I wonder if the data dump contains a smoking gun. While I could never vote for either of major party candidates for a variety of reasons, it would be nice if there were clear evidence of HRC's guilt or innocence in the emailgate matter.
In any case, the FBI said there were classified emails on her server. Classification is not an issue of markings it's an issue of contents. The question then becomes whether the presence of those files was due to negligence. I would contend that it takes obscene levels of negligence to remove classified information from SIPRNet and have it appear on your personal email. It's just not something that happens accidentally. I'd also contend that her use of an unsecured phone against the explicit guidance of the NSA qualifies as gross negligence.
Most importantly, the question of guilt should be ascertained by a court, as it is with us peons. Anyone else would have been charged. Maybe not convicted, sure! A court could totally discover that it was an honest mistake that was easy to make. But many Americans feel that it's the court who decides that, as designated by our Constitution.
A document doesn't even have to contain classified information to be retroactively classified. For example, let's say a merchant who once gave the USG a tip on something sensitive is petitioning the State Department for the release of some of his goods that are being unreasonably tied up in Customs. Someone else does a reply-all "oh yeah that guy has been helpful to us in the past, let's see what we can do for him" - thus revealing past involvement in a classified matter. Boom, that first email is actually now classified - despite the fact that it itself contains no sensitive information - because someone could look at that conversation and discern from the fact that it suddenly became classified that this obviously somehow had to do with a classified matter.
The standards for handling classified materials are extremely strict and there's lots of ways to end up with classified materials in unclassified places that don't rise to the standard of gross negligence. The people involved are public figures whose job title straddles classified and unclassified spheres, they can't be locked inside a SCIF indefinitely, and reasonableness has to be viewed in that light.
- The FBI, emphasis mine
True, however it seems that all the relevant emails were not necessarily considered by the FBI, so completing the email archive (by adding any missing emails for consideration) would make that conclusion carry a lot more weight in my opinion.
No, even with "peons", a prosecutor reviews the evidence available and determines if they justify prosecution before a court has a chance to ascertain guilt, and the court never gets the chance if the prosecutor decides that there is nothing worth prosecuting.
> Anyone else would have been charged.
That's not what those making the charging decisions have said, and given the amount of material that has been leaked about the detailed findings, I find it interesting that no one has even attempted to support this kind of claims with any comparisons of actual facts to cases where people have been charged.
"Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities."
...
"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. "
...
"With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level."
...
"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information [no one is saying she's a spy], there is evidence that they were extremely careless [gross negligence] in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."
In fact, the FBI stated the exact opposite: there is evidence of legal violations, but due to "a number of factors," they don't recommend charges:
"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."
He goes on to explicitly say that these consequences would be different for other people:
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now."
Source: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-b...
No, he didn't.
> He then continues to say that no reasonable prosecutor would take the case against her – not for lack of evidence, but just because they wouldn't.
He doesn't say it is not for lack of sufficient evidence. In fact, he strongly suggests it is exactly for that reason.
> In fact, the FBI stated the exact opposite: there is evidence of legal violations
Actually, it says -- in your own quote -- "potential violations". Which is saying that there is evidence that Clinton and/or subordinates may have broken the law, but falls far short of saying that there is evidence that demands that conclusion.
And it goes on to say that that evidence is not such that a reasonable prosecutor would prosecute based on it.
> He goes on to explicitly say that these consequences would be different for other people
He goes on to explicitly say that consequences other the decisions on criminal prosecution ("security and administrative sanctions" being specifically called out as examples) would potentially be different for other people, but that those consequences which might be different are not the subject that the immediate discussion (focussed on recommendations on criminal prosecution) is about.
Every one of your statements misrepresents the substance of the quote offered to support it.
Ah, good. So maybe she wouldn't be charged if she were a normal person. She'd just lose her job and her security clearance, which totally doesn't affect her candidacy for POTUS.
Anyways, someone actually was charged and sentenced for equivalent actions:
https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sacramento/news...
Regarding his plainly stating that they broke the law:
"a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities."
...
"There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation"
Pretty direct, no?
Actual guilt is ascertained by a court. Whether there is strong enough evidence of guilt for it to be reasonable to expend resources in prosecution is ascertained by a prosecutor. Evidence of potential violations exists all the time without anyone being prosecuted. (Heck, without even meeting the "probable cause" standard -- for which "evidence of likely violations" would be a reasonable approximation -- for a prosecutor to secure an indictment or proceed beyond a preliminary hearing and actually compel a defendant to stand trial.)
> Anyways, someone actually was charged and sentenced for equivalent actions:
I don't think that's equivalent, either in terms of evidence (and thus, whether prosecution was viable) or the alleged offense (where there is no question of the intent to put classified information on an unapproved system.)
I'm sure poor kids get let off the hook all the time because cops consider that "there was evidence that maybe a crime occurred, not necessarily evidence of a crime!"
This is the issue. Once an official takes measures to circumvent accountability and transparency, I think all bets are off. If it turns out that there were emails that got destroyed to cover up wrongdoing, I think it's a pretty big deal.
Reasonable people can read many things into all the data that have been produced as a result, and her culpability is left as an exercise for the humble observer.
