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At least four senior officials in President Trump's White House have active accounts on a private Republican National Committee (RNC) email system, according to a new report.
Counselor Kellyanne Conway, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner — Trump's son-in-law — all have rnchq.org email accounts, Newsweek reported Wednesday.
Trump repeatedly attacked 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton last year for using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State.
[...] Newsweek added the rnchq.org email system caused controversy during former President George W. Bush's administration.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) accused Bush White House staffers in 2007 of using the system to evade transparency.
The rnchq.org email system was involved in the loss of 22 million Bush administration emails, Newsweek reported, many from around the start of the Iraq War.
Former President Obama’s administration found the lost emails after private lawsuits were filed, it added.
Those messages are now in the National Archives, according to Newsweek, but remain under the national security shield and have not been seen by the public.
[Update:] Newsweek updated its story and is now reporting:
Since this story was published, the RNC has deleted the emails of Bannon, Kushner and Conway. RNC spokesman Ryan Mahoney told Newsweek Wednesday night that the emails were set up only for distribution lists, “There is nothing wrong with having an RNC account if it is not used for any official government business,” he said. “In this case, the officials previously employed by the Trump campaign never had functional email accounts with the RNC. The RNC has various distribution lists to communicate with state parties or campaigns, and as a byproduct these contact groups are assigned RNCHQ.org addresses that only forward to external accounts at their respective organizations.”
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:08PM
It's against the law to use Federal computer systems, including email servers, for political campaigning. This borders on "fake news" with how it is being up-played as nefarious.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:32PM
One of the first things I thought of when I read this article was Nixon's checkers speech. Really worth a listen if you have not heard it before.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JpWwgwytdzk [youtube.com]
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:01PM
It's against the law to use Federal computer systems, including email servers, for political campaigning. This borders on "fake news" with how it is being up-played as nefarious.
You are trying to undermine and misrepresent what "fake news" is. Stop it right now.
Fake news is known falsehoods being portrayed as news. For example, the Obama Birther movement, the Kerry Swiftboat smear campaign. Even the insistence of the Trump administration that the crowds were larger at inauguration than they are documented as being is fake news.
Fake news is not things which are irrelevant, things which happen to be false but are earnestly thought to be true by the reporter, reports which are dramatically spun in favor of one side, or things you don't agree with.
If this was a report that Trump/etc were in secret correspondence with the Kremlin using these email addresses, it would be fake news. If it is that they have these private email addresses, it is legitimate news.
Stop trying to undermine and belittle the honest lying propaganda going around.
(Now that I think about it, all of the fake news I know of have been anti-Democrat. I'm sure some hits Republicans too, but I can't help but feel this means something. The only anti-Republican fake news I can think of is the 9-11 Truther movement, and I actually think those reporting on it earnestly think they are right and not willfully propagating falsehoods.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:36PM
That is only because anything anti-republican seems to somehow be redefined by the left just as you are doing now.
It is almost like you fail to see how this is not democrat vs republican but actually the bourgeoisie and the prolitariat vs the aristocracy.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @11:08PM
During past years, the dems did have official cover. Their propaganda was officially endorsed and therefore seemed less fake. The claim that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous reaction to Innocence of Muslims was fake news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @03:55AM
> The claim that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous reaction to Innocence of Muslims was fake news.
No. What was fake news is the claim that they deliberately lied about it.
At the time they said it. it was the best available information. As more info came in, it changed their understanding.
That's the nature of intelligence, it changes as reports come in and even then different sources have different confidence levels.
Nobody disputes the attack on the Cairo embassy [wikipedia.org] was provoked by the video. There was a lot of protesting at in a lot of cities around that time. It was reasonable to assume the Benghazi attack that followed was related.
Ultimately, complaining about state and cia getting ahead of the full story of Benghazi for a couple of days is some nit-picky shit given all the other protests and riots and how little difference it made. It isn't like the CIA just gave up and blamed it on the video and so didn't do a full post-mortem analysis. They did their job anyway, as they would regardless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @09:44AM
Oh, and the argument about inauguration crowd size is not "nit-picky shit" given that Sean Spicer was technically correct that total viewership (in-person + streaming + TV) was the largest ever?
On Benghazi, the Obama administration had its talking points lined up to fit the preferred political narrative. They didn't let facts get in the way of their made-up BS until much later.
I'll give you another example of Democratic fake news [forbes.com]: 97 % of scientists agree that humans are causing dangerous global warming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:17PM
Technically correct? You mean Spicer's comment that the physical crowd was much bigger? Or that the WMATA subway ticket sales were much higher? Or that the photos are misleading because ground cover was used on the grass this time, but not during 2009?
Not only were those very specific, and very easily verifiable, statements not technically correct, they were out-and-out FALSE. They then tried to take refuge by claiming that "millions" of people saw it via streaming to make them "technically correct" all the while not providing any evidence that the streaming numbers were what they said either (talk about your making up your BS later).
How about the "millions" of fraudulent votes that were cast? They even quantified it at somewhere around 11 million, but *shock*, provide ABSOLUTELY NO backing for that claim. THAT is fake news, when you completely make shit up and pass it off as real fact. Stating as fact claims about ground cover and ticket sales that are simply FALSE and trying to paint them as "alternate facts" is, by definition, fake news. And the fact that they seem to do this regularly for nit-picky shit is very troubling because they seem to feel the need to do this to assuage Trump's enormous ego.
