Just a guess, but that "communal" laptop was probably a lot more communal when it was first purchased and the email client set up. It eventually became Wiener's laptop, but the email client was never changed. It probably received every email sent to Abedin's email address from any and all senders including Clinton emails that she thought she deleted. They just sat in the in box unread while Abedin dealt with them on her other devices. She didn't have a clue this was happening. TTG
———-
I have been wondering how this mass of e-mails belonging to Abedin could have been found on Weiner's laptop. This would be an intriguing explanation. pl
This would also explain Abedin’s telling the FBI, under oath, that she turned over all her email devices. She didn’t have a clue that the laptop used by her no good shit of a husband was collecting her emails… probably for years. This whole email server in the basement scandal is due to a whole flock of technologically ignorant people trying to be too clever. It was like giving a box of straight razors to a bunch of toddlers. That and an overly secretive and suspicious HRC.
TTG, Sir
Yes, indeed. An email client like Outlook can be configured with the appropriate POP, IMAP or Exchange credentials. The email client will continue to receive emails as long as the credentials remain correct.
There’s got to be something there. I can’t imagine Comey doing this knowing it would be such a big deal considering he made such a big deal about not recommending indictment earlier.
Weiner is a sleaze. (Trump said so in Aug 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvFP2lfAIUo That is not what formed my opinion – its just obvious)
I find it quite possible that he took emails from her to find some dirt – just as self protection to counter accusations against him. Then again TTG may be right though I do not know of anyone who would buy a laptop to share it with someone else. These things have become too personal.
The FBI does not know what is in these emails. They have no (legal) access yet. But there may well be classified emails beyond them or emails that Clinton ordered deleted at the start of the investigation. I think Comey is doing the right thing here. He did wrong when he shut down the Clinton case in the first place. Several good people have been indicted for not being careful enough with less confidential stuff than Clinton was circulating. The fact that she used a private server alone should have been a full case.
That Loretta Lynn met Bill Clinton while the case was active is enough to take her completely out of the chain on the whole issue. That she tried to block Comey now is another violation.
The email client requires an email address and a password to connect to an email server and download a copy of the emails on the server. In principle, the same email client software could connect to multiple email servers (each with a different account and password). The email client would then have copy of the emails of each account to which it was connected on the hard drive. If the emails were not deleted on other devices, they would remain on this hard drive.
Sloppy, stupid and really cheap. Just use the freebie gubmint computer to send all your dicpics. Washington, where competence goes to die.
how would that work? unless downloaded the emails are on the server they originate from not on your computer. Try disconnecting from the internet and see if you can access the email account and find old emails.
rakesh wahi
If you set the client so that a copy of these e-mails is downloaded onto the laptop then they are. My e-mails are downloaded on all my devices. pl
b
“I do not know of anyone who would buy a laptop to share it with someone else” Have you no one at all? pl
Babak,
Once the emails are downloaded, it doesn’t matter what happens to the email server. You can delete the whole account and destroy the server and the downloaded emails will remain on the laptop.
b,
As Colonel Lang said, you must be a lonely man. Every family I know has a family computer, often a laptop. The individual devices are the smartphones. SWMBO and I have a family computer upstairs and I have a laptop. We have no smartphones, just camera-less, GPS-less burner phones.
Jack,
Comey is in a position where he was going to be lambasted with any decision he made. He was already catching hell for failing to indict Clinton. If he kept this info secret and it turns out to lead to an indictment after the election, he will be accused of perverting justice to sway the election for Clinton. He decided to let this info out now and take the heat for seeming to sway the election for Trump. It’s probably better for him to be considered a dick by both sides. It was a no win situation.
the first servers placed in HRC’S house were transferred from the Foundation so it is entirely possible for Abedin to have taken a laptop from work and then simply handed it over to Weiner w/o deleting her mail accounts.
Praise the lord that Weiner was active on the internet so Abedin’s mail account was continually accessing and downloading here email.
You think he did not notice that his wife’s email box was filling up with hundreds of messages, all marked unread?
Well, the NYPD (or whoever is investigating Weiner) finding them first is probably what forced the FBI’s hand here, however I believe another copy of the 33K emails exists somewhere also. I still stand by my prediction that the missing emails will be released, and even perhaps that Hillary will be off the ticket before 11/8.
Not phones but my kids and other family use my laptop often.
The illustration at the beginning of the post is beyond snide; I love it. If she weren’t so potentially dangerous, not that she hasn’t done enough damage already, H Clinton would be a figure of fun by now. That she is becoming so is a measure of her delegitimization.
