Judge Orders State Dept, FBI To Expand Clinton Email Server Probe

An anonymous reader writes: In a hearing over Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said that former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't comply with government policies. He ordered the State Department to reach out to the FBI to see if any relevant emails exist on Hillary Clinton's email server. Judge Sullivan was surprised that the State Department and FBI were not already communicating on the issue following the FBI's seizure of Clinton's email server and three thumb drives of emails. More than 300 emails are being examined for containing classified information, and dozens of the emails were "born classified" based on content. Some of those emails were forwarded outside the government. There are also clues emerging about how some of the classified information made its way onto Clinton's server. The email controversy is beginning to show up on the campaign trail, an unwelcome development for Secretary Clinton. Reporter Bob Woodward, who helped bring down President Nixon, said the scandal reminds him of the Nixon tapes. It is interesting to note that the post-Watergate reforms have helped move the investigation forward.

Comments

Lying scum

[Tyrannicsupremacy]

Watching her act like she doesnt know what a "server wipe" is made me laugh a little. She takes scumbaggery to great heights.

Re: Lying scum

[Entrope]

Whether she knows what a server wipe is depends on the meaning of the word "is".

We've known this family is full of lying scum for at least 20 years. We've also known she (rather than Bill) likes to use informal processes to avoid government openness laws since the HillaryCare shenanigans in the early 90s.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy has gotten to the entire judicial system in the USA, that's obviously the only way anyone would make such a big deal over something that certainly was completely legal and moral at the time...

Re:Lying scum

[romco]

As an older IT guy/programmer I can tell you most non geeks over 60 have no idea about IT stuff.

Re:Lying scum

[Dutchy Wutchy]

This Judge Emmet G. Sullivan was appointed by Bill Clinton.

Re:Lying scum

[Runaway1956]

That is irrelevant. The disgusting sack of shite had paid advisors and consultants to take care of this stuff. There are procedures in place. Obviously, Clinton decided that she was going to do things HER WAY - and in the process broke a metric shit-ton of laws.

Her understanding of technology is totally irrelevant to the investigation.

That said - I strongly suspect that she understands a lot more tech than you are giving her credit for. Who set up that server? Who administered the server? How did she access the server? Who decided what to turn over to the state department? Who made the decision that she would have her own private server, under her own control?

The unsophisticated old coots down at the community center certainly don't have their own servers.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a Hilary fan but, why would she? I mean really. she doesnt/never worked in IT and is over 60. Why should she know? My parents generation would only be able to make somewhat educated guesses.

Re: Lying scum

[sabbede]

So, are you saying that two wrongs make a right, or that because you so strongly dislike the Right it's okay for the Left to lie, deceive and obstruct?

Let me point out something very, very important - Thinking the other side is worse justifies nothing.

Re: Lying scum

[Entrope]

The way that you get everyone to follow the same laws is to enforce them fairly and predictably, regardless of who violates them. M. K. Gandhi is widely credited with saying (something like) "An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind", which exemplifies why the enforcement of this kind of thing should be as impartial as practical: otherwise it looks like partisan hits, which is corrosive to both compliance with the law and the larger political environment.

Re:Lying scum

[sabbede]

I find it very hard to believe her claims of ignorance. Especially since she is so often lauded for her intellect by her supporters, or given her preexisting reputation for causing documents to disappear.

Re:Lying scum

[Entrope]

Hillary Clinton should know what a "server wipe" is because she was in charge of the people who were managing this, she was the head of a Federal Department, and she wants to be President. Your parents might be random schmoes with no reason to know simple computer jargon, but high-level executives in the modern world do not have that excuse.

Re: Lying scum

[fey000]

I don't know about you, but noone has come around to fondle my testicles yet.

So either you are lying, or someone needs to hire more fondlers.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Where those her terrorists? If not, find a better strawman to burn.

Look, I'm not a US citizen, but in the current circus that is the US elections, I tend to support the democrats. This is a breach of security unacceptable for a low level officer; in a secretary of state it would be tantamount to treason. The bottom line is that she broke the protocols in place and did something illegal with a huge potential to cause harm to the country.

That simple fact would disqualify her from running for presidency and most likely would put her behind bars. That a lot of people still supports her blows my mind away; it means that in today US politics, party lines trump human decency and respect for the law.

Re:Lying scum

[Pascoea]

because she was in charge of the people who were managing this

I find very hard to believe that she was directly in charge of the people who were managing this. I'm willing to bet there was a layer in between her and the server admins doing the executive level "translating". I picture it like the CIO and CEO role. I'm willing to bet my CEO wouldn't know what a "server wipe" is, much less care what it is. That's not his job, he has smart people hired to handle stuff like that. I imagine the conversation went something like this: Clinton:I need to make sure my e-mails are secured. IT:Sure ma'am, we'll do perform a DoD level wipe on the hard drives. Clinton:Um, ok, that sounds good. I guess. Whatever, just make sure it's secured.

Is it just me, or when they say "private e-mail server" does any body else mentally picture an old Dell desktop PC sitting in a broom closet somewhere?

Re: Lying scum

[sabbede]

That's actually a necessity, not a practicality. Laws have to be enforced equally and predictably for the system to function.

Re:Lying scum

[JackieBrown]

Is it just me, or when they say "private e-mail server" does any body else mentally picture an old Dell desktop PC sitting in a broom closet somewhere?

Close...
It was kept in the bathroom

Re:Lying scum

[DarkOx]

Than maybe someone her age who isn't a geek has no business being the President of the United States in the "Information Age"

Re:Lying scum

[DarkOx]

No we don't know if she violated any laws yet, although it looks more and more like she probably did. We do know she at least violated some government practice documents, she was not obligated to comply with but should have.

The issue isn't if she broke the law or not. There are bunch of people that would enjoy seeing Clinton in the slam but it won't affect things much beyond that. What matters is she should be losing this election. She was the Secretary of State for the United States of America. She either could have and should have recognized that she was dealing with sensitive information classified or not and cared enough about operation security to do something about it.

So she knew or should have known the risks of E-mail its not 1998 anymore, everyone has heard the post card analogy with inter-domain mail. If she did not know she should have people around her to tell her that. If she did not listen or only select a bunch of yes men and women that is also a problem.

Even if all the operational security issues and risks of e-mail were a surprise to her, you'd think her behavior would have very suddenly improved when Bradly Manning and a few other events took place, again nope, so we are left with willful ignorance, or gross negligence. Crime or not, prosecutable or not, there isn't a good spin you can put on it. Even Her own justifications about carry multiple devices etc have been contradicted, she has been evasive about it and her story keeps changing so she is only compounding it with lies and bad ones. She isn't a good candidate to lead the country pure and simple.

Re: Lying scum

[Faust6]

I can think of one that doesn't fit that bill.

Re:Lying scum

[Jiro]

What she probably said was "I want a server that isn't subject to legally mandated retention or public records requests". The IT person then responded with "Sure ma'am" like you suggest.

The fact that doing this also makes security hard is just a side effect. The security problem didn't happen because she told someone to make it secure without supervising them closely, the security problem happened because she decided she'd rather not be subject to the rules, and not being subject to the rules automatically comes with bad security unless you're really careful.

Re:Lying scum

[DarkOx]

Hillary Clinton should know what a "server wipe" is because she was in charge of the people who were managing this

Personally I find it hard to accept Hillary as a former Secretary of State would not know a lot more than she lets on. Its difficult to imagine she could have done her job effectively otherwise. That said she does not need to know the details of what "wipe" means in terms vs say a simple delete.

The question could have plainly been understood as "did you or someone in your employ attempt erase the contents of the server before handing it over and how do you explain that as anything other than destruction of evidence."

You don't need to know anything about filesystems, databases, disk sectors, pointers, logical addressing, block sizes, etc to understand the important aspects of the question. She chose to evade the question and the best she could come up with to feign an embarrassing degree of ignorance in the form of bad joke. Honestly I would have better about her as the next POTUS if her answer had been "no comment".

Re:Lying scum

[Rockoon]

No we don't know if she violated any laws yet

Actually we do and she is still doing it. She is a civilian in possession of classified material that she collected while she wasn't a civilian. End of the fucking discussion. She is still breaking the law.

Re:Lying scum

[RingDev]

There are procedures in place.

