…deepen:
The latest release of roughly 6,300 more pages of emails is just the latest installment of a prolonged disclosure process that has proved to be painful for Clinton’s presidential campaign. The roiling controversy has opened up the Democratic front-runner to accusations that she was trying to dodge public records rules and that she put sensitive material at risk — allegations Clinton denies.
Wednesday’s release marks the first time the State Department itself has deemed messages in Clinton’s account to warrant protection at the SECRET level — the middle tier of the national security classification system. State earlier classified one Benghazi-related message SECRET, but did so at the request of the FBI.
Well, if she denies it, that should settle it.
Note that the earlier iteration had the FBI (?) look at a random sampling of the email and decide that a hefty percentage of them were Top Secret. Could be the State Department has different standards. A lot of the emails described in the article might be things that certainly should not be on a non-classified server.
This is all not even discussing the deleted emails, which will for sure contain things that are embarrassing if not illegal. If there are still copies of those anywhere, they will probably come out sooner or later.
It’s really not possible to guess where this will end. I mean, liberals do guess that it’ll all be nothing, and conservatives do guess that she’s toast, but it’s all just pure guessing. Only the FBI really knows.
For my sake, I think she’s toast as a viable Presidential candidate. She has shown complete contempt for the American people and the notion that we elect representatives that are accountable to us.
She can claim the server was allowed. She can claim the emails were not classified. And she may be right about those things. But if she claims she did this for the transparency to the American people; well that is a lie. She did this because she is rich enough to afford it, and thought she was powerful enough to get away with it.
I personally have trouble grasping the claim that the emails were not classified. She used it for diplomatic business. That stuff is always going to be classified, and often top secret. The whole idea is ridiculous.
Did she have some _other_ email address for her diplomatic business? No one has said so. Did the Secretary of State never deal with any important state matters?
Ridiculous.
She had the chance to get everything out at once and be done with it but now with rolling releases it will be in the news for a long time. A minor embarrassing email would go unnoticed in a crowd of similar emails but now they all have a chance to get their 15 minutes.
There is only one plausible explanation for all of this, and that is she was trying to hide activity that would have been subject to FOIA. Obviously documents that fell under secret or top secret classifications would not have been subject to FOIA, or only heavily redacted versions. But, because of her position and the non-security of the system, she at best was negligent with national security and at worst was treasonous. If the US is a nation of laws then she should be charged. If she is not charged, then the laws are all knocked flat and then where does she hide?
She may also have been hiding her activities from the rest of the Obama administration. There seem to be a number of parties she might want to hide stuff from.
Among the Clinton Democrats, party hides . . . you!
Your question is rhetorical, but I’ll answer it.
If the laws are all knocked flat, where does Hillary hide? The newsmedia will cover for her, and tell All Right-Thinking People how they should feel about the matter. Perhaps there’ll be another fawning “biographical” movie-of-the-week about her. They’ll drown the story in irrelevancies and trivia to drive it off the front page and direct water-cooler conversations in other directions–ermahgerd, Hollywood gossip! Sports gossip! And did you hear about that horrible mass shooting in Oregon? And global warming is causing hurricanes! Etc., etc., etc., etc.
It’s been going on for decades. I’ve said it before. She’s a Clinton and the newsmedia are all in love with the Clintons. A video could surface tomorrow in which she presided over a Black Mass and sacrificed infants to Satan on a blood-dripping altar made of stacks of “Heather Has Two Mommies,” and our friends at MSNBC would drop it down the Memory Hole. And the late-night TV comedians would make allusions to “crazy people” and “conspiracy theorists” and “it’s probably CGI” and “oh look, I saw a video of Abraham Lincoln killing vampires on board Bigfoot’s UFO, hurr hurr hurr hurr”
Hillary and her defenders are utterly without shame and regard respect for the truth as a bourgeois affectation. They have almost all of the US newsmedia to use as a megaphone. They’re sort of like Russian nationalists, only with less shame or sense of propriety:
http://i.imgur.com/ka4Gmd0.jpg
You misunderstand. If all laws are flat, then the “hiding” I’m talking about is physically hiding from an angry mob. cf. Nicolae Caeucescu.
Sadly, I think you may overestimate the amount of outrage out there.
Something like 47% of the electorate are net tax consumers rather than net tax payers. As long as they can keep watching Celebrity Gossip TV and Sunday afternoon football, they really, really, really don’t care. They barely, I think, know who Hillary is, but she’s a Clinton, and Bill Clinton was a doubleplusgood President–they know this because TV tells them so.
