New York Times: Hillary Clinton illegally used private email for all State Dept. business

Don't you see how that is irrelevant though? It doesn't excuse breaking the law even if we assume that the data was safer on the private server....and there's no reason to assume that.

 

I agree that either way she should have been using the state department servers. I've said that all along. It's just ironic that it could turn out the information in this particular case was safer.

It doesn't excuse her not using state department servers in any way.

 

What she did was wrong no question about it. I just wish those calling for her head yelled as loudly when Bush administration officials were using RNC email addresses for official business.

Oh and that only came out during a Congressional investigation of the Bush administration's removal of multiple US attorneys for political reasons. And unlike Hillary Clinton's emails, the administration's RNC emails were deleted. Over 20 million emails were never recovered. So who knows what information (including classified information) went over those non governmental emails and servers. In fact, the White House press secretary admitted that using RNC emails was a way to get around the Hatch Act and other rules in place around communication.

I'm sure many people have some genuine outrage but I suspect much of this is partisan gamesmanship. Hillary Clinton has been under the microscope for 20 million years with more money spent investigating her over Benghazi than was spent on Watergate.

 

It's not confusing at all, unless you try to confuse folks.

And as usual, the real issue is likely to just lay waste to political noise and won't be addressed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...e2ee06-dbd6-11e5-81ae-7491b9b9e7df_story.html

 

So if you agree what she did was illegal, why try to deflect by bringing up unrelated issues? If others broke the law like Clinton did, they should be prosecuted for it just like she should be.

I can understand not wanting her prosecuted for partisan reasons or fear over a Trump victory, but if you don't treat everyone as equals, the whole system falls.

 

Well that was exactly my point, the Clinton spinsters were trying to confuse people. It's very simple, Clinton broke the law and had others break the law by grossly mishandling classified material, including top secret information, for personal convenience and in order to have more control over her own emails so that she could duck FOIA requests that she wanted to.

 

I'm telling y'all right now: huge cash savings for uncle sam here.

Bobby, for free, will be the Federal Bobby of Investigation. Saves us all $9B.

Who's in? I mean, he already knows better than them so why exactly are we paying them all that cheddar?

 

You just stated my point. NO ONE on the Republican side complained about the Bush adminstration's use of RNC email or the fact that they deleted 20 million emails.

You're proving my point. If you want to treat things as equal, then we have our precedent set. The Bush administration got off for doing something much worse. They had multiple high level members of the administration using private email and then deleting those emails.

Also, I havent seen actual evidence of her sending information over email that was classified at the time it was sent.

How can one say throw the book at Hillary when senior members of the Bush administration openly admitted to violating multiple federal laws around communication and didn't face any repercussions.

If anyone is being partisan, its those that chose to ignore the Bush folks but then demand that Clinton be thrown in jail for activities that don't even come close to what the Bush officials did.

 

We regularly don't enforce many laws that are on the books because of, well, common sense. There's a reason a cop doesn't stop every speeder or jaywalker. Most information security laws were written before email and other modern communications methods existed, and the whole system is rife with problems and many of the regulations conflict with each other. Basically every federal employee likely violates some kind of security procedure on a fairly regular basis - I don't think anyone (maybe you) think it's would be rational to prosecute them all because it's neither malicious not harmful and would be a gigantic waste of resources.

The unanswered questions with Clinton are whether she did anything that rises to a level worthy of prosecution - as in, could her actions endanger anyone, were they done for malicious reasons, etc. If it's as simple as that she sent an email that some random dude labeled classified but no one actually thinks should have been considered that, no one is going to prosecute over that. If she was knowingly changing classifications of potentially dangerous emails and sending them unsecurely, that's a very different issue.

 

The problem with talking about those emails is that you don't actually know what was inside them, if Hillary did a more competent job wiping her servers, we wouldn't know what was inside them either.

In one example, we don't have any evidence as to what was inside the emails, in another, we have the actual emails.

Now if they managed to recover any or all of those 20 million emails and they found classified information being mishandled, they should absolutely prosecute anyone that broke the law. Of course all we can do is speculate as to if that happened or who was to blame.

 

You haven't seen the reports? Is your head in the sand?

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/...erver-hacked-china-south-korea-germany-214546


I'm sure the evidence will all be available as soon as the current massive FBI investigation into your candidate has concluded.

 

Are you seriously comparing mishandling classified information, including top secret information, to speeding or jaywalking?

