March 2013 or After: Cheryl Mills is re-hired to be one of Clinton’s personal lawyers.

Before Clinton was secretary of state, Mills was one of Clinton’s lawyers for several years. For the four years Clinton was secretary of state, from January 2009 to February 2013, Mills was Clinton’s chief of staff as well as her counselor. However, in a May 2016 court deposition, she will clarify that “the counselor role at the State Department is not a lawyer role. The counselor role at the State Department is actually a policy role.” During the deposition, Mills’ lawyer Beth Wilkinson also clarifies that Mills “wasn’t acting as a lawyer at the State Department.”

However, after Clinton’s tenure ends in February 2013, Mills is hired again as one of Clinton’s personal lawyers. (Clinton’s main personal lawyer for decades has been David Kendall.) In her deposition, Mills will fail to remember when she is hired again, except to say it was “post February of 2013.”

She will be working as one of Clinton’s lawyers in late 2014 when she, Kendall, and another lawyer will sort through Clinton’s emails and delete 31,830 of them. (Judicial Watch, 5/31/2016)

Late July 2014: State Department officials anticipate media interest in Clinton’s emails.

In May 2016, Cheryl Mills will say in a court deposition that around the end of July 2014, she was in contact with the State Department about turning over Clinton’s work-related emails from Clinton’s time as secretary of state. Mills will claim “there was a set of conversations around materials that were going to be provided to [the House Benghazi Committee], and questions that [department officials] had with respect to media inquiries that they anticipated. And then subsequent to that there was communication with respect to the department potentially needing all of her dot gov emails.”

Clinton never used her state.gov government email account, so presumably the conversation switched to turning over her private emails, which she eventually does months later. (Judicial Watch, 5/31/2016)

The predicted media interest will happen in March 2015 after it is revealed Clinton exclusively used a private email address hosted on a private server.

June 14, 2015: Bill Clinton says he and his wife Hillary don’t know if there were conflicts of interest with the Clinton Foundation.

Jake Tapper (Credit: CNN)

Jake Tapper (Credit: CNN)

CNN journalist Jake Tapper asks Bill Clinton, “I think a lot of people might say, OK, you say there’s no evidence that anything was done for [donors to the Clinton Foundation], but can you really say that these companies, these wealthy individuals, these governments, none of them sought anything? I mean, some of them did have business before the State Department.”

Clinton replies, “I don’t know. […] I know of no example. But you never know what people’s motives are.”

Tapper then says to him, “You say you don’t know if anybody sought any favor.”

Clinton responds, “No, and I don’t think Hillary would know either. She was pretty busy those years. And I never saw her study a list of my contributors or…and I had no idea who was doing business before the State Department.” (CNN, 6/14/2015)

September 29, 2015: Some former government whistleblowers believe that “the scales of justice weigh differently for [Clinton] and other senior officials than it does” for low-level government employees.

Danielle Bryan (Credit: The Project on Government Oversight)

Danielle Bryan (Credit: The Project on Government Oversight)

This is according to McClatchy Newspapers. Cabinet-level officials like John Deutch, Sandy Berger, Leon Panetta, and David Petraeus were charged with mishandling classified information, and yet all of them escaped jail. Thus, some believe that Clinton “will get off easy,” due to the politically powerful getting special treatment.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), says that whistleblowers who reveal confidential or classified information have “lost their livelihoods, have been prosecuted, have even had their homes raided for heroically trying to stop wrongdoing. This is a far cry from how politically connected senior officials who have actually mishandled classified information, either for convenience or for self-aggrandizement, are treated. This double standard is frankly un-American.” (McClatchy Newspapers, 9/29/2015)

January 29, 2016: FBI agents are saying “something’s happening” with their Clinton investigation.

Mika Brzezinski (left) Joe Scarborough (right) (Credit: public domain)

Mika Brzezinski (left) Joe Scarborough (right) (Credit: public domain)

Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” comments, “[T]he Hillary Clinton investigation of the FBI is far more progressed and [my co-host] Mika [Brzezinski] and I have been hearing it from the top officials in the Obama administration for actually several months now. And we can’t go to a meeting in Washington where we don’t hear that. […] All of our sources high up are telling us the same thing: that this investigation is far more advanced than we the public knows. What are you hearing?”

Mark Halperin, a political analyst at Bloomberg News, comments, “There’s a lot of chatter amongst FBI agents, many of whom have never been big fans of the Clintons, but a lot of FBI agents seem to be saying something is happening here. … [And] there are some people in the White House are starting to talk about this. It’s not clear whether they know what’s happening or it’s just their intuition but the body language among some Obama administration officials is, this is more serious and something is going to happen.” (MSNBC, 1/29/2016)

May 27, 2016: Cheryl Mills is deposed under oath, but frequently fails to answer questions.

