One of Bill O'Reilly's many sexual harassment victims defies her confidentiality agreement to accuse O'Reilly and Fox News of breaking the settlement contract.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

A woman who reached a settlement with Bill O’Reilly over harassment allegations sued Mr. O’Reilly and Fox News on Monday for defamation and breach of contract, saying that public statements he and the network made violated the settlement and portrayed her as a liar and politically motivated extortionist. 

The woman, Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, is one of six known to have reached settlements after making accusations against Mr. O’Reilly. (Her allegations did not include sexual harassment.) None of the others have said anything publicly about their claims, which involved sexual harassment. 

Mr. O’Reilly has repeatedly said that the harassment allegations that led to his ouster from Fox News in April have no merit, that he never mistreated anyone and that he resolved the matters privately to protect his children. 

“In fact, Mr. O’Reilly is the liar,” states the lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. “He mistreated Ms. Bernstein. She was forced out of her job at Fox News and paid a settlement because of his mistreatment.”

The lawyers for Ms. Bernstein have suggested that these nondisclosure agreements are just a way of keeping the victims quiet while Fox News and Bill O'Reilly disparage their character.   

“Knowing Ms. Bernstein and Mr. O’Reilly’s other victims are afraid to speak out because he and Fox forced them to sign nondisclosure agreements, O’Reilly and Fox have made false and disparaging claims,” Mr. Mullin said in a statement. “They should release all victims from their NDAs and let the truth out. It is cowardly to publicly attack these women knowing they have been subjected to contractual provisions requiring absolute silence.” 

I doubt very seriously that Fox would ever release these women from their agreements to let them start talking, but if they band together as one and defy those agreements.....whoa Nelly!

After election Trump businesses required employees to sign draconian confidentiality agreements or risk losing their jobs.

Courtesy of CBS News:

CBS News has obtained a new confidentiality agreement rolled out after the election. The Trump Organization is requiring employees at all levels to sign it, or else they will lose their jobs. 

Employees must agree to keep secret any information they learn about anyone in the "Trump family" and extended family, including their "present, former and future spouses, children, parents, in-laws." 

"I have reviewed confidentiality agreements in international, family-run hospitality organizations and... I have never seen a loyalty code to a family like this," said Debra Soltis, who has specialized in employment law for more than 25 years.

"This confidentiality agreement looks more like what you would expect to sign if you were a nanny to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's children, where you were being brought into the home and exposed to private information," she said. 

Specifically off limits: "all political, legal, social, religious, health-related affairs, activities, views and/or opinions of any member of the Trump family... all photographs, movies, sketches, videos, sound or image recordings or likenesses of any member of the Trump family." 

The agreement lasts forever and is retroactive.

Not surprised by this at all, this family is terrified of having their private information leak out, because they know that some of their secrets could land them in prison.

I imagine that there is a similar agreement which members of Trump's cabinet and White House staff are also required to sign.

Really makes you wonder just how much dirt is out there, doesn't it?

VP Mike Pence discussed classified issues on a personal email account, and it was hacked. How do you perform CPR on an irony meter?

Oops?

Courtesy of The Guardian:

Vice-president Mike Pence used a personal email account to discuss security issues as governor of Indiana and was hacked last summer, it was reported on Thursday. 

Pence’s AOL account was compromised by a scammer who sent an email to his contacts claiming Pence and his wife had been attacked on their way back to their hotel in the Philippines, losing their money, bank cards and mobile phone, the Indianapolis Star reported. 

“In response, Pence sent an email to those who had received the fake communication apologising for any inconvenience,” the paper said. “He also set up a new AOL account. Because the hacker appears to have gained access to Pence’s contacts, experts say it is likely that the account was actually penetrated, giving the hacker access to Pence’s inbox and sent messages.”

Here is more from Indy Star:  

Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges.

AOL? What is this 1991?

Here is Mike Pence back in October of 2016 attacking Hillary over her private server, while the crowd yells "Lock her up!"