Republicans: “We caught her with her hand in the cookie jar!”
Clinton: “Lies! And if you vote for me I’ll give you free cookies!”
Media: “The Clintons love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”
The 47%: “Yay! Cookies!”
I think we’ve passed not merely one but several tipping points. Little things like Federal felonies don’t matter to people who want “their” Free Stuff to keep coming every month, and who believe that Hillary will give them even more Free Stuff and maybe even more Free Stuff than any of the other Democratic candidates.
Ethics? They don’t care.
National security? They don’t care.
Federal laws? They don’t care.
The Constitution? They don’t care.
They want to get back to watching Dancing with the Stars–right after they cash their welfare checks. They don’t understand any of these big words. And they vote.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/chat-how-much-damage-has-the-email-scandal-done-to-hillary-clinton/
Hillary Clinton isn’t harmed, but her brand sure as hell is.
That’s being masked by avoiding objective press interviews and delaying debates, but time won’t heal this damage. Nate Silver tries to be objective in polling, but his bias is preventing him from asking the right questions. Here’s a poll question for him, “Do you have a personal email server for business emails?”
Little confusion here: Nate Silver doesn’t poll, he’s a statistical analyst. I think he’s correct, though, that your average poll-answerer and voter is going to have trouble following what this is all about. A few public statements from angry investigators would help, of course. If that happens.
I accept that correction. I stated it wrong. Rather than try again to explain, I’ll simply state that I think the scandal, which will resonate with voters not privy to Secret or TS/SCI information, is the rational for an employee having a private server to conduct business.
Okay, if we look at only what is known for a fact at this point, what have we got? Or to be even more specific, let’s look only at the mishandling of classified information issue, and what’s presently known about it.
How, exactly, does it not rise to at least the level of what Clinton CIA director John Deutch did? I’ll paste it Wikipedia’s abbreviated version;
“Deutch left the CIA on December 15, 1996 and soon after it was revealed that several of his laptop computers contained classified materials designated as unclassified. In January 1997, the CIA began a formal security investigation of the matter. Senior management at CIA declined to fully pursue the security breach. Over two years after his departure, the matter was referred to the Department of Justice, where Attorney General Janet Reno declined prosecution. She did, however, recommend an investigation to determine whether Deutch should retain his security clearance. President Clinton pardoned Deutch on his last day in office.Deutch had agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets, but President Clinton pardoned him before the Justice Department could file the case against him.”
Was what Deutch did a crime? Yes. Was he being prosecuted for it until pardoned? Yes. Does having classified material on a private server (whether marked classified or not) constitute a crime in at least the same way having it on your home laptop (as Deutch did)? Yes.
So, based on what’s already known, can we say that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified info in a criminal manner, and at a minimum the law requires her to be stripped of her security clearance and (as the federal statute stipulates) disbarred from ever holding a position requiring one? I see no means by which the answer is not “yes”, unless it involves Obama pardoning her.
I’d seriously like to hear any counter arguments.
No “nothing to see here, move along” from Jim?
Did you ever watch on TV “The Invaders”? I caught some episodes in my young-adult-insomniac days of staying up late and watching reruns.
It was a Quinn Martin Productions series following a rigid formula that the opening to each show explained. Architect David Vincent (I guess he needed an occupation thought to give him a lot of time off to chase alien invaders rather than punch a time clock) encounters the aliens late one night while lost on a back road trying to get someplace while tired.
Only Vincent knows about the aliens, and only a close social circle sort of believes him and offers help. The aliens fight Vincent while running one of their schemes to achieve World Domination whereas Vincent fights the aliens to come up with the necessary proof that they are real and that the rest of the world can by rallyed to putting an end to The Invaders for good. By the end of every episode, David Vincent has thwarted the aliens, but something prevents his getting the evidence needed to prove the existence of the aliens.
This is sort of like in every episode, the Professor comes up with a scheme to save the Castaways from whatever threat they are facing, but Gilligan goofs something up to thwart their rescue from the island.
Anyway, the aliens aren’t human or even humanoid, but they take on human form through some process requiring them to retreat for “regeneration.” So while they are at a “regeneration station”, they are not around for that time to create alien mischief . . .
Oh Dear……
From the WSJ……….
Some Hillary Clinton Donors Defect to Movement to Draft Joe Biden
Oct. 2, 2015 4:03 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—Some Hillary Clinton donors are defecting to Joe Biden, resisting entreaties from the Democratic front-runner’s campaign to stand by her despite slipping poll numbers……………..