Yup, from Rice and Powell the procedures were to wipe the server and delete all records of the emails so that they wouldn't be included in any records retention or available for inspection.

If Clinton had followed the standing procedures, none of this would have happened. ;)

-Rick

PS: Don't take this as defense of Hillary. It's offense at the cherry picked nature of this witch hunt.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the anti-Nixon witch hunt. Remember that everthing Nixon did was something both Kennedy and Johnson had done--in many cases to Nixon. The reason young reporters were the ones that took down Nixon is that they didn't know it was SOP. Just because someone did it before doesn't mean it's right or that it won't take you down.

Re:Lying scum

[Pascoea]

What she probably said was "I want a server that isn't subject to legally mandated retention or public records requests"

I'm betting your paraphrasing of the conversation is more accurate, I was trying to keep it as neutral as possible.

Re:Lying scum

[ScentCone]

Somebody is a Trump supporter....

No, somebody is making perfectly valid observations that call into question those who are attempting to help Hillary by excusing her behavior and contempt for the rest of us by saying she's old. Those are observations that could be made by a Biden supporter, a Sanders supporter, or a Jindal supporter ... or by anyone that simply finds her career of duplicitous hypocrisy under the cover of a fawning media to be simply too much, for too long.

Re:Lying scum

[ScentCone]

Bullshit ass-hole. You like Condoleezza Rice should have known terrorists would hijack a plan and crash it into the Trade Towers.....

You mean the terrorists who hatched that plan and were working on it under the Clinton administration? Those terrorists? The ones who were answering to Bin Laden, a person that the Clinton administration let slip through their fingers more than once, even after his group and associates had already killed hundreds of people, including US Navy personnel? Yeah.

Re:Lying scum

[LetterRip]

Actually we do and she is still doing it. She is a civilian in possession of classified material that she collected while she wasn't a civilian. End of the fucking discussion. She is still breaking the law.

The documents were not classified at the time. Contrary to the assertion in Routers article, FGI (foreign government information) are not 'born classified' - this is shown both by the wording of the statutes themselves; court interpretation of the statutes and executive orders; and according to the State Department itself.

It is far from clear what duty, if any, she has in the case of retroactively classified documents, but almost certainly she has no legal culpability.

Re: Lying scum

[JackieBrown]

Every time someone accuses Hillary of doing something nefarious with these emails I picture explaining to my mother that she will need to use two different email accounts for different purposes and the resulting blank looks that would ensue.

Your mother was the Secretary of State?

Your mother is running for president?

Your mother has a staff that could have set up the phone for her to receive emails from two addresses?

I really doubt your mom has the resources and training that Hillary has. The only thing your statement demonstrates is that a lot of people will not realize this is a big deal because they have no idea how things work.

Re: Lying scum

[I'm New Around Here]

Is your mother a former First Lady, US Senator, and Secretary of State?

I don't expect my mother to understand why she might need more email addresses, but I don't expect her to violate federal law to avoid it either.

Re:Lying scum

[LordLimecat]

The documents were not classified at the time.

Im pretty sure the whole point of classifying a document after the fact is to indicate that it is not, from that point on, suitable for viewing by non-cleared / non-need-to-know parties.

It is irrelevant whether it was classified at the beginning, its classified now, and its classified for a reason.

Re:Lying scum

[I'm New Around Here]

Clearly the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy has gotten to the entire judicial system in the USA, that's obviously the only way anyone would make such a big deal over something that certainly was completely legal and moral at the time...

In case this isn't sarcasm:

And They're coming to take me away Ha Ha
They're coming to take me away ho ho he he ha ha
to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time,
and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats
and they're coming to take me away ha ha

Love that song.

Re:Lying scum

[LordLimecat]

That's not his job, he has smart people hired to handle stuff like that.

But its not the smart people's responsibility to comply with laws (and common sense)-- its Hillary's.

Re:Lying scum

[I'm New Around Here]

As a matter of fact, after the first World Trade Center attack in the 1990s, I did know that the next attack would be with planes. It would have to be to get past the security measure put in place to prevent a second truck bomb.

Question: How do you get a truck bomb past cement barricades that stop trucks?

Answer: Strap a set of wings to the fucker and fly it over them. In other words, use a plane.

Re:Lying scum

[fahrbot-bot]

There are procedures in place. Obviously, Clinton decided that she was going to do things HER WAY - and in the process broke a metric shit-ton of laws.

Along with the people that allowed it to happen. Email doesn't get forwarded on its own. *If* she broke any rules, someone let and helped her do it and they should be as, if not more, accountable. Part of an administrator's job is to say "no" to things that are wrong. Sure you might get fired, but I know that I would stand by that decision and consequence.

Re:Lying scum

[CodeArtisan]

Maybe she had the same advisers that saw 22 million emails deleted by the Bush/Cheney Whitehouse. Remember the outrage over that affair? Me either.

Re:Lying scum

[fahrbot-bot]

She is a civilian in possession of classified material that she collected while she wasn't a civilian.

If she still has the Clearance and Need to Know, that's not a problem.

Re:Lying scum

[fahrbot-bot]

Bullshit ass-hole. You like Condoleezza Rice should have known terrorists would hijack a plan and crash it into the Trade Towers.....

You mean the terrorists who hatched that plan and were working on it under the Clinton administration? Those terrorists? The ones who were answering to Bin Laden, a person that the Clinton administration let slip through their fingers more than once, even after his group and associates had already killed hundreds of people, including US Navy personnel? Yeah.

Or do you mean the Bin Laden family who have long ties with the Bush family?

• Bush ties to bin Laden haunt grim anniversary
• Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden
• Bush-bin Laden family links

Or how the Bush family wealth comes not only from partnering and or owning everything from banks to Halliburton and selling or financing arms to the Bin Laden family as well as Hitler?

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

How War Made the Bush Family Rich

You mean *those* terrorists?

Re: Lying scum

[Bartles]

President Walker will gladly exercise all the new executive powers that Barack Obama has snatched for the Presidency. Too bad you were silent then.

Re:Lying scum

[Bartles]

She sent or recieved 60,000 emails in three years. She knows what she's doing.

Re:Lying scum

[Bartles]

By that definition no document is classified when it is created. That's bullshit. Classified information is classified information. And Secretaries of State with high levels of security clearance are trained on the handling of classified information. It is her job to classify documents as they are created.

Re:Lying scum

[Bartles]

Except that it is unsecured. Ask General Petraeus about that.

Re:Lying scum

[Bartles]

So Rice and Powell wiped the home brew servers they kept in their basement and exclusively used while in office? You're delusional.

Re:Lying scum

[Bartles]

What makes you think she knows nothing about tech?

Re:Lying scum

[Coren22]

The documents were not classified at the time.

Except all the ones they found that were marked TS and were then somehow unmarked that this whole investigation is about, but I guess willful ignorance is what you prefer.

Re:Lying scum

[Coren22]

Bull Shit.

I am getting very tired of this argument being trotted out like you know anything about the records retention laws. They have been around a VERY long time.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

Re:Lying scum

[pipingguy]

Supposedly it was in a bathroom closet in Colorado or something.

Re:Lying scum

[RingDev]

From Powell's interview:

Powel: I started using it [the private email server] in order to get everybody to use it, so we could be a 21st century institution and not a 19th century.

But I retained none of those e-mails and we are working with the State Department to see if thereâ(TM)s anything else they want to discuss with me about those e-mails.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So they wantâ¦

POWELL: (INAUDIBLE) have a stack of them.

STEPHANOPOULOS: â" theyâ(TM)ve asked you to turn them over, but you donâ(TM)t have them, is that it?

POWELL: I donâ(TM)t have any â" I donâ(TM)t have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files.

And, in fact, a lot of the e-mails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and the State.gov domain. But I donâ(TM)t know if the servers the State Department captured those or not.

And most â" they were all unclassified and most of them, I think, are pretty benign, so Iâ(TM)m not terribly concerned even if they were able to recover them.

You may also have forgotten the Bush Administration's use of private email servers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Seriously, this is record of fact. Powell openly admitted to using a private email server, that he 'thinks' most or all of the emails were unclassified, and that he doesn't think that any that may have been classified were impactful.

Rice has not openly admitted it, but she was on the Bush admin's private web server and there were records that she "occasionally" used the official state department email system.

