New Emails in Clinton Case Came from Anthony Weiner’s Electronic Devices | Hacker News Reader

New Emails in Clinton Case Came from Anthony Weiner’s Electronic Devices

nytimes.com

70 pointskoolba70 comments

Remember that Huma Abedin also had her devices seized as part of this investigation. Likely, the emails are on her device.

or she used his to avoid subpoena / foia etc

That seems like a huge stretch, considering he himself is and was a politician known for phone communication-related scandals... I imagine she'd much, much rather use a burner than his phone, if that were the intent.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, but you're 100% correct. The 10,000+ emails they are now looking at came from a shared computer. I wonder if Carlos Danger turned them over to the NYPD. The FBI still doesn't have a warrant for them.

It's looking like Preet and his colleagues found them, informed Comey and said "us or you, your choice".

There's no way Comey would do this without external pressure - he's Clinton Foundation through and through [1]. He was brought in to clear Bill for the 140 pardons issued on his last afternoon in office (some very unsavoury folk in that - inlcuding Marc Rich) [2]. Jimmy Carter called it "disgraceful" [3]

[1] http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/10/e...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controvers...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/23/us/clinton-pardons-democra...

Ok, as someone from outside of the US, I'm still not getting the issue here?

So she put some e-mails on a private a server and she deleted them. I actually couldn't care less.

What is the deal here?

EDIT: thanks all for the responses. I have to say, from afar, the Occam's razor in me (which i accept will be different for all) says that if Clinton was involved in corruption it is likely we would have heard about it by now ... like Bill and his lady ... like Trump and, well, everything ... like Nixon ... etc. No one involved in serious corruption does it my e-mail (I presume).

As a public servant (and a high ranking official with access to top secret information at that) she was supposed to use government email.

Deletion was an obstruction of justice.

The reason it gets so much attention is because the Clintons are very wealthy and powerful and there is a longtime suspicion that they are up to nefarious activities or using their access and power to bring about personal wealth, which many people view as corrupt. However there has never been a "smoking gun" found to definitively prove the existence of these claims.

Hope that clears it up for you.

I would say there have been numerous smoking guns, but most of them have been ignored by those who should have brought charges. To claim that the law wasn't broken because she didn't mean to leak classified information is incredulous and wouldn't hold up in any legitimate criminal trial.

The law says it is a crime to sell or leak to foreign governments/the media. It isn't a crime to be incompetant.

It is a crime to willingly and knowingly violate regulations in a position where you have legally sworn to abide by said regulations.

Specifically in this case you don't even have to knowingly or willingly violate the rules. The law makes both malicious intent and gross negligence illegal.

And those are just to be prosecuted in criminal court. The burden of proof to have your clearance revoked? Uhh... there isn't one. 100% of normal people would have their clearances revoked with little drama for doing something like this.

Many people have had their clearance revoked, lost their jobs, and been sent to jail for similar acts. I think anyone who has held a security clearance is appalled at what has happened.

No in the case of classified material, it is a crime to be incompetent. The only burdon of proof is that the disclosure in some way harms the United States, and that the disclosure was knowingly and willfully done.

She knew she had and E-mail server doing state business, She willfully continued to use it and no precautions were taken to ensure classified information was not sent over it, and in some cases she willfully altered documents without properly declassifying them. Its a pretty clear felony.

The emails contained information that was classified and she was legally obligated to ensure they were not placed in a manner where they could be compromised. She may have deleted them after she was asked by congress to provide them, again that would be breaking the law

Some of those E-mails contained classified information which is illegal to have on non secured systems. There are many cases of others who have leaked secured information onto unsecured systems and they ended up in federal prison. After the fact there has been a never ending circus of denials and then cover-ups that have been sequentially dis-proven and uncovered, and this is just another instance of that.

