Clinton's State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries

[rooster59]

Clinton's State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries

STEPHEN BRAUN, Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) — An Associated Press review of the official calendar Hillary Clinton kept as secretary of state identified at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests that were not recorded or omitted the names of those she met.

The fuller details of those meetings were included in files the State Department turned over to the AP after it sued the government in federal court.

The missing entries raise new questions about how Clinton and her inner circle handled government records documenting her State Department tenure — in this case, why the official chronology of her four-year term does not closely mirror the other, more detailed records of her daily meetings.

At a time when Clinton's private email system is under scrutiny by an FBI criminal investigation, the calendar omissions reinforce concerns that she sought to eliminate the "risk of the personal being accessible" — as she wrote in an email exchange that she failed to turn over to the government but was subsequently uncovered in a top aide's inbox.

The AP found the omissions by comparing the 1,500-page calendar with separate planning schedules supplied to Clinton by aides in advance of each day's events. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, the records show.

No known federal laws were violated and some omissions could be blamed on Clinton's highly fluid schedule, which sometimes forced late cancellations. But only seven meetings in Clinton's planning schedules were replaced by substitute events on her official calendar. More than 60 other events listed in Clinton's planners were omitted entirely in her calendar, tersely noted or described only as "private meetings" — all without naming those who met with her.

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Thursday night that the multiple discrepancies between her State Department calendar and her planning schedules "simply reflect a more detailed version in one version as compared to another, all maintained by her staff."

Merrill said that Clinton "has always made an effort to be transparent since entering public life, whether it be the release of over 30 years of tax returns, years of financial disclosure forms, or asking that 55,000 pages of work emails from her time of secretary of state be turned over to the public."

In one key omission, Clinton's State Department calendar dropped the identities of a dozen major Wall Street and business leaders who met with her during a private breakfast discussion at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2009, The meeting occurred minutes before Clinton appeared in public at the exchange to ring the market's ceremonial opening bell.

Despite the omission, Clinton's State Department planning schedules from the same day listed the names of all Clinton's breakfast guests — most of whose firms had lobbied the government and donated to her family's global charity. The event was closed to the press and merited only a brief mention in her calendar, which omitted all her guests' names — among them Blackstone Group Chairman Steven Schwarzman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and then-New York Bank of Mellon CEO Robert Kelly.

Clinton's calendar also repeatedly omitted private dinners and meetings with political donors, policy sessions with groups of corporate leaders and "drop-bys" with old Clinton campaign hands and advisers. Among those whose names were omitted from her calendar were longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal, consultant and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas "Mack" McLarty, former energy lobbyist Joseph Wilson and entertainment magnate and Clinton campaign bundler Haim Saban.

The AP first sought Clinton's calendar and schedules from the State Department in August 2013, but the agency would not acknowledge even that it had the material. After nearly two years of delay, the AP sued the State Department in March 2015. The department agreed in a court filing last August to turn over Clinton's calendar, and provided the documents in November. After noticing discrepancies between Clinton's calendar and some schedules, the AP pressed in court for all of Clinton's planning material. The U.S. has released about one-third of those planners to the AP, so far.

The State Department censored both sets of documents for national security and other reasons, but those changes were made after the documents were turned over to the State Department at the end of Clinton's tenure.

The documents obtained by the AP do not show who specifically logged entries in Clinton's calendar or who edited the material. Clinton's emails and other records show that she and two close aides, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and scheduling assistant Lona J. Valmoro, held weekly meetings and emailed almost every day about Clinton's plans. According to the recent inspector general's audit and a court declaration made last December by the State Department's acting executive secretary, Clinton's aides had access to her calendar through a government Microsoft Outlook account. Both Abedin and Valmoro were political appointees at the State Department and are now aides in her presidential campaign.

Unlike Clinton's planning schedules, which were sent to Clinton each morning, her calendar was edited after each event, the AP's review showed. Some calendar entries were accompanied by Valmoro emails — indicating she may have added those entries. Every meeting entry also included both the planned time of the event and the actual time — showing that Clinton's calendar was being used to document each meeting after it ended.

The State Department said Friday that "extensive records" from Clinton's calendars were preserved. Spokesman John Kirby said he couldn't speak in more detail about practices during Clinton's tenure because of the AP's ongoing lawsuit.

Kirby said the department was confident it was properly preserving Secretary John Kerry's calendars and other historic documents, but he noted that Kerry was not required to include details of private, non-work-related meetings. Kirby declined to specify the agency's definition of those private sessions, saying only that "there are obviously some moments of his life that have no bearing on his work as secretary of state."