Politically speaking, Clinton's mistake was to keep a backup of the emails. Security speaking, this whole thing has been a wank fest for over a decade. At least Kerry started getting it cleaned up.

-Rick

Re:Lying scum

[fahrbot-bot]

I was only replying to the remark about a civilian still having classified data collected while not a civilian, not the storage of said data. Sorry for any confusion.

Re: Lying scum

[sabbede]

Politicians from any party lie for the same reasons as anyone else and about the same general things. That's just something humans are liable to do.

Not sure what the point of those last two sentences is. Something of a non sequitur considering the context and preceding statements. And it pointlessly creates an opening to discuss whether the Left would appreciate having people on the Right define why a person would want to hook up to their wagon. In other words, stop trying to pick a fight. Especially one that will instantly devolve into endless rounds of name-calling.

Re:Lying scum

[Coren22]

An water efficiency law being voted on for the EPA?

What does that have to do with records retention laws that were in place before Hilary took over as Secretary of State?

Re: Lying scum

[Archangel Michael]

Laws are for the little people to obey. Not the rich and powerful.

Re:Lying scum

[cayenne8]

I think the most valid explanation anyone could come up with is...the Hillary just wanted to be able to NOT have to share or have her email transactions become part of the public record, etc.

Of course, that is now blowing up in her face...but seriously, there aren't many other valid reasons to just NOT use the govt supplied and managed email servers.

Setting up your own email server isn't rocket science....but why bother when you have all the security questions taken off your shoulders and allowing the govt security types to set up and run your email for you? Unless you fear you will have something to hide....

Re: Lying scum

[Archangel Michael]

Any sufficient level of incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

She is either incompetent or evil. I'm not judging her motives, I'll the those better qualified to figure it out.

Re:Lying scum

[Archangel Michael]

The documents were not classified at the time.

Some documents are classified immediately upon generation or receipt. And Hilary would either have to know this, or wasn't qualified to be Secretary of State. An email from Merkel is classified immediately upon receipt. It doesn't require review or "stamp" or "markings" or any other technicality. They are "born classified".

So repeating this line, is factually in error, and functionally bullshit designed by political shills.

It is far from clear what duty, if any, she has in the case of retroactively classified documents, but almost certainly she has no legal culpability.

This is factually completely wrong. Some documents are classified IMMEDIATELY upon receipt. Further, you speak of "duty" which was clearly abrogated here in that it was Hilary's duty to safeguard those "born classified" documents (emails), which she couldn't have done, given what we do know about her servers.

The fact is, she is toxic politically, and the only people still trying to defend her are those that 1) don't know anything, or 2) Political shills. So, which are you?

Re:Lying scum

[ScentCone]

Careful, your tinfoil is on pretty tight there. And you're slipping. Where's the link to a discussion about the temperatures at which steel melts? Who's going to take you seriously if you don't talk about that? And chemtrails, of course. Haliburton Chemtrails.

Re:Lying scum

[Archangel Michael]

Actually, some documents are classified upon generation / receipt. The term I have heard is "born classified", meaning they are classifed from the beginning. The "Marked Classified" is a lame attempt at obfuscation of the seriousness of the problem here. Hilary knows she's politically dead. The real question is, is she bound for Prison or will Obama pardon her.

Re:Lying scum

[Archangel Michael]

um no, it isn't. The problem is that possession is a crime, regardless of clearance level. There are systems in place for keeping classified documents safe, she violated just about every protocol with her private server.

Re:Lying scum

[Archangel Michael]

I find it hilarious that left wing nutjobs seem to thing that the bumbling idiot GWB, could get elected, take office, orchestrate the WTC plane crashes all within 12 months.

It gives way too much credit, not enough credit, both at the same time.

Re:Lying scum

[fahrbot-bot]

um no, it isn't. The problem is that possession is a crime, regardless of clearance level. There are systems in place for keeping classified documents safe, she violated just about every protocol with her private server.

Speaking from experience, there are procedures for possessing / retaining classified data. If they're followed, there's no problem. Mere possession is not automatically a crime.

Re:Lying scum

[Ramze]

Ding ding ding. We have a winner!

The entire purpose was to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests and to prevent her communications from entering into the National Archives. A nice side-effect was that her political enemies would have a tougher time snooping on her.

She believed she could skirt the law (as so many in DC do). Regardless of what happens with her over the issue, it looks like there will be severe penalties for future Secretaries of State that attempt this.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has experience in record retention and government rules governing them I can tell you that prior to 9-11 there were almost no rules covering the retention of email or the use of specific government servers for the use of email. Official memos were entangled with all kinds of rules, but whether electronic records were covered by National Archive regulations and laws was not clear. As a matter of fact when Bush took over his staff found none of the government computers worked because Clinton staffers had removed and taken all of the hard drives. (There was also reported a large amount of damage to keyboards and other equipment.) While there were a number of media stories on that (one by the NYTimes) there was never a thought that such behavior was actionable because at that time neither the National Archives nor Congress or the individual departments had much in the way of either law or regulation concerning electronic records. Along about the middle of the Bush presidency Congress finally passed some laws and NARA set some regulations for electronic record retention.
So its not so shocking Rice and Powell were not held to the same standard that Clinton is being held to. Heck I can tell you that during the first Bush presidency the government agency where I worked was still doing email using Pine on a terminal connected to a mainframe.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon because I have worked with TS material. Even if she has the appropriate clearance and caveats ("need to know") for the documents, that doesn't give her liscence to keep those documents on an unsecured computer in her private residence. Classified material has to be kept in special facilities (unless being transited) that meet the construction standards laid out by the Director of National Intelligence. Anyone in the US working with classified information signs a form acknowledging their understanding of these rules and the legal consequences that follow from breaking them.

Re:Lying scum

[kenai_alpenglow]

And if they broke any laws, then they should also be prosecuted.

Re:Lying scum

[crbowman]

More importantly the question should be: is someone who has so little understanding of the digital technology as she has stated, qualified to be president of a country whose economy and citizens privacy depends so heavily on that technology?

Re:Lying scum

[Archangel Michael]

Tell that to General Petreus

Re:Lying scum

[Coren22]

So in other words, for 3 years of Clinton's time in State, it was well documented that ALL email was to be retained? Pretty different from the comment I was replying to that it was after she left State that the rules changed.

Her last day as Secretary of State was February 1, 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Lying scum

[laird]

Actually, what Bush did was worse. He shut down the White House email system, which was secure and properly archived to comply with "sunshine" laws, and had the entire white house staff work in a new system that had no archiving, and which they wiped when he left office, destroying all white house emails in clear violation of the law. And which there was no investigation into, oddly enough.

The mistake that Hillary Clinton made was that she didn't wipe the server to destroy the evidence.

Re:Lying scum

[RingDev]

Like Clinton, it wasn't illegal at the time to host an off government network private email server for government use.

Unlike Clinton, they did a better job of destroying the evidence so that they can't be investigated for security breaches.

-Rick

Re:Lying scum

[Traksius Egas]

According to an earlier story, the server was apparently set up for Bill during his presidency. That begs the question, what did Bill have on there before?
Although that was a very early story and could have just been a false story attempting to cover up the truth.

Re:Lying scum

[DanielRavenNest]

> The real question is, is she bound for Prison or will Obama pardon her.

I'm sure Ed Snowden can give her some relocation advice :-).

The hypocrisy would be particularly pungent if she gets a pardon for mishandling classified data, and Snowden doesn't. The law only applies to peons, right?

Re:Lying scum

[linuxrocks123]

What you said is utter nonsense.

Even if the document is "born classified", it only matters if she created it -- receiving an email isn't an action. Hillary Clinton is not politically dead; she will get the Democratic nomination for President and there's probably a greater than 50% chance she'll win the general election.

Sending someone to prison for receiving emails is necessarily making that person a political prisoner. Political imprisonment is injustice per se. Perhaps it's best that everyone in important executive branch offices is usually of the same political party; the temptation to make political prisoners out of people is less that way.

There was always going to be a political scandal involving Hillary Clinton, because of the media. No, not because of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", because "Hillary Clinton still is a shoe-in for the nomination" is not a story and the media likes stories. So they have to go, "OMG Bernie Sanders MIGHT WIN!" and "OMG SCANDAL WILL IT MAKE HILLARY FALL???".