I use my wife’s old smart phone. She demands new kit. I am happy to use old.
Outlook or another e-mail application run on a pc can be set up tovdownload everything from the e-mail accounts it’s connected to.
That (your thesis) does not convince me. (although it makes Huma, the woman, the innocent and trusting victim of an evil and debauched man, which seems to be the theme of the year (decade?) so far). Any decent lawyer specializing in digital evidentiary issues , worth his or her salt, would have gone over this scenario with a fine too comb. You push the client, and when your done, you push some more, on all POSSIBLE (never mind how possible) vectors where digital artifacts MIGHT reside. And you start, right at the top, with the spouse.
And so would the FBI and they may have asked.
The hilarious thing is that the emails were filed as “Life Insurance”. I wonder who named it so, Weiner or Abedin.
Assuming Huma’s e-mails were populating on the family laptop-now Anthony’s unknown to Huma then the following questions arise.
1. Were they just sitting there undisturbed.
2. Were they opened on that laptop. Assumed to have been read. Then by whom.
3. Were they printed out from that laptop. Then by whom.
4. Were they re-sent to another e-mail address from that laptop.Then by whom and to whom.
Now would Comey go through all this hullabaloo if it is just #1 probably would of waited, #2 maybe, #3 certainly or #4 OMG.
wisedupearly
He may not have had the password to her side of the computers or to Outlook. pl
how many people take the trouble to secure their own computer/email setup at home? Not many.
But this is all conjecture – hopefully the FBI will fill us in.
One point that came up in the emails already released is Chelsea’s pique at Doug Band for having the audacity to dip his snout into the foundation trough putting old Bill’s income at risk.
Did she ever stop to ask herself if old Bill was blameless?
Appears not.
It is possible this laptop has every email ever sent using the Clinton server, as well as all of Huma’s commercial emails like yahoo. However, Kimdotcom has sworn he has all missing email and is going to release them some time this week, perhaps tomorrow. These will not be filtered or redacted and will contain all the nasty things they say about each other in private plus whatever classified crap is there. The FOIA avoidance scheme which is the root cause of all of this, sure isn’t working is it? We must all not forget the real reason any of this is pertinent and that is the Bhengazi coverup which will hopefully get resolved soon once the dust falls.
wisedupearly
The Chelsea/Band thing was in the WikiLeaks releases from Podesta’s e-mail, not the Humaesque potentials. pl
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/28/bernstein_fbi_would_not_reopen_case_unless_new_evidence_was_a_real_bombshell.html
Bernstein: FBI Would Not Reopen Case Unless New Evidence Was “A Real Bombshell”
“Right now we’re all talking in a vacuum but I want to add here that in the last, oh, 36, 48 hours, there has been an undercurrent of kind of speculative discussion among some national security people that something might surface in the next few days about e-mails, and I think the expectation in this chatter — and I took it as just chatter but informed chatter, to some extent — was that it would relate to another round of WikiLeaks e-mails, which our Justice Department people seem to be saying is not the case, but there has been some noise in the national security community the last day or two of this kind of possibility of some kind of revelation. ”
the emails must have been in the computer for the FBI to find them?
If Weiner didn’t have her password how did the FBI get it?
Regardless, you would think that any decent spouse would have alerted the significant other about “these emails to you that keep arriving”.
Speaking also of Podesta’s email, not Huma’s, the following is interesting:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/phishing-email-hack-john-podesta-hillary-clinton-wikileaks/index.html
Briefly, it seems Podesta received an email “You need to change your password”, asked for professional advice from his staff if it was legit, was told “Yes, you DO need to change your password”, but then clicked on the link in the original email, which was sent him with malicious intent, as he suspected at first and then was inappropriately reassured about – rather than on the link sent him by the IT staffer. Result – the “phishing” email got his password info, and the world now gets to see all his emails.
Personally, my hope is that Huma and HRC will be pardoned for all their crimes, by Obama, before he leaves office. Then I hope that Huma’s divorce will go through, and that once Hillary is sworn in she will at last be courageous enough to divorce Bill (who actually performed the Huma-Anthony Weiner nuptials – you don’t have to make these things up). Then it could happen that the first same-sex marriage will be performed in the White House, probably by the minister of DC’s Foundry United Methodist Church, which has a policy of LBGQT equality. Or maybe Hillary, cautious and middle-of-the-road as usual, will go to Foundry UMC sanctuary for the ceremony, recognizing that some Americans’ sensibilities would be offended by having the rite in the White House.
As Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan wrote, “Love is all there is, it makes the world go round, love and only love, it can’t be denied. No matter what you think about it, you just can’t live without it, take a tip from one who’s tried.”
