“If you’re using one device,” former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told Megyn Kelly last night in a discussion of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, “then nothing’s personal.” Of course, we know now that Hillary used multiple devices despite her claims otherwise after the exposure of her private e-mail system, but that’s hardly the worst of it. The former intelligence commander tells Kelly that penetration of Hillary’s communications by hostile powers was not just possible but “likely,” and the odds are “very high” that both friends and foes had a ringside seat to American diplomatic strategies for several years (via Daniel Halper):
FLYNN: As a military officer, if I said I was doing something for convenience’s sake to the soldiers that I was leading, and it was solely for my convenience instead of their, you know, their welfare, I should be relieved of duty. I would expect to be fired. You know, it’s one of those things where if it doesn’t feel good, it probably isn’t. And this one doesn’t feel good to me.
KELLY: What do you think the odds are that the Chinese, the Russians hacked into that server and her e-mail account?
FLYNN: Very high. Likely.
KELLY: Really?
FLYNN: Yep. Likely. They’re very good at it. China, Russia, Iran, potentially the North Koreans. And these — and other countries who may be our allies, because they can.
KELLY: But she says the sever was always at the house, and under protection by the Secret Service, at least the physical server. I mean, do you have any questions about who was actually [garbled] that server?
FLYNN: I think we all ought to be asking that question. I mean, if it’s government, if the Blackberry’s government and she did everything — I mean, everything that a person in that level of responsibility touches who’s in the government, everything belongs to the government, for the most part. I mean, if you’re using a government device to do personal things, I mean I just think that’s what you do. You accept that, and if somebody’s doing things — somebody’s sending you stupid things, you tell them to stop. But if you’re using one device, and it’s personal and professional, you know then nothing’s personal.
We should all be asking these questions, and more importantly, Hillary Clinton should be answering them. Where exactly is she these days? She hasn’t announced her run for the presidency officially yet, but the day is drawing closer. The winding down of the Ready for Hillary PAC will signal that it’s almost here:
When Hillary Clinton announces her presidential campaign, as expected, more than a dozen people in a nondescript office building overlooking the Potomac River will blast out the news by email and social media to millions of her supporters, urging them to sign onto her campaign.
And then the super PAC will begin winding down its operations — just as the Democrat opens her White House campaign.
Clinton’s new beginning will mark the end of Ready for Hillary, which launched two years ago to lay the groundwork for a Clinton campaign, organized her sprawling network of supporters and promoted the former secretary of state on campuses, at small gatherings and Democratic rallies. It will leave behind a data-rich list of volunteers and financial supporters to be tapped for her campaign.
Speaking of nothing being personal, Kate Anderson Brower got a chance to speak about the Clinton years with White House personnel, and they don’t paint a heartwarming picture of the couple. In her new book The Residence, Brower uncovered the second-floor secrets of several administrations — but only one is bidding for a comeback:
Allen cannot hide his reservations about the Clintons. Over lunch by the pool at his large home in rural Pennsylvania, he fondly recalled how Mrs. Clinton always asked him to help her by tying bows on her outfits, something she couldn’t do herself. But he said the Clintons never fully trusted the residence staff and were particularly suspicious of the Usher’s Office. “They were about the most paranoid people I’d ever seen in my life.”
Allen isn’t the only one with bitter memories of the Clinton White House. Usher Chris Emery, who had been close with the Bushes, remembers feeling unduly scrutinized by the Clintons. In the 14 months he served them, he says, he was subjected to three drug tests and a background check that he was not due to have for several years. He says that some of the questions he was asked—including what church he belonged to—were unusually personal, so he refused to answer them. “I think they were just trying to find something to make it easier [to fire me].” He sighed. And, indeed, when Emery was fired from the White House in 1994, it was in part because of a favor he had done for former first lady Barbara Bush.
The Secret Service can’t be terribly enthusiastic about it either:
One day, according to Payne, he was walking through the second-floor private kitchen when an agent walked in behind him waiting to escort Chelsea to Sidwell Friends, the private school she attended in northwest Washington. Chelsea was on the phone.
“Oh, I’ve got to go,” she told her friend. “The pigs are here.”
The agent turned “crimson,” Payne recalls. “Ms. Clinton, I want to tell you something. My job is to stand between you, your family, and a bullet. Do you understand?”
She replied: “Well, that’s what my mother and father call you.”
Ooooooo-kay.
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