"Truth is a force of nature, and truth has a way of making its way out."

It certainly does, doesn't it Mikey?

Yeah I don't just want Donald Trump impeached I want this asshole taken down as well.

POS!

Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!! Update!

Courtesy of Wonkette.

Courtesy of CNN:  

Donald Trump will receive his first classified national security briefing Wednesday in New York, two sources told CNN. 

The briefing, prepared by the director of national intelligence, will be the first in what could be several classified briefings Trump will receive as the Republican nominee for president. Trump has never before had access to classified national security information.

Jesus Christ, why would we do this?

I don't care if it is customary, I would not tell this lunatic my real middle name much less anything classified.  (By the way for the record my middle name is not "Asswipe." My mother just tells people that.)

I wonder how many nanoseconds it will take before Trump dials up his pal Putin and starts telling him about the handful of secrets we still have that he HASN'T already learned by hacking virtually every government agency in the country?

And by the way, whatever happened to Harry Reid's idea of giving Trump fake intelligence briefings?

That was a great plan!

Besides we already know that he will believe virtually any bullshit thing he is told.

'It's just a 2-point race, Clinton 38%, Trump 36%' https://t.co/EzDzJ4EzIN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2016

See?

Update: Apparently Trump does not even trust intelligence briefings:

Hours before he is set to receive his first classified intelligence briefing, Donald Trump said he does not trust information coming out of U.S. intelligence agencies and indicated he would cease relying on the bulk of the intelligence community’s massive workforce. 

That's right Donald it's all a bunch of lies. Certainly not even worth your time to leak it to the press or slip to your pals in Russia.

You fucking moron. 

I guess we should assume that if Trump were to actually win the election that he would ignore the State Department briefings altogether, and go to what he considers legitimate sources of information.

World Net Daily and the Drudge Report.

No Guccifer did NOT hack Hillary Clinton's e-mail server.

Farenthold: Did Guccifer gain access to Hillary Clinton's emails?

Comey: He admitted that was a lie

— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) July 7, 2016

This widely held belief by Republicans and Bernie-Bros that this Guccifer fellow hacked Hillary Clinton's e-mail server, and that she put potentially top secret information into the hands of our enemies, is complete bullshit.

Despite the claims by Fox News: 

The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer,” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily – and repeatedly – breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. 

"For me, it was easy ... easy for me, for everybody," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held. 

Guccifer’s potential role in the Clinton email investigation was first reported by Fox News last month. The hacker subsequently claimed he was able to access the server – and provided extensive details about how he did it and what he found – over the course of a half-hour jailhouse interview and a series of recorded phone calls with Fox News.

Well he lied to them and in their desperation to prove Hillary Clinton unfit for the presidency they ate it up with a spoon.

Today when asked point blank if Hillary's e-mails had been hacked FBI director James Comey said this:  

"I'm not sure."

Which is ridiculous because he also said that there was no evidence found that the server had been hacked.

Typically when you find no evidence of a crime you say there was no crime. You don't say "Well there could have been a crime, but I can't be sure because I can't find the evidence."

So we now know that the State Department was hacked, the White House was hacked, the IRS was hacked, the Office of Personnel Management was hacked, and even the DNC was hacked.

And yet we have no proof, nor any real reason to suspect, that Hillary Clinton's e-mails were hacked.

So one more time, WHOSE e-mail system was more secure again?

Hillary Clinton is being vilified for what MIGHT have gone wrong with her e-mail situation, but in the end nothing that was classified fell into enemy hands, no hackers broke into her system, and it resulted in no agents or soldiers being put at risk.

Which by the way, is a hell of a lot more than can be said for other so-called secure government e-mails servers.

The saga of Bristol Palin and her baby daddies.

b a b y d a d d y b f f

A photo posted by Bristol Palin (@bsmp2) on May 26, 2016 at 8:41pm PDT

I think we can stop beating around the bush and just say that Bristol has either already lured Dakota back into her bed again, or she is still in the process of reeling him in.