There's nothing, or at most very little, substance to the email thing.

Re: Lying scum

[jhoger]

Please name a new executive power. Idiot.

Re: Lying scum

[jandersen]

We've known this family is full of lying scum for at least 20 years.

Have we? Funny you should say that, because in much of the world outside the US, Clinton was widely admired as one of the better presidents; in fact, he received standing ovations, not least in response to what people perceived as the dignified way he handled the vicious attacks in connection with the Lewinsky affair. Maybe it is only in a narrow circle of extremist Republicans that "we have always known...."?

American politicians seem to be universally hated by Americans - or at least by the opposition. It is a strange thing that you guys can find anybody who is willing to run at all; you would have to be either a masochist or stupid to wish to be exposed to that sort of treatment, where even the smallest error is viciously attacked and nothing is ever forgiven - in God's own Country, where the teachings of Christ are said to be held in respect.

Re:Lying scum

[sabbede]

I support users her age and older who are both decidedly less intelligent and so illiterate they don't know what a window is, and they are wholly aware of what it means to wipe a computer. I just don't buy it. Thirty years ago maybe, but now I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't know what it means.

Re: Lying scum

[Tyrannicsupremacy]

The HELL I was silent!

Re: Lying scum

[Tyrannicsupremacy]

The Clintons were never anything more than a bunch of opulent white folk with a good grift going.

The people who "widly admired" them were the ones most taken by their grift. Everyone else saw them for what they were: Republicans who pretend to like minorities.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

What you said is utter nonsense.

Even if the document is "born classified", it only matters if she created it -- receiving an email isn't an action.

You're right, receiving an email isn't an action. Storing classified information in an unapproved location (like, say, a personal server) is, however, a crime, especially if she knew it was classified (and she really should have - if she didn't, that means she's pretty incompetent). In addition, the fact that she deleted a whole bunch of emails before turning them over is sketchy, and she may have violated federal retention laws (yes, I know they were amended after she left office, but the requirement to turn everything over was still there - the amendment just added a timeframe).

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

It was still illegal to destroy federal records, and it was still illegal to store classified information improperly. They all screwed up.

Re: Lying scum

[jandersen]

Heh, I get it - anybody disagrees is a complete idiot, am I right? You should check the newspapers from Europe from around the time, among other things. Apparently the whole world outside of your close knit circle are idiots. No wonder the world is in such a sorry state.

Re: Lying scum

[Tyrannicsupremacy]

I guess you fell for it too.

Re:Lying scum

[RingDev]

Absolutely, but only one of these people is being investigated for it.

If it's against the law, but we only ever enforce the law targeting individuals based on political reasoning, then the law should be changed or the enforcement should be changed.

Either hold everyone to the same standard and initiate investigations into Powell, Rice, and the entire Bush administration, or change the law such that cabinet level officials have the power to disclose/store non-impactful classified information as they see fit to execute the duties of their office.

"law" may also be the incorrect term here. IIRC, classification rules are maintained by executive order, not by the congress. Could be wrong on that, but I don't have time to look it up at the moment.

-Rick

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Oh, I agree, enforcement shouldn't be selective. On the other hand, only one of those people is running for President, so it makes sense to focus more effort (not all, but more) on that one, since it's potentially quite important and time-sensitive.

Re:Lying scum

[david_thornley]

I'm not sure it would be a crime for you or me. However, Clinton was cleared for Top Secret material, and I think the laws are different for her because of that.

Re:Lying scum

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

I think it would likely still be a crime, although anyone not cleared for Classified material shouldn't be expected to know what to do with it, so I'm not sure what the actual penalty would be. Clinton definitely should have known, so in principle she should be punished more harshly. In practice, I doubt it'll happen.

Re:Lying scum

[david_thornley]

People have had classified material, and published it, without legal retaliation. The people leaking it, when found, are in all sorts of legal trouble. I've never had any kind of security clearance, so I have no responsibility. Clinton was cleared, and therefore does have responsibility.

Re: Lying scum

[toddestan]

That's completely ridiculous, but if we were to accept that argument as true, then she's clearly too fucking stupid to be the President.

Re: What with a cloth?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall it roughly the same when the RNC lost millions of emails from various people, and said they couldn't be recovered during Bush's admiration. No backups or anything... right?

Given the race, arguing I'm as bad as Republicans seems to not be av sensible strategy. However, I expect the same level of punishment for one of the elites.

Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if your a loyal Democrat, this is not good. Keeping highly sensitive documents on personal servers when your a top government official is just wrong. No matter if there is a smoking gun or not. Just the fact this goes against all protocol setup and defined to protect information is very troubling. It shows Mrs. Clinton totally disregarded protocol simply for her own benefit and possibly for a convenient way of controlling history and her legacy in case she messed up.
This goes far beyond a Richard Nixon moment and I cannot believe how many people still thinks she is the best the Democrat's have for President??
In my mind, she is just what America doesn't need in the White house. Another politician who makes up her own rules and disobey's government policy. Really?
We want more of that in government? Hey, if your a Democrat do what you will next year at election time. But if Hillary Clinton is a choice. Do the right thing and don't vote that disgraceful piece of work into office. She has no place in public office of any kind.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong?
I that a legal term?
How about using the Republican Party server? It that wrong?
How about ex post facto?
Was it illegal at the time?
Lots of thing were fine at the time and now they are wrong.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilary lost to Obama because she was old and could not mobilize the youth vote, which Obama did, to the chagrin of the 50-year-old women who made up Hilary's base. Now Hilary is eight years older. A young candidate would slaughter her in the primaries, which is why you see nobody young in the running now.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[brunes69]

"I cannot believe how many people still thinks she is the best the Democrat's have for President??"

An increasing number of people think Bernie Sanders is the best Democraft for President.. even if he isn't really endorsed by the party elite.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

My sister is an Ambassador (not an American) and her eyes opened really wide when she saw the letter encoding on some of the emails and basically stated that if anyone else did that (in our government, likely in hers) - they would be up on charges -- facing serious prison time.

The breach that occurred with Petraeus was less severe (sharing documents with someone doing his bio - which BTW would still be vetted by US security for things that should be omitted on security grounds) faced lesser charges (a relative slap on the wrist) -- but was still charged and still has a record - even if suspended.

There are people in prison on in the US on long prison terms for mishandling classified information. To which Clinton had no sympathy and said they got what they should have because they put US at risk due to security breaches.

So Yes.... it is definitely wrong..... very very wrong....

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally, when viewing material like this they have to go into a secured area even within the Embassy - which they are to leave ALL unsecured personal electronic devices out of.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[codeButcher]

This. Is why I think you americans may already have a winner for your next presidential election.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[BonThomme]

sharing documents with someone he was doing

ftfy

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[BonThomme]

I thought it was entitlement which when combined with no excess of competence is a decidedly inert combination.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Convicted by the court of public opinion, with zero personally viewed evidence and no trial. Bravo. Merika!

Clinton has faults, but there is no need to go fishing for them. She voted for the war in Iraq and for credit reform. She's almost as bad as the rest of the clown car Republicans. Almost.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[fey000]

Or perhaps *because* he isn't endorsed by the party elite? The appeal of Trump appears to be largely because he's not cut from the same cloth as the standard politician.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[CraigCruden]

Google my last name and Pakistan.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Faust6]

I'd venture he'd make a better defense against commies. Destabilize too much and that's the kind of push-back you get. If you remember, following the Depression the General Theory of Economics was written in part to prevent a Communist revolution.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Fire_Wraith]

Considering how well the traditional/standard mold politicians endorsed by the party elites have done for us in the past few decades, it should come as no surprise that not being one is currently seen as a positive thing.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[meta-monkey]

And once again, with the Clintons, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. If she had said "whoops, silly me" issued an apology and vowed to do right in the future, this would have blown over by now. Republicans would still harp on it, of course, but Democrats could respond "she made a technical mistake, it was brought to her attention and she corrected her behavior. Move on."

But she keeps trying to make excuses and tell stupid lies because NEVER SHOW WEAKNESS. It's disgusting.

