Congress, Criminal law, Media, Politics, Society

State Department Refutes Key Statements By Clinton On Email Scandal; Finds That She Violated Clear Rules

Hillary_Clinton_Testimony_to_House_Select_Committee_on_BenghaziWhile the New York Times has reported that the “State Department’s inspector general sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server” and “undermined some of Mrs. Clinton’s previous statements”, the report did far more than criticize and undermine. It directly contradicted Clinton’s assertions on a number of key points. It further indicated not only clear violations of the State Department rules, but rules that were made clear to Clinton and her staff.  (The Washington Post took a more critical view of Clinton’s statements in light of the report).  Moreover, while this report deals with State regulations and rules (as well as the Federal Records Act), it does have bearing on the ongoing criminal investigation to the degree that it shows knowledge or reckless disregard of the security protocols and rules. It does show precisely that.


The report clearly establishes a number of damaging facts. First, the State Department made clear that a personal server was not allowed and would present serious security risks for the country. Second, Clinton never asked or received permission for such a server. Third, the State Department would
never have approved such a server. Fourth, Clinton’s objections to using the secure State Department system was not convenience (as she previously stated) but access to her personal emails. Fifth, her actions failed to comply with the Federal Records Act. Sixth, Clinton suspected that she was being hacked but continued to use her personal server exclusively. Finally, the report indicates that Clinton did not fully cooperate with the subsequent inquiries and investigation.

The contradictions with past statements are glaring and will not help Clinton already historic lows for trustworthiness or honesty with voters. For example, in March 2015 Clinton stated at a press conference that:

“Third, after I left office, the State Department asked former Secretaries of State for our assistance in providing copies of work-related emails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related, which totalled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work- related emails and deliver them to the State Department.”

However the statement department found that

“At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

She waited two years to turn over emails after deleting tens of thousands deemed “private.”

Likewise, Clinton previously insisted “under the Federal Records Act, records are defined as reported information, regardless of its form or characteristics, and in meeting the record keeping obligations, it was my practice to email government officials on their state or other .gov accounts so that the emails were immediately captured and preserved.” This has led to the dubious claim that over 90 percent of the emails were preserved due to the recipients being in the system. However, no one has supported that still repeated claim and the State Department did not have those emails. The report further states “sending emails from a personal account to other employees at their Department accounts is not an appropriate method of preserving any such emails that would constitute a federal record.” It further noted that these emails were not saved beyond a couple years and thus could not be viewed as complying with the system.

Clinton also repeatedly stated “It was allowed under the rules of the State Department. And, again . . . it was allowed. You know, one of my predecessors did the same thing. Others in our government have done the same thing at very high levels because the rules did change after I left state department. But at the time and in prior years the rules allowed it.”

However, the State Department clearly and unambiguously rejected this claim. It states that she never asked permission to use her own server and that such a request would have been denied. It further said that the security risks for such an act were clearly high and would never have been considered as acceptable.

Clinton has also insisted that she has always been entirely cooperative and transparent with the State Department. However, the State Department said that Clinton declined to be interviewed by the State Department’s inspector general as did top aides.

Does this mean that she will clearly be charged with a crime? No. Does this have bearing on a criminal investigation? Yes. Prosecutors often look at elements like (1) a failure to fully disclose or cooperate with an investigation; (2) knowledge or reckless disregard of security protections; (3) awareness of the danger of hacking; (4) false statements made in the wake of disclosure; and (5) the circumvention of standard procedures or personnel. Notably, Clinton acknowledges that she believed that there may have been a hacking effort, but still retained her personal server. Moreover, while part secretaries of state are referenced for sending unprotected emails, Clinton is clearly identified as being a far more egregious case in the use of her own server and taking these actions after the use of such a server was clearly improper.

I have been writing that the security violations involved in the email system are serious and should not be dismissed by the media or the public. As is often case in Washington, the scandal was made worse by the habitual denials and evasion from the Clinton camp. The odds still favor Clinton in avoiding criminal charges but she and her staff have maximized their exposure through their actions and public statements.