Cheryl Mills speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting 2012. (Credit: Clinton Global Initiative)

Cheryl Mills speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting 2012. (Credit: Clinton Global Initiative)

Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills is deposed by Judicial Watch as part of civil lawsuit presided over by US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. She is questioned for seven hours, with eleven other lawyers present, including four Justice Department lawyers assisting Mills.

The deposition is contentious, with Judicial Watch lawyers frequently arguing with Mills’ lawyer Beth Wilkinson and State Department lawyers. Mills has also worked as one of Clinton’s lawyers at times (though not while Clinton was secretary of state), and Wilkinson often objects to questions on the grounds of attorney-client privilege between Mills and Clinton. For instance, Mills fails to answer any questions about the sorting and deleting of Clinton’s emails in late 2014, when Mills was one of Clinton’s lawyers who performed that task. Mills also doesn’t answer many questions about Clinton’s former computer technician Bryan Pagliano. (LawNewz, 5/31/2016) (Politico, 5/31/2016) (Judicial Watch, 5/31/2016)

Mills is frequently forgetful or uncertain with her answers. The New York Post calculates she says “I can’t recall” 40 times and “I don’t know” 182 times. (The New York Post, 6/11/2016)

June 17, 2016: Former FBI agents are wondering why the FBI’s Clinton investigation is taking so long.

Edward C. Cosgrove (Credit: Eileen Buckley)

Edward C. Cosgrove (Credit: Eileen Buckley)

Former FBI agent and former district attorney Edward C. Cosgrove says that he has been in contact with other former FBI agents, and “Most former FBI agents cannot understand why the FBI investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not been concluded.”

He wonders why the investigation has gone on for about a year, and yet it “has not been turned over to the attorney general [Loretta Lynch] for her prosecutive judgment.” (The Buffalo News, 6/17/2016)

June 17, 2016: A “deadman’s switch” file increases speculation that WikiLeaks could soon release more Clinton documents.

(A June 17, 2016 WikiLeaks post, including mention of the "deadman's switch" and a "risk insurance" picture. Credit: public domain)

(A June 17, 2016 WikiLeaks post, including mention of the “deadman’s switch” and a “risk insurance” picture. Credit: public domain)

WikiLeaks posts on the Internet an 88-gigabyte encrypted file labeled “WIKILEAKS INSURANCE,” along with the comment, “Protect our coming publications.” This is believed to be a “deadman’s switch,” meaning that unless WikiLeaks personnel are not there to periodically confirm their status, the file will be automatically decrypted, revealing its contents to those who have downloaded it. WikiLeaks have posted several similar files in previous years.

Heavy.com notes that because of recent comments by WikiLeaks head Julian Assange that the organization will soon be publishing more of Clinton’s emails, “many people are wondering if this insurance file is meant to ensure that WikiLeaks can release potentially damaging information about Hillary Clinton.” The file is large enough to contain millions of files if they are all text-based files, but it could include video or other files that take up much more space.

Heavy.com also notes that the reason WikiLeaks doesn’t simply post the files right away is, “The organization often combs through files to redact any sensitive information that might put lives in danger. The INSURANCE file is typically the unredacted version.” (Heavy.com, 6/17/2016)

June 17, 2016: Some cybersecurity experts doubt the Russian government is behind recent hacking attacks.

Nathaniel Gleicher (Credit: Carmen Holt)

Nathaniel Gleicher (Credit: Carmen Holt)

Time Magazine notes that although CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to stop the hacking of their computer network, claims the Russian government is behind the attacks, other security experts are skeptical. Someone calling themselves “Guccifer 2.0” has posted some files that appear to come from the DNC hack, and that person claims to be a “lone hacker.”

CrowdStrike asserts this is just an effort to sow confusion about Russian involvement, but some experts doubt that as well.

Nathaniel Gleicher, the former director for cybersecurity policy on the NSC [National Security Council], says, “Attribution is incredibly difficult—I wouldn’t say impossible, but it’s very difficult.”

Reg Harnish, the CEO of the cybersecurity company GreyCastle Security, says the final answer may still be unknown, with political intrigues complicating the picture. “I’ve been personally involved in hundreds of these investigations, and you just don’t end up in the same place where you began. […] I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there right now.”

Scott Borg, the head of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, echoed the skepticism. “Our best guess is that the second (and apparently less skillful) of the two intruders was not Russian intelligence. We are also uncertain about the first group.”

So far, the FBI has not made any comment. (Time, 6/17/2016)

June 19, 2016: Attorney General Loretta Lynch say she’s never spoken with President Obama about the FBI’s Clinton investigation.

“We’ve never discussed the Clinton case. I’ve never spoken about it with the president or really anyone at the White House. That’s not the kind of relationship that I have with the people there, and it would be inappropriate to do so.”

She also says Obama’s recent endorsement of Clinton doesn’t create a conflict of interest, even though she’s an Obama appointee. “I don’t get involved on whom the president endorses.” (The Hill, 6/19/2016)