True, but I am sceptical about the following statement:
They just sat in the in box unread while Abedin dealt with them on her other devices.
Every e-mail client will obligingly inform the user that N new messages have been received (each time upon being fired up by the user, and afterwards upon polling the e-mail servers at regular intervals), and indicate in which folder they have been put.
If Mr. Weiner continued to use the e-mail client, which itself was still configured to retrieve those Clinton/State Department messages, then even somebody with low computer literacy would have stumbled on at least some of them with high probability, and therefore Mr. Weiner would too.
To say that this affair looks fishy would be an understatement; it stinks like a whaling ship.
OMB
“It is possible this laptop has every email ever sent using the Clinton server,” If HC had a standard address group that included Abedin that is certainly possible. pl
Even if e-mails were on the laptop disk and deleted,they remain, windows don’t destroy data just change the first letter. They are so many software that can recover data………unless you have used a soft ” eraser” type.
What surprises me here is that the emails ended up on a personal computer at all. I’ve never had current emails stored on any personal computer–they all reside on the ISP’s server or on IT’s server, where they can be easily accessed from various devices via password.
That said, I do occasionally clean up my email account on the server and then delete garbage and outdated stuff and then intentionally download the remainder as backup.
Apart from [intentional] backup, there is no point to keeping emails on a personal computer. As far as I know that’s the way it has always been.
JohnH
IMO you are being deliberately obtuse. The presence of the e-mail mass in her inbox was an accident caused by her forgetfulness of the presence of an inbox of hers on her husband’s laptop. pl
aleksandr
The e-mails do not seem to have been deleted. pl
visitor
Are you a visitor from Brooklyn? You have a different experience of computers than I. I use Outlook. In my experience the program does not tell you anything about the state of the e-mail account of other users on the same machine. to get that you have to change user. To change user you need the other user’s password. pl
wisedupearly
Yes. The e-mails were present on the hard drive of Weiner’s laptop. How would the FBI learn her password if there was one? Come now! Do you really think that the FBI and NSA cannot figure that out? pl
JohnH,
Have you ever used an email client like Outlook, Mail or Thunderbird? They all work by downloading the emails from a remote server and are widely used. Even Pine, a text-based Linux client often used on shell accounts downloads the emails from a server. The situation you describe only occurs when you log into a web account. Both methods can be used with email accounts like @gmail.com, @verizon.net or @yahoo.com.
TTG, Colonel,
Speaking of real weiners….take the case of the near miss earlier this Month in the skies over Syria:
https://www.rt.com/news/364666-us-apologizes-syria-flyby/
IMO the whole flight crew of the U.S. aircraft along with their three back-end commanders need to be permanently removed from flying status. And the aircraft’s mission liaison at CENTCOM needs to be reamed as well.
“By less than 500 meters”……cringe
Rodrigo Duterte swears off swearing and Comey gets a laptop full of HCR & Co emails,
Someone has been doing some good work.
Does Outlook have a provision for encrypting the emails it keeps on disk? If so, does it use AES-256 or other cryptoware?
some points
. people using yahoo, gmail, hotmail, livemail, etc. these people use the webbrowser to look at their emails. there is a mozilla utility for actually downloading gmail (for one) to your actual computer). Otherwise, the stuff stays up in the cloud
. just b/c you delete an email, does not mean it is gone. it gets refiled in the TRASH folder. you then have to delete the trash folder to actually kill the stuff. i’m sure that even then, it’s probably archived in the cloud somewhere anyway. The commercial email companies mine email for commercial purposes to send targeted ads.
. these people don’t even know how to use secure email & they actually want to run the country. (sigh)
. if HRC wins, she needs to pardon Snowden in return for teaching her computer security.
Looks like Hilary has even lost Obama’s home town paper:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-hillary-clinton-emails-kass-1030-20161028-column.html
Or there could have been a scheduled script that ran daily, hourly or whatever, and backed up Huma’s computer to his over a local network. As TTG suggests this might have been part of the original set up when the computer was shared and forgotten about when it became Weiner’s toy.
@ TTG
You are assuming it is Outlook.
However, Huma said that she had a webmail account (Yahoo account specifically) to handle the State Dept emails for printing and for sending PReleases and then a fourth account ( don’t know which one) for the political activities of her husband when he was running for mayor.
From what I heard through scuttlebutts: it is the office of NY AG, investigating the hanky-panky activities of Weiner who found the emails and then informed the FBI. From what Yahoo is saying ( exclusive ??? news from yesterday) FBI does not have the warrant yet to go through those emails and their content.
