Congress, Criminal law, Justice, Media, Politics, Society

Clinton: “Pretty Clear” No Emails Were Classified Despite Contrary Findings Of Inspector General

225px-Hillary_Clinton_official_Secretary_of_State_portrait_cropDespite the determination of investigators at the State Department and intelligence agencies that Hillary Clinton did use her personal email system to handle confirmed classified information (and potentially compromised “hundreds of classified emails”), Clinton dismissed such allegations and assured the public that it is “pretty clear” that there was no classified information on her personal email system — a system that she used rather than the secure State Department system.


Clinton portrayed the recent bombshell report of the allegations of the Inspector General as simply some bureaucratic infighting: “What I think you’re seeing here is a very typical kind of discussion, to some extent disagreement among various parts of the government, over what should or should not be publicly released.” (Notably, the State Department itself confirmed specific classified emails on the system).

I think that it is much more than that, though the Obama Administration has been quick to downplay any suggestion of a criminal investigation and has stressed that the letter from the Inspector General was not technically a criminal referral.

Again, Clinton is stressing that she did not send or receive any material marked classified. I have previously discussed why that explanation is less than compelling, particularly for anyone who has handled sensitive or classified material. As I discussed earlier, virtually anything coming out of the office of the Secretary of State would be considered classified as a matter of course. I have had a TS/SCI clearance since Reagan due to my national security work and have lived under the restrictions imposed on email and other systems. The defense is that this material was not technically classified at the time that it was sent. Thus it was not “classified” information. The problem is that it was not reviewed and classified because it was kept out of the State Department system. Moreover, most high-level communications are treated as classified and only individually marked as classified when there is a request for disclosure. You do not generate material as the Secretary of State and assume that it is unclassified. You are supposed to assume and treat it as presumptively classified. Otherwise, there would be massive exposure of classified material and willful blindness as to the implications of the actions of persons disregarding precautions. For example, there is not a person standing next to the President with a classification stamp in the Oval Office. However, those communications are deemed as presumptively classified and are not disclosed absent review. Under the same logic, the President could use a personal email system because his text messages by definition are not marked as classified. This is the whole reason that Clinton and others were told to use the protected email system run by the State Department. We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to secure such systems.

Clinton portrayed the dispute as entirely removed from her controversial decision to use a personal server — a move that gave her total control of the server and ultimately allowed her staff to delete thousands of emails before turning over emails to the State Department: “They can fight over it or argue over it. That’s up to them. I can tell you what the facts are.”

Clinton continues to struggle with her spin that she wanted to use her own server to avoid multiple devices (which has been widely ridiculed) as well as her insistence that she never received a subpoena. Her repeatedly claim that she was never subject to a subpoena has been described as false by media like CNN after it was disclosed that she had indeed been given a subpoena for the emails.

I would be surprised if the Administration opened a criminal investigation into the matter given the treatment of other high-ranking officials in such cases by the Justice Department in the past. However, to kill any investigation after this letter would be viewed as unusual and biased by many in the intelligence area. First and foremost, Clinton may have to yield to long-standing demands for access to this server. For the moment, she is clearly maintaining the original position that there was no problem so long as her communications were not marked as classified at the time — a rather preposterous suggestion since no one sits next to a Secretary of State and stamps every line as classified in communications. The use of private server obviously placed these communications at greater risk of interception, which is the whole reason we have spent hundreds of millions on the secure system for communications. I do not see how Clinton will be able to maintain her conduct as justified or responsible in the face of the overwhelming view of experts as well as prior internal memoranda on the subject.

130 thoughts on “Clinton: “Pretty Clear” No Emails Were Classified Despite Contrary Findings Of Inspector General”

  1. “Her repeatedly claim that she was never subject to a subpoena has been described as false by media like CNN after it was disclosed that she had indeed been given a subpoena for the emails.”

    Throw it on the pile of documented lies that people will just ignore.

  3. These are the undisputed facts:
    1. Ms Clinton used her personal email exclusively
    2. set up her own sever to which she refused to allow State access
    3. Failed to turn over all emails to State for them to agree or disagree with her private vs State email piles, as is done with every other employee upon exit
    4. Failed to provide emails under the Benghazi subpoena
    5. When she came under investigation for these emails she brazenly and openly deleted thousands of emails and then wiped her server clean
    6. State determined that some of the emails which she did turn over were in fact classified

    Since she purposely destroyed her server, we were prevented from determining if her server had been hacked.

    Does anyone seriously believe that you can use personal email exclusively as SOS and NOT send classified information?

