User:SWSomerville/sandbox

Paul R. Combetta is a pivotal figure in the Hillary Clinton email controversy.

New York Times Reveals Combetta's Identity and Immunity
Combetta was unknown until the public until September 8, 2016, when the New York Times revealed that he was the computer specialist who deleted Hillary Clinton's emails despite Congressional orders to preserve them.

The FBI documents released to the New York Times redacted Combetta's name, but the Times claimed that a law enforcement official and others briefed on the investigation had confirmed his identity. According to FBI documents cited by the New York Times, "Mr. Combetta told the FBI in February [2016] that he did not recall deleting the emails. But in May, he told a different story." According to the FBI, Combetta deleted the emails in the days after Hillary Clinton's staffers called his employer to discuss a pending sub poena.

The FBI documents indicate that in his first interview with the FBI in February, the computer specialist said he did not recall seeing the preservation order from the congressional committee. In his May interview, he admitted that "he was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton's email data."

The New York Times reported that Combetta had received an immunity deal. Details of his immunity agreement are not publicly available.

Reaction to Combetta's Immunity Agreement
The immunity deal prompted surprised responses from politicians and legal scholars. Law Professor Jonathan Turley argued that this gave immunity to "the person some are liely to argue would have been the most likely to implicated others." Congressman Jason Chaffetz, Chariman of the House Oversight Committee issued a sup poena for Combetta the day after the Times revealed his identity.

A young woman who identifies herself as "Katica" who is "studying law (MS) with concentration is eDiscovery/eLitigation" started searching the web for references to "Paul Combetta." On or around September 16, she discovered a web page thanking "Paul Combetta" for his help with the video game "Betrayal at Krondor" which included the email address "stonetear@gmail.com."

Combetta and stonetear@gmail.com
Expanding her search for "stonetear," Katica discovered the following post on reddit.com:

Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out. I am not sure if something like this is possible with PowerShell, or exporting all of the emails to MSG and doing find/replaces with a batch processing program of some sort. Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?

The date on the reddit post was July 24, 2014, exactly one day after the State Department agreed to hand Hillary Clinton's work-related emails over to the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Researchers began looking for evidence connecting Combetta to "stonetear" and found so many connections (down to personal details such as the name of his dog and cat) that they stopped posting lest they violate reddit's "doxing" policy.

US News and World Report published the allegation that Combetta was "stonetear" on September 19, 2016. Within four hours, posts by "stonetear" began to disappear from reddit.com. Despite this attempt to eliminate the posts, the House Oversight Committee has asked reddit to preserve the archived posts, and reddit is reported to be cooperating.

Editing Email Metadata
The "Stonetear" post asked how to replace or remove email addresses from "to" and "from" fields in a Microsoft Outlook archive file (a .pst file). The address metadata in Microsoft Outlook archive files cannot be edited in this manner. Emails can be exported to a text file, however, and that text can be edited and printed out.

When Secretary Clinton turned her emails over to the House Oversight Committee, she turned over 55,000 pieces of paper, leaving some commentators scratching their heads.

A journalist at "Federal Computer Week" noted that Secretary Clinton's production of printed documents raised a "problematic issue in records management." "Printed emails aren't searchable and don't retain all of the associated metadata."

Sub Poena and BleachBit
If Clinton's emails had been delivered in digital form, Combetta would probably not have become a material witness in an FBI investigation. But the production of 55,000 pieces of paper raised additional questions about Clinton's emails. On March 4, 2015, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued a sub poena requiring Clinton to turn over "any and all documents and communications" sent from or received by certain email addresses which related to the matters the committee was investigating. The sub poena expressly stated, "The Committee's preference is to receive documents in electronic form (i.e., CD, memory stick, or thumb drive) in lieu of paper productions."

According to the FBI, the Microsoft Outlook archive file still existed at this time and was in Combetta's possession. Despite admitting that he knew about the existence of a preservation order, Combetta admitted to deleting the file, using open source called "BleachBit" to permanently remove all traces of the file.