Wow. I mean I knew some people were blinded by partisanship and party line rhetoric but that's completely ridiculous. There are people in jail right now for far less than what Hillary did. I mean, I plan on voting for her if she doesn't have her eligibility stripped, but c'mon man be better than that.

 

It's an analogy.

 

A bad one that intends to trivialize a very serious crime. If someone had a family member murdered and the police decided to not prosecute due to the murderer being a high profile politician they wouldn't want to hear "well we can't prosecute every jaywalker or speeder". If it's that you think Hillary is above the law, just say that you think Hillary is above the law instead of trying to trivialize the crime she committed.

 

no it's not!!!

murder >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> misdemeanor

death penalty >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> fine

 

You're better than that

 

No. Bobby is better than the DOJ and FBI.

He can these criminals charged with capital offense annd death or life senteces at worst.

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-federal-cases.html

 

Meanwhile, there really is a Trump tape.

Donald Trump masqueraded as publicist to brag about himself

 

I think the most telling thing is Trump's response. He's now threatening to take anti-trust action against Amazon because Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.

 

First off thank you for posting some source material.
Reading through the article I'm going to cite a couple more key portions in addition to the portions that you've highlighted.

[rquoter]Some diplomats point to the volume of classified email as evidence of systemic flaws in deciding what information is sensitive rather than an indictment of Clinton’s actions.

“If experienced diplomats and foreign service officers are doing it, the issue is more how the State Department deals with information in the modern world more than something specific about what Hillary Clinton did,” said Philip H. Gordon, who was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and was the author of 45 of the sensitive emails from his non-classified government account.
...
Still, some diplomats who have reviewed their emails that have now been classified have expressed puzzlement. Several said in interviews that they thought the State Department’s review process relied on an overly broad interpretation of *public-records laws that restrict release of certain information involving relations with foreign governments.
...
They said they never stripped classified markings from documents to send them through regular email, as Republicans have alleged occurred in Clinton’s correspondence.

Instead, they said, the emails largely reflect real-time information shared with them by foreign government officials using their own insecure email accounts or open phone lines, or in public places such as hotel lobbies where it could have been overheard.

In other emails, they said they purposely wrote in generalities. Numerous emails were labeled “Sensitive But Unclassified,” indicating those writing did not think the note was classified.

Former ambassador Dennis Ross, who has held key diplomatic posts in administrations of both parties, said that one of his exchanges now marked “secret” contained information that government officials last year allowed him to publish in a book.
...
Princeton Lyman, a State Department veteran who served under presidents of both parties and was a special envoy to Sudan when Clinton was secretary of state, said he has been surprised and a bit embarrassed to learn that emails he wrote have been classified. He said he had learned through decades of experience how to identify and transmit classified information.

“The day-to-day kind of reporting I did about what happened in negotiations did not include information I considered classified,” he said.

One former senior official who authored some of the now-classified emails referred to a “cringe factor” for officials reviewing their own emails with the benefit of time that was often not available in the middle of unfolding world crises.
[/rquoter]

These pieces support the argument that the information now being considered classified was not at the time. Further that the decision to classify some of this material many don't consider that it needed to be when in some cases it was otherwise released publicly.

[rquoter]The former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed disagreement with the State Department’s decision to classify the emails. Still, the official said diplomats at the time believed they were sending the material through a “closed system” in which the emails would be reviewed only by other State Department officials. They are becoming public now, the official noted, only because of Clinton’s email habits and her presidential run.[/rquoter]

This point also shows that the situation involving the classification of these emails wouldn't be a factor except the political climate.

That doesn't mean that Clinton is without blame. As the same official above says.
[rquoter]The former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed disagreement with the State Department’s decision to classify the emails. Still, the official said diplomats at the time believed they were sending the material through a “closed system” in which the emails would be reviewed only by other State Department officials. They are becoming public now, the official noted, only because of Clinton’s email habits and her presidential run.[/rquoter]

That again goes to bad judgement but not necessarily malfeasance.

Further Clinton was not alone in doing this.
[rquoter]The analysis also showed that the practice of using non-secure email systems to send sensitive information was widespread at the department and elsewhere in government.[/rquoter]

Clinton in this matter wasn't a sole bad actor but was largely doing what it many others were doing. That isn't a good thing nor does it excuse Clinton it does explain though why perhaps she felt it was OK to use her server. Rather than some nefarious scheme as many are characterizing it it was an error based upon what many others were doing.