“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
It looks like Trump administration investigators are finally about to move in on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her illegal homebrew e-mail server – and she’s scrambling to stay one step ahead of the cops.
The State Department stripped Hillary and five of her closest aides of their security clearances in August… but the word is just getting out.
This could be the first step toward prosecuting her – and the investigation is already underway.
“Former Secretary Clinton’s security clearance was administratively withdrawn on August 30, 2018,” the State Department said in a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley, released last Friday.
Yes, until this September, Hillary still had access to top secret, classified material!
All we can ask is, what took so long?!
Hillary lost her security clearance two years after Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said the government should shred Clinton’s access to classified information.
“I don’t think she should get classified information, and I think the (then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper) should block it given how recklessly she handled this from the start,” Ryan said in 2016.
The State Department letter announcing the move, written in September but not released until last Friday, said Hillary lost her access to the nation’s secrets “at her request.”
Hillary’s spokesman, Nick Merrill, claimed that his boss personally agreed to lose her intelligence access “quietly, so as to not allow Trump to use our national security for partisan purposes yet again. Because that’s what was in the best interest of the country.”
So, the media has decided to spin the decision as “voluntary.”
Yeah, just like former President Bill Clinton “voluntarily agreed” to relinquish his law license in 2001 – to avoid being indicted for perjury, right?
The fact is that the Trump administration is hot on Hillary’s heels – and closing in fast.
Former FBI Director James Comey made heads spin when he refused to indict Clinton for sending the most sensitive national secrets over an unsecured e-mail server in her home in Chappaqua while she was secretary of state.
Foreign intelligence assets intercepted the classified material she sent and stole national secrets, thanks to Hillary’s decision to skirt the law.
“We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account,” Comey said.
But, Comey made Republicans see red when he let her keep the security pass, giving her the right to look at the most sensitive secrets in global intelligence.
“Any other government workers who engaged in such serious offenses would, at a minimum, have their clearances suspended pending an investigation,” Grassley wrote in a 2017 letter to Foggy Bottom. “The failure to do so has given the public the impression that Secretary Clinton and her associates received special treatment.”
Grassley is a Republican – but nonpartisan servicemen who spent their whole careers in military intelligence agreed that Hillary practically handed top secret documents to foreign spies.
“That is one of the things you look at: ‘Is this person a risk?’ And yes, she was a risk,” said retired Col. James Williamson. “From that standpoint, she should have her clearance revoked.”
Williamson’s group, OPSEC – which represents retired spies, intelligence assets, and special forces – wrote to former Secretary of State John Kerry twice about cutting off the Clintons from their hard-won secrets… but Kerry did absolutely nothing.
Now, it looks like President Donald Trump has put the fear of God into Hillary.
The new president stripped former CIA director – and Communist – John Brennan of his security clearance – and that must have convinced Clinton that she was in hot water. She decided to voluntarily remove her own clearance before the investigation went further.
But investigators are already combing through reams of documents to see if she broke the law… and the evidence is literally stacking up!
The State Department said it is going over “tens of thousands” of documents released by the FBI as part of “its ongoing review of the mishandling of classified information related to the use of Clinton’s non-government email server.”
Now, put two-and-two together.
Hillary set up a private e-mail server to keep her dirty laundry out of public records. She stonewalled the investigation, smashed computers with hammers, and hid tens of thousands of e-mails.
She saw the Trump administration closing in – ready to recommend she lose her clearance… and possibly be prosecuted.
So, she “demanded” the State Department cut off her access to classified material.
Sorry, Hillary, that won’t stop the president from scrutinizing every single e-mail and holding you accountable… and Trump is not even stopping with Hillary.
Trump has his administration looking at revoking the security clearances of Obama administration officials – including former President Barack Obama’s FBI directors James Comey and Andrew McCabe, Obama’s NSA adviser Susan Rice, and Obama’s other CIA director, Michael Hayden.
Lock them up!
Frank Holmes is a reporter for The Horn News. He is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”