Serious question: if that is illegal, isn't it the sender of the email that committed the crime, not the receiver? I'm assuming the email address wasn't something official like hillary@state.gov, I'm guessing it was something like hillary@clintonpersonalsite.com. I'm probably wrong, but I'd like a clear explanation why.

the short answer is yes, they are both in trouble. The sender has a plausible defense they they didn't know it was a unsecured server as there is the case to be made that the secretary of state should be trustworthy to be operating in a safe fashion, additionally if upon receipt Clinton had raised the alarm and turned over all the hardware she wouldn't have been held accountable for having the information sent to her, but she didn't and then she kept it a secret and then she was hacked and then she lied about it, and then the emails leaked and then she was not prosecuted because she didn't mean to break the law she just wanted a blackberry and didn't like being told no, and then the American people are like WTF man if I did this I would be sent to jail ( in fact two defendants made this exact case in their defense in similar trials ), but no one cares are there are armies of people who just want to see their team win an election so they will defend pretty much anything that was done.

America

Thanks for the reply.

Another question: how does this differ from what past secretaries of state have done? I remember reading Colin Powell used an email address provided by his ISP. Not saying that makes it OK, but why shouldn't Powell be charged for the same reason?

He did and the same would apply to him. He should be even more culpable as he had a background in the defense department, so he had many many years of handling classified information on a daily basis. There should have been an official inquery into his activity as soon as it came to light that he had a private email server. The only saving grace for him is that the ability to send classified email on something that wasn't physically isolated and under 24 hour armed guard is a recent capability. Previously I can tell you transmitting classified information digitally required a CD burner ( no USB or CD-RW ) and a trusted courier.

Both commit crime.

The sender obviously put the info where it shouldn't be. The sender and recipient are both required to report this immediately.

BTW, after that gets reported, a normal expectation would be that all computers get powered off and then handed over to the security people. This may be why things didn't get reported. The server and Blackberry would have been taken and likely destroyed.

The question is it reasonable to assume that the person should have known that the email address Hillary was using was hosted on a private email server or on a secure government system. I don't think the vast majority of people would be able to tell. They'd likely trust her people set it up properly. Those who are technically inclined might have noticed the non .gov email but then the question is how much authority they have to question her on the matter.

Largely the onus would have been on Hillary to use a government email when engaging in business related to the state. How did that person get the email in the first place? Did Hillary say this should be for personal emails only? etc.

She, or rather the tech guy her team hired and who worked at their behest, deleted them at the onset of a federal investigation. That's called destroying evidence.

Furthermore, many of the emails contain undeniable evidence that the Clinton Foundation used its connections to score business opportunities and cash for Bill and Hillary. They have illuminated the huge rift between the Clinton we see in public and the one giving speeches to Wall street behind closed doors. Even the Clinton-cuddling NYT reported on this.

The allegation is that she was using private email to conduct official government business while she served as Secretary of State (one of the highest-ranking positions in the government; chief diplomat).

This was likely done to avoid requirements to turn over emails in cases of FOIA requests, or I think a few other conditions. There's supposed to be some degree of transparency in government communications.

By itself, that alone isn't too bad, I think. But the other reason why government officials should use government infrastructure for communications is security.

Messages that were classified after-the-fact (not at the time) were found to have been sent to/from Clinton's private server. I believe some messages that were classified at the time were also there, but were improperly marked, so someone could plausibly claim they did not know they were classified.

EDIT: There were in fact many emails properly marked as classified at the time. Some marked top secret. This definitely demonstrates carelessness. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/286513-fbi-direc...

Further, after she received a subpoena from the FBI to turn over all emails on her server, 33,000 emails were allegedly deleted. This doesn't necessarily mean anything, but could indicate a cover-up of something shady or even illegal.

For the most part it's just a lot of speculation and character judgment. Even if this second investigation doesn't find anything illegal, it shows someone trying to shield themselves from public scrutiny at best, or potentially trying to cover things up at worst.

> This was likely done to avoid requirements to turn over emails in cases of FOIA requests, or I think a few other conditions. There's supposed to be some degree of transparency in government communications. > By itself, that alone isn't too bad, I think.

Really? I think it demonstrates clear intent to deliberately avoid a federal law (the FOIA). Clinton appears to value keeping her behavior secret over protecting classified information.

That's certainly not provable, though - she's said she did it so that she could use the device of her choice (Blackberry), not to hide from FOIA. Not sure how easy it would be to establish intent, there.

I'd like to see a grand jury get the opportunity to decide.

That's rarely how it works, though. If the prosecution can't find enough evidence to warrant taking the case to court, they won't. The accused being a very famous politician doesn't change that logic.

I think avoiding the FOIA is bad (and possibly illegal, if intent is proven?), but not that horrible.

