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

Apparently Clinton surprised her but yeah, it is a very strange thing for Clinto to do. One has to wonder what he was thinking. Apparently he wasn't.

 

Yes because if you wanted to do something illegal or improper, you'd do it right out in plain sight where everyone can see.

This whole investigation is a win-win for the right no matter what happens. Either Clinton gets indicted and it's a win, or she doesn't and the right claims it was a scam investigation.

 

Because she didn't break any laws?

 

Prosecuted would require someone having committed a crime.

What was the crime again?

 

It's not enough for the conservatives to argue that she used bad judgment (legit point) and that due to this, she shouldn't be President. But they can't leave it at that. They want their Nixon equivalent on the left so badly it's transparent.

 

The Republican Party and their media minions have been busy demonizing Hillary Clinton for 25 years. Nothing new here, people.

 

Mishandling classified information and ordering others to do the same. Those are crimes and she absolutely committed them.

Sorry, I know your partisanship won't allow you to acknowledge it, but I'm sure somewhere deep down you know it.

 

She is not going to be indicted. Obama and his regime are completely corrupt and there is no chance that they allow the presumptive Democrat nominee for president to be indicted less than a month before their national convention and four months before our national elections, regardless of how many counts the FBI tries to recommend or how many crimes against the national security of our nation she is guilty of.

Zero chance. None. No way. Forget about it. It is not happening.

 

Mishandling classified information, or mishandling information that was not classified at the time but was later classified? Which took place?

 

Everyone's partisanship clouds the issue. If you are a moderate, you literally don't know what to think. On one side, you have those who say, without a doubt, that she committed a crime. On the other side, you have those who say that she did not commit a crime. Google the issue- there's no clear-cut consensus- if you follow Newsmax, Fox, or National Review, she committed a crime. If you follow Huff Post, Politico, and MSNBC, she didn't commit a crime.

And if you read any site boasting legal expertise, it's a split down the middle. I don't want to vote for a criminal. But there is no smoking gun of illegal activity, so am I supposed to assume she's guilty if she actually isn't? I don't take this lightly- I read the viewpoints of at least 45+ on this, and it's literally split down the middle. So, unless you have proof that a crime was committed, your opinion of this doesn't make it so.

If you're an independent, and you read this:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...e-federal-laws-violated-by-the-private-server

And then you read this:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...versy-no-comparison-petraeus-column/71421242/

You literally have no idea what the heck to think- do you?

 

The information was classified at the time it was mishandled....we know this because part of her breaking the law was instructing staffers to remove classification headings from documents and send them via unclassified means.

Also on her emails, in most cases the information was classified before being included in the email, but the email itself was classified after the fact because that's what you do when you discover something that should be classified that isn't.

For example, I send an email with classified information to a friend of mine, that email itself isn't classified because it hasn't gone through that process. If the FBI caught on to what I did they'd arrest me and then apply appropriate classification to the email. It doesn't mean the information was classified after the fact. You following what I'm saying?

There's absolutely proof of crimes being committed. There's one email that has become public already where she is instructing a staffer to remove classification markings from a document and send it via unclassified means. That's illegal. That's a smoking gun. Simply soliciting the mishandling of classified information is a crime in and of itself.

Even if we ignore everything else, that's proof of at least one count. It's not opinion, it's fact. Now what they plan to do with that is anyone's guess. Personally I think they sweep it all under the rug and let her get away with it because of who she is.

 

POINT A:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has committed a felony. That is apparent from the facts and in the plain-language of the federal statute that prohibits "Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information", 18 U.S. Code § 793(e) and (f). This offense carries a potential penalty of ten years imprisonment.

It's called a prima facie case: clear on the basis of known facts.

It's up to prosecutorial discretion by the US Attorney as to what charges may be filed and when. Nonetheless, Mrs. Clinton is clearly chargeable for violation of federal law. As of right now, the matter is under FBI investigation. This isn't just about violation of Departmental policy.

The facts (and he goes on to list them)

Four para limit stops here. But, I will in all fairness stipulate that this article goes on to say that HRC is not at this point the target of the investigation. However, Reuters has since reported that her unsecured private server email system contained "presumed classified" materials. Hillary personally exchanged such presumed classified information with Sidney Blumenthal, and those communications were intercepted and publicly released by a Romanian hacker. http://www.aol.com/...
The fact that the email was not marked classified at the time does not excuse Mrs. Clinton. This is because information gathered from foreign government sources, a great deal of her email was so sourced, is presumed classified. Mrs Clinton received Departmental training on recognizing and handling classified materials. Presumed classified information is defined by Executive Order as "The unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to the national security." (see full text of that section of Executive Order 13526- Classified National Security Information, Sec. 1.1(4)(d), below)

Secretary Clinton was trained in handling of classified materials, and acknowledges that she understood them. By transmitting and receiving email correspondence that contained information gleaned from foreign government sources on an unauthorized, insecure system, she violated the law. This was not something she did unwittingly, and that the foreign government sourced material was not stamped classified is irrelevant.

