Hillary Clinton email probe turns to Huma.
In the mob movies it’s always the underling who takes the rap. This is known as “plausible deniability” in more…respectable circles.
An attractive and newsworthy “victim,” Ms. Abedin, don’tcha think?.
Let us hope…for her sake…that the equivalent of hospitalization and eventual rehabilitation (also known as “The Revolving Door Clause” in PermaGov-speak) is included in the deal.
Read on for more.
Plausible deniability is the ability for persons (typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command) to deny knowledge of any responsibility for any damnable actions committed by others (usually subordinates in an organizational hierarchy) because of a lack of evidence that can confirm their participation, even if they were personally involved in or at least willfully ignorant of the actions. In the case that illegal or otherwise disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such act in order to insulate themselves and shift blame onto the agents who carried out the acts, confident that their doubters will be unable to prove otherwise.
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In politics and espionage, deniability refers to the ability of a powerful player or intelligence agency to pass the buck and avoid blowback by secretly arranging for an action to be taken on their behalf by a third party ostensibly unconnected with the major player. In political campaigns, plausible deniability enables candidates to stay clean and denounce third-party advertisements that use unethical approaches or potentially libellous innuendo.
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Although plausible deniability has existed throughout history, that name for it was coined by the CIA in the early 1960s to describe the withholding of information from senior officials in order to protect them from repercussions in the event that illegal or unpopular activities by the CIA became public knowledge.
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Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s most trusted confidante, is increasingly becoming a central figure in the email scandal that’s haunting her boss on the campaign trail, as Republicans and federal judges seek information about Clinton’s communications while she was running the State Department.
The 2016 Democratic front-runner on Monday told a federal judge that Abedin — long considered her boss’s keeper and even dubbed her “shadow” — had her own email account on Clinton’s now infamous home-brewed server, “which was used at times for government business,” Clinton acknowledged. That’s an unusual arrangement, even for top brass at the State Department.
Abedin has hired a team of lawyers, one of whom is a former Clinton aide, who are responding to information requests from the courts and State. They’ve denied any wrongdoing on the part of their client and said Abedin is cooperating with requests for official emails in her possession, aiming to turn over all her correspondence by the end of August.
But her lawyers — Karen Dunn and Miguel Rodriguez — didn’t respond to questions about emails on Clinton’s separate server. Dunn is a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and she served as a senior advisor to Clinton when she was in the Senate.
After an inspector general found that Clinton had at least two “top secret” emails stored on her unsecured computer network, Abedin is likely to face more questions from congressional investigators, and perhaps others, about her access to Clinton’s system.
Abedin had been granted “special government employee” status, allowing her to work both for Clinton and the private sector — and it’s unclear if she continued using the server that appears to have held classified information following her departure from her full-time State gig.
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Beyond allegations of conflict of interest, Senate Republicans in recent weeks leaked findings by the State Department inspector general that Abedin was overpaid nearly $10,000 for “unused” time off that she actually took but did not record while working at State — a finding her lawyers are currently challenging.
Abedin, who’s been with Clinton for about two decades, started working for Clinton as a 19-year-old intern in the former first lady’s office.
At State and during the 2008 campaign she was considered Clinton’s “body woman,” never far from Clinton’s side and often seen watching her boss intently, ready to scramble to her aid at any minute. Top politicians, and even Bill Clinton, would phone her to reach Hillary, and emails released in recent months showed she enjoyed access to Clinton at her private home, too, dropping items off on her counter and instructing her how to dress and keeping her schedule.
In 2013, news broke that Abedin had been given a special government employee status, allowing her to be simultaneously on the payroll for the philanthropic Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a consulting firm founded by former Clinton White House adviser Doug Band. She previously had not disclosed the dual employment.
Abedin has said she stepped back from government work and became a contractor so she could be with her family and her newborn son. But since then, critics have questioned her about whether she had a conflict of interest while working at State and alongside close friends of the Clinton family.
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Clinton on Monday declared under penalty of perjury that she handed over all her work emails to the State Department for record-keeping purposes; Abedin declined a judge’s request to do the same.Dunn said Abedin, who was among 10 State Department officials asked by their former agency to hand over any work-related messages on personal emails, expects to turn over all her official correspondence to the State Department by Aug. 28. On Wednesday, Dunn declined to say whether Abedin will then do the same as Clinton and swear under penalty of perjury that she has handed over all official records.
It is unclear whether all her official emails on Clinton’s server were saved.
I repeat:
“…Dunn declined to say whether Abedin will then do the same as Clinton and swear under penalty of perjury that she has handed over all official records.”
“It is unclear whether all her official emails on Clinton’s server were saved.”
Hmmmmm…
AG