This guy would disagree: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sacramento/news...
But yes I agree with the thrust of your comment. I'm just saying as a hard left dem, it pains me to be put in a position where my only real options are two symbols of how the rich and powerful are beyond reproach in this country.
Small nit- IIRC NIPRnet should not contain classified information. Maybe you were thinking CENTRIXS instead?
edited for clarity
We know she lied about "it was allowed." She's avoided intent by insisting that "I did it only for convenience, not for privacy reasons."
If you have any doubt about that - if you think a desire to use a separate server was partially for privacy reasons - then she's committed perjury and obstruction of justice there.
It's entirely reasonable to continue to be suspicious about this investigation at this point. I'm not going to argue "it's unreasonable to trust her" but i think there's plenty of reason to believe "she DID use a private server for reasons or privacy, and thus lied to the FBI to avoid criminal charges."
Right. In my opinion, this is what matters. Since I am not a partisan for or against HRC winning the presidency, I don't care about any impact on that outcome, but I would prefer to know if we're talking about basic cluelessness / IT-incompetence or something far more sinister.
Not just perjury. It's also destruction of evidence and conspiracy. Using the servers "for privacy" means anything that should be covered by FOIA but isn't available was destroyed intentionally. AFAIK the investigation didn't even touch FOIA liability.
> What are your reasons for believing that she used a server for reasons of privacy?
When they discussed moving her into the state system, she said explicitly that she didn't want the personal emails to become accessible:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/hillary-clinton-person...
So we have her on record saying (at the time) that she didn't want to risk any personal messages becoming exposed. She has every right to her personal privacy, but prioritizing that over "retaining all documents covered under FOIA" is both an abrogation of duty and an affront to transparency.
On top of that, setting up a private email server is a huge amount of work. She could very easily have simply forwarded work messages to her personal account. She didn't do that, and she's well known for having a strong desire for privacy.
I'm not saying "this is a slam dunk case and anyone who disagrees is clearly unreasonable." I'm saying there are perfectly valid reasons for believing that she committed perjury to avoid being charged with destruction of evidence and violating the FOIA.
If she destroyed any documents covered by the FOIA, period.
Which she did. Saying "i did it for convenience" allows her to say that she didn't intentionally destroy them; she changed her email policies and that happened to have the "undesirable side effect" of destroying documents covered by the FOIA.
She had a duty to preserve all those documents, and she didn't. It doesn't matter whether the documents showed wrongdoing; they were documents used by state officials in their duties.
Yes! I will not vote for either major party candidate, but I think our nation would be better off with a more thorough finding of guilt or innocence. Perhaps this data dump will provide that.
This kind of basic accountability and transparency is essential to the proper functioning of democracy.
I would also support the body camera idea, and would like them to wear one even in meetings to discuss classified material. The recordings would be classified, but could eventually be declassified a few decades later.
Think about how much highly relevant American history is still classified. While there are some (narrow) cases where information should be secret for a limited time, I do not think that the public should give up its right to access the communications of elected officials.
In the past, the minutes from a meeting would be recorded and classified. The modern equivalent is recording/archiving/classifying all official conduct.
I'm not saying I want to read HRC's emails, but the idea that there were secret correspondences that she undertook while in office and took pains to hide from the public record should be troubling to all of us. The notion that historians might review the emails after they were declassified in 20 years is enough of a disincentive for corrupt behavior to warrant capturing and preserving the information.
We've seen in the past dozen years that our officials have hidden and classified information simply to avoid embarrassment or as part of a disinformation strategy aimed at the American people. Doing this should not be possible and should not be a temptation to officials when deciding on a course of action.
> While I could never vote for either of major party candidates for a variety of reasons
Then who are you going to vote for? There's only one other candidate that's on the ballot in every state.
Guilt or innocence likely doesn't matter; like Sanders said, I'm sick of hearing about the emails. The fact of the matter is that, well, they don't matter. DOJ will not prosecute, and a ton of people voting for Clinton will choose her anyway, even if she did something illegal, because Trump is basically an American Duterte.
Nothing short of full-blown, violent-crime-felony-type scandal will derail the Clinton train at this point, and even then it would end up with a lengthy impeachment process vs. destroying her chances in the election.
Haha that will be funny, when Trump gets 60% more votes than the second-place candidate, and then three months after election has a 90% approval rating. We heard it here first!
[EDIT:] I ain't voting for him, but I seem to have touched a nerve... are you guys afraid of something?
And although she is generally more circumspect... ditto for Clinton. Somehow people who do care about human rights find enough blank spaces in her that they can color in a candidate for whom they can stomach voting. In reality, she won't even make the halfhearted gestures at pardons for victimless crimes that Obama has made recently. Clinton will be every bit as eager as he is to murder around-the-world around-the-clock with terrordeathdrones. She'll continue her innovations in hiding from FOIA while throwing the citizenry to the dogs of the Surveillance State. She'll be talked into more travesties like Libya. She'll probably rein in those states who have rolled back drug prohibition. Trump will do this crap because he doesn't know any better. Clinton will because the real evil bastards have plenty of proof of all of her "violent-crime-felony-type scandals".
Remember kids, don't waste your vote!