POINT B:

If you need 3,000 words...
...to make your "prima facie" case, then you don't have much of a case.

This is the very WORST thing that you can say:

Hillary Clinton might have unknowingly and accidentally received classified information which was NOT marked as classified, and may NOT have been classified at the time it was received.

Because this unmarked classified information was received on a private server, there is a REMOTE possibility that this unmarked classified information COULD have fallen into the wrong hands.

So the worst thing she might have done is accidentally leak some classified information.

In fact, you can't even really say that...because she only would have RECEIVED the information. The person who accidentally leaked it is the person who SENT it. Saying that Hillary is at fault for something like that is like saying that I should be prosecuted as a cyber terrorist because I received an email with a virus in my Spam box.

If you scour an email server with 20,000 emails, and the number of emails that you find that pose some security risk is in the single digits, that's actually a security record to be PROUD of. A security breach rate of LESS than .05 %.

So that's it. There's an outside chance that less than .05% of the emails received by the Secretary of State might have been leaked, IF some clever hacker had managed to break into her private server and find a few UNMARKED classified emails out of 20,000, or in the event that Secret Foreign Ninja Agents managed to break into Hillary's basement and steal her computer.

The diarist sounds like the grandpa in Peter and the Wolf. "What if Peter hadn't caught the wolf? What then?"

In every administration, leaks happen. For such a large organization that processes so much information, it is inevitable. If it were justifiable to prosecute every accidental leak of information, then every living American President would be in prison right now, along with many of their cabinet members.

And as for the diarist's comment:

"If this were about a more mere Departmental policy violation, we'd never have heard about it."
There were probably MANY people in the State Department and the White House who knew about Hillary's private server for the FOUR YEARS she was Secretary of State, and yet no one spoke up and said "Excuse me, but this is an OBVIOUS prima facie violation of the law", just like no one spoke up n the previous years when previous Secretaries of State did the SAME thing.
So the real truth is: if Clinton were not running for President, and there were no powerful interests pushing for a fishing expedition to bring her down, THEN we'd never have heard about it, because there's NOTHING to hear about.

Nobody but Grandpa cared about what mightt have happened if Peter didn't catch the wolf. Until Peter decided to run for President. (Then Peter was subjected to a well-orchestrated smear campaign, and the pundits became obsessed with the issue of why Peter caught the wolf with his own, private rope, instead of a more secure, government-issued rope....)

 

“If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton replied.

In her email, the former secretary directed staff to turn the talking points into “non-paper” before sending it through non-secure channels. In the State Department, the term “non-paper” appears to have a pretty specific meaning.

As about 30 seconds on Google will reveal, the Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual defines non-paper as, “A written summary of a demarche or other verbal presentation to a foreign government. The non-paper should be drafted in the third person, and must not be directly attributable to the U.S. Government. It is prepared on plain paper (no letterhead or watermark). The heading or title, if any, is simply a statement of the issue or subject. (For example: ‘Genetically-Modified Organisms.’)”

OK, to your point:

1. Not everything that is sent via a classified system is classified, right?
2. So, it's possible that this document was unclassified, right?

According to Pompeo:

“You don’t get to send classified information through unsecured means simply because you’re having technological problems with the secured system,” said House Intelligence Committee member Mike Pompeo (R-Kans.), who also sits on the House Benghazi panel. “It is not permissible to communicate classified information via unsecured means simply because one’s secure means of communication are temporarily not functioning.”

Pompeo acknowledged he did not know the contents of the documents in question, or if they were indeed classified, but he said it would be “highly unusual to send an unsecured document on a secured network,” which he said suggests the message was likely classified.

So, you're right, it is possible that this document was classified.

But, then there's this:

It's unclear whether the talking points themselves contained classified information. Typically, talking points are used for unclassified purposes (e.g. speaking with the media).

So, you're saying that she definitely broke the law when she may have, correct? Even the House Committee says it was likely classified. So, am I to say this is 100% proof that she committed an illegal act?

 

What about her selling favors as Secretary of State to some of the most vile regimes on Earth in exchange for payments to her foundation? That is worse than the email stuff.

 

Agreed. It's just those wink wink Charles Barkley deals are harder to prove in a court. Revolting nonetheless.

I'm more willing to write off the email stuff because government IT is a continuous ****storm and past officials have hacked away their workarounds in order to operate inside an infrastructure that makes their duties harder.

The Clinton Foundation mess follows the narrative of her making bat**** silly decisions (several Gold man $ack$ $peeches) that anyone else would question themselves as unacceptable given an upcoming candidacy.

 

Hillary Ali