Democrats, you have a choice in the primaries. Do not make that choice Hillary. I don't really care who else you pick. But literally I would vote for Donald Trump before I would vote for Hillary Clinton.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[buckbanzaii]

The real sad thing is that Sec. Clinton decided to have a personal e-mail server, but those working for her will do jail time for getting her information she needed to do her job the only way they could have.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[TwoEyedJack]

B. Sanders is a democrat in name only. He actually self-identifies as a socialist, which seems to be the way the D party is going these days anyway.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[kheldan]

I got news for you, friend: There are no candidates from ANY party that are suitable to be POTUS. Anyone who gets elected will be a deeply flawed pile of shit that will just make things worse.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[Coren22]

I fully intend to vote Deez Nuts for president!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/21/...

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[HiThere]

??? The Democratic party has been swinging right since ... well, nearly 20 years. At this point they're somewhat to the right of Nixon. And despite claims both parties are also proponents of big government and centralized control, so that's nothing to choose between on their part.

Tbe Democrats *do* tend to try to return a little value to their the general populace, though not enough to repay the centralization that they demand in return. The Republicans also tend to return a bit of value to their supporters. This generally means intolerant laws and bacon for the wealthy. Being somewhere in the middle, neither side helps me much, but I dislike intolerance, so I'm less anti-Democrat than I am anti-Republican. I don't like either, however, so I generally vote 3rd party. (Not that I like most of them. Think of the kind of candidate that would devote the time and effort involved in running for office when they had no reasonable chance of winning.)

I really think elections have proven a failure. For propositions I'm in favor of either Condorcet or Instant Runoff voting, but for candidates I've become convinced that we'd get better candidates from a lottery.

Re:Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[HiThere]

Actually, thinking again, for propositions standard voting makes more sense. I was focusing too hard on alternatives for selecting candidates. For anything that's yes/no the only viable thing to adjust is the proportion of yes votes required for passage.

Re: Even if you bleed Blue this is wrong

[snizzitch]

"Wrong" is probably not a legal term, but it's adequate for me to base my voting decision on.

Re:This was all about convenience

[fey000]

Dude, have you ever walked around with two phones? It's inconvenient.

Another Government failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of how you feel about the parties, the Government has rules, which we find yet again have been violated. The SIPR nET is not suppose to be able to talk to NIPR or the Internet at all. If someone SENT out Secret, Top Secret, or Classified emails to the Internet, then the Government servers, network, or staff F'd up. And here we wonder how OPM was breached so often, and lost data that is not allowed on the internet. (They used a secure dial in for taking fingerprints, so how did that get on the internet facing servers......)... Sigh.....

Re:Another Government failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I agree. My point is that the news said she was EMAILED this data. WTF. If that data is "supposed" to be only on the SIPR, which is to have ZERO connection to the internet, how did it get forwarded to her. That is my question.

Re:Another Government failure

[Eosi]

The story says the email was "Forwarded" to her. Not a new typed email. Again, my point is that the Government network is not setup to follow their own rules, and that the issue is larger than Mrs. Clinton. She is a scapegoat to hide that fact. Have you not noticed that the last OPM breach new coverage went away as soon as this came up? Rather than fix the issue, hide it. Its what they do best.

Re:Another Government failure

[Eosi]

Oh I read your comment. Have you not been listening to the news. The latest statement by the government staff was that "TOP Secrect and Classified emails where FORWARDED to Mrs. Clinton's personal server" Forget the retyping, which is something that government staff is trained NOT to go. So I guess we are at a spot, do we believe the Government official that stated they were forwarded and not retyped, OR do we not believe anything they say, which means that she did not in fact get this material. Either way, this story is lacking in details, rules were broken by more than her, yet she is the scapegoat and the OPM breach is swept under the rug.

Re:Another Government failure

[Coren22]

Hint for you, unclassified is a classification. TS and S are also classifications. Anything marked with one of these labels is considered classified, Unclassified has much less handling restrictions though.

Re:Another Government failure

[HiThere]

She's not *just* a scapegoat. She wasn't supposed to HAVE governmental material on a private server. I'm not sure she was supposed to have a private server. What she did was also clearly a crime, despite excuses. There's reasonable question of why she isn't in jail. But it's also true that she didn't originate the emails that she received, and she received them over an unsecured network. Did she solicit those emails? Whether she did or not, the person sending them committed a crime. So there's plenty of criminal activity to go around, and one needs to wonder why she had a private email server when she wasn't supposed to have any communications from official parties that were not logged on a governmental server. This is consistent with a plan to engage in illegal activity. (A possible example is illegally discriminating against someone getting a job in government.) This isn't proof. We don't know why she had a private email server. We do know she wasn't supposed to get any governmental communications on it. I suppose it might have been legal if it used a whitelist to only allow communications from, say, campaign staff that weren't employed by the government...but I'm no lawyer.

Re:Another Government failure

[david_thornley]

Why wasn't she supposed to have governmental material on a private server? It wasn't illegal while she was Secretary of State. In fact, it had been standard practice in the Bush administration. It's illegal now, because the law was changed the year after she left. You don't appear to understand that laws in effect at the time.

The real questions are about retention and classified material, Neither of them is clearly a crime, with what we know now, and there is no reason to have her in jail. She isn't a flight risk, and she hasn't been convicted of anything yet. Currently, there's an investigation that might well result in criminal charges against her, but she's not even on trial yet.

"This is consistent with a plan to engage in illegal activity" is just stupid. The law says that the prosecution has to show that the defendant was guilty of specific illegal actions. Lots of perfectly innocent actions are consistent with such a plan.

Re:Another Government failure

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

It is illegal to keep classified information in an unapproved location, including (but not limited to) a private server. Obviously, the Bush administration shouldn't have been doing that either. She may have violated retention laws by deleting emails (interestingly, those laws did not really include emails during the Bush administration) but it's hard to know for sure, given that any evidence is, you know, gone. I agree there's no reason to jail her yet, but from what I can see, criminal charges should be brought, given what we currently know, especially since if one of her underlings kept classified or Top Secret documents at home, they'd be locked up right quick.

Re:Another Government failure

[david_thornley]

Criminal charges should not be brought, based on what we know. Based on what we know, there should be an investigation. If that finds sufficient evidence of criminal activity (and I'm not ruling that out), then we can go to the criminal charges.

The evidence isn't gone. The FBI has found several classified documents where they shouldn't be, which wouldn't have happened if she'd just had everything wiped.

Re: What with a cloth?!?!?!

[Entrope]

The RNC case and this are worlds apart. The RNC operated email servers for partisan purposes that are illegal to perform using government resources (labor time, equipment, and so forth). Hillary Clinton operated a private email server to keep government records out of the government's hands, contrary to both policy and statute, when both of those were crystal clear about what was required. Any law or policy violations in the RNC case went against specific direction from higher-ups. In the more recent case, the law and policy violations were directed by a member of the Cabinet.

Re:This was all about convenience

[Entrope]

According to CNN, she actively used multiple personal electronic devices at the time, including one that was prominently mocked for being as big as four phones.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/31/...

Re:This was all about convenience

[requerdanos]

> According to Bloomberg, she only wanted to carry one phone

>> Dude, have you ever walked around with two phones? It's inconvenient.

While I understand trying to do something about getting multiple email addresses into and out of one account (gmail does this pretty easily for example), the "I carry one phone" theory is nonsense.

Hillary points out that she carried two phones at the state department [Advisory: Contains video] [Advisory: Originally posted by a vast right wing conspiracy]

The mishandling of email was probably a simple, unintentional mistake that as both a lawyer and politician she is automatically lying about. *shrug* unsurprising.

Re:Framed

[satch89450]

She's just an innocent [white] female, trying to make it in a white man's world... Racists!

This statement is just plain wrong on so many levels, Anonymous Coward.

She deserves to be in prison

[MikeRT]

Even the average person who reads the news knows by now that TS/SCI materials can't legitimately end up in unclassified email systems. The very best she could argue is "I had no idea what it was and deleted it immediately" at which rate she's still guilty of not handing over the machine(s) to the federal government to verify that the data is actually gone.

She needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because the alternative is that we live in a country where contractors and lower level civil servants go to Leavenworth while the elite gets to make cutesy jokes about destruction of evidence in a national security scandal.

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[fey000]

I'm not sure where you have been raised, but in 'Murica, the law, much like the bus, is for poor people.

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[Anonymous Coward]

LO prison. If nobody went to jail for illegally invading Iraq based on lies, and nobody went to jail for the 2008 banking crisis, then nobody's going to jail over some emails.

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[pz]

I don't know the relevant law (or really much of any law) in detail, and hope that someone here who does can express an informed, educated opinion.

Stuff that is TS/SCI (Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information) is what commonfolk call state secrets. It's stuff that is so important to national security that we call people who share it with non-cleared foreign folks spies and charge them with treason, and the punishment is up to and including death. It is a Big Frelling Deal. That's the heavy hammer that's being threatened and used against Assange, Snowden and Manning for doing the same thing, albeit on a larger and wider scale. Just storing it on a non-secure system within the government is considered Bad Form and subject to disciplinary action or worse. Printing it out and taking it home is Particularly Bad Form. Doesn't forwarding it over private email systems amount to all of that and much more?

Why aren't we calling for Hillary's political head, if not sending her to jail?

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[Anonymous Coward]

1) From all accounts the material wasn't marked classified and apparently wasn't classified till after the fact and even that state may be in question.

2) Having a private server means nothing in this context. An unclassified server is an unclassified server, whether Hillary or the Government owns it. The violation would be the same.

3) No matter where the emails were republican operatives would pour over every tiny dot trying to find a way to destroy her. In fact this nasty political climate may have been part of the reason she did it in the first place. How the hell can anyone be expected to work in this kind of environment? Hell they are now resorting to active sabotage with groups trying to infiltrate and "find the truth" to various organisations and people they don't like.

4) So far I've heard no actual reports of significant damage to the country caused by her server, which other deliberate leaks of classified intelligence have arguably caused. Preventing such is the point of classifying information. If the information can cause no great harm then it may be over classified. In this case it has mostly been well Hillary is technically wrong, so she must be destroyed for the good of the republican party.

5) There can be little doubt that she handled some truly sensitive data that was classified that did not end up on her email server. She could not avoid it at her level. Now it is possible she screwed up with some percentage of it, and that is bad. Not following policy here is also bad, since in theory it increases the risk of exposure in the event there was a data spill. Of course with how incompetent the government is at handling information, I'm half betting that Hillary's server was the more secure of the two options! Good grief the government's office of personnel management has repeatedly been hacked which gives foreign intelligence service a how to list to compromise people! What has been done there? Nothing.

6) The alternatives to Hillary are either Bernie Sanders or someone from the republican clown car. I can't see Bernie getting elected, and, well, the ones in the clown car frankly scare the hell out of me. We will be right back in the ditch Bush drove us in, except it will be twenty foot deeper with Donald Trump's wall around it to make damn sure we don't get out again!

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[Nyder]

Even the average person who reads the news knows by now that TS/SCI materials can't legitimately end up in unclassified email systems. The very best she could argue is "I had no idea what it was and deleted it immediately" at which rate she's still guilty of not handing over the machine(s) to the federal government to verify that the data is actually gone.

She needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because the alternative is that we live in a country where contractors and lower level civil servants go to Leavenworth while the elite gets to make cutesy jokes about destruction of evidence in a national security scandal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Nothing came of that, nothing will come of this.

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[SuricouRaven]

Don't forget the Palin email thing. It seems to be a standard practice in US politics: There is just so much secret activity of dubious legality going on that needs to be kept away from the prying eyes of the media, everyone seems to have a desire for some off-the-record personal or unofficial communications channel. Occasionally someone gets caught, and the other party doe their best to exploit it to the fullest without reminding people that they were caught doing the same not long ago.

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[pipingguy]

Because she has a uterus and is a Clinton, that's why.

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[HiThere]

As I understand it, in her office she was not to have unlogged communication with governmental employees, either directly or indirectly. I could be misunderstanding things.

What you are talking about is what would be the law for an average citizen, not for a cabinet official. The law for a cabinet official is, as I understand it, much stricter. That, of course, doesn't say anything about enforcement.

Re: She deserves to be in prison

[phocion]

Why? Politics. The right IS calling for her to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The media wishes to appear impartial so they avoid repeating the Republican claims and stick to just reporting as little as they can. But since in reality much of the media leans Democrat, they don't want to report anything at all. Because the Democrats just want this problem to go away. If Hillary is forced out of the race their bench is pretty weak. Sanders (who technically isn't even a Democrat) has no chance of winning nationally with his Socialist platform. Biden might be able to win, or he might implode completely. Throw in a mediocre governor no one knows and a progressive ivory tower senator who's as far left as Sanders, and that's about it. Clinton is (absent an act of self destruction by the Republicans - such as nominating Trump) their only realistic chance of keeping the White House. It's much easier to just go along pretending that this is all a partisan attack and hope it doesn't get any worse. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Re: She deserves to be in prison

[phocion]

So the tl;dr version is that because the Democrats have no other viable candidate that can win, she has to be innocent and even if she did do something wrong it's no big deal and no one got hurt so let's just forget about it and it's all the Republicans fault anyway. Think that's going to fly with anyone outside those who are blinded by hatred of the Right? Especially when FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors (neither group being Republican operatives) find evidence to the contrary?

Re: She deserves to be in prison

[david_thornley]

After all the stupid Benghazi ranting, my automatic "tl;dr" was that the Republicans were launching baseless attacks on her again. It's looking now like that isn't really the case.

Re: She deserves to be in prison

[phocion]

Yeah, the tendency of politicians to grab on to every little infraction of their opponents ends up sounding a lot like the boy crying wolf after a while. Most people just stop listening and stop caring. But sometimes there really is a scandal to be upset about.

Re:She deserves to be in prison

[shutdown -p now]

The alternatives to Hillary are either Bernie Sanders or someone from the republican clown car. I can't see Bernie getting elected, and, well, the ones in the clown car frankly scare the hell out of me. We will be right back in the ditch Bush drove us in, except it will be twenty foot deeper with Donald Trump's wall around it to make damn sure we don't get out again!

First of all, this is not a valid reason to ignore clearly harmful, and potentially criminal conduct.

But in any case, what makes you believe Sanders cannot get elected? Getting him through the primaries with Hillary in there is problematic, yes, but in the general election? Especially if it really is vs Trump (which at this point I think is not at all unlikely)?

Re:This was all about convenience

[DRJlaw]

Dude, have you ever walked around with two phones? It's inconvenient.

All the time. I call them "personal phone" and "work phone." Because work does not need access to my personal emails, contact lists, apps, etc.

Meantime, please let me know how "it's inconvenient" can be used as an affirmative defense to complying with workplace policies or, in this case, the actual law. There are hordes of people not named Clinton who'd like to be able to play that card...

Reach out and touch base and have a chat

[pipingguy]

"He ordered the State Department to reach out to the FBI to see if..."

What the FUCK is with this language.

Re:Reach out and touch base and have a chat

[oh_my_080980980]

Reuters is engaged in a witch hunt that much is clear. The only thing Clinton is guilty of is bad email practice. There has been no smoking gun; nothing that come close to treason or giving away state secrets. Jesus Christ, check every member of Congress and see how they handle email, are they all in compliance.

Re:Reach out and touch base and have a chat

[fey000]

Reuters is engaged in a witch hunt that much is clear. The only thing Clinton is guilty of is bad email practice. There has been no smoking gun; nothing that come close to treason or giving away state secrets. Jesus Christ, check every member of Congress and see how they handle email, are they all in compliance.

Okay, let's translate this:

"Hillary isn't guilty of anything. Her crime is far from being on the same level as treason. You can't convict Hillary for her crime until you convict the congress members who are committing the same crime."

Forgive me if I chuckle a little.

Re:Reach out and touch base and have a chat

[Nyder]

Reuters is engaged in a witch hunt that much is clear. The only thing Clinton is guilty of is bad email practice. There has been no smoking gun; nothing that come close to treason or giving away state secrets. Jesus Christ, check every member of Congress and see how they handle email, are they all in compliance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Reach out and touch base and have a chat

[dcw3]

"He ordered the State Department to reach out to the FBI to see if..."
 

You'd prefer reach around ?

Re: This was all about convenience

[Entrope]

Scooter Libby did no such thing. Richard Armitage did. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice anyway. Your rant is unhinged.

Re:Framed

[tsqr]

Anonymous Coward notwithstanding, that one went so far over your head that you really can't be blamed for not hearing the woosh.

Am I missing something?

[watermark]

I still don't understand why this is so bad, especially to the point of being compared to the Nixon tapes. (I'm a Dem, but not really a Hillary fan)

The emails in question were believed to not contain classified info, so they would have been sent on the official unclassified server anyway. It wasn't against the law to have her own server, but possibly against policy. If she fired people for doing the same, that makes her a hypocrite, not a criminal. (although, hypocrites don't make good leaders either)

There has been speculation that she may have tried to intentionally wipe incriminating evidence off the server. So far, that seems to be pure speculation. I haven't seen/heard of any reason yet that makes me think this is even likely true. By all means investigate, but at least consider the possibility that it didn't happen. If this charge seems likely true (based on actual evidence), then we can start trying to compare this to Watergate/Nixon.

Even if she turns out completely/mostly innocent, her reputation has already be irreparably destroyed. Even if her innocence is proven likely, there will be a good number of people that will never believe it.

Re:Am I missing something?

[cbraescu1]

By avoiding government systems Clinton potentially put lives, diplomatic relations, and US secrets at risk.

The emails in question were believed to not contain classified info

That's simply not true (and I'm surprised you could believe Clinton's utterly false claims). As per State department rules, anything related to foreign countries is classified by default, without any need for such marking.

Re:Am I missing something?

[JackieBrown]

I still don't understand why this is so bad, especially to the point of being compared to the Nixon tapes.

It's the cover up (wiping the servers) which make it just like the Nixon tapes.

Re:Am I missing something?

[tranquilidad]

Maybe because it's part of a pattern of "willful" coverup under her tenure?

http://gawker.com/state-department-finds-thousands-of-philippe-reines-ema-1724560491

"Over two years ago, the department claimed that 'no records responsive to your request were located' - a baffling assertion, given Reine's well-documented correspondence..." "Last last week, however, the State Department came up with a very different answer: It had located an estimated 17,000 emails responsive to Gawker's request."

It took a lawsuit to uncover the State Department's illegal response to a Freedom of Information Act request. In this case, "20 boxes" of official emails were found on the personal account of Reines.

Philippe Reines was the former deputy assistant secretary of state and "aggressive defender" of Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps you don't like Gawker. Well, how about the Associated Press which is also suing the State Department to force the release of email correspondence and documents because of their unresponsiveness to FOIA requests: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/11/ap-sues-state-department_n_6847146.html.

The choices of what's going on are easily reduced to a small number:

- Clinton and her top aides simply care nothing about protocol because they're going to do things their way and screw what everyone thinks about it

- Clinton and her top aides willfully violated the law on multiple occasions and don't care what anyone thinks of it

- Clinton and her top aides were consistently incompetent in executing their statute-mandated responsibilities

- It's a vast, right-wing conspiracy to bring down the Clintons.

Now, which of the first three choices leads anyone to believe that Clinton deserves to be President?

If you still think it's a vast, right-wing conspiracy then I guess you have to throw the federal district courts and Clinton-appointed judges into the mix.

Re:Am I missing something?

[Camel Pilot]

The emails in question were believed to not contain classified info, so they would have been sent on the official unclassified server anyway.

Not sure where you are getting this. I see several sources confirming that her email did in fact contain classified information. They certainly contained sensitive FOUO content. We are talking the head of the State Department here. Her server was more than likely already compromised by several foreign intelligence organizations. Can you imagine their glee when they reported to their superiors that they have access to all the emails sent by Secretary of State of the US of A?

Re:Am I missing something?

[Archangel Michael]

Which is kind of Ironic, since Hilary was fired for creating a fraudulent brief during the Watergate investigation.

http://jacksonville.com/reason...

What you are missing

[Anonymous Coward]

The emails were subpoenaed by Congress for an investigation. She deleted them 14 months AFTER the subpoena, which she then claimed she never got. The Congressman who subpoenaed them came on news the next day showing what he sent her requesting the emails. She deleted evidence during an investigation (obstruction of justice).

Since then they have gotten more evidence of why she deleted them. This is all based on her original obstruction of justice and now they want to find out what she is hiding by not turning them over. She has lied at every step for not giving them over.
1. I wanted to use 1 device. She used 3
2. They were private emails to husband. Bill Clinton doesn't use email
3. No classified documents. There are classified documents
4. No documents were classified at time. They included signal intelligence which is classified at all times
5. Server protected by secret service at her house. It was in a Denver apartment that didn't have an alarm.
6. There are no backups. There is a backup server in New Jersey that is still not in government control.

Re:What you are missing

[CraigCruden]

To be classified it does not need to be stamped "classified" -- it is automatically classified by the fact of the source information at the top.

Often in the foreign service you communicate things that would not necessarily be classified - such as talks or communications in confidence with others in power etc. (off the record) -- and this lack of taking security seriously put both them and their lives at risk in some cases. What this teaches the world is that the US cannot be trusted with confidential or classified material and they should stop co-operating with the US on or off the record.

The emails were not 'born classified'

[LetterRip]

Read the effin statutes. The emails are not automatically classified if they are from a foreign government. They are only classified if the foreign government has stated they are classified.

The courts have ruled that being from a foreign government is not sufficient to be classified. The State Department argued that it was in a FOIA case and lost.

The case and the law are discussed in this link,

This provision of Executive Order 12,958 was a significant factor in a 1998 decision by the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that rejected the government's claim that a communication from the United Kingdom could be withheld from a FOIA requester because it had been classified by the Department of State. Weatherhead v. United States, 157 F. 3d 735 (9th Cir. October 1998), vacated as moot, 528 U.S. 1042 (1999) . The Ninth Circuit found that the government was unable to demonstrate that there was any specific reason for withholding the documents at issue and, therefore, without a presumption that foreign government information should be classified, the government could not justify withholding this document under the 1995 Order. The Court of Appeals panel also examined the letter, and found that its contents were innocuous and disclosure could not reasonably be expected to result in damage to the national security.

http://www.bushsecrecy.org/pag...

Re:The emails were not 'born classified'

[sycodon]

The very fact that an email originates from the SoS means that it is at least potentially classified.

It is HER dutyto mark it as such if it contains sensitive information. Are you saying that she is too stupid to recognize classified information? So if some source tells her that Iran will be attacked at X hours, she can send that inform over plain email because, "it wasn't marked classified"?

Re:The emails were not 'born classified'

[david_thornley]

WTF was anybody doing sending her TS/SCI emails that could be received by a private server? As I understand it, if you have authorized access to that stuff you know perfectly well that you do NOT send those things on public email.

That's okay

[rockabilly]

I'm sure Hillary's team has a few people in line waiting to take the fall on her behalf.

Re: This was all about convenience

[JackieBrown]

It doesn't matter how often you tell him this. He will keep posting the same incorrect facts.

I don't know if people do this because they believe it so much they have blinders, they never check if someone replies to their posts, or that they are trying to get others to believe it knowing there will not be a fact correction every time they post a falsehood.

Re:This was all about convenience

[LetterRip]

The mishandling of email was probably a simple, unintentional mistake that as both a lawyer and politician she is automatically lying about. *shrug* unsurprising.

There is no evidence yet of her mishandling email. There have been a lot of false claims about the classified nature of the email. The courts have ruled that information from a foreign government is not 'born classified', it must be explicitly stated that it is classified by the foreign government for it to be treated as classified material.

Re:This was all about convenience

[requerdanos]

I should probably have said "Any mishandling" instead of "The mishandling."

Blame game

[phorm]

This is also one of the few times a politician doesn't get to blame an underling. "But I didn't know Bob was shredding secret documents and working with arms dealers" might be able to pass, but you can't blame Bob for an illegal server full of government emails set up in your f**king house.

Re: Blame game

[jhoger]

The server wasn't illegal. Where did you get hat idea?

Re: Blame game

[phorm]

Not illegal in the sense that there's no legal boundary to having a home-mailserver, illegal in the sense that it was being used for the purpose of government business that is prohibited from such.

Re: Blame game

[david_thornley]

Using it for government business was legal when Clinton was Secretary of State. The big issue appears to be having classified material on it, which is very definitely not OK.

