In the News
- Emails: 6 questions for Hillary Clinton
- Obama says he learned last week
- Feinstein wants answers from Clinton
- Troubles ahead for Congress
- Debt limit: Both sides jockeying
- Iran: Obama prepared to walk away
- Thousands march on Selma bridge
- Iowa ag summit for 2016ers: 5 takeaways
- Obama: High-tech hiring effort
- Dempsey: Some Iraqi troops not ready
Emails: 6 Questions for Hillary Clinton
• Why did Clinton set up this email system? No other secstate has used one exclusively. Did she simply want to have as much control over her email correspondence as possible? If so, why? Was there political motivation, to shield communications from the GOP? Did she consider a private server more secure from hacking? If so, who advised her? (WaPo)
• How many emails did Clinton send from her private account during her four years at the State Dept? Clinton World has shipped 55,000 pages of emails to State. How many more pages exist? A Clinton aide has said 90% of those turned over were between Clinton and agency employees. The others were other govt officials. Still doesn’t say if that was all the emails
• What did Clinton mean with her tweet? “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them…” Did she mean the 55,000 pages? Or all of her emails? If it’s all her emails, the burden to turn them over rests with her, not State
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• Who was in charge of deciding which emails Clinton sent to State for archiving? We know someone (or people) in Clinton’s orbit went through the emails to decide which ones should be shipped to State. The supposed standard for withholding was “personal.” But we don’t know who it was and we need to
• Did anyone at State or the WH raise concerns about Clinton’s exclusive use of the private email system? A Friday Politico piece said the WH, State and Clinton’s personal office knew in August that House Republicans had info that Clinton used personal email. Did anyone at State or the WH raise a red flag earlier? If so, what was Clinton’s response? Did it get to her?
• How do we know there was no classified info in those emails? What about “sensitive” material, and if they did include “sensitive” material, did her email system meet State requirements for the exchange of such info? State has said there didn’t appear to be any classified info, but they needed to go through the trove again to check for “sensitive” info – so – wiggle room
Clinton Emails: Obama Says He Learned Last Week
• President Obama said Saturday that he had learned only last week that Hillary Clinton used a private email system for her official correspondence when she was SecState. In a CBS News interview, Obama said the policy of his admin was to “encourage transparency” and he was pleased Clinton had instructed State to turn over her emails for archiving (NYT, me)
• “My emails, the Blackberry I carry around, all those records are available and archived,” Obama said. Asked how Clinton’s email practices met the standards of transparency he has called for, Obama said that “the fact that she is going to be putting them forward will allow us to make sure that people have the information they need.”
• Obama didn’t address how he could have avoided noticing that Clinton was sending emails from a “clintonemail.com” address throughout the years she served in his admin. WH officials have said in recent days that some in the West Wing were aware that Clinton wasn’t using an official “state.gov” email address for official correspondence
• WH spox Josh Earnest has repeatedly said the guidance from admin lawyers is that employees should use their govt-issued email addresses for their official business. He’ll likely be hammered again in the briefing today
• The WH has refused to say whether they believe that Clinton violated any admin policies or broke any laws by conducting all of her business with a private email address. Clinton tweeted Wed: “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”
• Vid: Hillary Clinton – “a relatable woman on a couch” – doesn’t let a little thing like the email controversy get in the way of her inevitable rise to the presidency in SNL’s open
Feinstein Wants Answers From Clinton
• Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that Hillary Clinton “needs to step up and come out and state exactly what the situation is. I think from this point on the silence is going to hurt her.” Feinstein didn’t accuse Clinton of any wrongdoing (Hill, me)
• Former SecState Colin Powell said on ABC’s This Week Sunday that he had no record of his State Dept email messages. “I don’t have any of them – I don’t have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files.” He declined to weigh in on what Clinton should do
• Rep Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chair of the House select committee on Benghazi, said Sunday on CBS that there are “gaps of months and months and months” in the emails provided to the committee by Clinton. He pointed to an image of Clinton looking at a smartphone while on a trip to Libya. “We have no emails from that day. In fact, we have no emails from that trip.”
• Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA), former House Oversight Committee chair, said on CNN Sunday, “A subpoena, which Trey Gowdy issued, is so that in fact it will be a crime if she knowingly withholds documents pursuant to subpoena.”
• Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA), who sits on the House Benghazi committee, pushed back on CNN. “They issued a subpoena for records we already have. We’ve read them. There’s nothing in them. What is the law at the time? The law at the time was that she could use her personal emails as long as she preserved it.”
• Wow: “I don’t email,” Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “You can have every email I’ve ever sent. I’ve never sent one.” (HuffPo)
Troubles Ahead for Congress
• In their first major test of governing this year, Republicans stumbled, faltered – and nearly shut down the Dept of Homeland Security. And that vote may have been the easy one (NYT, me)
• In April, doctors who treat Medicare patients face a dramatic cut in pay. In May, the highway trust fund runs dry. In June, the charter for the federal Export-Import Bank ceases to exist. Then in October, across-the-board spending cuts return, the govt runs out of money – and Treasury bumps up against its borrowing limit. All require congressional action
• “We really don’t have 218 votes to determine a bathroom break over here on our side,” said Rep Charlie Dent (R-PA). “So how are we going to get 218 votes on transportation, or trade, or whatever the issue? We might as well face the political reality of our circumstances and then act accordingly.” Democrats feel empowered
• In an interview in her office, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “Part of our strength stems from: They need our votes to pass something. But part of it is, it’s no use for you going down this path, because the president’s going to veto it and we’re going to sustain his veto. And that gives the president leverage and that gives us leverage.”
• But hard-line conservatives like Rep Walter Jones (R-NC) warn: “If the leadership continues to reach out to Democrats and forgets that the Republican Party has certain core principles as a party, it will create more and more animosity.”
• U.S. nonfarm payrolls grew by 295,000 jobs in February, the Labor Dept said Friday. The economy has now added more than 200,000 jobs for 12 straight months, the longest such streak since 1995. Feb’s unemployment rate came in at 5.5% down from Jan’s 5.7% (WSJ, TRNS, me)
Debt Limit: Both Sides Jockeying
• Congress will be in no hurry to raise the federal govt’s borrowing limit, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Sunday, but will act in time to avoid Washington defaulting on its debt. “The debt ceiling will be handled over a period of months,” McConnell said on CBS’s Face the Nation (Reuters, me)
• On Friday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked Congress to raise the statutory cap on borrowing “as soon as possible.” The govt is expected to exhaust its borrowing authority around 15 March, but it can take “extraordinary measures” to continue paying its bills. The CBO estimates such steps will run out sometime in October or November
• “I made it very clear after the November
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