Kirby would not comment on how Clinton and other former secretaries handled their calendars. Five former State Department logistics officials told the AP that some of Clinton's predecessors also omitted some private meetings from their calendars. The former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss sensitive agency practices, said omitted meetings typically were for medical or other personal reasons as opposed to the meetings Clinton attended with political and charity donors and with corporate executives.

P.J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman for Clinton at the time, told the AP that Clinton's vision of "21st century statecraft" included exchanging views with corporate leaders and promoting public-private partnerships. "That was certainly reflected in her day-to-day schedule, her travel and her global outreach," Crowley said.

The former department officials as well as government records experts said that secretaries of state have wide latitude in keeping their schedules — despite federal laws and agency rules overseeing the archiving of calendars and warning against altering or deleting records. Omissions in Clinton's calendar could undermine the document's historical accuracy, particularly its depictions of Clinton's access to political, corporate and other influences, experts said.

"It's clear that any outside influence needs to be clearly identified in some way to at least guarantee transparency. That didn't happen," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government reform group. "These discrepancies are striking because of her possible interest at the time in running for the presidency."

Clinton's terse calendar entry on her 2009 private breakfast on Wall Street contains no details on what she and her 12 guests discussed.

Besides Schwarzman, Nooyi and Kelly, Clinton's other guests were Fabrizio Freda, CEO of the Estee Lauder Companies Inc.; Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks Corp.; Lewis Frankfort, chairman of Coach Inc.; Ellen Kullman, then-CEO of DuPont; David M. Cote, CEO of Honeywell International Inc.; James Tisch, president of Loews Corp.; John D. Wren, CEO of Omnicom Group; then-McGraw Hill Companies chairman Harold McGraw III; and James Taiclet, chairman of the American Tower Corp. Also attending was then-NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer, who later accompanied Clinton when she rang the stock exchange bell.

Four of the attendees — Schwarzman, Nooyi, Cote and Kullman — headed companies that later donated to Clinton's pet diplomatic project of that period, the U.S. pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

All the firms represented except Coach lobbied the government in 2009; Blackstone, Honeywell, Omnicom and DuPont lobbied the State Department that year. Schwarzman and Frankfort have personally donated to the Clinton Foundation, and the other firms — except for American Tower and New York Bank of Mellon — also contributed to the Clinton charity.

-- (c) Associated Press 2016-06-25

[JetsetBkk]

Just get on with it and impeach the corrupt woman.

[JHolmesJr]

Lyin Crooked Hillary…she's starting to own it now.

[Rancid]

Obama will never allow Hillary to be indicted, regardless of how how much more corruption and lying surfaces, add to that the media will never go after her properly either, she is the war candidate their owners want.

[NickJ]

Sadly, It will not matter. Nobody voting for her cares.

[mrwebb8825]

Sadly, It will not matter. Nobody voting for her cares.

Nobody voting for her cares BUT, everybody else does. If Obama buries it (or tries to) his legacy may very well be sharing the Martha Stewart suite at club fed with her. Clinton may think her poop don't stink but she also forgets that she's only carrying around 1/4th of the decided voters. With the SC effectively blocking the registration of another 4 million voters, with the media finally starting to mention her wrong doings, with the judge finally calling it a criminal investigation by the FBI, with Bernie announcing that his campaign has only just begun and the full power of The Donald coming down on her, she might just as well start looking into a relocation plan to Rio. (Brazil being a non-extradition country)

On a side note: I want all of you Clinton supporters to notice that, not once did I refer to you as "Wing-nuts", "Mongoloids", "Uneducated", "Low-brow", "Knuckle-draggers", etc. as I respect your right to believe what you want to believe and I would appreciate the same in reciprocation. Posts calling other people names and addressing them with derogatory labels is uncalled for.

I really hope the forum mods will take this into account with all future discussions of this political season.

[NovaBlue05]

Move along.....nothing to see here....

[bassman]

Haven't heard from Hillary in days. She's holed up, knowing that main stream media will blow this story over by Monday. Didn't see her on CNN about the UK referendum, of course that being an embarrassment to Clinton, Obama, George Soros and Ted Turner, I understand why.

That she is beyond corrupt is an understatement, Donald Rumsfeld says when he goes abroad there is a great worry among US allies, to share sensitive information with a Clinton administration, because of her lack of concern when keeping secrets. Also allies are worrying about possible blackmail/information peddling potential.

