‘How Hard Can It Be?’ State Dept Still Can’t Find Hillary’s Crucial ‘Separation’ Form

[mystery-ak]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/415470/how-hard-can-it-be-state-dept-still-cant-find-hillarys-crucial-separation-form-brendan

‘How Hard Can It Be?’ State Dept Still Can’t Find Hillary’s Crucial ‘Separation’ Form  by Brendan Bordelon March 16, 2015 2:46 PM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L6Ak0go1a4

AP reporter Matt Lee was stumped by the State Department’s inability to find the “separation” form Hillary Clinton should’ve signed when she quit as Secretary of State, wondering why the department cannot go back and pull the document from the department’s HR files.

The form, OF-109, is critical to understanding whether Clinton violated the law by maintaining her own private e-mail account and server to conduct official business as Secretary.

If she signed the form, as is required for all departing employees, she may have committed a felony. The document asserts, under penalty of perjury, that the employee turned over all relevant records at the time of signing.

And if she didn’t sign the form, the question remains: Why not? But reporters, who started asking for the form last week, have been repeatedly stymied by the State Department. “I don’t have an update on this, Matt,” spokeswoman Jenn Psaki told Lee on Monday.

 “We’re still working on it.” “The human resources department presumably has a file on every employee,” Lee pressed.

 “It can’t be that difficult.” “I don’t think former secretaries are standard employees,” Psaki said. “Well, they might not be,” Lee said.

 “But how hard can it be to find . . . Where do these forms, once they’re signed, go?

They don’t go into the ether, like so many other e-mails seem to have.”

“We do keep records, yes,” Psaki said.

“It should be on file.”

[rangerrebew]

AP reporter to Psaki: Why is it so hard to find out whether Hillary signed the separation form when she left State?


posted at 4:01 pm on March 16, 2015 by Allahpundit


Via the Right Scoop, if you’re following the Hillary e-mail saga you already know which form he means. It’s OF-109, which, per former DOJ lawyer Shannen Coffin, requires the employee to declare under penalties of perjury that she’s turned over all relevant records to the Department before leaving her position. Work-related e-mails, which Hillary didn’t turn over until two years after she stepped down as secretary, are relevant records. Which means, if she signed the form, she’s presumably guilty of perjury. If she didn’t sign the form, she’s guilty (or guiltier) of following irregular procedures to avoid the sort of accountability that’s routinely required of lesser mortals. You would think someone in State’s HR department could find the form and answer this question in 15 minutes but we’ve waited nearly a week for an answer. And we’ll have to keep on waiting, per Jen Psaki when she was asked about it again today. Which, actually, is bad news for Democrats: The longer this drags on, the more of a headache it is for Hillary. Better for her and for State if the Department just tells us the answer and tries to move on.

The fact that reporters keep asking means Psaki will probably have to tell us eventually, which means we can go ahead and start gaming out Hillary’s spin when she does. My guess is State will come back and say that Clinton never signed OF-109 (or that State’s archivist has misplaced the form), whether that’s actually true or not and even though she was supposed to under law. State’s already copped to horrible record-keeping practices; no one will blink if they further admit to having screwed up in failing to follow separation procedures for departing officials to the letter. If State can’t find the form then Hillary’s not guilty of perjury. If State can find the form then perjury is back in play, but remember that perjury is a crime of intent. You have to knowingly and willfully falsify facts to be guilty; an honest or pretend-honest mistake isn’t actionable. My guess is Hillary will claim that she told her aides shortly before she stepped down to turn over her work e-mails to State and the aides “forgot,” unbeknownst to our heroine. So she’ll have to make a new statement apologizing for the oversight and admitting that she should have supervised her staff more closely to make sure they had complied, and the press will treat that as some sort of noble “buck stops here” statement of fake-accountability by an obvious liar and we’ll all have a good laugh and then we’ll elect her president. It’s a great time to be alive.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/03/16/ap-reporter-to-psaki-why-is-it-so-hard-to-find-out-whether-hillary-signed-the-separation-form-when-she-left-state/