The wonderful thing about this is that it has the potential not only to take down the entire decades-long Clinton crime syndicate, but this administration, and perhaps the Democrat Party establishment, because they continue to circle the wagons.
[Update a few minutes later]
I saw what you did there, Instapundit.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The Clinton political machine isn’t as well oiled as advertised.
[Update mid morning]
She’s lost Gizmodo. Not sure what you’ve lost when you’ve lost Gizmodo, though.
[Update a couple minutes later]
When Mean Girls meets the Mob:
…this is what the American Experiment has come to in the hands of these awful people and their awful political party: “a symbol of status within the family’s inner circle, conferring prestige and closeness to the secretary.”
Think about that for a moment. Not only was Hillary’s use of private email for government business illegal and unethical (stop laughing), but it was used as a status symbol among the courtiers — including no doubt members of the lickspittle media, who tremble with near sexual-delight as they approach her majesty. In the incestuous club that houses the Democrat-Media Complex, every “job” is both temporary and secondary to the overall career, which is dominating American political discourse and becoming handsomely rewarded for one’s ability to manipulate the system. No wonder the Democrats have such contempt for the Stupid Party and the voters who foolishly support it.
In a just world, these people would be seen for what they are — nihilistic, dangerous, evil. Their fealty to the country is nearly non-existent and their “patriotism,” insofar as it exists at all, extends only to the imaginary country that may or may not exist after they get finished with the business of “fundamental transformation.” They enter “public service” as near paupers and leave aboard the Lolita Express as millionaires, having accomplished next to nothing except making themselves famous.
The Clintons were a criminal syndicate in the nineties, and nothing has changed.
[Early-afternoon update]
Hillary Clinton’s State Department fired an ambassador for using private email.
Rules and laws are for the little people.
Flashback: Hillary Clinton Bashes Bush Officials for Secret Email Accounts
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/03/flashback-hillary-attacks-bush-officials-for-secret-email-accounts-video/
Pre-projection? Well never let it be said that a Clinton let a good idea go to waste….
Don’t rip my head off – I’m not even defending Hilary Clinton, I’m just confused: If someone wants to say something in secret, they meet in person. If someone wants privacy, doesn’t want a written record, and isn’t worried about spy agencies, they use the telephone. (Or maybe an encrypted phone if they are a top official). Using email for secrets is known to be a bad idea. So, this isn’t about secrets, right?
I won’t rip your head off….but you are overlooking a few things:
1) If you are saying that Hillary would never utter *State* secrets in email because email is insecure, just remember human nature. People have been told for years and years..time after time, that email is not secure and you have no expectation of privacy and yet…..
people still email things they don’t want known.
2) Hubris and arrogance has a way of blinding people – Hillary might have thought that having her own, private, illegal, server shields her from the exposure of State secrets due to investigations or hacking.
She is wrong.
And when it comes to hubris and arrogance Hillary is right at the top of the heap.
3) Never underestimate the power and allure of “Legacy”. You can rest assured that every big government hack – I mean cabinet member and presidential staff member – has fantasies of writing The Book once they are out of office. They need records to refresh their memories when writing the book. They may not reveal the secrets in the book but they need the memory refreshment of events.
That’s what got Nixon, right?
4) It might have been Hillary’s plan to back up all the data secretively. Then when someone forces her to reveal an email well she’ll have “trouble” finding and presenting it because..no backups.
remember:
We were never supposed to find out about this.
This is so much more effective than claiming executive priviledge, which can be challenged in court.
Lerner and Koskinen showed the way….
5) And since we were never supposed to find out about this – just stop and think for a second:
Is that sort of secret [existence of private servers] REALLY safe from discovery? If she thought it was then…see #2. She has a history of this sort of thing and she has skated every time. So that only pumps up the arrogance and hubris.
But Nemesis awaits……..
p.s. Don’t fall prey to the notion that people in government are smart.
Or wise.
I’m not even defending Hilary Clinton
Well, you’d probably want to make sure you spelled her name right if you were endeavoring to do that anyway. But I’m curious, to what extent could you envision this clusterfuck extending where you wouldn’t vote for her next year? If she did send classified info, say to Abedin (so just within the system, leaving it completely outside any formal audit), and it was revealed that it was accessed by some hackers from China, but only after she definitively denied that possibility, would that be enough for you to decline voting for her next year?
I know someone who spells it with one l, so it was force of habit.
Last campaign, I frequently spelled her name wrong, and I’ll probably return to doing that as campaign season heats up.
To give your scenario more heft, I’ll assume the classified documents really were quite sensitive, but the scenario you lay out sounds like technical incompetence rather than deliberately evil, so I don’t think that would sway me. If it is somehow “evil”, it isn’t evil in the same way that deliberately turning over the classified documents to a potentially adversarial state would be.
(Also, in any “would you vote for x?” question, it is good to know what my alternatives are, and to have lots of knowledge about them. I never decline to vote, so I’m always voting for the least-worst choice. )
“So, this isn’t about secrets, right?”
You’re goddamned right it’s about secrets. As Secretary of State, Clinton would have had access to the very most sensitive classified information we possess. I speak of that which, by its nature, has the potential to reveal the source of intelligence. All of that is classified a the TOP SECRET/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) level, and she would have access to the Special Intelligence programs. An SCI clearance is the most sacred trust the nation can bestow.
Since Clinton conducted 100% of her email correspondence on her own system, it is inconceivable that she did not release some classified information. But even if she denies that she did, the fact that the server was in her home means that there is no way to objectively substantiate her denial. Since her system was a private one, there’s no way to prove that it had not been hacked. Or even if it had not been, that TS/SCI information had not been sent to a foreign person. There is no way to show that she did not destroy such data.
Normally, one would say “The burden of proof is on the accuser.” I would say that as well. But I’ve had at least a SECRET or higher clearance for most of my career, and I know that the rules are different. If classified information could have been compromised, it has to be assumed that it was compromised. There is no alternative, and none would be accorded in any other case.
It has to be assumed that every single piece of classified data to which Clinton had access has been compromised. And compromising TS information will “cause exceptionally grave damage to national security.”
This is the greatest security breach in the history of the Republic.
“This is the greatest security breach in the history of the Republic.”
No, that was Snowden or Manning.
@ Bob-1;
Bob, there are corporate criminals who have been brought down by using e-mail, and I think they’d know better, too.
I’d also think that no elected official would be profoundly stupid enough to tweet pictures of their genitalia, or to post an add on a dating site while married – yet both did so, and had to resign as a result. There are plenty of other such cases, but I’ll stop at those as they give us one from each party.
As for privacy, if what you seek is to evade oversight or disclosure of your conversations, then yep, a private e-mail server might be appealing. If they want privacy for criminal conspiracy, using e-mail of any sort makes no sense – but plenty have done just that, or worse. IMHO, we don’t know enough to assume that this is, or isn’t, about nefarious secrets in those e-mails, but we do know for a fact that she took clear and concerted actions to break the rules and laws of the government she represented.
I said much the same when some of the Bush admin officials were caught using private e-mail for official biz. Wrong is wrong, and a crime is a crime.
“I’m just confused: If someone wants to say something in secret, they meet in person.”
Hard to do when your personnel and foreign peers are scattered all over the globe.
From Michael Walsh – PJ Media:
“What we are witnessing now — and the Times’ stories are an unmistakable warning shot across Hillary’s bow — is the end of the Clintons as major factors in the nation’s politics. For a Yale grad, Mrs. Clinton is mighty dumb. She missed the signals the first time, when David Axelrod unfurled his trusty JournOlist rolodex and persuaded his media buddies that an obscure nobody in Illinois was the Next Big Progressive Thing. She got bought off by a bright, shiny bauble called Foggy Bottom, where she embarrassed herself. And now, magically, the house organ of American Regressivism, the NYT, has suddenly discovered her private email empire. How about that?”
Indeed…how about that……..the Left is telling her to back off. They don’t want her as a candidate. Will she take the hint? I dunno – hubris is a powerful thing….though not as powerful as Nemesis.
The amusing thing..the thing that has me chortling….is that lefty bootlickers who profess they are voting for Hillary – who want Hillary as President – are being knifed in the back by ………
their own side.
So incredibly satisfying, because we warned them that a party which will knife their opponents will just as easily give you the shiv (and smile while doing it) because liars will lie to you. Criminals will commit crimes against you. Killers will kill you…..
……no matter how low you bow; how much you lick their boots; nor how pure your motives. You are merely tools to them. They DO NOT care about you. “Useful idiots” is the phrase.
This is why many of us in Massachusetts shake our heads when Lie-awatha won her Senate seat. We KNOW she’ll lie to us.
But she’s going to lie to you too, bootlicker.
She doesn’t know you.
She doesn’t know you exist.
She doesn’t care the slightest bit about you.
And she won’t treat you any better than her enemies.
“Indeed…how about that……..the Left is telling her to back off. They don’t want her as a candidate.”
I don’t know. All she has to do to survive this is not quit or not go to jail. Democrats will still vote for her. Best for this to be dealt with now than later.
Do you really want to facilitate the Fall of The House of Clinton only to bring in Liz Warren? That’s one theory as to why the MSM is not yet – and maybe never will be – in suppression mode on the emails.
Firstly yes I want the House of Clinton nailed shut forever. Chelsea might choose to run for something, I suppose but I know nothing about her. As far and Bill and Hillary go ……
how can we miss them if they won’t go away?
I think Liz Warren is more beatable…you should have seen her run – literally flee – from reporters asking her questions about Federal Government topics.
All it takes is a smart no-nonsense truly Conservative GOP nominee who knows how to talk to everyone.