The careless handling of classified information is worse, in my opinion.

The FBI reported that 113 emails contained classified information (that should only have been on government controlled servers) that were marked classified at the time of sending. Of the 113, 22 were top secret, again at the time they were sent.

The scariest/funniest thing out of all of it is that Comey said that using Gmail would have been more secure.

Source: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/286513-fbi-direc... (Plus you can find the same information from hundreds of other credible news organizations, this was just the one I quickly google'd)

Apologies, I appear to have been misled from some of the sources I read (like http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/revisiting-clinton-and-clas...). In particular, I wasn't aware there were some top secret emails in there (apparently marked as such?).

Apparently some emails were not properly marked, but some clearly were. I've revised my post.

factcheck.org is not a reputable source. Can you think of a site that could possibly be more biased for Hillary than that?

See, this is the rub. If I ask you why you consider factcheck.org more biased than any other site, I won't have any better way to verify the credibility of your evidence than I do to verify the credibility of factcheck.org directly. It wins us nothing but uncertainty!

Does anyone have a good algorithm for this problem that does not degenerate at some point to blind faith in some ideology?

One method would be bypassing intermediate sources like those at issue where the direct source (i.e., the FBI report) is available.

Don't apologize - factcheck.org is right; thehill.com is wrong. Just go back to the original FBI report here:[1]. None of the e-mails were properly marked; three e-mails chains consisting of eight individual messages had at least one paragraph marked with a (C), but no header, footer, other portion marks, etc. to indicate classification. The content of two of those e-mail chains were determined to be unclassified based on current classification guidance.

There were 81 e-mail chains from her server that should have been marked as classified because they contained classified information (and thus shouldn't have been sent over unclassified e-mail). Quite a few outlets have made the mistake of conflating being marked as classified with containing classified information. The thehill.com article links to another article using the phrase 'Twenty-two emails in eight different chains of messages were [marked as top secret]', but the article they link to says 'The Obama administration will entirely withhold 22 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server because they have been classified as “top secret,”...'.

The point of classification markings is to unambiguously identify that the document contains classified information, what parts are classified and how to protect it. If it's not marked as such, there's the possibility that the recipient(s) won't realize that there's classified information in it. The most likely reason that the e-mails with classified information were sent in the first place was most likely that the sender didn't realize that the information was classified, or there might be differences in opinion between multiple government organizations as to whether a particular is classified or to what degree it is classified. An example is drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen - according to CIA that information is classified, but you could read about it in the newspapers.

Based on the description from factcheck.org, I was able to find two of e-mails with the (C) portion marks: [2],[3] Note that [3] was not redacted because it was classified, but rather due to FOIA exemption (you can see that everything after the (C) was left unredacted). [2] was redacted on account of both containing confidential information in the last paragraph as well as FOIA exemption.

[1] https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/hillary-r.-clinton-... (page 20)

[2] http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/pdfs...

[3] http://graphics.wsj.com/hillary-clinton-email-documents/pdfs...

She signed NDAs stating that she understood that handling classified information had to be performed using systems designed and approved for it. Then she denied signing anything or knowing anything. She later claimed that she did not know what those little classification markings in the emails were. Another lie. Then she claimed that the emails were not classified at the time they were sent. Another lie.

She was told on many occasions that she could not communicate using unapproved systems for official business. It's not only unwise, but against the law. The only way those classified emails end up on that server is if someone breaks the law.

Several people have been put in jail for much less mishandling of classified information.

There's only two possible conclusions. Either she's completely inept, and therefore cannot be trusted with classified information or she's a criminal and cannot be trusted with classified information.

Regarding your edit that corruption is not apparent... it's pretty easy to argue she was trying to hide from public scrutiny and avoid transparency policies. I think it's fair to be concerned and upset about that, even if you think she wasn't doing anything outright wrong otherwise.

Also, exchanging sensitive, potentially-classified information on your own infrastructure when the usual policy is for the government to run it, comes off as arrogant, careless, and dismissive of safe/transparent operating procedures carefully designed by a combination of democracy and the bureaucracy -- again a valid cause for some of us to have concerns about someone who wants to be one of the most powerful leaders in the world. Or, we can just be worried about setting this precedent for people in high offices, even if we think this particular person is a benevolent, un-corrupted rule-breaker.