I would assume the AG office saw the a/c of folder full of read or unread mails( who knows?) and w/o cracking the PW or getting it voluntarily from Huma ( unless her ex has it) can’t do Zilch about it and hence the involvement of FBI.
Only if there in further communication with the server – synchronizing deleted items.
The point is that I have no inbox on my personal computer–the inbox file is found on the server of the my email service, my ISP or of my company. To get the email onto my computer, I have to intentionally transfer it to a local file, download it, or back it up. This is the way it has been for the twenty years I have been using email.
What is the point of having email on a remote device, when you always have to be connected to a server to communicate via email? And what is the point of having tons of SPAM and other useless email gobble up memory on a remote device?
You have to love the MSM as they run around screaming Comey did not even have a warrant to look at the laptop and still goes to congress. Well there was a warrant to search the laptop regarding the Weiner dalliances and just imagine what a Keyword/phrase search turned up. That is why we are where we are.
Comey should get some support from Lynch, Obama, Congress and the American people for doing his job promptly.
JohnH
I don’t care what you choose to do. A lot of people have e-mail downloaded automatically to their device. pl
The Beaver,
An @yahoo.com email account can be accessed through any email client. I read a Yahoo account and two Gmail accounts with the Thunderbird client. It’s just more convenient than logging into Gmail or Yahoo with a web browser. If Huma had at least four email accounts, I’m not surprised that these “lost’ emails were found on the Weiner laptop. Neither of these two seem especially competent in their IT hygiene.
OK. You are correct. Outlook allows you to keep your file on the server or on the device.
Outlook also allow a user to delegate access, which ‘gives others permission to receive items and respond on your behalf,’ a permission that would have been especially useful for Hillary to grant to Huma Abedin.
https://lookeen.com/blog/where-does-outlook-store-emails
That suggests that of all Hillary’s emails could be stored on Weiner’s computer. It also seems like a great place for hackers to target–administrative assistants’ computers, where permissions could potentially be further delegated.
Mutiny?
Cited by French blog dedefensa.org
” Former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova, citing FBI sources close to the investigation, called the internal dissension “a big development,” in an interview with Hotair. “This is a big development. This means there are some great, traditional, honest people inside the FBI and DOJ who will not let this stand, said DiGenova, who still practices law in D.C. “They know that Comey is a dirty cop and they are disgusted. Inside the bureau I had a meeting today with a senior former FBI agent who told me this exact story. That people are starting to talk. They’re calling their former friends outside the bureau asking for help. We were asked, today, to provide legal representation for people inside the bureau and we agreed to do so. And, to former agents who want to come forward to talk.” “Comey thought this was going to go away. It is not. People inside the agency are furious. They are embarrassed. They feel they are being led by a hack. But, more than that, they think he’s a crook. They think he’s fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him. The bureau, inside, right now … is a mess.”
» Now it appears the anger and the mess may have turned into outright resistance. »
TTG, I know a lot about databases, design, statistical querying, etc. (information management) but I am fairly ignorant when it comes to all this IT stuff.
So, I often work from home often these days. I log onto the company’s secure network through VPN. I can only send and receive emails within the network when I am log on via VPN. When I am logged on, MS Outlook automatically receives any new emails that are sent to me. However, even when not logged on – even when not on line at all -I can open and read any emails that I already received. Outlook must save a copy of the emails somewhere on my laptop’s hard drive. That’s just how the company laptops are set up before they are issued to us.
Is that what you are saying happened here? If so, it makes perfect sense to me.
SWMBO is something of a Tom Boy at heart. She has a lot of disdain for “dizzy women” (her words). She tells me that we often over-think things. She says that Hillary and her little coven of witches are just stupid women that don’t understand how technical things work and who didn’t bother to think through all possible locations for the emails they sought to erase from the record for ever.
She also has long contented that Hillary’s apparent health problems (the collapses, etc.) are merely due to alcoholic behavior. Get drunk in the morning on 9/11/2016 and fall down, which is exactly what it looked like when you think about it.
KISS
Supposedly the “400lb foreign hacker” that Trump mentioned who hacked Hillary and has her 30K is actually a 400lb foreign hacker of Kiwi extraction named Kim Dotcom.
You may remember him as being the owner of megaupload and the brouhaha over the NZ government doing a commando style raid on his mansion with US agents watching from a NZ government C3. Extradited to the US despite never having a physical presence or registering in the US to do business.
If true, its a nice comeuppance.
