Last week, the FBI and State Department released documents related to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State. The FBI released 299 pages of internal records detailing a fight between the bureau and the State Department over the classification of an email regarding arrests related to the attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. The report includes internal emails as well as internal memos that shed additional light into the investigation of Clinton’s emails by the FBI. Read the report below or download a PDF copy HERE.
Meanwhile, the State Department released 371 of the 15,000 emails that were turned over to the department by the FBI. The total document dump totaled over 1,000 pages and are “near duplicates” of the documents turned over by Clinton’s team in 2014. The State Department has been reviewing the emails turned over by the FBI since late summer 2016 and has reported that about 60% of the emails were personal in nature and not related to business. Of the emails that relate to Clinton’s time as Secretary of State, the department reports that a “substantial number” of them are duplicates of those that have been previously reviewed. The State Department will continue to review and release the emails until all 15,000 have been examined. You can access the latest batch of emails by following the steps below:
Last week, the State Department announced that of the 15,000 emails found on Hillary Clinton’s email server turned over to the department by the FBI, 30 were related to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. This past week, the State Department said that of the 30 emails, only three had been previously unreleased. The one new email is dated January 23, 2013 and is from Ambassador to Brazil Tom Shannon to Clinton’s aide Cheryl Mills complimenting Clinton on her handling of her testimony on Capitol Hill. Mills then forwarded the email to Clinton. The other two emails are forwarded copies of two previously released emails. A copy of the emails is embedded below, and a PDF copy can be downloaded HERE.
Today, Hillary for America released a fact sheet combating conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health. The release references the official physicians report released by Clinton’s doctor in 2015 and denies all allegations that Clinton’s health is failing. The full release is below.
Trump Pushes Deranged Conspiracy About Clinton’s Health To Distract From Tax Return Questions
Facing withering criticism from national media outlets, state editorial boards and even some Republicanallies over his refusal to release his tax returns, Donald Trump is once again peddling deranged conspiracy theories in a desperate attempt to change the subject – this time with absurd and debunked claims about Hillary Clinton’s health.
This is hardly the first time Trump and his allies have donned tin foil hats when things weren’t going his way. When his back was previously up against the wall, he’s suggested President Obama was a Muslim with ISIS sympathies, that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered and that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Now, with the help of his well-oiled network of conspiracy peddlers – from Roger Stone to Sean Hannity – Trump is desperately trying to give life to already busted myths about the health of a woman whose stamina and focus was publicly lauded following an 11 hours long hearing about the tragedy in Benghazi.
Per his long pattern, Trump will clearly say or do anything to avoid the barrage of questions only his tax returns can answer: Whether he’s worth as much as he dubiously claims? Whether his pro-Kremlin policies stem from financial conflicts of interest with Russian oligarchs? Or whether he actually gives as much as he says to charity?
“While it is dismaying to see the Republican nominee for president push deranged conspiracy theories in a foreign policy speech, it’s no longer surprising,” said Jennifer Palmieri. “Donald Trump is simply parroting lies based on fabricated documents promoted by Roger Stone and his right wing allies. Hillary Clinton has released a detailed medical record showing her to be in excellent health plus her personal tax returns since 1977, while Trump has failed to provide the public with the most basic financial information disclosed by every major candidate in the last 40 years. It’s time for him to stop using shameful distractions to hide his own record.”
Two Deranged, Debunked Conspiracies About Clinton’s Health
The Doctors’ Letters
Trump confidant and discredited conspiracy peddler Roger Stone and his right-wing allies have been pushingfake medical documents supposedly leaked from Hillary Clinton’s physician that purport to show grave health problems.
However, here’s a statement from the actual Dr. Lisa Bardack, Hillary Clinton’s real internist and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at CareMount Medical, debunking the veracity of these false documents:
“As Secretary Clinton’s long time physician, I released a medical statement during the campaign indicating that she is in excellent health. I have recently been made aware of allegedly ‘leaked’ medical documents regarding Secretary Clinton with my name on them. These documents are false, were not written by me and are not based on any medical facts. To reiterate what I said in my previous statement, Secretary Clinton is in excellent health and fit to serve as President of the United States.”