That boy is dumber than a box of rocks.

But he should be paying very close attention to how she treats her other baby daddy.

Courtesy of People: 

Looks like a win for Bristol Palin. 

Her former fiancé Levi Johnston has reportedly been ordered by a judge to pay the mother of two $61,915.20 in back child support for their 7-year-old son, Tripp, according to TMZ. 

Palin's apparent child support victory is the latest development in a years-long and sometimes bitter custody battle between the ex-couple, who in February were finally awarded joint custody of their son. 

Now on the one hand this is exactly what Levi fought for in court, joint custody of his son. (Well almost joint custody.)

However I am told that he did not expect the support to be so high.

And what is even worse is that both parties signed a confidentiality agreement so that the details of the case would not end up in the gossip rags.

The Johnstons kept their part of the deal (Trust me.) but clearly Bristol did not.

And it is this kind of nasty back stabbing that Dakota Meyer can look forward to as well.

If he think that there is a happily ever after in his future he needs to wake up and smell the arsenic, because everything about these people is poisonous.

Upgrades by the State Department as to what is "confidential" or "secret" find that former Secretaries of State Condollezza Rice and Colin Powell may now be in violation of the guidelines as well. Oops.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Colin Powell and top staffers for Condoleezza Rice received classified information through personal email accounts, according to a new report from State Department investigators. 

Hillary Clinton has received severe criticism -- particularly from Republicans and computer security experts -- for using her personal email account while serving as the nation's top diplomat under President Barack Obama. 

Thursday's revelation about the two secretaries of state under former President George W. Bush gave her supporters an opportunity to claim the Democratic presidential candidate was being singled out over the practice. 

The emails were discovered during a State Department review of the email practices of the past five secretaries of state. It found that Powell received two emails that were classified and that the "immediate staff" working for Rice received 10 emails that were classified. 

The information was deemed either "secret" or "confidential," according to the report.

So I assume that we can now look forward to Condi and Colin having to sit before some Congressional investigative committee as well now, right?

Oh no I'm sorry that only happens if your name is Clinton.

Colin Powell is not exactly happy that he has been dragged into this BS either:

"The State Department cannot now say they were classified then because they weren't," Powell said. "If the Department wishes to say a dozen years later they should have been classified that is an opinion of the Department that I do not share." 

"I have reviewed the messages and I do not see what makes them classified," Powell said.

Okay we need to move onto a new scandal, this one is boring.

I think the new shiny object is that Hillary is supposedly the mascot of Wall Street.

Well at least it's relatively new.

Former Benghazi House Committee investigator charges Chairman Trey Gowdy with releasing confidential information. Dammit! Where's the butter for my popcorn?

Courtesy of MSNBC: 

The legal battle between the House Benghazi Committee and its former investigator, Todd Podliska, escalated Monday afternoon, when Podliska’s lawyers alleged that Chairman Trey Gowdy violated government confidentiality rules and federal law in responding to allegations made by Podliska. 

“Both Representative Gowdy and the committee have clearly violated terms of the confidentiality agreement and the Congressional Accountability Act,” said Peter Romer-Friedman, one of Podliska’s attorneys, to MSNBC on Monday afternoon. 

The lawyers allege that Gowdy and the committee improperly released confidential information regarding an employment dispute with Podliska, in an effort to discredit him. 

This is what Gowdy said that upset the investigator so much:

Shortly after Mr. Podliska appeared in an interview Sunday with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Gowdy released a statement denying what he described as “sensationalist and fabulist claims,” adding that Mr. Podliska has “demanded money” from the committee. 

“One month ago, this staffer had a chance to bare his soul, and raise his claim this Committee was focused on Secretary Clinton in a legal document, not an interview, and he did not do it,” said Mr. Gowdy, South Carolina Republican. “Nor did he mention Secretary Clinton at any time during his counseling for deficient performance, when he was terminated, or via his first lawyer who withdrew from representing him.” 

