#ClintonEmail — cui bono?

If I were Hillary Clinton, I would hope this photo never, ever again
sees the light of day. Too late! (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

That's the old Latin phrase, often used in the world of law, for "who benefits."

So, yes, as we learn more and more about Hillary Clinton using private email, and not just Gmail, but, on a private, specially created domain, it's a good question to ask.

(Update, March 9: A sidebar cui bono is Saturday Night Live, with a smashing opening. Click link for video of SNL's opening.)

First person that benefits is, of course, Hillary Clinton.

(Note on photo at right: Clinton has herself claimed that one reason she didn't use a government email account is that BlackBerrys only handle one email account. But that ignores the fact that she should have used another BlackBerry, or some other smartphone for her private email.)

Anyway, back to Hillary Clinton being at the front of the line on cui bono with her private email domain.

After all, via a conservative blog that shall not be linked here, there's this, with the goods starting at about 3:30:



That's where Hillary admits, at a 2000 dinner party, that she stopped using email due to "all the investigations." And, of course, working at the Department of State, she knew that, should Republicans ever get majority rule in either house of Congress, investigations might just happen.

So, Hillary Clinton benefits from having a private email system. Now, her paid flaks, whether employees at her office, or outside hired guns, insist that she's turned over every email from that domain except "personal notes."

First, we should trust her flaks on this why? Especially when one of them, Phillippe Reines, has used a Gmail account whose emails apparently have not all been archived properly per federal regulations? Second, we should trust her flaks as to what "personal notes" are, given that Friend of Bill and Hillary Sid Blumenthal reportedly talked with her concerning a "sensitive source" who had direct access to Libyan President Mohammad Magarief about ....

ABOUT THINGS RELATED TO BENGHAZI!

Now, I don't believe the wingnuts' mouth-foaming over Benghazi. But, as I have blogged before, NEITHER "mainstream" party wants to talk about everything the CIA was doing there.

OK, back to cui bono. Details of other beneficiaries, and how their likely benefits redound to Hillary Clinton's, below the fold.



Second? Huma Abedin, otherwise known as Ms. Anthony Weiner, who apparently took notes from Hillary Clinton in the "Stand By Your Man" class. Yes, it's going to be one of those types of blog posts, so fasten your seat belts.

Abedin also had a private email account on the same server, and it is apparently still active. (For your curiosity, Clinton was at HDR22@ClintonEmail.com, Gawker says. The abbreviation is from her maiden name; no HRC for her now, which can itself be interpreted in various ways. Anyway, until just recently, Abedin's account was apparently active.

Clintonistas will probably defend this by saying that Abedin's email can also be archived. That said, I'm assuming that it is not already archived, and that Department of State officials, Congressional GOP and the White House, if they didn't know Clinton was relying solely on a personal account, surely didn't know Abedin was.

And, since the personal is always the political in the Clinton world, keeping those conversations off official government servers would be very nice. (These are all private notes, right, Phillippe? Right, Adrienne Watson? Right, Correct the Record?)

Third to benefit?

Eric Hothem. A Whois lists an "Eric Hoteham" of Chappaqua, N.Y., at the Clintons' home address, as running ClintonEmail.

Well, that name doesn't draw hits on Google, but the name of Eric Hothem does.

As noted here and elsewhere, he was a Hillary Clinton staffer when she was First Lady. And, that link notes he's got plenty of his own "baggage." Given that baggage, his long-time Democratic Leadership Council connections, his connections to Clinton money and more, the optics just continue to look worse all the time. More here on some of the angles involved with a private server, even without Hothem's name attached.

And, AP notes that he's the registered person for two other domains, both associated with the Clintons. The AP also notes:

He was a special assistant to Clinton as far back as 1997 and considered one of the family's information technology experts.

In other words, he would have known exactly what he was doing, and how to keep stuff away from private eyes. This dovetails with an early spin from Clinton, Inc., that insisted this site was well protected against hacking. (Even though it wasn't too well protected, since it was hacked in 2013.) 

Time for more dot-connecting.

First, how plugged in is Hothem? Oh, about this:

Hothem also received a special acknowledgement in Hillary Clinton’s book Living History.

The biggie, though?

He’s Mr. Moneybags:

Hothem went to work for Citigroup, then moved to JP Morgan Chase in 2013, according to public disclosure reports accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

 The documents indicate that Hothem began his financial career in 2002, just a year after his last documented work as an aide to Clinton. … 

 An analysis of Clinton’s personal financial disclosure forms shows she maintained accounts worth millions of dollars at Citibank throughout her years in the Senate. She moved her largest accounts to JP Morgan in 2009. 

 Her most recent available public financial disclosure in 2012 shows that she holds up to $25 million worth of assets in a JP Morgan account. Hothem did not make the switch to JP Morgan until Clinton was out of federal office in May 2013.

He also appears to have his full arsenal of securities licenses, etc.

This does lead to two questions related to this that I’ve not yet seen.

Why did Hillary move her accounts to JP Morgan in 2009, and why did Hothem not wait to follow until 2013?

Perhaps it was entirely due to conflict-of-interest or follow-the-money concerns.

Anyway, given that he, as well as Abedin, had worked for the Clintons during their White House years, and given that the Clinton Foundation has a history of accepting money from unsavory people, Hothem definitely benefits.

He’d hire others for the more techie work, but, they were “others” who surely keep the email records of big banks like Citibank and JP Morgan turd-polished for public inspection. So, he benefited Hillary that way, while getting some nice fees himself, I presume.

And, while “money laundering” may be an ugly term, I’m sure that his decade-plus in the banksters’ world gave him plenty of experience on advising the Clintons, individually and as officers of the foundation, in various ways.

Huma Abedin comes back in at this point. Those oh so private notes could be seen by Hothem, with the help of his techie assistants, in real time, if they pertained to his financial work, without them needing to actually email, or call, him.

I’m sure more “cui bono” will pop up soon enough. But, that's a good starting point.

And, something else already may have. Lifted from comments, it appears there's yet more email addresses, like HDR19.... HDR20.... etc., all on that server.

That’s why it’s not just wingnuts and real left-liberals telling Clintonistas to zip it.

The Nation also has little sympathy for Hillary Clinton. And rightly so. Beyond all the other stuff, the fact that the 2013 hack revealed she was talking to Sid Blumenthal about Libya issues has invited the House GOP wingnuts to go trolling for Benghazi.

And Dear Leader is now "finding out" he knew more about the emails than first admitted.

And, as for the issue about this being Benghazi trolling? Well, blind hogs can still find acorns. Alger Hiss was guilty of perjury, and of cooperating with the Soviets, even if it was Dick Nixon who was interrogating him.

And, we now have a poll up; do you think she's officially run for the presidency or not?