Rats are starting to leave the sinking ship:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-hillary-clinton-emails-kass-1030-20161028-column.html
Again, if you really believed that Hillary ever had a 12 point lead over Trump I’ve got news for you. Functionally tied even with a +8 Dem oversampling. Brace for a Trumpslide. This was even BEFORE the FBI announcement.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3885770/Trump-wipes-Clinton-s-seven-point-lead-loses-steam-polls-carried-FBI-announced-reopening-emails-investigation.html
Just for the record – I am not a “lonely man” – having a girl with kids (now mostly grown and seldom home) for years now.
It may be that my observation on this is German centric and too much restricted to my social and occupation relations. But we tend to care quite a lot for privacy for well known historic reasons. Folks may have an old laptop for the kids to share or a common gaming machine. But machines used for personal stuff are handled as personal private devices: No regular access, no sharing.
Col.,
what little is known about the laptop points to a few different modes of access:
1. There were 4 different accounts that Abedin used — non-secure DOS, Clinton private email server, Yahoo email, Weiner political.
2. Outlook does allow multiple accounts to be accessed in one client (since 2012), but it’s a pain in the ass. I’d speculate that only one account was accessed with the local client. The rest were probably accessed by some form of web client. Also, if it’s a Mac, a different client would likely have been used, with much better handling of multiple accounts. But right now we don’t even know if this was a PC or Mac.
3. If it’s the accounts that Abedin has already testified to, most likely these are duplicates of the emails that are already in the FBI’s possessions.
Let’s wait and see. Given how little the FBI itself seems to know about the emails, I would have held off with an announcement until a preliminary investigation revealed if this was just penis pill and Nigerian prince communications or something more substantial.
@Bobo “Well there was a warrant to search the laptop regarding the Weiner dalliances and just imagine what a Keyword/phrase search turned up. That is why we are where we are.”
I suspect that this is a “parallel construction” case like the FBI regularly uses when it gets the information first through a not-so-legal channel like some NSA snooping. It then makes a different case or invents an explanation why it needs a warrant. From there it builds a completely new parallel case that covers the legal ground from a to z. The original information source is thereby never revealed.
This has been used in hundreds of cases by the FBI, DEA and local police to hide their access to (electronic) information sources not (or barely) covered by law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
I agree, Babak. …
I would assume she used imap not a pop setting for easy availability on every tool she used. Which no doubt might complicate matters.
It’s a somewhat odd story, anyway. Spitzer/Weiner?
It is possible that Huma has a Clintonmail account and she has been using Outlook to received those emails. In which case Outlook allows you configure in your settings such as either the emails remain on the server OR alternately are downloaded on to your device/laptop. So although the Clintonmail server is now destroyed, every single email sent from that server either addressed to or copied to Huma would be on the Weiner laptop. After her estrangement from Weiner, Huma probably set up another client to receive those emails on another device, but forget to disable the client on the laptop she donated to Weiner and hence the present situation.
b
in American law the principle generally is that if you learn something unexpected in the course of a legal search that something is admissible in court. pl
Edward Amame
I have screened out a lot of his more personal attacks on you today. pl
b
An interesting cultural insight. I agree with TTG that this is not the American cultural norm. pl
“Every e-mail client will obligingly …”
Every e-mail client will obligingly do whatever has been specified in the filters setups which could be “Move to such and such folder an set as already read.”
This of course requires knowledge an intent from the one setting up the filter.
jld
An IT technical person normally sets this up when you buy the machine. pl
Well, modern laptop/desktop operating systems are designed for multiple-users, with each user profile having its own password-protected environment that is inaccessible to the other users. If the computer in question had been set up with different user profiles, then the husband would not see his wife’s email box filling up as that would be happening inside her user environment, to which he did not have access.
If you value anything in/attached to those emails then YOU maintain a copy or COPIES of them.
You can’t trust that the other end will maintain them.
I had emails from the last 15years of work on 3 seperate encrypted backups.
Lucky for me , since I am retired for several years , I don’t have to worry about them, but still have the backups.
That’s the way it has been for decades.
Yes, the local client can be set to store a copy offline just as web pages can be done.
Does your laptop store data only on encrypted storage?
They should have your device set for that.
Tyler –
I found a surprisingly good article on BBC news this morning addressing whether Trump can pull off the election. The poor predictions of Brexit vote outcome have clearly raised concerns about polling accuracy. A key point was that “Some 2.8 million people – about 6% of the electorate – who had not voted for decades, if ever, turned up at the polling stations on 23 June and almost all of them voted to leave the EU.”