Here’s a link to the actual medical records about Hillary Clinton released by Dr. Bardack (written on actual letterhead) with the concluding summary directly below:
Now compare that to the medical records released from Donald Trump’s gastroenterologist – not internist — that makes several peculiar claims that Kurt Eichenwald, senior writer at Newsweek, dissected in a must watch segment on CNN this morning:
Eichenwald: “This is not a real letter because what you have, number one, it’s not from an internist. It’s from a doctor who treats digestive problems.”
Eichenwald: “He says that all of Mr. Trump’s medical tests are positive. That means that everything he was tested for, he has. No competent or real doctor would write this.”
Eichenwald: “It also says such things as ‘Donald Trump will be the healthiest president in the history of the United States.’ That sounds a lot like Donald Trump.”
Eichenwald: “It doesn’t have a real letter letterhead. The letterhead was written on Microsoft Word.”
Hannity Drafts Urologist To Diagnose Potential Head Trauma Via Video Tape
To push the baseless narrative about lingering head trauma, Trump surrogate Sean Hannity drafted a urologist – not a neurologist – wearing a white physician’s coat to help diagnose whether a video tape was evidence of repercussions from previous head trauma.
Hillary Clinton sat down for an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace on this morning’s episode of Fox News Sunday. Wallace pressed Clinton a number of issues including the FBI investigation into her handling of classified emails, the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the general election against Republican Donald Trump. Clinton was asked about her popularity and beginning of the general election cycle. Clinton acknowledged she had a lot of work to do, but she spoke about how her popularity numbers are up when she is doing a job, but they seem to drop when she is seeking office. She said, “Every time I run for an office, though, oh my goodness, all of these caricatures come out of nowhere. And people begin to undermine me because when I left office as secretary of state, 66 percent of Americans approved of what I do.” Videos from the interview are below.
The House Select Committee on Benghazi concluded its multi-year investigation into the terrorist attack on the United States Diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. The attack resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith. After reviewing evidence and conducting countless interviews, the committee released its findings at the end of June.
There has been controversy surrounding the committee since its creation in 2014. Democrats have accused Republicans as using the attacks in Benghazi as a way to harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. Its critics point to the endless investigations, many of which concluded before the committee was created in 2014. Because of this, the Republican majority and the Democratic minority of the committee have agreed on little. In fact, they even have separate websites covering the investigation. These divisions were made more apparent when Clinton testified for over 10 hours before the committee in October 2015.
On June 27, the minority members of the committee released their findings in a report led by Representative Elijah Cummings. In the report, the minority members focus on the way the committee has acted and the cost to tax payers for an investigation that ultimately yielded no new findings. They also complained that they were largely left out the process of writing the primary report that was released the next day. The report, which consists of 340 pages, is primarily a criticism of the handling of the investigation by the Republicans on the committee and their limited focus on Clinton.
The Republicans released their final report on June 28, a day after the Democrats. In 869 pages, the committee’s Republicans, led by Representative Trey Gowdy, harshly criticized the State Department, Defense Department, and CIA for failing to fully understand the situation that led to the attack in Benghazi. The report criticizes the delayed action by the Obama administration following the attacks. Overall, the committee failed to find any new evidence that changed the narrative of the attack nor could they prove that Clinton was in any way negligent. Instead, the report largely blames systemic issues for the poor response to the attack.
While the committee is responsible for discovering that Clinton used a private email server as Secretary of State, the findings of the committee largely echo that of an investigations conducted by the State Department in 2012 and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2013. During the Senate hearings in January 2013, Clinton accepted full responsibility for the State Department’s failures leading up to and following the attack. She also spoke about security funding that was cut by Congress arguing that those cuts have made United States diplomatic posts less secure around the world and she urged Congress to increase funding to ensure the safety of diplomats.
Since the release of the report early this week, Clinton has been asked for her thoughts. While she has not had much to say, she did offer a comment late this week saying, “I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on.”
While many agree that it is time to move on, we want to ensure that the report, and every other report released on the Benghazi investigation are fully available to readers in the interest of full transparency. Therefore, we have gathered all the internal investigations and reports into the Benghazi attack into one place. Below, you will find a collection of websites for each the investigative committees as well as a collection of hearings and reports released by Congress and the State Department.
