Republicans have a black belt in bullshitsu

Gotta hand it to 'em.

[blm]

52. LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!

And we're being told here at DU that we are supposed to go along with the bullshitsu.

I've been as tough a critic of HRC as anyone over the years, but, I won't do it based on utter BULLSH!T!!! Especially when the talking points we're supposed to swallow were crafted by the same RW propagandists we've been battling for decades, now.

[BeyondGeography]

54. They're the party of antique ideas and scandalmongering

Keeps the money coming in and their base properly distracted. Here we are again, with another big, fat waste of time on our hands. Hillary (not my fave either) owes them nothing but ridicule.

[cstanleytech]

59. Gowdy needs to stop because this has nothing to do with Benghazi

and everything to do with trying to conducting a fishing expedition in the hopes of finding "something" that they can use against Clinton and the democrats.

[Monk06]

60. How do we know the Big Bang occurred if we weren't there to see it? We must see the Big Bang emails

NOW !!!!!

[sendero]

61. Utterly predictable...

.. and not good news for HRC. Thanks for giving the tards some new angle.