    She’s not even hiding any of this. Her response appears to be that the law does not apply to her, and so what? The only way we can actually do something about it, I believe, is to appoint an IG, and what do you think the chances are that Obama will do that? So she’s right. There’s nothing we can really do about it but make noise.

    This reminds me of the Whitewater scandal in which her files “disappeared” when they were subpoenaed. Her secretary found them open on a coffee table a long time later and submitted them. The only fingerprints found on the files were hers and Hillary’s. Sounds like a trend to me.

    Except we can rebuke her by not voting for her. That, I believe, she would listen to.

    I am frustrated that Hillary Clinton is even a serious candidate for president. She has a long, well documented history of lying, attacking women whom her husband sexually harassed, and she is on tape laughing and joking about having volunteered to get a pedophile she knew was guilty off for raping a young girl. It’s sickening that a significant number of people will vote for her. I recall the savage backlash when the wealthy Mrs Romney pampered her show horse, and when they put their dog’s carrier on the roof of their car at a time when it was legal for people to ride in the back of trucks and not wear seat belts. They went for the jugular for the most mundane issues, but give a woman a pass who helped a child rapist go free and volunteered to do it. She’s been “running” for president for so long, and she has yet to deign to grant a single tough interview. I recall watching a press conference when someone from Fox asked her a question. Her answer was that she would think about considering answering his question.

    And yet a significant number of people polled are going to vote for her, possibly inflicting one of the worst examples of political lawlessness and lack of character on all the rest of us. I find that irresponsible.

  6. Aren’t you tired yet of this inanity?
    He was BORN in the USA, thus he is an American citizen. Ted Cruz was born in Canada, thus NOT an American citizen.

    Aren’t you? Geeze

    They are both American Citizens. Obama’s mother is a US Citizen. Cruz’s mother is a US Citizen. As long as ONE of your parents is a citizen who has met the residency requirements, it doesn’t matter where you are born. You are an American citizen and in some cases “might” be able to claim dual citizenship. Hawaii, Kenya, Canada, Panama, Mexico.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/yes-ted-cruz-can-be-born-in-canada-and-still-become-president-of-the-us/275469/

    Man, you birther types are really tiresome. On both sides of the fence.

  7. “Hillary should step down. Most politicians have a trust issue, but hers is over the top. We on the left have much better candidates than Hillary.”

    What I.Annie wrote!

    The Presidency is open season for those wanting to take potshots. Isn’t that a given?

    The Clintons each have a serious lack of foresight in this respect which manifests itself as a flat-out denial or a shrug of the shoulders when they’re confronted with it, and I suspect, apart from the fact she’s a card-carrying neo-lib, Hillary will compromise to save her legacy when she’s done something wrong during her presidency, and she’ll sell the farm to the absolute horror of those of us watching.

    Besides, I always like seeing someone dethroned when she thinks of herself as the presumptive nominee.

    Bernie’s the better candidate for their party on policy, transparency, and lack of baggage, but he apparently has an irrational bias for the Zionist project, which doesn’t sit well with me.

    stovegreen

  8. Obama’s Birth Certificate is a Fake

    “What was presented to the American people is nothing”
    The Following is a Presentation on the Fraudulent Identity Documents of Barack Hussein Obama AKA Barry Soetoro
    Presented by: Mike Zullo, Lead Investigator of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Cold Case Posse

    https://youtu.be/PwDqXFCy0Bo

  11. Aren’t you tired yet of this inanity?
    He was BORN in the USA, thus he is an American citizen. Ted Cruz was born in Canada, thus NOT an American citizen.

  14. Is Hillary Clinton IT savvy? How to hack & forge emails. Check video at 2:55 mark, emails to Barack Obama on TCP/UDP port 25.

  16. Barack:

    The bathrooms at the Secretary of State’s Office are filthy. You need to send over some cleaners who dont work for the government and will get their hands dirty.

    Hillary

  18. “Actually the detail in the story is that the info was not classified originally but later was changed. That makes a difference. Whatever you think about her email server the facts are on her side.”

    What part of “everything from the Secretary of States office is classified”, that you didn’t understand?
    All that have an 1A or A1 security clearance, has to consider everything they communicate as “classified”, doesn’t matter if you are SOS or not!
    All of my emails were classified and I was just a minion in the government but had the highest security clearance. Their good for 10 years and they will even go to your childhood neighbors and ask questions about you.
    I’m pretty sure Hillary knew the rules, since she had fired her own staff for the same breach!
    No other government employee in history has had ‘their very own’ server!

Comments are closed.