"Loathsome"

Cheryl Mills, left, was Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff and former White House counsel who defended President Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial. (Photo: Newscom)
Sharyl Attkisson writes at Daily Signal,

To Sonya Gilliam, a recent account of improper sorting of Benghazi-related documents at the State Department brought back vivid memories of her own encounters with high-level government officials who withheld, deleted or destroyed public records.

And one name stood out for its familiarity: Cheryl Mills.

A former deputy assistant secretary of state had told The Daily Signal that Mills was present during an after-hours document operation in a basement room of the State Department in October 2012. Mills was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The purpose of the session, former State Department official Raymond Maxwell said, was to “separate” documents damaging to Clinton before records were turned over to an independent review board probing the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Two years into the investigations, on April 3, 1996, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others were killed in a plane crash while on an official trade mission in Croatia. Brown recently had been served with a deposition notice regarding the alleged sale of trade mission seats.

Evidence revealed a “flurry of document shredding in the [Commerce] secretary’s office” following his death. The document obstruction, which continued for years, is detailed in a 1998 federal court ruling.

Judge Calls Mills’ Behavior ‘Loathsome’ in Other Case

In a separate case involving missing documents that was brought against the FBI in 1997, Lamberth found no obstruction or conspiracy but referred to Mills’ conduct as a White House official as “loathsome.”

Lamberth faulted Mills for making “the most critical error in this entire fiasco”: learning of missing White House emails but not taking proper steps to resolve the situation.

“Mills’ actions were totally inadequate to address the problem,” Lamberth concluded.

And she gives Maxwell a great deal of credit for speaking up about what he saw in the State Department basement in October 2012.

“I never met Ray Maxwell,” Gilliam told The Daily Signal. “I don’t know Ray Maxwell. But I am Ray Maxwell because I lived Ray Maxwell’s story. And I felt compelled to say something.”

The account of Cheryl Mills told by Raymond Maxwell, former assistant deputy secretary of state, sounds familiar to Sonya Gilliam. (Photo: Sharyl Attkisson)
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