That her private server was compromised I personally have no doubt. If Guccifer, Guccifer 2, Wikileaks or the Kremlin release her most damaging emails after her election, there will be a constitutional crisis in America and that would cause a real world economic crisis. Whether they "sale it" back to Hillary or pay America back for its sanctions remains to be seen.

What little good of the Obama legacy it will burn in flames with his endorsement of Hillary.

A week doesn't go by that Trump doesn't piss me off, but no way Hillary. The credibility of a nation is at stake.

[stevenl]

Haven't heard from Hillary in days. She's holed up, knowing that main stream media will blow this story over by Monday. Didn't see her on CNN about the UK referendum, of course that being an embarrassment to Clinton, Obama, George Soros and Ted Turner, I understand why.

That she is beyond corrupt is an understatement, Donald Rumsfeld says when he goes abroad there is a great worry among US allies, to share sensitive information with a Clinton administration, because of her lack of concern when keeping secrets. Also allies are worrying about possible blackmail/information peddling potential.

That her private server was compromised I personally have no doubt. If Guccifer, Guccifer 2, Wikileaks or the Kremlin release her most damaging emails after her election, there will be a constitutional crisis in America and that would cause a real world economic crisis. Whether they "sale it" back to Hillary or pay America back for its sanctions remains to be seen.

What little good of the Obama legacy it will burn in flames with his endorsement of Hillary.

A week doesn't go by that Trump doesn't piss me off, but no way Hillary. The credibility of a nation is at stake.

If you did not see her that means you did not look. She was there.

[Boon Mee]

On a side note: I want all of you Clinton supporters to notice that, not once did I refer to you as "Wing-nuts", "Mongoloids", "Uneducated", "Low-brow", "Knuckle-draggers", etc. as I respect your right to believe what you want to believe and I would appreciate the same in reciprocation. Posts calling other people names and addressing them with derogatory labels is uncalled for.

Sadly, it's the 'other' side that resorts to those names.

[Pinot]

On a side note: I want all of you Clinton supporters to notice that, not once did I refer to you as "Wing-nuts", "Mongoloids", "Uneducated", "Low-brow", "Knuckle-draggers", etc. as I respect your right to believe what you want to believe and I would appreciate the same in reciprocation. Posts calling other people names and addressing them with derogatory labels is uncalled for.

Sadly, it's the 'other' side that resorts to those names.

Is "Cheeto Jesus" offensive?

The TV baggers never use derogatory language. It's all on the Clinton supporters, eh? Actually the term is wingnut...all one word, no hyphen, lowercase. They dwell in wingnuttia, where they spend their days telling each other the latest conspiracy theories and how Hillary is beyond corrupt and just plain evil, just like Obama.

What I find most offensive is stating ridiculous things and then using Fox News media echo chamber links to justify the nonsense.

Getting back to HRC's calendar missing scores of entries...yeah, so what? It's like the email server so called story, or Benghazi, or whatever else it is this week. There is nothing there.

Piling on to the latest "gotcha" story ain't going to help get Donald Trump elected. Donald Trump is not a serious candidate for President...outside of wingnuttia.

[TPI]

Sadly, It will not matter. Nobody voting for her cares.

Nobody voting for her cares BUT, everybody else does. If Obama buries it (or tries to) his legacy may very well be sharing the Martha Stewart suite at club fed with her. Clinton may think her poop don't stink but she also forgets that she's only carrying around 1/4th of the decided voters. With the SC effectively blocking the registration of another 4 million voters, with the media finally starting to mention her wrong doings, with the judge finally calling it a criminal investigation by the FBI, with Bernie announcing that his campaign has only just begun and the full power of The Donald coming down on her, she might just as well start looking into a relocation plan to Rio. (Brazil being a non-extradition country)

On a side note: I want all of you Clinton supporters to notice that, not once did I refer to you as "Wing-nuts", "Mongoloids", "Uneducated", "Low-brow", "Knuckle-draggers", etc. as I respect your right to believe what you want to believe and I would appreciate the same in reciprocation. Posts calling other people names and addressing them with derogatory labels is uncalled for.

I really hope the forum mods will take this into account with all future discussions of this political season.

What will the situation be if POTUS gives her executive clemency? He can't be indicted and she's off the hook? She then becomes Madam President and for good measure gives herself a get out of jail free card!!

[Chicog]

Haven't heard from Hillary in days. She's holed up, knowing that main stream media will blow this story over by Monday. Didn't see her on CNN about the UK referendum, of course that being an embarrassment to Clinton, Obama, George Soros and Ted Turner, I understand why.