“In fact, throughout the pendency of an ongoing legal mediation, which is set to conclude October 13, this staffer has not mentioned Secretary Clinton,” Mr. Gowdy said in the statement. “But as this process prepares to wrap, he has demanded money from the Committee, the Committee has refused to pay him, and he has now run to the press with his new salacious allegations about Secretary Clinton.”

Yeah that kind of sounds like they are trying to discredit this guy with confidential information.

This is how a spokesperson for the Benghazi committee responded to the investigator's accusations:    
“The ludicrousness of a former employee who has spread himself across the news media over the weekend complaining about confidentiality ought to be obvious,” a Benghazi Committee spokesperson told NBC News’ Kristen Welker Monday. “The Committee will vigorously defend itself against these and any other false claims and has nothing further to add at this time.”

However a report from the New York Times seems to back up the investigator, and the earlier comments of Kevin McCarthy quite nicely:

Now, 17 months later — longer than the Watergate investigation lasted — interviews with current and former committee staff members as well as internal committee documents reviewed by The New York Times show the extent to which the focus of the committee’s work has shifted from the circumstances surrounding the Benghazi attack to the politically charged issue of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. 

A committee with a stated initial goal of learning more about how four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed in Libya has created a political whirlwind in Washington, affecting not only Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, but now also the race for House speaker. Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to testify in front of the committee on Oct. 22. 

The committee has conducted only one of a dozen interviews that Mr. Gowdy said in February he planned to hold with prominent intelligence, Defense Department and White House officials, and it has held none of the nine public hearings — with titles such as “Why Were We in Libya?” — that internal documents show have been proposed. 

At the same time, the committee has added at least 18 current and former State Department officials to its roster of witnesses, including three speechwriters and an information technology specialist who maintained Mrs. Clinton’s private email server.  

It appears to me as if this whole committee is about to blow apart at the seams, and their partisan agenda has already been revealed for all to see.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, I see no need for Hillary Clinton to lend this witch hunt any credibility by showing up to testify this month.

If she refuses I think the whole thing will be disbanded before November.

Sarah Palin reaches $15,000 settlement over 9-11 copyright lawsuit, but only if the deal remains confidential. Well we're talking about it, so guess what?

Courtesy of New Jersey.com:  

Sarah Palin agreed in December to pay a New Jersey newspaper $15,000 to settle a lawsuit over her campaign's unauthorized use of an iconic photograph of firefighters hoisting the American flag on 9/11 — but the deal remains stalled over the former GOP vice presidential candidate's insistence on confidentiality, according to court papers filed Monday in U.S. District Court. 

According to the documents, William Dunnegan, the attorney for North Jersey Media Group, which publishes The Record of Bergen County, says that on Dec. 22, 2014 -- four days after the two sides agreed in principle to settle the case -- lawyers for SarahPac, Palin's campaign organization, "asserted that there must be a broad confidentiality clause." 

"Shortly thereafter, Palin's counsel, Ronald Coleman, Esq., told me that Palin required a confidentiality clause because her political action committee did not want any hint of a compromise associated with her name," Dunnegan writes. 

Dunnegan included with his filing several emails exchanged with Palin's lawyers regarding the settlement. 

"We have confirmed with our client, and accept your offer of a $15,000 settlement," Palin attorney Brian Farkas wrote in a Dec. 18, 2014, email that Dunnegan filed with the court. "We assume that this will include a mutual confidentiality/non-disparagement clause in the stipulation of discontinuance.''

Okay this cracks me up.

So after first claiming that the plaintiffs did not have a case, then claiming they lived in the wrong place to file a lawsuit, and then demanding that they move the case to Alaska, finally Palin reaches a deal and it falls apart because she does not want anybody to know that she settled?

Yeah wouldn't want anybody to think she was capable of compromise or anything, right?

I like how Palin claimed that she required the confidentiality clause because "HER political action committee did not want any hint of a compromise associated with her name."

As if SHE wasn't the person completely in charge of what the PAC wanted or did not want.

Well gee, guess what? We all know about it now.