The article covers a broad range of issues raising uncertainty in elections like the impact of cellphone use and the increasing reluctance of the public to answer surveys.
It suggests that there is probably more uncertainty in all of the presidential race polling than is being admitted – with some emphasis on the limits of “proprietary ‘likely voter’ models used by most polling companies. The article ends quoting Nate Silver suggesting that many pollsters have not factored enough uncertainty into their models..
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37736161
Is that article indicating a climate of doubt or is it attempting to create one? It looks as if it’s the former.
So how does it work if Mrs Clinton is elected? Presumably from now on all officials and associates will be walking on eggs, making sure they’re not party to setting up any communication system for the President unless everything is vetted and filed.
How can someone living at the office take care of her private business in such circumstances? How will the distinction between public business and party business be managed? Difficult to see how a President could be effective if those serving her were more concerned with getting the balance correct than with getting on with the job.
It does also look as if enquiries or investigations might continue past the inauguration. Some officials will therefore be wearing two hats. They could find themselves helping with an investigation and serving the subject of the investigation at the same time.
I assume, for all the scandal stories, that the American administration is pretty normal. A few bad eggs but most of the officials busy with just getting the job done right. I don’t envy those officials who will find themselves walking all those tightropes.
My outsider reason for hoping Mrs Clinton won’t be elected is that it looks as if fewer foreigners will get killed if she’s not. So I’m scarcely unbiased. But could a President serve in these circumstances in any case?
Tyler,
Kim Schmitz, a/k/a Kim Dotcom and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, has appealed the ruling from a New Zealand trial court late last year that he can be extradited to the U.S. for the criminal case filed against him here. He appealed it, and at the end of August of this year, the appeal was heard. He wanted a live stream of the appeal hearing to be broadcast on the Internet. Lawyers for the U.S. argued in New Zealand against that, saying that potential jurors in the U.S. might be prejudiced by watching the argument in the New Zealand court. Of course, the U.S. Dept. of Justice tries to influence potential jurors all the time by calling a press conference to announce an indictment, etc. The judge allowed the live streaming, but said it could not be saved as video on the Internet for later viewing.
Schmitz, born in Germany, does know computer hacking–
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/01/rich-and-obese-kim-dotcom-boasts-a-checkered-colorful-bio-/1#.WBY1bih_jHg
His U.S. lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, wrote a paper giving a legal side of the argument (48 pages)–
http://kim.com/whitepaper.pdf
Back in early 2013, Schmitz / Dotcom gave his side of the story in an interview with RT–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JKGAt1__-Q
He claims that Hillary Clinton signed his extradition request (or she may at least have been a signatory on it)–
https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/792087674706272256
There is another possibility at play here as well. Huma or some one working for here could have deleted her email account on the laptop along with any locally kept emails before handing it to the weiner. When the FBI seized it the first thing they would do would be to clone the drive and then try to recover any deleted files. As long as the part of the hard drives where Hama’s emails were wasn’t over written they would be recoverable with the kind of people/tech the FBI has available.
The emails might have been part of a backup archive of the whole disk of the computer examined by the fbi (or even from a different computer), or even a backup of just the email file. The archive could have been created automatically, or, if deliberately, Weiner or Abedin may have just forgot about it.
When I upgrade the OS, for example, I often backup the whole computer disk to an archive, and put it onto a different hard drive. I also regularly make backups of email files.
Anyway, I think there are fairly innocent explanations for why Weiner’s computer might have these emails, and why Abedin may have not disclosed them earlier, when she ought to have.
Wall Street Journal now claims that “Federal agents are preparing to scour roughly 650,000 emails contained on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, ”
650,000?
Abedin has been working with HRC for the last 20 years and has been the closest to HRC.
This should be very interesting indeed.
Ah. so you have expertise in IT Infrastructure. Only such people know the difference between PO3 and IMAP.
If this article from the New York Post of 22 September 2016 is more or less accurate, it may provide a clue as to how the case against Anthony Weiner — Huma Abedin’s estranged husband — got started–
http://nypost.com/2016/09/22/nypd-investigating-weiners-sexting-relationship-with-teen/
The fifth paragraph says: “The teen claims Weiner, 52, told her about his ‘rape fantasies,’ sent her pornographic videos and asked her to get naked and masturbate for him over Skype.”
