August 28, 2015 – Internet researcher Katica discovers the FBI sent a notification for preservation of documents to members of the CFIUS Committee

“Internet researcher Katica (@GOPollAnalyst) may have found the hidden thread that unravels a much bigger story within the Uranium One-Clinton-FBI scandal.

In an otherwise innocuous FBI FOIA file Katica located a notice for preservation of documents sent by an FBI special agent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on August 28th, 2015.  What is interesting about the preservation request(s) are the recipients, their attachment to CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States), and the timeline of events surrounding the agent’s notification.

The time-line here is very important as it might change the perception of exactly what the FBI was investigating as it relates to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.  Therefore a backdrop to understand content and context is important.

Up to now the general perception of the FBI’s involvement surrounding the Clinton emails has been against the backdrop of using a personal email server to conduct business, and the potential for unlawful transmission of classified data.

Additionally, the circumvention of official information technology protocols was the narrative most often discussed. The headlines were “Clinton used bad judgement” etc.

In essence, throughout 2015, 2016, 2017 the arguments, including FBI legal probes, were thought to center around “process“.  However, Katica’s discovery re-frames that argument to focus on the subject matter “content” within the emails, and not the process.

The first notification of a Clinton email problem stemmed from the discovery that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her personal email (and server) to conduct official government business.  Those initial revelations were discovered around March of 2015. [New York Times, March 2nd]

Sometime around August 3rd, 2015, we discovered the FBI inquiry was actually a “criminal probe“.  [USA Today August 4th] – [Washington Post August 3rd] – [New York Post, August 5th, 2015]  The media reporting in early August of 2015 showed the FBI investigation was actually a criminal probe.   The dates here are important.

The discovery by Katica shows that on August 28th, 2015, an FBI special agent sent a notification to preserve records to: •Nuclear Regulatory Commission; •The U.S. Dept. of Treasury; •Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI James Clapper); •The National Counter Terrorism Center; and the •U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).

(Page #7 – FBI Clinton Documents – Part 15 LINK)

Each of these agencies was intricately involved in the 2010 approval of the Uranium One deal. Indeed, each of these specific agencies is involved in the CFIUS approval process for the purchase within the Uranium One deal.  Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time.

Five Days later, on September 2nd, 2015, the FBI special agent sent another notification for preservation of records to the same agencies -beginning with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission- and adding: the National Security Agency (NSA – Admiral Mike Rogers) and the United States Secret Service (USSS).

(Page #13 – FBI Clinton Documents – Part 15 LINK) 

The following day, on September 3rd, 2015, the FBI special agent submitted a supplemental notification for preservation of records to: •The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), •Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and •The Department of Defense:

(Page #15 – FBI Clinton Documents – Part 15 LINK)

Taken in their totality those FBI special agent notifications now encompassed every member of the CFIUS group who “signed off” on approval of the Uranium One deal.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 11/03/2017)

Internet sleuths discover social media posts by the manager of Clinton’s server that could impact the investigation of Clinton’s email usage.

On September 16, 2016, Twitter user Katica@GOPpollanalyst sends a message to Jeffrey Marty via his Twitter page which is a parody account for a fictitious congressional member named Rep. Steven Smith@RepStevenSmith. Katica had recently discovered posts to the Internet forum Reddit by someone using the name “stonetear,” and had deduced through various clues that this person actually is Paul Combetta, the Platte River Networks (PRN) employee who has managed Clinton’s private server since June 2013.

Katica then sends Marty a copy of stonetear’s Reddit post that was written on July 24, 2014, and includes a request for advice about “stripping out” the email address of a “VERY VIP” email account.

Marty replies, “NO WAY!!!!! That’s HUGE.”

Marty will later explain in a news article, “After a lot of discussion about the potential fallout of this decision, Katica and I decided the ‘stonetear’ information had to be released.  Late Sunday night [September 18, 2016], we tweeted the (then-live) short link to the Reddit ‘VERY VIP’ post and four screenshots to Katica’s 2,000 followers, followed by an immediate re-tweet of her post to my 16,000 followers.”

Many interested people then begin finding and archiving all of Combetta’s Reddit posts, as well as other traces he’d left on the Internet using the “stonetear” alias. In the process, more evidence is found that “stonetear” and Paul Combetta are one and the same.

Within hours after the story breaking in various media outlets, including US News and World Report, “stonetear” is caught deleting all of his Reddit posts. The deletions are captured on video as they happen and are posted to YouTube. By September 20, 2016, a Congressional committee demands Combetta submit to recorded interviews by September 23, 2016 to explain these Reddit posts, as well as the deletions, or he will face another subpoena. (Daily Caller, 09/22/16)

July 21, 2018 – Katica finds in FBI report, reference to a thumb drive the FBI received from Clinton’s lawyer, and it reveals her emails were being auto-forwarded to a “foreign entity”

Researcher and Paul Combetta aka Stonetear whistleblower, Katica@GOPPollAnalyst, tweets to Rep. Louie Gohmert after a combined House Judiciary and Oversight Committee hearing. Katica’s tweet was in response to a question Gohmert posed to Peter Strzok regarding a “foreign entity” found on Clinton’s private server, when a forensic analysis was done by the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General’s office.

The forensic analysis revealed nearly all of Clinton’s emails were automatically forwarded to an unknown email address (not Russia). Gohmert said the ICIG investigator, Frank Rucker, presented the findings to Strzok, but that the FBI official did not do anything with the information.

Here is a clip of Louie Gohmert’s exchange with Peter Strzok regarding Clinton’s emails sent to an unauthorized source:

Katica discovered in Part 3 of the FBI Vault report, mention of an unknown email address on Clinton’s server and tweets her findings to Representative Louie Gohmert:

Katica then tweets: “FBI Vault part 3, page 61: The hackers then used the password to modify the users gmail/yahoo account to auto-forward to [redacted]. “

Katica continues, “One common theme with hackers is they create an email account relatively close to the ID of the person they hacked. Huma: My email address is misspelled…and clintonmail has never been hacked. Part 3, page 89.”

 

The FBI report also states, in February 2011, several State employees were victims of Yahoo and Gmail phishing attacks and Clinton’s private server was affected.(Read more: Katica@GOPPollAnalyst/Twitter, 7/22/2018)

(Timeline editor’s note: Katica constantly amazes us with her discoveries and is one of the few researchers willing to do the painstaking work of reading the Clinton FBI reports, making sense of them and then posting her findings to the public. Her work is invaluable for those seeking documented details.)