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Monday, August 22, 2016

Colin Powell Protests too Much

It's amazing what he doesn't remember now that he did remember two months ago.

He was very happy to kick Hillary in the teeth over the weekend. Of course, Chris Cillizza was very happy to write about it. It's about the only thing Cillizza ever writes about himself anymore at The Fix.

"Colin L. Powell wasn't too happy that Hillary Clinton laid her decision to use a private email address at his feet during her interview with the FBI. And he made that annoyance plain over the weekend in the Hamptons."

"The truth is she was using it (her personal email) for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did [during my term as secretary of state],"Powell told the gossip site Page Six over the weekend. “Her people have been trying to pin it on me.”

"Pin it on me." Oomph.

"As I explained last week — even before Powell's latest comments — his email use and Clinton's are simply not analogous. In addition to how the rules governing electronic communication were significantly tightened between when Powell left office and when Clinton arrived, Powell neither exclusively used his personal email account nor did he establish his own private email server. Clinton did both."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/22/why-colin-powell-is-a-bad-enemy-for-hillary-clinton-to-make/

For starters she wasn't trying to 'pin it on him' this was in an interview with the FBI that was supposed to be private. Powell's beef is with Comey for choosing to wade into politics and handing over private info for House GOP consumption.

As for Cillizza's pious insistence that in no way is there even the slightest similarity between Hillary and Colin Powell's use of private email as Secretary of State, this is just plain wrong.

Powell did use private email for most of his SOS communications-as a State Department investigation found a few months ago. True he didn't use a server, though, his use of an AOL account was hardly failsafe. In fact, Powell was hacked by Guccifer 2.0.

"Yet in another sense, it is hardly surprising that Powell would prefer not to be drawn into the center of the continuing controversy over Clinton’s emails, a position he has carefully avoided so far."

"After all, not only did Powell use a private account to communicate with his State Department subordinates and others, like Clinton—but unlike her, he failed to provide any of those email records to the National Archives, which requested all of the former secretaries of state to turn over electronic records related to their government service."

http://www.newsweek.com/did-colin-powell-advise-hillary-use-private-email-492376

So Cillizza and friends, that is a way in which Powell's use was worse: he failed to provide any records. While Cillizza feverishly exclaims 'There are 15,000 emails she didn't release!'

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/22/the-fbi-found-15000-emails-hillary-clinton-didnt-turn-over-uh-oh/

She handed over a lot more than Powell did-who released none.

"Moreover, several indignant Clinton critics have drawn a distinction between her use of private email accounts and his, noting that she used a server located at her Chappaqua home, while he used America Online—suggesting that what Powell did was somehow more virtuous, circumspect or secure."

"But as Powell knows all too well, the Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, easily invaded his highly vulnerable AOL account and stole messages that he later posted on the Internet. When the Justice Department prosecuted Lazar, Powell was one of the “victims” included in the indictment."

See, Joe Conanson is good: I didn't know what Guccifer's real name was before.

As for Powell's denials-not really a denial, just a 'I don't recall-he recalled more in the past. You get a sense of the Hillary rules here:

"Nothing more than CP not remembering a conversation 8 yrs ago. Who can? This is much ado about nothing. Let it be!"

https://twitter.com/ArentsJim/status/767740638058033152

"On it's face, that seems pretty reasonable, except for the fact that no one will let Hillary be. She's expected to remember events that transpired eight years ago with perfect recall. So it's tough to feel too sorry for Powell who not only get hacked as Hillary did not by Guccifer, but didn't exactly cover himself with a blaze of glory as the man who went to the UN and called for an invasion of Iraq under some very faulty evidence."

"Did Colin Powell suggest that Hillary Clinton should use her private email account as secretary of state—as he had admittedly done in that same job several years earlier?"

"Last week, The New York Times confirmed that Powell did offer her precisely that advice, based on an account in my forthcoming book on Bill Clinton’s post-presidency. Yet Powell has responded by insisting that he has “no recollection” of such an incident."

"In Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, to be published in September by Simon & Schuster, I report on a dinner party that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright hosted for Hillary Clinton several months after she assumed that office in 2009, with Powell in attendance:

"Following up on my book, which the Times received in advance of publication, reporter Amy Chozick discovered that Clinton had mentioned her conversation with Powell—as well as an email exchange with him on the same matter—when the FBI interviewed the Democratic presidential nominee during its probe of her private email use at the State Department."

"Powell’s office then released a statement saying he “has no recollection of the dinner conversation,” which he has since repeated to other news outlets. While hardly a denial, his response seems designed to cast doubt on the story."

"Over the weekend, he told a reporter for the New York Post’s Page Six, “Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” with evident annoyance. “The truth is she was using [her personal email] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did,” he said.

"But last June, while reporting on Powell’s advice to Clinton for my book, I contacted his office for comment—and got a very different answer."

"His principal assistant, Margaret “Peggy” Cifrino, informed me then via email that their calendar showed that the Albright dinner had occurred in June 2009. While he didn’t recall some details of the dinner because it had occurred seven years ago, according to Cifrino, he remembered what he did and didn’t say to Clinton on the topic in question that evening:

"He does recall sharing with Secretary Clinton his use of his email account and how useful it was and transformative for the Department. He knew nothing then or until recently about her private home server and a personal domain, nor, therefore, could he have advised her on that or suggested it. By June I would assume her email system was already set up."

P.S. For a real laugh listen to this question by Ron Brynaert:

"Straight up question for @JoeConason: Have you ever received any money directly or indirectly from the Clintons or their related projects?"

https://twitter.com/ronbryn/status/767774023165935616

Bare in mind Bryanert works at Judicial Watch! I mean who pays him exactly?

And we'd be here all day figuring all the people being paid by Donald Trump to vouch for him in public. He's still paying Corey Lewandowski over at CNN. He's got Breitbart, Ailes, Sean Hannity.

Based on who Bryanert works for and who Trump is there is no room for this piety about 'Do the Clintons pay you?'




2 comments:

  1. this is impossible to follow
    who is saying what
    what is the point ?
    you want readers, write so that the structure of your argument is clearer

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you can't follow it, maybe you can't read. When there are quotes, I'm quoting from the link I provide at the end of the quotes.

    No quotes, It's me making a point.

    You must be a Trump supporter

    ReplyDelete