Hillary, or rather her chief of staff Cheryl Mills, told the company to change the date on the server retention period, which made the emails out of date and ready for deletion.
I hadn't even heard this claim before. It took me 15 minutes of Googling this and sifting through nothing but Breitbart, Blaze, and NR articles before I just gave up. Not going to lie Colton, that was a red flag for me.
So I used the FBI link to actually read through the transcripts.
https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/Hillary R. Clinton Part 03 of 27/view
Apparently Combetta "remembered" that Mills asked to change the date on the server retention in late 2014 early 2015. It's not going to be until March 2015 when her email controversy begins.
What exactly do you think is nefarious here?
And you're completely overlooking the fact that the company did NOT delete the emails at the time when it was requested.
A mistake widely known and reported to be an innocent mistake by Combetta. Combetta admitted to the FBI that he had an "oh ****" moment because he forgot to delete the emails on the server. See p. 25 on the FBI vault.
And the emails weren't actually deleted until months later, specifically after the subpoena was issued by the Senate committee.
And you think this was done... At the request of the Clintons? To cover up their tracks when they originally requested the emails to be deleted months before prior to any investigations? Hmmm... What evidence do we have that the Clintons were in communication with these people and ordered them to hurry up and delete these emails to eliminate incriminating evidence? The FBI vault doesn't seem to support this claim that the NR article seems to insinuate.
And maybe the technician (Combetta) at the server company did that on his own at that point
That's what I've read. He did it to cover his butt because he was supposed to have deleted the emails months prior. The FBI didn't find anything malicious between Combetta and Clinton with this act. Do you have sources that prove otherwise?
It certainly stinks to me.
I'll be honest, it stinks of laziness and incompetence to me. The hallmarks of the Clintons. Not a nefarious ingenious criminal scheme. She's either a criminal genius or incompetent. I wish republicans would make up their minds. From what I read, she didn't want to carry two separate devices. Those employed to secure and maintain the server didn't do their jobs. When it was revealed that she had been using this private email server she was less than forthcoming, knowing that it would hurt her politically.
Nothing malicious or illegal was done. However, the poor job of maintaining the server fed conspiracy theorists. And most of all, the republicans knew they good make hay with this politically. And they did. If she hadn't been in the running for president I doubt we would have heard anything more about this than Ivanka's email controversy. But republicans knew she was the frontrunner and wanted to ruin her.
I tend to side with FBI director James Comey (who gains NOTHING by lying or covering for Clinton):
"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information"
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/james-comey-hillary-clinton-grassley/index.html
Nothing illegal just careless and stupid.
According to the account here (yes, I know National Review is a conservative publication
You're right, it's difficult to take this piece seriously when you read these jabs:
- No, I’m not suggesting that DOJ direct the FBI to break into Mr. Combetta’s home with guns drawn in the dead of night, as Mueller did with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
- Back in November, we catalogued the stark contrasts between Mueller’s brand of hardball and the kid-gloves treatment given to subjects of the Clinton-emails investigation.
- It was unmitigated nonsense, but very useful nonsense. It enabled the Obama Justice Department to feign the appearance of a thoroughgoing inquiry: No, no, the fix wasn’t in; they tried really hard to make the case but, gee whiz, they ran into some legal restrictions that just couldn’t be overcome.
- The Trump Justice Department should appoint a solid United States attorney and some hard-nosed FBI agents from outside Washington, with no prior involvement in the Clinton probe, and instruct them to follow Mueller’s aggressive model in investigating Combetta. In return for the immunity he should never have been granted in the first place, the PRN tech should be compelled to reveal exactly what he was told in these conversations with Clinton lawyers. If he refuses, Combetta should be prosecuted, at a minimum, for lying to the FBI and obstructing Congress’s Benghazi investigation.
- As Robert Mueller might say of Paul Manafort: That should get his attention.
The bitterness is so thick you can taste it! You know it's bad when Benghazigate rears its ugly head! All we needed was a Seth Rich reference to complete the trifecta.
The title of this piece should be, "Paul Manaford and Michael Cohen are being railroaded! Can we please return the favor to Clinton? Oh and while at the same time ignore all of the crap the Trump crime cartel has committed? Thanks."
These conspiracies are why I tend to stick with more mainstream sources like NPR, Wash Post, NY Times, NY Post, CNN, and MSNBC while avoiding places like the NR and Breitbart.