Archived comments unearthed by citizen-detectives on Reddit indicate that Paul Combetta -- the tech specialist who deleted Hillary Clinton’s emails from her server -- may have sought advice on the website for how to hide a certain “VIP’s” email address.

One archived comment from July 24, 2014 – during the same month that the State Department first asked Clinton aide Cheryl Mills to turn over the former secretary of state’s work-related emails from her personal server – shows Reddit user “stonetear” asking others on the site:

“Hello all- I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email… Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?”

Multiple Reddit users at the time responded that it was not possible, saying Microsoft does not include an option to change addresses on existing emails because altering them could be used by people to evade court-ordered discovery procedures.

One wrote: “[If Microsoft Exchange] allowed this, it could result in major legal issues. There may be ways to hack a solution, but I am not aware of any.”

User “stonetear” responded: “The issue is that these emails involve the private email address of someone you'd recognize, and we're trying to replace it with a placeholder address as to not expose it.”

Reddit user “stonetear” appears to be a username used by Paul Combetta, the tech specialist with Platte River Networks who ultimately deleted Clinton’s emails and reportedly has received immunity from the Justice Department. Reddit users typically do not link real names to their accounts, but the website Etsy shows the profile “stonetear,” created in 2011, is registered to the name Paul Combetta. The email address stonetear@gmail.com is also linked to Combetta’s name, and the domain name combetta.com is registered under that email.

The connections have caught the attention of Capitol Hill. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told The Hill that the House oversight committee is now reviewing the Reddit posts.

The “stonetear” Reddit user frequently asked for and gave tech advice regarding servers over the years.

On Monday, as users on Reddit uncovered the old comments asking for tech advice, user “stonetear” began deleting every one of his comments and posts – but not before other Reddit users managed to archive them using the website “archive.is,” which allows anyone to archive a webpage (the archived page is then hosted on archive.is indefinitely, even if someone later deletes or alters the original.)

On Monday morning, one Reddit poster wrote “He's actually deleting his comments in real tim[e] right here.” Another made a video of the comments being deleted on the screen as he refreshed the page.

User “stonetear” made several comments in 2014 that line up with the Clinton scandal timeline.

According to the FBI report on Clinton’s email issues, Clinton aide Mills told the FBI that Hillary Clinton decided in December 2014 that she did not need emails older than 60 days, and Mills asked someone to implement that. The name of the person she asked was redacted by the FBI but later determined by The New York Times to be Paul Combetta.

“Stonetear” posted on Reddit that same month – on Dec. 10, 2014 – asking about how to set up a server which would automatically delete all emails after 60 days:

“I have a client who wants to push out a 60 day email retention policy for certain users. However, they also want these users to have a 'Save Folder' in their Exchange folder… All email in any other folder in the mailbox should purge anything older than 60 days… How would I go about this?”

Nobody on Reddit responded to stonetear’s question.

The FBI report notes that in late March, the person the Times identified as Combetta realized he had in fact failed to implement the 60-day deletion policy as requested: “In a follow-up FBI interview… he believed he had an ‘oh ****’ moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox.”

The FBI report goes on to note he also used “Bleachbit” to make sure some backups were permanently deleted, and that several different backups were deleted at that time.

Combetta was reportedly granted immunity in exchange for answering their questions. However, when asked questions by Congress, Combetta invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and declined to answer their questions.

Platte River Networks, where Paul Combetta worked, declined to comment to FoxNews.com and declined to comment about whether Combetta still works there. An email to Combetta’s address went unreturned Tuesday.

Other postings from “stonetear,” meanwhile, indicate he isn’t a fan of conservatives. On a post titled “Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman comes out in favor of gay marriage after son comes out as gay,” “stonetear” left this comment:

“Typical of conservatives in general... it's bad or evil or undesirable until it happens in their own family/life/neighborhood.”

Another post shows him asking for programming code that would automatically delete thousands of emails from a server. That post was from Aug. 26, 2013 – almost two years before Combetta actually deleted Clinton’s emails but just three months after the Clintons had hired the company Combetta worked for to run their server.

In another comment on Oct. 14, 2014, Combetta responded to another user who had asked about a server problem they were having by suggesting their error may be due to someone on their server trying to hide something:

“This is probably diving into paranoia,” he said, before going into his theory about their problem. “Just thinking outside the box. Plus I like devious $hit like this :)” he wrote.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/20/clinton-email-wiper-appears-to-have-asked-online-how-to-hide-vip-info.html

This is one of those kinds of information where those who are so inclined or biased, can read positive or negative things into it, but there's nothing in the report itself which directly condemns or praises any side or person.

