What reasonable understanding? She did it to circumvent privacy issues, which was the most obvious reason from the start? Or that she was too incompetent to know she was not subjected to privacy and needed a previous SOS to tell her this? Nothing has changed except Clinton is now trying to weasel out of this by throwing Powell under the bus. Which further cements that she is an unethical person. Clinton takes no responsibility for her actions.
To an extent she has thrown Powell under the bus, but it wasn't her campaign that released these emails was it?
Ah, Colin. Hate to see you get dragged into this thing. Can't say I blame her for talking about Powell's bad advice. Republicans and Democrats alike tend to hold Colin Powell in fairly high regard. In any case, this whole email thing is stale. It's the only thing Matt Lauer could talk to Hillary about last night, as if he reeeeeaally wanted that exclusive. Meanwhile Lauer could not manage to call Trump on any of his b.s. So sorry, but there's no Watergate here.
The reservoir of affection people have for Powell is a tricky thing for me. I get that he had a compelling personal story - he's an Obama endorser, and among a roster of horribles from W's reign of error, like Cheney, Feith, Rummy, etc he is a more sympathetic/noble figure, but then he also swallowed his doubts and stood up there and sold the Iraq war story, which behind closed doors, he famously said was "bullsh-t", but did it anyway. Imagine if instead of being a good soldier, he'd have resigned in protest? It may not have stopped the Iraq War, but it would have been a big damned deal.
Agree. It sounds like Clinton reached out to a predecessor she trusted, and he talked to a common practice he was comfortable with. I wouldn't be surprised if others within the same or similar roles engaged in similar practices. At the same time, the FBI determined that there was no proof or indication that any email security was compromised. I'd suspect the same would be true of Powell's or other official's emails. Certainly better judgement and better practices should have been followed, and I am sure will in the future. btw, I also agree with a previous poster that its a shame that Powell wasn't more directly involved in subsequent GOP administrations and campaigns.
interesting - I read a similar article on this about a month ago - except it said that Powell also said NOT to send any "classified" information this way. Curious why this article removed that information.
This is the bigger point in all this. It's one of those rules that everyone in government breaks. The entire Bush Admin senior staff used to RNC servers. It's a policy that is routinely ignored and that no one actually cares about. It's only the worst thing ever in this case because it's Hillary Clinton. If anyone actually cared about this, they'd have to arrest half our government officials if they wanted to be consistent. Anyone who's spent any time in or around government knows this.
Since the DNC stated that Hillary supporters are ignorant, it makes sense that all of you think that someone coming in to her position wouldn't consider that even if Powell did things in a certain way that it could have been the wrong thing to do or that guidelines had changed. The FBI stated any reasonable person in her position, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for the types of e-mail conversations she was conducting. Give up the silly defense of her.
Again, you offer no evidence or even logical argument of why "it literally not possible that it wasn't intentional" All you do it make-up b.s. and never support it and attack anyone of disagrees with you. You are literally the Donald Trump of the BBS. All talk, no substance. When are you going to tell us a single instance of corruption by Clinton???
I've seen the actual email. He said nothing of the sort. He expressed one single concern: that people would find out and as a result the emails could become public record; and that his solution was to keep it as hush-hush as possible and stay away from record-keeping systems. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">House Dems just released email that Colin Powell sent to Hillary Clinton about using personal email at State. <a href="https://t.co/CqSXwd3Lf8">pic.twitter.com/CqSXwd3Lf8</a></p>— Rebecca Shabad (@RebeccaShabad) <a href="https://twitter.com/RebeccaShabad/status/773666821970984964">September 7, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
1. The FBI Director's editorializing was completely out-of-place and was a personal, subjective opinion; 2. The FBI's actual findings were that she did nothing wrong, and in fact, Comey has admitted as recently as this past week that they did not even come close to finding cause for prosecution -- this was no nailbiter; 3. Hillary actually declined to take Powell's advice about avoiding record-keeping systems, preserved her emails, and freely interacted with state department systems that were subject to record keeping requirements. All of this would be a joke if the Bush administration, that Powell was a part of, wasn't actually responsible for deleting literally <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy">millions of emails</a> that had to do with classified information that involved the loss of thousands of American lives. But carry on with the witch-hunting.
