Boggart Abroad: 05/06/16

Friday, May 06, 2016

Hillary Clinton To Face FBI Interview Very Soon

After the US Department of Justice had effectively blocked the FBI inestigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server shenagigans involving official material classed as 'top secret and above' he woman who has a reputation as the world's greatest gloater probably thought she had got away with blatantly disregarding laws on national security, and could focus on cheating Donald Trump or whoever (I'm not ruling out the possibility that Trump's bid for the presidency will be derailed by a scandal,) an order made by Judge Sullivan of the U.S. District Court laid out ground rules for interviewing multiple State Department officials, and ordered at least six current and former State Department employees to answer questions, all in an effort to finish the depositions in the weeks before the party nominating conventions.

According to a CBS report, a Washington source has confirmed that Hillary Clinton will be interviewed by the FBI within the coming weeks, in connection with the investigation into her private email server. Hillary's top aide, Huma Abedin was interviewed by the FBI in April. The FBI and Justice Department have been investigating whether classified information stored on Hillary's email server was mishandled. Abedin was interviewed at the FBI's Washington field office last month. The FBI's investigation into Clinton's email server was first reported in August.

The Clinton campaign has said it's confident that the FBI's review "will conclude that nothing inappropriate took place." There's no timetable for completing the investigation, and there have been no statements about how much longer the investigation will take. A federal judge in Washington said he may order Clinton to testify under oath about whether she used a private email server to evade public records disclosures. The order from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan granted a request from the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch to question six current and former State Department staffers, including Abedin, about the creation and purpose of the email system.

Clinton, who has been accused many times of behaving as if she is above the law, dismissed the idea that she could face legal trouble over the use of the server, responding to a debate question in March about the prospect of a federal indictment by saying, "It's not going to happen." Well at least she didn't say, "What difference does it make."

USA Has Told Assad He Needs To Commence Handover Of Power In Syria by August Or Face Consequences

Bashar al Assad and John Kerry: which one looks more ~~like a Scooby Doo villain~~ worried?

Secretary of State John Kerry this week set an August deadline for the transition in Syrian from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to an as yet unidentified government (probable a US nominated puppet regime that will cave to Islamic extremists in weeks.) Warning Assad, his government and its Russian and Iranian allies that non-adherence to the ultimatum will prompt a new US approach to ending the five-year-old war, Kerry said, "The target date for the transition is 1st of August," Kerry said in a press conference at the State Department on Tuesday. "So we’re now coming up to May. So either something happens in these next few months, or they are asking for a very different track."

It’s not clear how much weight Kerry’s ultimatum carries, during the five years of conflict in Syria the US has given several such ultimatums but has meekly backed down when Putin stood by Assad. The most memorable of these was Kerry’s warning in 2011 that "Assad’s days are numbered", and the rent-boy President, Barack Obama's declaration that chemical weapons were a "red line" that, if used by Assad’s regime, would prompt decisive US action. Following that, there were chemical weapons used against anti - Assad rebels, although the illegal act was later proved to be a CIA sponsored false flag attack. In another face off won by Putin, Washington put US Navy warships in the eastern Mediterranean, but when Moscow had its ships anchor off Syria's coast, the USA again backed down.

The Obama administration has repeatedly declined to put US troops into Syria in large numbers, preferring to use Turkey and the ISIS terrorist group as its proxies. Currently there are around 500 US advisors working with Syrian rebels following a recen increase in their numbers ordered by Obama.

Kerry spoke after attempting to restore a partial truce in Syria amid a dramatic rise in violence, especially in Aleppo. Kerry was in Geneva on Tuesday as UN Envoy Staffan de Mistura met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.

Kerry warned Assad of “repercussions” if he does not stick to a ceasefire brokered by Russia and the United States and move forward with a political transition aimed at ending Syria’s war. It was unclear what the Secretary Of State meant by repercussions. "I don't think Russia wants that. I don't think Assad is going to benefit from that. There may be even other repercussions being discussed," he said

Kerry was in Geneva on Tuesday 3 May as UN Envoy Staffan de Mistura met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. So far there has been no official Russian reaction to this latest sabre rattling from Washington.