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Justice Dept. Grants Immunity To Staffer Who Set Up Clinton Email Server (washingtonpost.com)
schwit1 writes with this news from the Washington Post: The Justice Department has granted immunity to the former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton's private email server, a sign the FBI investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing is progressing. A senior U.S. law enforcement official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009. As the FBI looks to wrap up its investigation in the coming months, agents will likely want to interview Clinton and her senior aides about the decision to use a private server, how it was set up, and whether any of the participants knew they were sending classified information in emails, current and former officials said. The inquiry comes against a sensitive political backdrop in which Clinton is the favorite to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
Information that is "Top Secret" is born classified. Removing markings, headers, footers etc. doesn't change the classified nature of it. If you measure what was done with her server (leaving it in her hands to sift through at her leisure, turning over only that which she felt like doing and then wiping the rest) with what happens to ANYONE else when they are even suspected of breaking clearance rules ...
Good to see that Hillary as President will be more of the same, there are rules for them and rules for us.
>2. When Clinton was using the private email server, there was no law or policy that required her to use the government email server.
This is incorrect. Her use of a private email server for government business was in direct violation of policy.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/state-department-email-rule-hillary-clinton-115804
And to those ranting about how the Republicans going back years did the same thing, note that the policy was enacted in 2005. So most, but not all would be outside it. (and any that violated it should be appropriately penalized).
She didn't obviously commit many more counts of the same crime that Patreus did even if everything that has been speculated about this is true. Patreus handed known classified info to a reporter/writer. No one has even suggested that Hillary handed anything top secret to a source outside the government. At worst she knowingly allowed them to be in a less secure manner.
And I really don't like Hillary either, just not a pitch fork and torches kind of guy on this issue.
Yes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform[edit]
The House Oversight committee in an interim staff report, released on June 18, 2007:[20]
At least eighty-eight Republican National Committee email accounts were granted to senior Bush administration officials, not "just a handful" as previously reported by the White House spokesperson Dana Perino in March 2007. Her estimate was later revised to "about fifty." Officials with accounts included: Karl Rove, the President’s senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.
The RNC has 140,216 emails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these emails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official ".gov" email accounts. Other users of RNC email accounts include former Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 emails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 emails). These email accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies.
Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC email accounts, the RNC has preserved no emails for 51 officials.
There is evidence that the Office of White House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales may have known that White House officials were using RNC email accounts for official business, but took no action to preserve these presidential records.
The evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC email accounts in a manner that circumvented these requirements. At this point in the investigation, it is not possible to determine precisely how many presidential records may have been destroyed by the RNC. Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC email accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing emails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.
"Toed." The idiom does not refer to pulling on a rope; it refers to people standing next to each other with their toes along a line marked on the ground.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"don't understand the difference between what David Petraeus was indicted for and what Hillary Clinton, even by the most maximal interpretation, is accused of. What David Petraeus did was not mishandling classified information. No one ever suggested those were the facts of the case; it was lesser charge that grew out of a plea deal. David Petraeus was in a position of the highest military authority and knowingly shared the highest levels of classified information: secret code words, the identities of informants, war strategy among other things with his mistress, who unquestionably had no right to have access to the information. Even marital infidelity in itself is a serious matter in the military. The breach of trust, vulnerability to blackmail and dereliction of duty are all huge and knowing transgressions. Petraeus could have been indicted for a number of individual crimes. He was pled down to a mishandling charge. Comparing this to insufficiently protecting information that appears not to have even been explicitly classified at the time is silly. "
There's over a thousand items that were classified after the fact, but dozens were top secret or above at the time.
The classification is based on the information, not the markings. People with clearances get briefed on this as part of getting the clearance, and sign an acknowledgement that they understand this. Certain types of information are ALWAYS considered classified, and encountering them in a non-classified setting mandates that a person with a clearance report the security breach to their information security office. Claiming otherwise is spin, pure and simple.
Those are BORN Classified.
On an unsecured server? Doubtful.
Congratulations! You have just outed yourself as a fucking Hillary Kool Aid drinker and cult member.
As moderate conservative, I'm voting for Hillary. If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, the neocons will vote for Hillary.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-clinton-neoconservatives-220151
The laws forbidding using a 3rd party server for communication were put in place AFTER Hilary's email server was shutdown.
Hold on, Tex, she said in an interview that's simply short-hand for cleaning it up for non-classified release, such as removing the classified parts and rephrasing. She said the office worker she sent it to knew what she really (fully) meant because he had done it many times before.
http://hotair.com/archives/201...
If all my internal emails were interpreted by the public/press verbatim, I'd probably be on trial also.