Bingo. If the teenager showed enough indications of some credibility and that it was not an obvious frameup of Weiner, then an investigation could get started. As I mentioned the other day, Title 18, U.S. Code, sections 2251, 2252, and 2256 (definitions) can apply to a federal investigation of sexting cases–
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2251
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2252
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2256
The definition of “sexually explicit conduct” includes masturbation and the “lascivious exhibition of the genitals”. If there were no existing photographs or videos of the girl, then if Weiner did indeed ask her “to get naked and masturbate for him over Skype”, and evidence that was admissible in court existed to prove that statement, an investigation would consider whether that and other evidence would be enough to think that probable cause existed for an “attempt” to commit the offense.
That brings us to the lead paragraph of the article: “Prosecutors in US Attorney Preet Bharara’s office have issued a subpoena for Anthony Weiner’s cell phone and other records, law enforcement sources said.”
What might have happened is that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office got the information that a teenager had been having a lewd “sexting” relationship with Weiner. When they found out about the claim that he had asked the girl to masturbate for him over Skype, which could also fit a federal investigation of sexting, the DA called the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) and/or the FBI. The U.S. Attorney then got into the act, and issued subpoenas for Weiner’s cell phone and “other records”. This might mean that a grand jury was created to make evidence-gathering easier (federal grand jury subpoenas are nationwide in scope) and to investigate more thoroughly.
It is unclear how the computer laptop got involved. Today (30 October) there are reports claiming that Weiner is “cooperating” with the investigation–
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/anthony-weiner-cooperating-with-fbi-on-email-probe/article/2606004
If he is cooperating, then he would be asked to sign a consent form giving permission to search a place or some item. If he did that in a “non-custodial” situation and not when under threat or duress, then a search warrant would not be necessary. But depending on how the laptop was obtained, and what Weiner said about its use, a search warrant may still be sought.
My guess is that both Weiner and Huma Abedin were using the laptop and that he had access to her e-mails on it. Maybe Weiner was even passing on to other people some of the State Department e-mails and those that might have contained classified information.
The Wall Street Journal says this afternoon that there may be 650,000 e-mails on the Weiner-Abedin laptop–
http://www.wsj.com/articles/laptop-may-include-thousands-of-emails-linked-to-hillary-clintons-private-server-1477854957
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/303510-fbi-to-review-650000-emails-on-weiners-laptop-report
I also agree with ‘b’ that the fraud on the courts and the public known as “parallel construction” may have played or may be playing a role in this.
Now, according to the WSJ, it appears that Federal agents are preparing to scour roughly 650,000 emails that, as we reported moments ago were discovered weeks ago on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, as metadata on the device suggests there may be thousands sent to or from the private server that the Democratic nominee used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.
More stunning is just how many emails were found on Weiner’s computer. And while one can only imagine the content of some of the more persona ones, the WSJ writes that the latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that both Mr. Weiner and Ms. Abedin used and that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-30/fbi-scour-through-650000-emails-found-weiners-laptop
This problem Hillary has with E-Mails is like the Gift that keeps on Giving. On CNN last evening ex FBI agent Fuentes talked about the One-Stop shopping involving the Clintons as according to Fuentes there is an extensive investigation ongoing regarding the Clinton Foundation pay to play, the Weiner case regarding child molestation and now the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation.
WSJ by DEVLIN BARRETT google search: FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe
The latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau’s second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those emails stretched back years, these people said, and were on a laptop that hadn’t previously come up in the Clinton email probe. Ms. Abedin said in late August that the couple were separating.
The FBI had searched the computer while looking for child pornography, people familiar with the matter said, but the warrant they used didn’t give them authority to search for matters related to Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement at the State Department. Mr. Weiner has denied sending explicit or indecent messages to the teenager.
In their initial review of the laptop, the metadata showed many messages, apparently in the thousands, that were either sent to or from the private email server at Mrs. Clinton’s home that had been the focus of so much investigative effort for the FBI. Senior FBI officials decided to let the Weiner investigators proceed with a closer examination of the metadata on the computer, and report back to them.
visitor
Assuming that the FBI has legal authority to examine the Abedin trove, what matters is the content of the messages. pl
Is McCabe the same person whose wife received big bucks from Clinton pal and Virginia governor McAuliffe? Can he legitimately oversee this investigation in light of this money transfer? How about AG Lynch who has tarmac discussions with Slick Willie?
The whole thing stinks! The country needs a grand jury and special prosecutor to investigate.
Jack
“The country needs a grand jury and special prosecutor to investigate.” Before the inauguration? pl
Who issues a search warrant in a case like this?
Yes, Sir. The grand jury should be empaneled immediately. And a special prosecutor appointed.
Better the country know that they may elect a president who could be subject to a criminal indictment while in office.