On Wednesday evening, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders took part in the eighth Democratic Debate live from Miami, Florida. The debate aired on CNN in partnership with Univision and The Washington Post and was moderated by Karen Tumulty, Maria Elena Salinas, and Jorge Ramos. Clinton and Sanders were asked tough question about immigration reform. Clinton defended her position of enforcing the border, but giving people who are currently in the country a clear path to citizenship. She also attacked Sanders for not supporting a immigration reform bill in 2007.
Clinton focused on immigrant families saying that she promised to “knock down barriers” for everyone, especially in the realms of employment and housing. Other topics that came up during the debate were the Republican opposition, newly renewed relations with Cuba, Clinton’s use of private email during her time as Secretary of State, and the 2011 attacks in Benghazi. A full video from the debate is below.
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton remained in New Hampshire where she attended a number of Get Out the Vote rallies, but Clinton also took the ground and knocked on doors in Manchester. She stopped at a number of houses and visited with local residents. Clinton is behind in the New Hampshire primary polls, but she has not given up on the state. In addition to her efforts, a number of other politicians were in the state campaigning on her behalf including former Secretary of State Madeleline Albright, Senator Al Franken, and Senator Cory Booker.
Clinton attended three rallies in New Hampshire on Saturday. The events in Concord and Portsmouth were typical events during which Clinton spoke to the crowd before taking questions from the audience. However, the event she held at New England College in Henniker was different in that the campaign challenged Bernie Sanders supports to attend the town hall event. She was asked tough questions about her ties to Wall Street, and she was able to defend herself in person. It was an interesting strategy that might earn her some respect and support. A video from her event in Portsmouth is below.
Today, Hillary will be on CNN’s State of the Union and will hold a community event in Flint, Michigan. For all the latest, follow our revamped Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Clinton appears on “This Week” on January 17, 2016.
This morning, Hillary Clinton appeared on ABC’s This Week. During the interview with host George Stephanopoulos, Clinton discussed her campaign and the upcoming Iowa caucus. She was also asked about recent allegations that 22 of her emails as Secretary of State contained “top secret” information. Clinton dismissed the claim saying, “This is very much like Benghazi. Republicans are going to continue to use it, beat up on me. I understand that. That’s the way they are.” Clinton has repeatedly said that her use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State was a mistake, but she turned everything over to the State Department for them to review and release. A video from the episode will be added when/if available. A transcript can be read HERE.
On Tuesday night, Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. During the interview, Clinton spoke about her campaign and her promise to help all Americas. Colbert asked Clinton about her testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, her Republican rivals, and her TV watching habits. The most surprising moment came when Clinton was asked whether she would let the big banks fail if they had another crisis situation like in 2009. Clinton responded with a simple “yes.” She elaborated saying, “First of all, under Dodd-Frank, that is what will happen because we now have stress tests and I’m going to impose a risk fee on the big bank if they engage in risky behavior. But they have to know, their shareholders have to know that yes, they will fail. And if they’re too big to fail then under my plan and others that have been proposed, they may have to be broken up.” Clips from last night’s show are below.
Last night, Clinton also attended a private fundraiser in Morristown, New Jersey. The fundraiser was hosted by Philip and Barbara Sellinger. As with all private events, the fundraiser was closed to the press.
In a hearing that lasted over 10 hours, Hillary Rodham Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. This was her second time appearing before Congress to answer questions about the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans. However, it was the first time she appeared since it was announced that she used a private email server as Secretary of State.
The day began with opening statements by members of the committee and Clinton (read Clinton’s opening statement on The Briefing). Clinton was then asked an endless series of questions about her response to the attack on Benghazi including where she was, who she spoke with and when, what she knew and when, and why other options weren’t exercised. The other topic of interest was her use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State. She was asked why she used it, who had access to it, why she didn’t turn over all of emails instantly, and how it was decided which emails were personal and which were for work.
The questioning was tense at times, and Clinton and members of the committee did get heated. At one point in the conversation, two members of the committee, Representative Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina), and top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) argued with each other for several minutes before Rep. Gowdy (the chairman of the committee) called for a break.
Much will be said about Clinton’s testimony over the coming days and weeks both in the press and online, but we believe in presenting the information directly to those interested. You can read a full text of Clinton’s opening statement on The Briefing, and full video of the testimony is available from C-SPAN. The video is presented in four parts and can be accessed at the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
Tomorrow, Clinton returns to the campaign trail in Virginia before going to Iowa on Saturday. For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Hillary Clinton Speeches 