Seems like a lot of rationalizing. I don't think she intentionally sent classified information -- she sent information with no regard for its classification. Which is just as bad. And I think it's ludicrous that you think it's ludicrous that we expect our high officials to exercise good housekeeping with their email (I do that) and with classified information. Powell and Clinton didn't struggle with the system -- they intentionally steered clear to defy FOIA. "Not using systems that captured the data" may be referring to private email (in some cases, apparently so), or it could refer to having phone conversations or in-person meetings which would be allowed under FOIA. And, I don't know you can say so unequivocally that Clinton retained everything when she hid it on a non-government asset, refused to hand it over, and deleted a bunch of material before finally acquiescing. Statute. Anyway, I'm fine with prosecutions if they can get them. We obviously have a problem with enforcing FOIA though and I'm also fine with revisiting the parameters of that law. Are the safeguards we have for the interests of the politicians insufficient and that's why we have high government officials breaking the law to hide their communications? Or is this simply a case of the impunity of high officials? FOIA is there to protect the people from malpractice by officials, but I'm willing to entertain tweaks so that those officials can feel like they can do their jobs within the rules. You seem to think this proved something. Still looks to me like she was evading FOIA.
You are correct. Nobody made a big issue of it. Government communication was a mess during this era. But again, after Private Manning, this all changed. Clinton fell under this era and continued to use private servers when the government started caring. Nobody gets a free ride on this after that period. Further, people have been prosecuted, jailed, demoted and restricted for such offenses.
I keep seeing this line of argument. Every government agency and personality since the history of FOIA laws has dragged its feet on requests. And it will always remain that way. There is zero evidence that Hillary ever did anything for the purpose of concealing information that should be lawfully available -- in fact, the FBI director for all his unwarranted editorializing made it clear that they attempted to pursue a case on THAT VERY BASIS and came up empty after a whole year of digging; and for all the hand-wringing that the years-long witch hunt by Judicial Watch and co. has brought about, more of her communications as a top-level official of the US government have been made public than any other top government official in US history. And yet there is still no evidence of wrongdoing. Look, I get that people like Judicial Watch and the House Republicans have a clear, unabashed goal to drag her down and attempt to destroy Hillary politically by any means available. What I don't get is people who still pretend like "I assume she must be guilty of something, so even if investigation #1,000 has failed to implicate her, surely the next 5 will turn up something" is anything other than gross intellectual dishonesty.
That's because you're dealing with JuanValdez, A GUY WHO HAS OPINIONS , particularly opinions on legal matters germane to the present moment. Despite his possessing of a graduate degree - you will find despite being A GUY WHO HAS OPINIONS, you are basically reading something as well grounded in fact/law as the HS-only lobby (Space Ghost, Crackpot Rojo) etc. when they discuss climate science or other matters. And in Juan's particular case, there is a persistent hint of Clinton Derangement Syndrome as well.
But, she is plainly guilty of attempting to shield her communications, and mishandling classified information in order to do it. I'm not looking for anything more than that. That's enough. On the everybody-does-it rationale that Major brought up, I understand that. Nobody complied with the rules and there was no policing. So it seems capricious to pick on Clinton and obviously political. Fine. But, I'm keen on seeing FOIA complied with, and you won't really get there unless you capriciously start to enforce where you did not enforce before. I hope this little email scandal will make it too dangerous for future SoS and other officials to try their own circumventions in the future.
As always, I blame whoever deserves blame. Powell was wrong for what he did, Hillary was wrong for what she did. Try to keep up.
That she followed some semblance of what the previous SOS did? Throwing Powell under the bus? You are very quick to jump on Clinton and it's telling.
It's no excuse for her breaking the law, it's just an attempt to deflect blame from the obviously guilty.
There's really no spinning the email thing. She was flat out wrong. Whatever Powell did was not done to the same extent as what she did, and was done at a time that the whole email and server thing wasn't as prevalent or expected protocols as well known. I'm less bothered about potential security breaches as I am about the whole stupidity of the call on her part.
