Clinton IT Aide Who Defied Subpoena Says He Created A Cryptic Gmail Account And Sent It Nearly All Of Hillary’s Emails
Luke Rosiak
Investigative Reporter
August 16, 2019 8:31 AM ET

All but four of Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 emails were copied, likely secretly, to a Gmail address called CarterHeavyIndustries@gmail.com, according to a new Senate report.

The FBI says that the account was linked to Paul Combetta, an IT aide Clinton hired who used BleachBit to destroy emails after they were subpoenaed and misled FBI agents.

Combetta said he sent all of her emails to the Gmail account as part of trying to copy them to a new server. Combetta was copying Clinton’s emails off of an old laptop that he was supposed send back in the mail, but there’s no evidence he returned it, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General.
[li] When an intel agent discovered the copying to a third-party account, he said Peter Strzok seemed uninterested. The intel agency feared the email account could be a link to a foreign power, but the FBI refused to explain it to them.

Virtually every single one of Hillary Clinton’s emails were sent, potentially secretly, to a cryptically named Gmail address, according to a new Senate report.

The finding, which has not been previously reported, means that Clinton’s emails, including classified ones and ones which were later deleted, likely existed on Google’s U.S.-based servers. The FBI said in the report that it knew this — and of the suspicious explanation for it — but did not alert other intelligence agencies or the public, according to the report.

The FBI says that the suspicious Gmail address was set up by an IT aide, Paul Combetta, who worked for a company that managed Clinton’s server. Combetta is the same IT aide who used BleachBit to permanently erase copies of Clinton’s emails after they were subpoenaed by the House, misled the FBI about it, and was given immunity from prosecution, all while asking for basic computing advice on Reddit.

Combetta refused to cooperate with the Department of Justice Inspector General and with the authors of the Senate report about his use of the cryptic email address. He previously pleaded the Fifth before Congress in September 2016 about his deletion of emails.

Combetta worked for Platte River Networks, a technology company in Colorado that began managing Clinton’s email server when she decided to house it more professionally than the homemade server in her basement.

Charles McCullough, the Intelligence Community Inspector General, and his investigator Frank Rucker discovered that every one of Clinton’s emails except four were secretly copied to the cryptically named email address, CarterHeavyIndustries@gmail.com, according to the report.

But when Rucker brought the findings to Peter Strzok, the anti-Trump agent who was in charge of the Clinton case for the FBI, he seemed uninterested and did not ask any followup questions, Rucker told Senate investigators.

...................................................................................


“It raises more questions about the honesty and integrity of those in the FBI that they gave a pass on this and during the House and Senate inquiries into this, nobody mentioned that he had set up another address,” he said. “It makes the FBI look either incompetent or dishonest, because it didn’t come out from the FBI until the ICIG was so forthcoming that the FBI had no choice.”

“I think Combetta ought to be prosecuted,” Gohmert, a former judge, said, adding that typical immunity deals can be canceled if the person has lied at any point. “And just because there’s incompetence, doesn’t mean there’s not also conspiracy there.”

Timeline

August 20, 2012: Paul Combetta, a Platt River Networks (PRN) employee, creates CarterHeavyIndustries@gmail.com.

June 2013: Clinton’s PRN server (an upgrade from her basement server) becomes active.

February 2014: Clinton aide Monica Hanley mails Clinton’s old laptop to Combetta to transfer emails from 2010 off of it. Combetta migrates the emails to the new server using the Carter Heavy Industries gmail account as an intermediary, according to the FBI. Combetta was supposed to wipe the laptop and mail it back to Hanley, but there is no evidence that Combetta wiped it or mailed it, according to the DOJ IG.

Summer 2014: Combetta puts Clinton’s emails on Mills’ and Samuelson’s laptop the more typical way — by uploading PST files. Mills directed him to set clintonemail.com to delete all mail after 60 days, but he doesn’t do it.

March 2015: Days after a House committee issues an order requiring all of Clinton’s emails to be preserved, Combetta “had an ‘oh shit’ moment,” according to the FBI, and retroactively deletes Clinton’s old emails using Bleachbit.

September 17, 2015: Combetta is interviewed by Strzok voluntarily. He denies deleting emails.

January 15, 2016: Rucker drops off a packet of info to Dean Chappell of the FBI containing information about the Carter email address. Chappell emails: “I did get your information and we were aware of the one thing you found.”

January 20, 2016: Rucker asks the FBI to let him know the explanation for the Carter Industries account since other agencies have equities, but the FBI gives no answer.
[li] February 9, 2016: Peter Strzok is promoted to Section Chief.

February 18, 2016: At 2pm, Rucker meets with Strzok and Chappell about Clinton server issues. Strzok seems uninterested. Strzok interviews Combetta for a second time that same day — it is unknown whether this occurs before or after the Rucker meeting, or whether the timing is a coincidence. Combetta tells the FBI he created the dummy email account to transfer Clinton’s archived emails from the archive laptop to the PRN Server. (The DOJ IG says the FBI already knew that Combetta was behind the Carter account, but it is not clear how.) Combetta says he does not recall deleting any emails, even though the FBI shows him evidence that they were deleted.

May 3, 2016: DOJ gives Combetta immunity, even though team members say he should be prosecuted for repeatedly lying, according to the DOJ IG.

April 20, 2018: DOJ IG interviews Strzok about allegations that he had ignored evidence of a compromise of Clinton’s server. He tells DOJ OIG that the allegations were “not accurate” and he did not know “where that could come from.” The report says the questions were prompted by news reports, however, the news reports did not occur until August 2018.

June 2018: DOJ IG report on FBI conduct in Clinton case is released. It vaguely makes reference to Combetta using a “dummy” account.

June 2018: DOJ IG interviews the FBI’s Chappell and asks about his interactions with the ICIG. He says he does not remember receiving anything from him related to evidence of email routing data. Rucker is also interviewed by DOJ IG.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/16/hilla...-cryptic-gmail/