What is fascinating is that the spin from Clinton supporters is now the final line of defense: there is no evidence that she was actually hacked. Many of us have expressed our view that such hacking or compromise of the system seems highly likely since the Secretary of State is one of the priority targets for foreign intelligence. Moreover, a hacker who says that he routinely hacked the account has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the government. This spin seems an effort to kick the can down the road to get beyond the convention and secure the nomination before this new line of defense could be contradicted. That is a continuation of the approach from the outset of not getting out in front of the scandal but evading the allegations and adding layers of denial. The Clinton team seems absolutely confident that the Administration will not move on any criminal charges but that is a considerable risk, particularly for top aides implicated in these findings.

76 thoughts on “State Department Refutes Key Statements By Clinton On Email Scandal; Finds That She Violated Clear Rules”

  3. Clinton is a liar with decades of insider experience, so she knew exactly what she was doing with that server of hers: blowback is the only reason she “regrets” it now.

    Trump is a self-serving, make-it-up-as-he-goes buffoon with zero substance and a demeanor befitting a fourth-world nation.

    Sadly, voting Clinton.

    1. Dave, I agree 100% with your opinion but not with your conclusion to vote for Hillary. Write in Bernie or vote Green.

  4. I’ve never accepted the myth that those who claim to lead us have a particular gift for that leadership. Dick Cheney, former corporate head, is noted for the following statements. “The war (Iraq) will last for weeks or months, certainly not years.”; “We will be greeted as liberators.”; “The insurgency is on its last legs.”; “Deficits don’t matter.”; “The vice-president is not a member of the executive branch.:” Then, the greatest lie of all, the claim of WMD stated with absolute certainty.
    Conclusion: A government job is often a sinecure paying more than comparable jobs in the private sector and one from which one is rarely fired. There is absolutely no evidence that these people have better judgement, wisdom or decision-making ability than the man on the street. George W. Bush was a national disaster, yet he was re-elected.
    The experience factor is dubious as well, as it often means that the employee has been doing the same thing over and over again for, say, 20 years, and has largely depended on others to do the actual work.
    Hillary voted for the Afghanistan/Iraq disaster by giving Bush II carte blanch, an error in judgement of monumental proportions which cost the us $3 trillion, the loss of 1 million Iraqi lives, creation of tens of thousands of widows and orphans, and the destabilization of the entire Middle East.
    Trump, for all his braggadocio, has experience making decisions in the real world, not the warm womb of bureaucracies in which no one is ever held accountable.

  5. More Hillary closet junk:

    Hillary Clinton Praised ‘Corrupt’ Brazilian President Ms. Dilma Rousseff For Her Transparency

    Brazilian lawmakers voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff over alleged corruption. And that could make life a little uncomfortable for Hillary Clinton, who said just four years ago that Rousseff herself set “a global standard” for transparency.

    Now, thanks to allegedly shady accounting practices and her connection to a scandal involving Brazil’s state-owned oil company, polls show that more than 60 percent of Brazilians want Rousseff impeached. You wouldn’t have predicted this four years ago if you’d listened to Clinton, who then called Rousseff a role model of openness for other world leaders.

  6. She voluntarily co-mingled her personal emails with government emails. At that point she should have lost her choice to remove personal emails before turning them over to the Government.

    1. Michael – from articles I have read, Clinton should have delivered two piles of emails when she left office. One marked personal, one marked work. She waited two years and delivered one pile marked work. She, her attorneys and Jake Sullivan supposedly found over 30,000 personal emails that they destroyed. Even teenage girls don’t get 30000 emails in that time period. Something very hinky was going on with the emails.

  9. @issacbasonkavich: “perhaps this country is strong enough to weather 4 years of Republican dysfunction.” OF COURSE this country is strong enough to do that, and much more. What it may not be strong enough to do is survive voters who vote for criminals because they think the honest candidate is too weak or too old. He’s only five years older than Clinton.

  10. Oh so glad to have Good News this Friday. We really can believe in hope and change at the State Department and the New York Times and the Washington Post.

