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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.

14 of 592 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's over a thousand items that were classified after the fact, but dozens were top secret or above at the time.

  3. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by Tharkkun · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Work-Speak [Re:FFS, just indict her] by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Informative

    They have emails from her telling people to take classification markings off.

    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.

  5. Re:Remember how "Top Secret" works by sideslash · · Score: 4, Informative

    Information that is "Top Secret" is born classified.

    Only in the land of fairies and unicorns. Information is born and everyone with a classification is supposed to submit it to a original certification authority that'll determine what, if any, classification status it'll get. Primarily it's the one who creates this information but secondarily everyone who receives it also has an independent duty to get any information they think is classified reviewed. From what I gather a lot of people sent information to Clinton's server that has been retroactively classified, meaning those who sent it didn't do their job. The accusations are so far as I can tell that Clinton should have recognized some of this information as obviously classified, so she didn't do her job either.

    I'd be much more interested to hear if there's any accusations of mishandling actual, pre-classified information. It's one thing to say that you could have, should have, maybe seen this was classified it's quite another to be reckless about content that's clearly marked secret/top secret. If they can prove that, they might have an actual case against her. If it's only a case of omission as a recipient of information that ought to be classified, that doesn't seem like that big a deal.

    And the Special Access Program (SAP) information? The emails that everybody involved, including the recipient Clinton, certainly knew was always and permanently classified? Clinton committed a crime in multiple ways in the handling of that info. Here's an example -- simply leaving the received email on her server in any format that could be read by her own IT staff was a crime. Deleting it and knowing that the bytes might still be on the HDD would also be a crime. Ignoring the situation was a crime.

    Of course, somebody went to great lengths to somehow hop the airgap between the SAP network and the public internet. But even as the recipient, Clinton committed a crime in allowing that email to continue to exist on her server.

    Stop trying to paint her as anything other than a willing lawbreaker on this. Lesser analysts of the State Dept or the TLA intelligence agencies would go to jail right away. It's only the Democratic party's M.O. of corruption while they hold the reins of power that keeps Obama's DOJ from arresting her.

  6. Re: Will she pardon here self and him once she get by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:FFS, just indict her by sideslash · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Informative

    If her email server was never compromised then she never committed a single crime.

    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

  9. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by Alypius · · Score: 5, Informative

    Storing classified material on an unsecure server (which, to be clear, her server was the definition of unsecure) is in fact a serious crime.

  10. Re:I'm actually OK with this by Straif · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!
  11. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!
  12. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  13. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by larkost · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  14. Re:Will she pardon here self and him once she gets by PapayaSF · · Score: 5, Informative

    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