Think about your own internal work emails being read and interpreted by bloggers, pundits, and trolls.
I don't know if her claim is true yet, but until that's determined from the investigation, it should be "innocent until proven guilty".
Further, note that if she had used the "regular" office server instead of her home server, the classified/problematic emails would probably still end up on a server NOT designed for classified materials. The risk/breach would still exist. (There was a separate transmission system for classified stuff, but it wasn't email as we know it.)
The regular office server was no more special or vetted than her home server. Pundits keep implying it is.
I'm not defending her actions, only saying many are jumping to conclusions prematurely. Using a home server is probably not illegal (although the laws are subject to interpretation*), just poor judgement, which she admitted to. Members of the other party made similar errors of judgement.
* Wealthy people are more likely to afford top lawyers who can successfully argue their side of such vague laws, and in that sense, her "privilege" may indeed just get her out of it. But that's life in an unequal society. OJ would probably lose if he were poor.
Table-ized A.I.
Actually, giving people immunity is a tactic that the government uses to compel testimony from a reluctant person - if you've been granted immunity, you can no longer assert the 4th amendment right to remain silent, since you can no longer incriminate yourself. If he refuses to talk after getting immunity, he's going to the jug for contempt of court.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
She had information that was born classified not retroactively classified. Research before posting.
The Clinton have far too many suicides of partners in their history. If the FBI doesn't protect the witness, that one will surely die as well.
If you follow the link, the Breitbart piece quotes from and summarizes a linked Yahoo News piece by Michael Isikoff. The Isikoff article in turn quotes Congressman Trey Gowdy talked about specific published emails from Hillary's illegal server. Seems adequately substantiated to me. And I disagree with your dismissal of Breitbart, I suspect that claim originates from those who simply don't like their conservative focus. The Brietbart editors certainly make mistakes, but probably no more than some of the larger news gateways and punditry outlets.
No, the mere fact that the server was used at all is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Storing classified material on an unsecure server (which, to be clear, her server was the definition of unsecure) is in fact a serious crime.
Actually, yeah, I have a lot of trust in Director Comey's integrity. He was the guy who threatened to resign rather than renew the warrantless wiretapping program while AG Ashcroft was in the hospital.
We know Powell used a private email service (not sure which one) because email rules weren't well developed when he was SoS. He claims (and no one has yet to prove otherwise) that all his work related emails included a cc to a state department address which was considered adequate at the time.
Rice, apparently, rarely used emails and had a .gov email address.
The State department reviewed both Powell's and Rice's emails (which wasn't requested by anyone) while simultaneously claiming in federal court to not have time to review Hilary's (which they have a standing judicial order to do) and found a few classified documents but they were all State dept documents which the SoS has authority to classify or declassify at will, as opposed to Hilary's which contained all levels of classified documents from several outside agencies.
Also telling, they had access to Powell and Rice's emails while, until this whole fiasco broke, they had no access to Hilary's.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Leaking the name of Valerie Plame a CIA agent led to a long investigation with Scooter Libby going to prison.
Worth noting: Scooter Libby was NOT the leaker. The actual leaker, Richard Armitage, confessed almost immediately and was never charged. After Armitage confessed, Libby was caught with an inconsequential lie that the prosecutors ran with. Also worth noting: Libby did NOT go to prison. President Bush commuted his sentence. (Bush removed the jail time but left the fines intact.)
Here you go. Pretty cut-and-dried illegal action there, requesting that the classified mark be removed and send it non-securely. For anyone else, that's not just a firing offense, but one that will get you prosecuted and probably spending time in prison.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As Secretary of State she had the authority to declare when something is classified or not.
Only regarding classified information that originated from the state department.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but Obama is the President and the FBI is running the investigation.
If you read to the bottom, they do clarify that there are two pretty major unknowns in this argument:
1. Was the contents of the talking points that they were (unsuccessfully) trying to send through the secure fax machine actually secret (at the time), or were they just trying to use it as a convenience?
2. Did the talking points in question ever get sent over insecure email?
Both of these have to be "yes" in order for something illegal to have happened. And, as usual in this debate: we have answers to neither question. You can argue that if #1 is true then there was definitely some inappropriate instructions, but #2 has to also be true for actual transgression to have happened.
And items that were classified had their classification removed before being emailed per Hillary's instruction. She had her staff / interns scan/fax shit, remove the designation, and then email it. When it hit her email it wasn't marked classified. It's the equivalent of painting over a handicapped parking spot then parking on it.
You have evidence for this claim? Perhaps a link?
An image of the email in question, from Hillary. The text says: "If they can't, turn into non paper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure." Technically, that's a federal crime punished by 10 years in prison.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot