Re: NYT | Email Content

From:nmerrill@hrcoffice.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com CC: cheryl.mills@gmail.com, pir@hrcoffice.com, hsamuelson@cdmillsgroup.com, DKendall@wc.com, jennifer.m.palmieri@gmail.com, jake.sullivan@gmail.com Date: 2015-03-20 02:45 Subject: Re: NYT | Email Content

On the editor, Philippe’s point which was a good one is that he needs to feel like her has an out, and that his out is that he needs to make a choice for himself that he’s being fed a bunch of tainted BS. So I think we give him one more chance and go there tomorrow. Jake, will make your point more clear in the text, tweak a little, and send. Any point in cc'ing his editor or is that over the top at this point? On Mar 19, 2015 8:15 PM, "Nick Merrill" <nmerrill@hrcoffice.com<mailto:nmerrill@hrcoffice.com>> wrote: How's this look: Mike- Thanks for this, but reading the below, I have to tell you that I am more, not less confused, and not unreasonably so. You reached out on a story with the premise that she was using personal email to ‘operate completely outside the system.’ It was clear you were working with a wholly incomplete information, and we in turn asked you to clarify some things because based on the information we have, the facts didn’t match up. You sent back as new evidence to that request two emails that had nothing to do with your premise, as they were official emails sent from a State.gov<http://state.gov/> account. They were clearly provided without context, just as the below has been. So I don’t think you have helped us get any closer to the very basic questions we were asking in an effort to answer yours, and now we don’t know what you’re writing about. You have still not clarified anything from the original email, and it now seems like your sources are trying to further mislead you. So again, to suggest that the use of personal email off of the State system was happening as any sort of pattern of any kind is not only wrong, but not supported by anything you've given us after repeated requests. If you are now writing about something else, which appears to be the content of some of the emails that the select committee has, then please clarify that, and we can try and address it. But given how this has transpired to date and what I’m reading below, I think we can all agree that you have sources not been forthright and have a clear agenda. Let us know how you would like to proceed. Nick On Mar 19, 2015, at 7:31 PM, Cheryl Mills <cheryl.mills@gmail.com<mailto:cheryl.mills@gmail.com>> wrote: yep DOS does not anticipate releasing any materials before the end of next week at the earliest. cdm On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 7:28 PM, Nick Merrill <nmerrill@hrcoffice.com<mailto:nmerrill@hrcoffice.com>> wrote: The NYT is now telling us noon tomorrow is now the deadline. My vote would be to hit back again challenging their premise, since I don’t think anything they’ve provided has really been sufficient. And I think he knows he’s on weak ground. I can draft something. Narrowing the list Just spoke to the COS to inquire as to their timeline for release if that was information they were able to share, particularly given the selective leaking of these documents by Congress to the NYT. He will revert as he is traveling overseas; it does not appear that they are on a trajectory for today though based upon my conversation. cdm On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Jake Sullivan <jake.sullivan@gmail.com<mailto:jake.sullivan@gmail.com>> wrote: That's the idea -- someone call State and ask them to release these emails given that they are being selectively released to the NYT. CDM, could you do that? On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Cheryl Mills <cheryl.mills@gmail.com<mailto:cheryl.mills@gmail.com>> wrote: who are we pushing - State? On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 3:58 PM, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com<mailto:john.podesta@gmail.com>> wrote: We should push for this tonight if possible. NYT may have an incoherent story, but they seem to be fixing to call her a liar on the front page. On Mar 19, 2015 2:36 PM, "Jake Sullivan" <jake.sullivan@gmail.com<mailto:jake.sullivan@gmail.com>> wrote: This would seem to give a new imperative. The committee is leaking particular bits of information. Would be worth someone convincing State to just launch. On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Cheryl Mills <cheryl.mills@gmail.com<mailto:cheryl.mills@gmail.com>> wrote: We have asking state to do that cdm On Mar 19, 2015, at 2:24 PM, Jake Sullivan <jake.sullivan@gmail.com<mailto:jake.sullivan@gmail.com>> wrote: What do people think about releasing all the emails that went to Gowdy? On Mar 19, 2015, at 1:53 PM, Nick Merrill <nmerrill@hrcoffice.com<mailto:nmerrill@hrcoffice.com>> wrote: Alright, just heard back. See below. He is trying to save face and being helped by his source trying to save face. nick, i have read your email. we're not saying that her advisers exclusively used their personal accounts. we're just saying that they used their personal accounts at times to communicate with mrs. clinton on her personal account. for example, many emails jake sent or received from the secretary were from his state.gov<http://state.gov/> account. but he did send mrs. clinton an email in april 2012 from his personal account that outlined her leadership in bringing down the qaddafi regime. so what we're seeking an answer to -- along with the other questions i sent you -- is why did her advisers at times use personal addresses to communicate with her? meanwhile, below is some new information i have about the emails that i want to flag you on to see if you want to respond to them. we're running out of time and need a response by 4 p.m. thnx. new information: A month after the Benghazi attacks, the Republican controlled House Oversight Committee held a hearing about the security at the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The former chief security officer for the American Embassy in Libya testified that the State Department had thwarted his request to extend the deployment of an American military team in Libya. The State Department’s under secretary for management, Patrick Kennedy, testified that the extended deployment would have altered the outcome. "Did we survive the day?" Mrs. Clinton wrote in an email to Mr. Sullivan. “Survive, yes,” Mr. Sullivan said in response. “Pat helped level set things tonight and we’ll see where we are in the morning.” we now have a direct quote on the sullivan email to mrs. clinton that included a transcript of susan rice's appearance on one of the sunday talk shows: "She did make clear our view that this started spontaneously then evolved," Mr. Sullivan said. Not a peep from the Times since I sent this. On Mar 19, 2015, at 12:02 PM, John Podesta <john.podesta@gmail.com<mailto:john.podesta@gmail.com>> wrote: Where does this stand? JP --Sent from my iPad-- john.podesta@gmail.com<mailto:john.podesta@gmail.com> For scheduling: eryn.sepp@gmail.com<mailto:eryn.sepp@gmail.com> On Mar 18, 2015, at 11:52 PM, Nick Merrill <nmerrill@hrcoffice.com<mailto:nmerrill@hrcoffice.com>> wrote: Heather, Philippe and I spent a couple of hours on the phone just now talking through the specifics trying to piece together what Schmidt is being led to believe, and we concluded that from the below he may have a glaring hole in his fact set, which is that he thinks the two Jake emails, the only two he cites as examples of HRC “working completely outside of the system” as he put it to me last night, are emails sent from Jake’s personal account. The trouble with that is, they were not. They were both sent from his state.gov<http://state.gov> accounts, which means that if this is what he’s hanging it hat on, he has wrong information, and not much of a story. I sent him a note to that effect, telling him that from what he’s sent us, which is these two examples and nothing else, his premise is deeply flawed due to misinformation he seems to have been provided. We’ll see what he comes back with. I’ll keep everybody posted. Let's get HRC squared away first since he is challenging the pemise that it was her practice to use state.gov<http://state.gov>. So Heather, set aside how many we iniated from our personal email, how many of the 19 in the batch of 300 are HER initiating an email to one of the four of us us on our private accounts. Only us, not Sid. There were two more, right? The one to me & Huma was about getting a DVD and hardly the basis for calling her a liar. After some civil but unproductive conversations with Mike Schmidt last night, we followed up with a note to him this afternoon. He just replied with the below. Our original note pasted below that. Curious what peoples' reactions are. This response doesn't seem to address the core question, and further proves that this is just cherry-picked BS. Heather one immediate question for you is whether you can give us any details about the emails he's referring to. Related, HRC reiterated to me today a desire to call for the release of the emails. I didn't engage because I don't know all of the details here, so I told her I would convey. ------ Nick, I read your email. Below is a run down of the latest we know about the emails the committee has been given from the State Department. Below that are the questions we have. We would like a response from you by 10 amThursday morning. Thank you. // HRC received an email from Jake Sullivan shortly after Susan Rice went on the Sunday talk shows after the attacks. In the email was a transcript from one of the shows and a note from Sullivan saying that Rice had made the administration’s view clear that the attacks started spontaneously and then evolved. Two weeks later, Sullivan sent HRC an email outlining what she had said publicly about the matter, assuring her that she had never described the attacks as spontaneous and she had never characterized the attackers’ motives. HRC did not send many long emails. Many of them were to Sullivan and included news stories and the message: “Please print.” The emails show that four of HRC’s closest advisers at the State Department used private email accounts for some of their correspondences with her when she was Secretary of State. The documents show messages between HRC’s personal account and the private ones of her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills; senior adviser, Philippe Reines; personal aide Huma Abedin; and Mr. Sullivan. The questions I have for you are the same ones I sent before: Why did the advisers use private email accounts – instead of government ones – to correspond with Mrs. Clinton? Was this the normal practice? Why did Mrs. Clinton suggest that her emails were being captured in the State Department system when she was corresponding at times with her aides on their personal accounts? Were Mrs. Clinton’s advisers given legal advice about whether it was appropriate for them to correspond with her using their personal accounts? Why did Mrs. Clinton rely on the advice of Sidney Blumenthal? --------- Hi Michael, Given the nature of the below involving facts that are under review by both the State Department and the select committee, I’m asking that this all be considered off the record. I say this because I want to share some of these details in an effort to better convey why we still find ourselves not clear on the core elements of this story, making it difficult to respond to your questions. Here’s what I know. I know that you have emails or information about emails that were sent between Secretary Clinton and a personal account of one of her staff. You described that the majority of them came from the 300 turned over to the select committee by the State Department, but that based on your reporting you weren't certain. I would note that by definition if the emails involved personal addresses and were not forwarded to the State system, they had to come from the 300 grouping, because otherwise State would not have had them until they received the latest batch (the 300 earlier this year). So either they are part of a group that came from a batch that the State Department already had in their possession, which would seem to contradict your premise, or they came from the 300. Based on this, assuming they came from the 300, we’re familiar with the 300. One of the things we know is that there is a handful of emails as part of that 300 that did not eventually go to the state.gov<http://state.gov/>system, as I told you last night. This was more often than not because they were personal in nature but handed over in an abundance of caution, came from outsiders but had some of the keywords (like Libya) in them, or because they were news articles simply sent to or from a personal account. The thing we are having trouble figuring out is that based on what you have told us, and the names provided below, the two don’t match up. And I’d remind you that there is no prohibition on the use of personal email accounts, as you noted on the phone last night, as long as they are preserved, and of course, by virtue of you having these emails, they were not only preserved but disclosed. So while we want to address your questions, without any sense of the frequency, volume and any characterization of the interactions that were had, nor any verifiable sense of whether these emails did or did not get forwarded to the state.gov<http://state.gov/> system, it’s difficult to do so, particularly since you are asking questions below that seem to characterize these interactions as frequent, but it’s unclear whether that’s substantiated. So, in short, can we ask you to provide more information about what you intend to write and the facts that will support it so we can more accurately address your questions. Thanks very much. Nick