The e-mail scandal involving former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has continued to unfold, as we have been discussing. The number of classified emails have now grown to 1340. While the vast majority have low level classification, a few contained information classified at the secret level. This is not the first such allegation of someone stripping classification headers in scandal.  The mishandling of classified information is a crime and the level of gross negligence in the use of the private server by Clinton is staggering. However, there has long been a good-faith debate over whether Clinton is being given a pass on a criminal investigation by the Obama Administration or whether her actions (while negligent) were not criminal in nature. A recent story could change that debate considerably  if critics are proven correct. One of the emails released recently reportedly shows Clinton instructing an aide to strip off classification markings from a document and to send by unsecure means. Such an act could be charged as a criminal offense under federal classification laws.  However, it is not clear that any email was sent and the Clinton staff could claim that she was referring to clearly unclassified material contained in a document.  There has been a suggestion that the material in question were “talking points” that were meant to be public or were clearly unclassified.  [Update: Clinton says that the email was never sent and that she trusted her aide to make the right choices on what could be sent.]

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