> Occam's razor in me (which i accept will be different for all) says that if Clinton was involved in corruption

Corruption aside, she clearly mishandled classified information, as the FBI found. The problem here is that the FBI chose not to prosecute her while other military servicemen HAVE been prosecuted for much less. This is a problem.

Clinton is not a military service member, so (even ignoring the "men" part) your "other military servicemen" is wrong in a fairly critical way. Civilian and military law differs.

Consider General David Petraeus. He was investigated by the FBI, similarly to Clinton, and charged by the DOJ at their recommendation. He pled guilty and got a pretty big punishment (2 year probation and $100k fine.) As far as the actual laws go, I don't think that proceeded much differently than it could have with Clinton, so I'm not sure your distinction between civilian/military is significant here. I could be wrong though, as I am not sure whether he was "officially in the military" (under their jurisdiction) at the time of the crime, and retired generals and such might be a special case anyway.

There are differences in the specifics of the cases, such that the different outcomes are justifiable enough in my mind, but I think there is a fair amount of unofficially cutting the bumbling civilian some slack and/or holding the foolish general more accountable, when the applicable laws and court process are probably the same. I think they could have held her to a similar standard, if they wanted to.

I don't think the cases are meaningfully similar; petraeus deliberately and knowingly gave highly classified information including current combat information and identities of covert agents to an unauthorized person whose intended use was writing a book (he was also having a affair with her at the time, but that's less relevant to the security-related offense); the FBI concluded they had evidence to pursue a felony charge under the Espionage Act, but they ended up getting him to plea to a lesser charge of mishandling classified information.

Regarding Clinton's emails being seemingly less sensitive: "In one case, according to media reports, one of Clinton’s potentially classified e-mail exchanges is nothing more than a discussion of a newspaper story about drones. That such a discussion could be classified underlines the absurdity of the current system. But that is the system that exists, and if and when the agencies determine that she sent or received classified information through her private server, Clinton will be accused of mishandling national-security secrets." [1]

I'm not sure we know much more about the contents of Clinton's emails. I think it's safe to assume some were as "highly classified" as the things Petraeus disclosed. I don't think the law cares, or should care, about whether it's mundane stuff about drones or North Korea's nuclear program, or if it's about covert agents' identities -- if it's classified, it's simply illegal to disclose it to unauthorized persons or through unauthorized channels like a personal email server. It doesn't matter whether your reason is so that your mistress can write your biography, or so that your colleague can do their job, or so that you can use a Blackberry to access your email -- doing it the wrong way is mishandling C.I no matter your intent. (But I'm not a lawyer.)

I'm all for punishing Petraeus harder btw, as he got off pretty easily for what was practically treason with his mistress! But if keeping "books [with top-secret information] in an unlocked drawer in his study"[2] is part of the grounds for his eventual conviction of mishandling CI, so is Clinton's keeping it on a personal, not-well-secured server in her home.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hillarys-problem... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/petra...

If they're randomly finding Clinton related e-mails on Weiner's devices that are relevant to their investigation, seems like they weren't trying that hard in the first place.

it might be the cynic in me, but I have trouble myself thinking that a presidential candidate (especially one associated with the currently empowered party) is going to get the same scouring precision that the FBI gives to 'Mr or Ms. Random Bomber'.

Yes, I'd expect the high-profile candidate to be scoured far more intensely.

Not even 'Mr or Ms. Random Bomber', other servicemen have been charged and sent to prison for mishandling classified information, intentional or not. The FBI's argument that they couldn't find a precedent for prosecuting anyone under those circumstances is is simply a lie. It's the double standard here that is troubling.

Service members are subject to the UCMJ which, AFAIK, has different provisions on the subject.

I held a mere SECRET security clearance last summer (not even TOP SECRET, which is what Clinton has) and I had to go through weeks and weeks of training, aside from many friends and relatives being interviewed. The consequences of using personal devices to send even just OUO (Official Use Only ---- not even classified) information was pounded into our brains. We were told countless stories of people getting their clearances revoked and being fired for using personal USB drives, let alone servers.

No matter how you spin it, Hillary is either the most incompetent government official in the US, or she intentionally broke the law. I would bet more than 99% of individuals who hold clearances would agree with me.