Yeah, she may have lost one particular Giz writer, but according to her fanbase in the comments it either isn’t an issue because Bush’s SecStates did it too, or because the government’s servers are hacked too, so this was actually more secure..
” it either isn’t an issue because Bush’s SecStates did it too,”
The word is that Condoleeze Rce rarely used email and I don’t know that she had an independent server set up for herself. I rather doubt it.
In fact I doubt everything the left says anymore…in print, from Obama’s mouth, to her administration (that includes the DOJ), to the MSM.
They are so prone to using rumor for fact that they are all just dismissable…like some people in this forum.
Baby/Bathwater.
Individuals have a right to privacy and control of their correspondence. In years past, correspondence went into filing cabinets that were locked. Even in political life, that correspondence went with the person and on to libraries and archives after their death.
I as an individual control my email. The State may screw itself, or it may properly use the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
What I see are a bunch of conservatives jumping on a bandwagon to bring down someone they do not like without the slightest concern for the trampling of liberty they are espousing, and which will be used against them eventually in retaliation.
The loser is liberty, rule of law, privacy and respect for the Bill of Rights.
I would rather see murders walk free and Hillary get away with Benghazi than to weaken my Rights by less than a hair of a moth.
My recommendation to all of you is to become technically savvy, run your own mail systems, encrypt everything and if requested by the State, refuse to give them anything not specifically named in a properly worded Search Warrant, physically signed by a real judge and handed to you by a police officer or officer of the court, with no restrictions on you sharing it with your own legal counsel or having it printed on the front page of the New York Times or read aloud by Judge Napolitano during Fox News prime time.
There are some things that are more important than getting at your political enemy. Far, far, far more important.
“Individuals have a right to privacy and control of their correspondence… Even in political life,”
I don’t necessarily disagree but what you are advocating would require a change of rules. Hillary, just as Petreaus, might not like all the rules but she has an obligation to follow them anyway.
The flip side is that elected officials are expected to act in good faith and produce documents that are requested through our legal process, which Hillary didn’t do.
My own take: “When privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.”
Come on man. You can do better than that. This is about email in pursuit in her role as a government employee, and especially as the head of the department that handles diplomatic foreign affairs. As such her correspondence in pursuit of said role is the property of her employer, the government.
Her own personal correspondence not relating to the job is of course her own business, and she is free to run her own server without complaint from me for that use case.
I don’t know about the specific legality, as I have read some stories that the laws were passed or take effect after she left. But, in my opinion t is completely improper at the very least to use your own personal email servers for work correspondence if you are a government employee, especially given the sensitive nature of the work she was engaged in involving classified information and such and being in charge of the State Department. And to complete the thought, it is also completely improper if any Republicans did so as well, and I don’t withhold criticism for that side either.
What would you think if she was sending a receiving classified information through her postal mail at her home? This is the same thing.
The Obama administration set higher standards for transparency but then immediately set about circumventing them. Private emails, meeting with lobbyists, ect.
Rand writes:
“Rules and laws are for the little people.”
Indeed….as we now have this:
“Fox News’s Catherine Herridge reports (via Fox’s Greta Van Susteren) that, in an internal 2011 State Department cable, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed employees not to use personal email accounts for official business due to security concerns. Nevertheless, throughout her tenure as Secretary, Mrs. Clinton used personal email accounts to conduct her State Department business – setting up her own personal servers in her New York home precisely to avoid the State Department system under which government electronic communications were maintained and disclosed pursuant to federal law.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414970/hillary-clinton-banned-use-private-email-state-department-employees-while-she“
Lanny Davis – a Clinton apparachik – wrote and article for USA Today which Purports to state several “facts”. Many – most – are not facts at all but conjecture, which, of course, casts doubt upon everything he says in the article. Here’s one:
“Fact: The 2009 Archives Preservation Law was not violated. Secretary Clinton’s e-mails were preserved on the server, regardless of whether it was located at home. More than 50,000 pages had already been turned over. On Wednesday, she asked the State Department to review and release them.”
That is a conjecture – he has absolutely no idea how many were originally on the server or removed from the server. He has absolutely no idea if the 50,000 pages is all there was.
Furthermore, BY LAW, by the very 2009 act he mentions, the government does understand that occasionally, an official might use a personal account…yahoo, gmail etc. to conduct business. The person doing that is REQUIRED to either print out a copy and file it with the government or CC the email to their government email address thereby placing the email on Government servers where they are supposed to be retained and backed up.
*IF* Clinton followed the law she would have done that and she would not have been required to hand anything over: it would already have been there.
But she didn’t do that…did she Lanny? Why didn’t you mention that little fact huh LANNY?
Here’s another:
“Fact: To those who argue Mrs. Clinton’s server at home was less secure than the one used by State, I answer: Really? Heard of Edward Snowden?”
So now Davis is an internet hacking expert and knows whether or not the homebrew server is more secure than one broken by Snowden? That is not a fact.
Lanny’s article is pure garbage.