TTG,
Absolutely right that Comey is in a tough spot legally: he’d have been damned if he kept quiet and if he is being damned for having said something. But if I were in his shoes, I’d rather not keep quiet–at least there are actual emails, and who knows what’ll turn up? He is under no obligation to do politicians favors by keeping things that could go bad under wraps.
Still, it seems unlikely that a whole lot of stuff will crop up. We already knew that HRC is a control freak who is surprisingly sloppy. It is unlikely that she’d have something especially damning, although probably a lot of questionable things–but nothing really new is likely to turn up. Nothing will really change–just more reminder that Clinton is not nearly as good even at wonking/administrating as she claims (but that too is hardly a secret.)
Still, if that is the route through which all these emails wound up on Weiner’s laptop, it is yet another reminder how porous our information is, how easy it is that we’d let all our “guts” (information wise) out without even realizing it.
If the hard disk wasn’t encrypted than it is as easy as remove screws, remove hard disk from laptop, put it in a usb hard disk caddy and insert the usb cable into a computer to read the data. It is not FBI level but grandma level. Encrypting was done rarely in the past because it makes hard disk even slower
KHC
IMO she is very type A and disdainful of the rules. given the volume there may be some really interesting stuff. pl
TTG
Publically, Anthony Weiner’s sex texting goes back to 2011. This is the third eruption. A lot is overlooked in an open marriage to keep a live-in househusband for the kid. Four devices were seized by federal authorities. His laptop contained sex texts and images to an underage girl. If the Clinton e-mails were found in a folder titled “Life Insurance”, I assume he downloaded them off of the wife’s work at home laptop during quiet time to his hot steamy one. No doubt he has told the Clinton family consigliore that he has given flash drives with all the dirt to his lawyers and/or relatives to be released if he commits suicide with two bullets in the back of the head.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/30/doj-blocked-fbi-from-huma-emails-but-other-law-enforcement-agencies-may-have-gotten-a-peek/
This incident highlights the differences between the lives and beliefs of the ruling elite and the rest of the slobs. The emotions stirred are tribal in intensity. Yet, corporate media continues broadcasting that everything is just great in this most exceptional world. Will we express shock when it collapses as fast as the Soviet Union?
There are multiple .pst files – one for each account – for each user, in case of MS Outlook.
Likewise for other email client software.
One can also archive one’s emails in another .pst file and load them – those are never deleted or altered by the server since, they are, in effect, in a different location that the server does not know of.
Englsh Outsider,
“So how does it work if Mrs Clinton is elected?” That’s the $64,000 question. I suspect the temptation/desire to purge the FBI of the “disloyal” would be irresistible – at least to Podesta, Humma and others who would serve on her staff. Look what damage Feith did under GWB. If they maintain control of either house in the legislative branch of government there are going to be investigations under oath. This scandal is not like ones of the past but involves a number of foreign governments by way of the Clinton Foundation.
Well done TTG. This is probably why Comey was excited about the discovery. It is a pristine copy of every email ever received from HRC’s private server sent to Huma Abedin.
I can see this happening
1. She sets up a user account on his laptop (that’s a little odd, at home we only bother doing this for desktop computers).
2. She sets up her email client to pop the email but leave the original on the server. This makes perfect sense because she knows that she will use multiple devices to read the email so she doesn’t want to have this one delete the server email.
3. She forgets about this dinosaur of an arrangement because it is totally impractical and never uses it. Instead she uses her own mobile devices to actually access this email, all while this PC is happily saving a copy of all of her email from the HRC server every time Weiner … never mind.
BTW I hate email clients. I only use webmail because I prefer the simplicity of having my email in one place, on a server that can be hacked instead of a desktop where my hard drive will randomly crash sometime in the future. I’m too lazy to configure backups and then figure out how to do a restore. I’ll just re-image and start all over again.
I feel kind of bad for Huma, she married a bum, works for a clone of Nixon, and is getting in trouble for not being able to cover up her boss’s tracks.
I think the most likely explanation is this- Weiner has been archiving his wife’s e-mails since they have been married and she has been in Clinton’s orbit.
Honestly, in his position and his wife’s associations, wouldn’t you make sure to collect some solid evidence insurance if they made it easy for you to do so?
Perhaps the mail client was removed when the laptop changed ownership, but they forgot about deleting the local backups. My local and remote mail databases are password protected and I am forced by the mail server to change the passwords often. It is hard to imagine that this mail could have been working on a forgotten device for long.
That vehicle should be the new Clinton Campaign bus.
This seems very reasonable. It brings up a question though, did her email credentials not change? That would drastically limit the backlog.
Herb
These people are technologically ignorant. Why would she change her credentials? pl
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