User:Wcmcdade/sandbox

This Sandbox subpage has been created for the work needed to create a new article titled “The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton E-mail Server Controversy and the Obama/Clinton Counter-Intelligence Operation in the 2016 US Presidential Election”Wcmcdade (talk) 14:58, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton E-mail Server Controversy and the Obama/Clinton Counter-Intelligence Operation of 2017 to 2019 (also referred to as the The Special Counsel Investigation, the Hillary Clinton e-mail Server Controversy, the Mueller Probe, and the Mueller Investigation, or the Russia investigation) was a series of related events carried out during the Obama Administration, the 2016 Clinton Presidential Campaign, the 2016 Trump/Pence Presidential Campaign, the Trump Presidential Administration and the 111th through 115th Sessions of Congress.

Clinton’s Private E-mail Server
Hillary Clinton established a private e-mail server after being appointed Secretary of State in the Obama administration. She then used that e-mail server exclusively for personal, professional and classified communications while Secretary of State. It is widely agreed that her intent to proceed with a private email server in direct contradiction to State Department and Obama Administration policy was so that she could maintain both technical and legal control over who could read her individual correspondence, even though she maintained that her reason was simply a matter of convenience (to set up a completely different system). Once discovered, this arrangement frustrated the efforts of journalists, conservative critics, the Judiciary and Congress to gain access to government information through FOIA requests and receive prompt and complete responses to Obama State Department requests. With more than 30,000 emails deleted and unavailable for investigation by the FBI and unavailable for FOIA requests and Congressional oversight, the subject of Hillary Clinton’s emails became a major topic of the 2016 Presidential election.

DNC email leak
On 22 July 2016, WikiLeaks released nearly 20,000 e-mails and over 8,000 attachments from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the governing body of the U.S. Democratic Party. The leak includes emails from seven key DNC staff members, and date from January 2015 to May 2016. The collection of emails allegedly disclose the bias of key DNC staffers against the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton's campaign. WikiLeaks did not reveal their source.

Podesta emails
On 7 October 2016, WikiLeaks started releasing emails from John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. The emails provide some insight to the inner workings of Clinton's campaign. One of the emails contained 25 excerpts from Clinton's paid Wall Street speeches. Another leaked document included eighty pages of Clinton's Wall Street speeches. Also among these emails was an email from Donna Brazile to Podesta that suggested that Brazile had received a town hall debate question in advance and was sharing it with Clinton. One of the emails released on 12 October 2016 included Podesta's iCloud account password. His iCloud account was reportedly hacked, and his Twitter account was briefly compromised. Some emails from revealed emails that Barack Obama and Podesta exchanged in 2008.

The Clinton campaign has declined to authenticate these leaks. Glen Caplin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said, "By dribbling these out every day WikiLeaks is proving they are nothing but a propaganda arm of the Kremlin with a political agenda doing [Vladimir] Putin's dirty work to help elect Donald Trump." The New York Times reported that when asked, president Vladimir Putin replied that Russia was being falsely accused. Julian Assange has also denied that Russia is the source.

Origin and powers
=== Original FBI investigations