Email security is being discussed, and the person who had been told to see to it had belatedly figured out that they hadn't done what they'd been told to do, but the the report doesn't give us any "smoking gun" of actual emails being problematic in and of themselves.

Where I work, which is no place special from a secrecy standpoint, the company emails are designed to auto-delete everything older than a certain date, unless someone manually saves it into a folder outside the email system. That's not because they are worried that someone later will find out who said what to who, it's just to save server space, for the sake of nickel nursing.

Other than revealing this particular IT person to be incompetent at their assigned task (and therefore going to Reddit after he was already supposed to have done something he didn't do on time), there's nothing in this report. It doesn't even say that the "VIP" ordered the guy to find a way to "doctor" the email after the fact.

So in the end, it neither shows Clinton being nasty and nefarious or devious, nor does it show Clinton as being careful and decisive about selecting someone to manage the emails properly.

Enough so apparently to have further company and private emails ordered before congress as well as he himself recalled. They are also following up with respondents to his Reddit request.

Clinton's an eel, as slimy as they come, and having been a lawyer she's smarter than people give her credit for, but it's all part of her "I'm innocent" act. Like when she told the FBI she couldn't remember, or didn't understand, and to cleaning her server "you mean with a rag or something?"

Hillary Clinton's former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and two other staff members, were granted partial immunity deals in exchange for their cooperation with the FBI, according to a Republican congressman.

"No wonder they couldn't prosecute a case. They were handing out immunity deals like candy," House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told Associated Press on Friday.

The now-closed FBI investigation was over Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

Chaffetz, who has been looking into Clinton's email practices, and who requested the immunity agreements from the Justice Department, said they showed Mills had given federal investigators access to her laptop on the condition that whatever they found couldn't be used against her.

Chaffetz told AP he was "absolutely stunned" that the FBI cut a deal with someone as close to the investigation as Mills, and said by including the emails recovered from the laptops in the immunity agreements, "the Justice Department exempted key physical evidence from any potential criminal case against the aides."

Mills had been among Clinton's closest confidants and voluntarily appeared last year for a lengthy interview as part of the House GOP's investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attacks that left four Americans dead.

The Justice Department issued the House Oversight Committee chair copies of the agreements, but they remain under seal.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon accused House Republicans of "trying to make something out of nothing" by requesting the files, and timing the request "just three days before the first presidential debate."

"Congressman Chaffetz continues to abuse his office by wasting taxpayer dollars to try to second-guess the FBI in what amounts to a desperate attempt to boost Donald Trump's chances against Hillary Clinton," Fallon said.

But Chaffetz said he disclosed the immunity deal Friday, because that's when he first learned of it from the FBI.

A total of five Clinton staffers received immunity deals, including John Bentel, then-director of the State Department's Office of Information Resources Management, and Clinton aide Heather Samuelson, according to Chaffetz. Others granted immunity were Bryan Pagliano, a tech expert who set up Clinton's email server, and Paul Combetta, a computer specialist for a private firm that later maintained Clinton's email setup.

FBI Director James Comey said in July his agents hadn't found evidence to support any criminal charge or direct evidence that Clinton's private sector server had been hacked.

Chaffetz is due to question Comey about the immunity deals when the FBI director testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Chaffetz is also a member of that panel.


reader comment:
Hang on
By: Hawklord

Quote "FBI Director James Comey said in July his agents hadn't found evidence to support any criminal charge or direct evidence that Clinton's private sector server had been hacked."

So all those emails weren't hacked by Guccifer V1 or V2.0?

They appeared on Wikileaks purely as a voluntary submission by HRC or her staff? Are we now to understand it wasn't Putin after all?

Is that the FBI official stance?

I'm not sure this story is completely right, for some imaginary reason.

http://www.rt.com/usa/360457-clinton-staffers-given-immunity-deals/

Hohohoho......I don't think such crear names "president" officer is not just Vip that easy.............thank god..............they've finally realized such question.......Saint holy mighty gaint peach.........next time board on the empire tower top dudes will Gona yell like this..........yo yo......monkeydle like some pinking holp.....wow........yoliyolo..............