The good thing

[phorm]

If Hilliary has managed to delete any of the more sensitive documents before the servers were seized, the Chinese and Russians probably have backups they can provide for the investigation :-)

Re:The good thing

[Agent0013]

Shouldn't the NSA have copies of all the emails also? What is the point of the whole warehouses of storage for grabbing everything that goes through the internet if they can't use it in cases like this.

E-mails were marked Classified Confidential

[buckbanzaii]

https://foia.state.gov/Search/... contains the released docs. Look for the one sent on 12/20/2012, titled H: Libya, Latest Benghazi Intel. It is marked "Confidential" as are many others. Is it really "Confidential?" I don't know. But it was born Confidential. And Sec. Clinton forwarded it on. The real sad thing is that Sec. Clinton decided to have a personal e-mail server, and those working for her will do jail time for getting her information she needed to do her job the only way they could have.

Re:This was all about convenience

[Karmashock]

Actually that lie fell apart already. You're not keeping up to date. Many of the emails were classifed.

She then changed her story to "they weren't marked classified"

That fell apart after that because classified material is not marketed "classified" anywhere on it. Several former state department people, CIA people etc have all stepped in to clarify how that works.

She did put classified material into that email server in Colorado.

And whatever you might think about it... the FBI and Justice department is taking it seriously.

if it were just political bullshit, then why would Obama's white house be permitting that?

Sorry, chum... she's in ACTUAL trouble here. Whether anything comes of it is another matter. But she's in actual trouble. You might want to consider throwing your support behind someone else. She might not make it to nomination.

Clinton Vote Solicitation

[TwoEyedJack]

The only votes Mrs. Clinton should be soliciting are from a jury.

Re:think outside of the box

[sycodon]

Probably while at a Starbucks. Public email on a public wifi.

Both Parties delete emails.

[Nyder]

Even if your a loyal Democrat, this is not good. Keeping highly sensitive documents on personal servers when your a top government official is just wrong. No matter if there is a smoking gun or not. Just the fact this goes against all protocol setup and defined to protect information is very troubling. It shows Mrs. Clinton totally disregarded protocol simply for her own benefit and possibly for a convenient way of controlling history and her legacy in case she messed up.
This goes far beyond a Richard Nixon moment and I cannot believe how many people still thinks she is the best the Democrat's have for President??
In my mind, she is just what America doesn't need in the White house. Another politician who makes up her own rules and disobey's government policy. Really?
We want more of that in government? Hey, if your a Democrat do what you will next year at election time. But if Hillary Clinton is a choice. Do the right thing and don't vote that disgraceful piece of work into office. She has no place in public office of any kind.

Weird, you should say this, because the republicans have been guilty of the same thing in the past and yet nothing came of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So while everyone is getting on Clinton's ass, this isn't the first time this is happen and I'm guessing she'll get away with it also. Republicans, Democrats, both kinds of politicians that are cheating lying scum. At least we know there is one candidate out there who's had a record of doing what he says and doing what is right.

Re:Both Parties delete emails.

[Coren22]

Did any of the republicans that supposedly did this transmit classified email over their personal servers after removing the classification markings (or having an aide do the federal law breaking part of removing the markings)?

Re:Both Parties delete emails.

[david_thornley]

Hard to tell, because they deleted stuff. If Clinton had just had all her stuff deleted, there wouldn't be much of a case against her now.

Re:Both Parties delete emails.

[Coren22]

If she had, the case would be destruction of evidence and illegal records destruction (under 44 U.S.C. Chapter 33)

Re: This was all about convenience

[TwoEyedJack]

Proving once again that liberalism is a mental disease.

Re:This was all about convenience

[ScentCone]

so I guess you wanted Scooter Libby tarred and feathered when he disclosed the name of a CIA operative.

Either you're much to ignorant about an event that you can research in moments with a few keystrokes (in which case, please resist commenting in your ignorance), or you know that what you said is a simple straightforward lie, and you're saying it anyway (in which case, what do you think you're actually accomplishing when everyone else around you knows you're lying like a little kid who thinks he's clever)? Trotting out pure fiction like that just makes you, and what ever point you think you're making, look foolish. Just stop it.

Remember where Hilary was during the Nixon tapes?

[dbc]

She was an intern for the Senate Judiciary committee....

Re: This was all about convenience

[SuricouRaven]

Convicted, but the instant his appeal failed Bush commuted his sentence. Some people are just too well-connected to be subject to the justice system.

does she really think she can win?

[slashmydots]

I cannot believe that an intelligent, average human being would think they can still run and win in the 2016 election under those circumstances. There's something wrong with her head. Clinton for prison 2016.

Re:This was all about convenience

[Bartles]

Here we go again. You should shut up about Scooter Libby until you educate yourself. No one was ever charged with outing Valerie Plame, even though it was known very early in the investigation who leaked her name.

Re:Framed

[HiThere]

It's a good joke, even though it's got a hint of truth behind it. Or perhaps because it has a hint of truth behind it. The number of scandals that are also crimes that show up and are then forgotten is so large that one has to suspect an ulterior motive in keeping this one alive. OTOH, there's also the question of why she isn't in jail.

I predict nothing will come of this

[roc97007]

The Clintons have, over the years, demonstrated a supreme ability to shake off controversy. I don't see this going anywhere.

Hillary could have actual blood on her hands and her prints on the weapon and she's look indignant, deny everything and blame it on her political adversaries. It's a strategy that's worked very well for her in the past.

Re:I predict nothing will come of this

[david_thornley]

Previous Clinton controversies were greatly exaggerated by their political enemies, and the reason they were able to shake them off was largely because there really wasn't anything particularly bad going on. (The Paula Jones case showed that Bill Clinton is a jerk, but Jones' allegations at face value didn't amount to violating sexual harassment laws.)

This one might well have some impact. We need to see how the investigation into the classified emails comes out.

Re:I predict nothing will come of this

[roc97007]

> Previous Clinton controversies were greatly exaggerated by their political enemies [...]

See? It works.

Re:I predict nothing will come of this

[david_thornley]

What I said was that minor controversies didn't bring them down despite being played up by their political enemies. That says nothing about a major controversy, which this could wind up being.

Nobody cares

[WillAffleckUW]

Now stop using your tinfoil for hats and move on.

Did the tax payers pay for her secret server?

[IHTFISP]

1. Were government funds used to pay for her unlawful personal e-mail server?

2. Did she claim an income tax deduction for the cost of buying/installing/maintaining her secret e-mail server?

Tax payers want to know.

Re:Did the tax payers pay for her secret server?

[david_thornley]

There was nothing unlawful about that server. There would be now, if Kerry were to set one up now, because the laws changed after Kerry took over. The question is about apparently unlawful things that happened on that server.

Re:Did the tax payers pay for her secret server?

[IHTFISP]

There was nothing unlawful about that server.

I'm sorry, but no, that is incorrect. I chose the word ``unlawful'' carefully. Thank you for bringing up this nuance.

Specifically, what she did in setting up a privately owned & operated server outside of government control for conducting official State Department business was contrary to official government policy at the time, as stated by the U.S. district judge cited in the lead sentence of the article.

Therefore, although this was not contrary to law at the time, it was contrary to official policy. So, although it was not ``illegal'', it was ``unlawful''. To wit:

illegal — contrary to or forbidden by law, especially criminal law.
unlawful — not conforming to, permitted by, or recognized by law or rules.

What she did did not conform to the rules (i.e., official policy). I stand by my word choice: her personal server was an unlawful server, by definition.

you rebel scum...

[TiggertheMad]

I suspect that some of her technical staff members have broken federal laws in setting up and managing this e-mail system. It seems unlikely that she would have made an decisions about this directly. (Or at least I hope not. A Senator has a lot more important things to worry about than what mail server is being used)

Re:This was all about convenience

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

There is plenty of evidence. While information from a foreign government may not be "born classified", other information on her server was.

The Daily Scandal

[manlygeek]

Clinton = Scandal; All 3 Clintons; All the time. Do we really want her running for President?

Re:The Daily Scandal

[david_thornley]

A scandal is some people saying nasty things about somebody. It can happen whether that somebody did anything wrong or not. If we started discussing manlygeek's fondness for COBOL we'd make it into a scandal, no matter what you actually did.

Let's wait until we really know something other than that Republicans want to badmouth her a lot. The facts are going to come out.