While your experience is much more like the standard for handling classified material I don't know if it's comparable to what those in the leadership at the state department experienced given the findings in the OIG(1) report that came out earlier this year. They looked some twenty years of record retention policies at the state department and concluded.

"Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State."

"the Department generally and the Office of the Secretary in particular have been slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership."

It seems likely that you and others in similar positions are under more scrutiny than those in leadership, at least that's what I get out of that report.

1: https://oig.state.gov/system/files/esp-16-03.pdf

Comey's letter says they have not yet determined whether they are relevant.

Not quite:

> the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

> Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.

They are relevant to the investigation almost by definition, but they may not be criminal or significant.

That the FBI is admitting to their existence so prematurely is interesting -- is Comey trying to avoid the accusations of politicization by being up-front that they found something, even before he can really describe what it is? His letter refers to previous testimony that the case was closed and he seems to not want to be caught "lying" now -- but if it truly was closed and truly was just re-opened, it wasn't a lie. Is he getting ahead of presumed leaks from the FBI that would have started rumors that he was suppressing/spinning something?

Funny that he's been called a Clinton shill, yet throws Trump a bone days before the election -- "Hey everyone, we found more stuff! We'll let you know if it's bad as soon as we can. Feel free to speculate and grandstand in the meantime." Or is it fishy that the resumed investigation might conveniently stall until after the election?

He's just covering his ass as Assange is going to release some very incriminating material for the SoS (and POTUS) in the next few days.

What I don't understand is the apparent oxymoron: Classified Emails.

Email is horribly insecure. Why would anyone use it to exchange classified documents?

Encryption, or, like the US DoD, a separate network (NIPRNET for non-secret, SIPRNET for secret). But yeah, you wouldn't or shouldn't be using typical email systems for classified communications, certainly not systems outside of your security's control.

You're not supposed to unless you're on a secure network, i.e. SIPRnet, etc.

Classification can be a marker, but it's ALSO a process where lots of different parts of government who often disagree debate back and forth whether something gets classified. And once they decided, those designations continue to change.

HTTP is insecure and yet here are a bunch of classified documents:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/04/us/document-cy...

My point being: sometimes information is simultaneously publicly available and highly classified.

to summarize (and not included in the article)

so far: it's 3 emails, not from clinton, nor her email server, and from a device used by anthony weiner.

Source? If one is interested in more information.

What other source did you get this information from? How are the 3 emails on Weiner's device tied to the Clinton investigation?

This NYT article just has an anonymous "federal official" saying "thousands" of emails. But given the official in question's anonymity, we don't know if they have a political axe to grind and are spinning quotes for maximum disfavorability to Clinton, etc.

pete williams is reporting this on msnbc and being relayed by other reporters on twitter.

trying to find the 3 email source (and relayed by other reporters on twitter). thought i heard williams say it on msnbc but can't find video.

One thing we do know, however, is that NYTimes does have a political axe to grind and is spinning everything possible for a maximum favorability for Clinton and a maximum disfavorability for Trump.

> so far: it's 3 emails, not from clinton, nor her email server, and from a device used by anthony weiner.

3? The article says thousands:

> The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

yes. they got thousands of emails. but that should say, between weiner and abedin. what's being reported is that few of them (or 3, although im trying to find a legit sourceof this number) were apparently cc/forwarded to clinton.

All the 33k 'missing' Clinton emails are available in Utah complimentary by NSA Cloud. Not sure why they haven't accessed them by this point.

Edit: from +2 to -3 in less than 10 minutes?

No reason to suppress the truth. Hopefully investigators access them eventually and investigate them as they legally should.

If you think the NSA has everyone's emails squirreled away in their teensy little data center then you do not understand the scale of email.

Like when Snowden documents showed just that?

Not everyone's, but certainly high value targets would have more of their email stored long-term than say, yours.

Legality of the NSA accessing the US SoS' emails aside, I'm sure some intelligence officials somewhere would love to have that trove to dig through to get maximum traction in any back room discussions. Which is why it was probably not a good idea (I don't mean "illegal", mind you, just not what I call a "good idea") for the Clintons to host any of their email, including their private emails, on what is basically a home server supported by what appears to have been a very small technical staff.

An endless parade of drama and hyperbole...

Amen. Preach it.

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