A new Podesta email released by WikiLeaks today reveals further direct coordination between the State Department and the Clinton campaign during what should have been a confidential investigation. The following email chain starts with a note from Clinton Deputy Communications Director, Kristina Schake, on April 9th, 2015 informing Mook, Palmieri, Mills, Podesta and Samuelson that “Someone here just got a tip that the State Department may be planning to release her Benghazi emails tomorrow or Monday.”
The emails further reveal a continued coordination between the State Department and the Clinton campaign with Heather Samuelson providing frequent status updates over the course of the following week.
As legal experts pointed out previously, ultimately another month passed before the State Department finally released the first Clinton emails on May 22, 2015. It is unclear what accounted for the delay. It is also extremely unclear why Samuelson would have received frequent updates from the State Department on the status of ongoing FOIA requests as she was no longer employed by the State Department in 2015.
It’s also unclear, and curious, why all of the controversial conversations, like this one, always seem to be conducted through gmail rather than official campaign email addresses.
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This latest discovery comes after we first reported on Monday another potential instance of the State Department seemingly “tipping off” the Clinton campaign on the timing of FOIA releases (see “Leaked Email Reveals Potential Collusion Between State Department And Clinton Campaign“), and also potentially explaining why Heather Samuelson got DOJ immunity, something which the House Judiciary Committee announced late on Tuesday it demands an Inspector General probe into.
In the following email dated March 17, 2015 disclosed today by Wikileaks, we find troubling details of the internal State Department process, which somehow made its way to Samlueson with details so nuanced it may only have come as a result of direct communication between the State Department (or DOS as Samuelson calls it) as Hillary’s young confidant, and which in turn she promptly conveyed to her team, regarding the FOIA request, in what appears to be a material breach of confidentiality. This is what she said :
DOS is soon releasing another round of documents and email traffic (not hers) in response to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request on DOS’s process for reviewing WJC’s speaking engagements.
It’s 116 pages with approx. 50 sponsor/subsponsor requests. No objections by DOS in this batch, but some lengthy internal discussions among DOS officials that I highlighted below.
There is one request where speaking fee would have been paid by Turkish govt — WJC’s office declined this. And one speaking engagement with fee from Canadian government, which he did do.
Let me know if you have any questions.
We have one question, Heather: is this legal, and are emailed exchanges such as this one why you received DOJ immunity in exchange for “turning over your laptop”?
From the original email, bolding ours.
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From: Heather Samuelson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 10:53 AM
To: Maura Pally; Craig Minassian; Philippe Reines; Nick Merrill; Jennifer Palmier I
Cc: Cheryl Mills; Tina Flournoy
Subject: JW FOIA | WJC Speeches
All — DOS is soon releasing another round of documents and email traffic (not hers) in response to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request on DOS’s process for reviewing WJC’s speaking engagements.
It’s 116 pages with approx. 50 sponsor/subsponsor requests. No objections by DOS in this batch, but some lengthy internal discussions among DOS officials that I highlighted below.
There is one request where speaking fee would have been paid by Turkish govt — WJC’s office declined this. And one speaking engagement with fee from Canadian government, which he did do.
Let me know if you have any questions.
In light of the ongoing speculation that there may have been collusion between the DOJ and Bill Clinton (and thus Hillary), following the infamous “tarmac encounter”, where Bill and Loretta Lynch spoke for 40 minutes about “Bill’s golf game and grandchildren”, the discovery that there was collusion between the State Department and Hillary Clinton, who formerly headed it, seems like a potential conflict of interest to us.
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