    No Sale

  11. Drip. Drip. Drip. She is now statistically tied with Sanders in California. She is losing support little by little.

    1. Paul: I was very surprised to hear the latest poll that Hillary leads Bernie 44% to 42%. I thought Bernie would overwhelm her in California. But she does have Baba “I feared for my life [at the Nevada Democratic Convention]” Boxer as her lead blocker here.

      1. steve – Hillary was way ahead some months ago. Bernie says he is planning to work the state until June 7. I guess that’s the election. She has the Democrats but he is getting the independents.

        1. Paul, Bernie’s got to win by a large margin, not just the majority. There are too many Baba Boxer lookalikes here for that to happen.

          I sure like how he thumbed his nose at the banksters, though. He’s got big cajones for such a polite and well-intentioned guy.

          1. steve – Bernie has done well, but he does not have the fire to win against Clinton. You have to get down in the mud and wrestle with her. Bernie won’t do that. Trump will.

  12. The FBI email conclusion will come soon. But there is other junk is in Hillary’s closet.

    Hillary’s Arab Spring uprising failures. On the topic of the Arab Spring, Clinton continuously voiced her praise for the coinciding revolutions that have plunged the Middle East region into irreversable turmoil.

    In 2011, Hillary Clinton strolled through Tahrir Square, the site of the Egyption protests that removed American Ally Hosni Mubarek from office. “To see where this revolution happened, and all that it has meant to the world, is extraordinary for me,” the gushing Secretary said to a crowd of journalists. “For the United States, supporting democratic transitions is not a matter of idealism. It is a strategic necessity.”

    Within the year, during Clinton’s second visit, protesters pelted her motorcade with tomatoes and shoes, all the while chanting: “Monica, Monica, Monica.” The Monica chant, of course, is in reference to Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair with a White House Intern. Within a year of that date, the first democratically elected president Mohammad Morsi was overthrown by the military in July 2013 following mass protests. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the former military chief, is now president of Egypt; Morsi has been sentenced to death.

  14. So let’s elect Trump? On the one hand perhaps this country is strong enough to weather 4 years of Republican dysfunction at levels yet to be experienced. On the other hand reflect upon the 8 years of the three stooges and the damage done; and then multiply it by, well, use your imagination. A perverse billionaire, lier extraordinaire, narcissistic over the hill male chauvinist, next to totally devoid of experience in government, but with great hair and shiny white teeth. Be serious, nothing Clinton has done can equal the mess that is Trump.

    Sanders, ideologically, might work but he is simply too old and disconnected with the present reality of the sewer that is the perversity of the US system of self governance. He wouldn’t last a year. We have a sewer and Clinton is the best rat for that sewer. Unfortunately the old adage of being a** deep in alligators, or rats as with the present condition, it is hard to remember that you came to drain the sewer.

  15. “The odds still favor Clinton in avoiding criminal charges. . . .”

    This statement seems to be a non-sequitur if this blog’s subheading “res ipsa loquitur” means anything. I’d say that if she isn’t prosecuted, it’s simply another sign that our government is as corrupt as any, and Hillary, like her bank friends, is too big to fail.

  16. Reblogged this on Memory Hole and commented:
    Has any major US presidential candidate ever been allowed to run while also being the focus of such a wide-ranging federal investigation? A cynic might conclude that since Clinton is “the establishment’s” choice, such potential criminal wrongdoing can be overlooked.

  17. Prissy, JT is superb on some topics. He understands the Clinton’s on a profound level and all of his posts about them are like this one.

    The more information comes out, I think the email stuff is secondary. I think the real crime was Clinton selling out the SOS Office to foreign corporations just like this greedy couple sold the Lincoln Bedroom. And, I surmise, this Macauliffe investigation[or is it a security review?] is almost certainly part of this even more serious crime. The wheels on the Clinton Cabal Bus may be coming off..finally!

  19. Facilitating the terrorizing and destruction of millions of lives around the world and assassinating national leaders are apparently acceptable, but using e-mail for communications – that is sinful.

  20. FYP –
    ….. that is a considerable risk ONLY for top aides implicated in these findings.

    great post as usual.

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