That she is beyond corrupt is an understatement, Donald Rumsfeld says when he goes abroad there is a great worry among US allies, to share sensitive information with a Clinton administration, because of her lack of concern when keeping secrets. Also allies are worrying about possible blackmail/information peddling potential.

That her private server was compromised I personally have no doubt. If Guccifer, Guccifer 2, Wikileaks or the Kremlin release her most damaging emails after her election, there will be a constitutional crisis in America and that would cause a real world economic crisis. Whether they "sale it" back to Hillary or pay America back for its sanctions remains to be seen.

What little good of the Obama legacy it will burn in flames with his endorsement of Hillary.

A week doesn't go by that Trump doesn't piss me off, but no way Hillary. The credibility of a nation is at stake.

If you did not see her that means you did not look. She was there.

She has been in Paris attending a fundraiser.

So presumably Fox will start screaming about the Logan Act or something.

She's in Indiana and Ohio today.

Meanwhile Trump is in the UK and has banned yet another news outlet for not being "nice" to him.

[NovaBlue05]

Sadly, It will not matter. Nobody voting for her cares.

Nobody voting for her cares BUT, everybody else does. If Obama buries it (or tries to) his legacy may very well be sharing the Martha Stewart suite at club fed with her. Clinton may think her poop don't stink but she also forgets that she's only carrying around 1/4th of the decided voters. With the SC effectively blocking the registration of another 4 million voters, with the media finally starting to mention her wrong doings, with the judge finally calling it a criminal investigation by the FBI, with Bernie announcing that his campaign has only just begun and the full power of The Donald coming down on her, she might just as well start looking into a relocation plan to Rio. (Brazil being a non-extradition country)

On a side note: I want all of you Clinton supporters to notice that, not once did I refer to you as "Wing-nuts", "Mongoloids", "Uneducated", "Low-brow", "Knuckle-draggers", etc. as I respect your right to believe what you want to believe and I would appreciate the same in reciprocation. Posts calling other people names and addressing them with derogatory labels is uncalled for.

I really hope the forum mods will take this into account with all future discussions of this political season.

What will the situation be if POTUS gives her executive clemency? He can't be indicted and she's off the hook? She then becomes Madam President and for good measure gives herself a get out of jail free card!!

He won't have to pardon her because he won't allow an indictment to happen in the first place

[Pinot]

This AP story is falling apart, as usual. Turns out, Braun (the author) has had an interesting tenure at the AP, the only subject he's ever covered is "conspiracies" related to Clinton. In Braun's writings, he hints, he raises his eyebrow, he drops in a small piece of information, and you can almost see the wink he gives when he does. There is NOTHING there. There is nothing there in the email server story but this story doesn't even have any background.

This calendar story is completely worthless. The AP won't provide access to the documents it received from State. Groundless!

On to the next conspiracy because this one is DOA.

[Buzzz]

Who writes this crap? More fake scandals for the right wing fake news or conspiracy nuts.

The truth comes out, the 6th paragraph..."No known federal laws were violated"

Why do the conservatives have to make up so many fake scandals if Hillary is so evil I wonder?

At least the Republican Senators realize they are all fake scandals, otherwise the full Senate would never have approved Hillary 94-2 as Secretary of State.

Edited June 26, 2016 by Buzzz

[mrwebb8825]

Who writes this crap? More fake scandals for the right wing fake news or conspiracy nuts.

The truth comes out, the 6th paragraph..."No known federal laws were violated"

Why do the conservatives have to make up so many fake scandals if Hillary is so evil I wonder?

At least the Republican Senators realize they are all fake scandals, otherwise the full Senate would never have approved Hillary 94-2 as Secretary of State.

Ahem, these scandals are while she was SoS, not while she was 1st lady.

[Buzzz]

Who writes this crap? More fake scandals for the right wing fake news or conspiracy nuts.

The truth comes out, the 6th paragraph..."No known federal laws were violated"

Why do the conservatives have to make up so many fake scandals if Hillary is so evil I wonder?

At least the Republican Senators realize they are all fake scandals, otherwise the full Senate would never have approved Hillary 94-2 as Secretary of State.

Ahem, these scandals are while she was SoS, not while she was 1st lady.

Thanks. So, it's verified, all the scandals while she was Senator and First Lady are fabricated right wing hogwash.

She became corrupt after the Full Senate approved her 94-2.