I sure hope Pence will make a good President because if we keep going at this rate, there's either going to be impeachment proceedings resulting from inevitable corruption, or he'll simply quit the job when he keeps getting called out for his unsubstantiated BS (but not before positioning his (oh, sorry, "blind trust" meaning his children's) businesses for success).
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday January 27 2017, @01:50PM
No. What was fake news is the claim that they deliberately lied about it. At the time they said it. it was the best available information. As more info came in, it changed their understanding.
Let us remember that the best available information was that there was an election in two months. The story of an ambassador being killed by terrorists would have played into the hands of their Republican opponents.
Nobody disputes the attack on the Cairo embassy [wikipedia.org] was provoked by the video. There was a lot of protesting at in a lot of cities around that time. It was reasonable to assume the Benghazi attack that followed was related.
There wasn't an attack on the Cairo embassy. From your linked article:
Protesters in Cairo climb over the walls of the US Embassy and tear down an American flag, replacing it with a black flag inscribed with Islamic emblems. Egyptian police have surrounded the compound to block further incursions.
Moving on, in Benghazi there were two attacks. The first on the consulate in Benghazi and the second on a CIA-based compound a couple of hours later. That indicates both premeditation and organization which was to use your phrase "high confidence" information known from the beginning. Sorry, it's ridiculous to suppose that a coordinated military attack like that is somehow equivalent to some protestors yanking down a flag. But it is politically convenient to do so.
That's the nature of intelligence, it changes as reports come in and even then different sources have different confidence levels.
Notice how even the flimsiest of excuses is good enough for you. This is a typical MO of many politicians these days. They don't have to provide a good excuse. They just need to provide an excuse that their supporters will swallow.
Ultimately, complaining about state and cia getting ahead of the full story of Benghazi for a couple of days is some nit-picky shit given all the other protests and riots and how little difference it made. It isn't like the CIA just gave up and blamed it on the video and so didn't do a full post-mortem analysis. They did their job anyway, as they would regardless.
Or rather a couple of weeks. And a lot of the ire comes from games like this [thehill.com]:
“I was very disappointed in the briefing yesterday, too. The bottom line is, we asked questions like, ‘How many people were at the Benghazi consulate?’ You pick up The New York Times and you get a blow-by-blow description of what supposedly went on,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The Times published a timeline of the attacks chronicling militants gaining access to the U.S. compound after 9:35 pm on Sept. 11, American security forces attempting to retake it at 10:45 pm and American and Libyan forces regaining control of the main compound around 11:20 pm, before evacuating.
According to the timeline, Libyans found Stevens in the compound after midnight and took him to a hospital, and 20 embassy staff members were hit by mortar rounds around 2 am, an attack that killed two former Navy SEALs.
The official Senate briefing was less informative.
“It was like pulling teeth to get information yesterday,” Graham said of the meeting with Clinton and other administration officials. “A lot of senators were frustrated. And you pick up major newspapers in the country and you find details not shared with you.”
The Wall Street Journal published a similarly detailed account of the attack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:29PM
So why do you quote a 2012 hearing article when there were seven or eight or more investigations done after that, plus the official report from Republicans that found very few differences between what was said at the hearings and what they put in the report? Then they conveniently release this tepid report, without including any dissenting opinions, just after the election even though the report was done five months before. It served its purpose and turned up no useful information that wasn't already revealed, just like Comey's announcement.
Boy, talk about using flimsiest excuses by the fanbois. The sad part is you most likely consider yourself one of the "fair and balanced" people on these topics.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday January 28 2017, @12:44AM
So why do you quote a 2012 hearing article when there were seven or eight or more investigations done after that, plus the official report from Republicans that found very few differences between what was said at the hearings and what they put in the report?
Because I didn't need to. Evidence is good enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @04:55AM
What a stupid gish-gallop you have spewed. Nobody has time for all that shit. But this one is beyond ridiculous:
There wasn't an attack on the Cairo embassy. From your linked article:
They breached the damn walls. You want to argue it wasn't an armed attack, go ahead. But JFC, that kind of shit puts people on edge because nobody knows what is going to happen next. It was not a planned peaceful demonstration. It was a fucking mob attack.
Even you, one of the most retarded robots on this site, would have been shitting your pants if you were on the grounds of that embassy at the time.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 28 2017, @10:48AM
What a stupid gish-gallop you have spewed. Nobody has time for all that shit.
I didn't realize "gish-gallop" meant "I'm too fucking lazy to read or educate myself about important topics." Learn something new every day. You probably ought to tell the dictionaries so they can correct their erroneous definitions.
There wasn't an attack on the Cairo embassy. From your linked article:
They breached the damn walls.
Trespassing isn't an attack.
(Score: 4, Funny) by linkdude64 on Friday January 27 2017, @10:23PM
"Fake news is known falsehoods being portrayed as news. For example, the Obama Birther movement, the Kerry Swiftboat smear campaign."
Don't forget the "99.9999999999% chance" that Hillary was going to win. Personally, my favorite fake news story of 2016.