Darkness approaches the Clinton campaign. Maybe.
Two Inspectors General have asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into Hillary’s handling of classified material on her private server.
WASHINGTON — Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.
The request follows an assessment in a June 29 memo by the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence agencies that Mrs. Clinton’s private account contained “hundreds of potentially classified emails.” The memo was written to Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management.
Originally it was described in the NY Times thusly:
“into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state.”
The Clinton campaign called in to complain and the Times was more than happy to oblige, changing it to:
“into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state.”
One could only imagine the NY Times changing a story to improve Donald Trump’s image.
Hillary campaign spokesman Nick Merrill issued this statement:
“Contrary to the initial story, which has already been significantly revised, she followed appropriate practices in dealing with classified materials. As has been reported on multiple occasions, any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted.”
In the course of the email review, State Department officials determined that some information in the messages should be retroactively classified. In the 3,000 pages that were released, for example, portions of two dozen emails were redacted because they were upgraded to “classified status.” But none of those were marked as classified at the time Mrs. Clinton handled them.
This is the heart of the matter. Transmission of classified materials on a private server is a violation of Federal law. Between then number of devices and soliciting information from Sid Blumenthal, Clinton has lied repeatedly about her emails.
Clinton DID have classified information on her server.
One is that, despite Clinton’s assurances, she had multiple classified documents on her private server. We know that only because a federal judge required the State Department to begin releasing documents Clinton turned over. On Wednesday, a State Department spokesman told Fox News it would not release some 25 emails (as part of its first batch) because it had determined they were classified.
It is utter and complete nonsense to argue that they weren’t classified when they were on her server. No one in the government had access to those documents and no one could classify them. She obviously knew that.
When she’s not blaming the media, Republicans, bureaucrats, and technology – everything and anything, except the dog who ate her email – Clinton is destroying her credibility.
“There is no classified material,” she said. Wrong.
“Everything I did was permitted,” she said. Wrong.
“People should and do trust me,” she said. Wrong and wrong. A majority of people don’t trust Clinton, because a majority of people aren’t blindly loyal to her or on her payroll.
Most people can sift through the spin, the lies, and the parsing to see the bottom line: She secreted and deleted her email for reasons we may never know. And she’s blaming everybody but the only person responsible for this mess, the only person who can clean it up: Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The guy who probably knows better than anyone else finds her defense “laughable.”
First, while it is accurate for Secretary Clinton to say that when she was in office there was not a flat, categorical prohibition on federal government officials ever using their personal email accounts for the conduct of official business, that’s a far different thing from saying (as she apparently would like to) that a government official could use his or her personal email account exclusively, for all official email communications, as she actually did. In fact, the Federal Records Act dictates otherwise.
Once again, let’s return to Clinton’s own 2007 diatribe- that government officials holding secret email accounts was “shredding the Constitution.”
You know our Constitution is being shredded. We know about the secret wiretaps, about the secret military tribunals, we know about the secret White House email accounts.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DCwmYHr-_M[/youtube]
By her own assertions, Clinton should be put on trial. She absolutely knew what she was doing was wrong. It is virtually a certainty that she erased government-related emails. It is virtually a certainty that she interwove the Clinton Foundation and her role as SoS for financial benefit. She absolutely needs to produce the server and let us see what’s on it and what is classified or not.
There is really no doubt she has violated the law. The only doubt I have is that this wretched and corrupt regime will carry out its duty to investigate a thing.
image courtesy legal insurrection
UPDATE:
WASHINGTON — Government investigators said Friday that they had discovered classified information on the private email account that Hillary Rodham Clinton used while secretary of state, stating unequivocally that those secrets never should have been stored outside of secure government computer systems.
Mrs. Clinton has said for months that she kept no classified information on the private server that she set up in her house so she would not have to carry both a personal phone and a work phone. Her campaign said Friday that any government secrets found on the server had been classified after the fact.
But the inspectors general of the State Department and the nation’s intelligence agencies said the information they found was classified when it was sent and remains so now. Information is considered classified if its disclosure would likely harm national security, and such information can be sent or stored only on computer networks with special safeguards.
“This classified information never should have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system,” Steve A. Linick, the State Department inspector general, said in a statement signed by him and I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the intelligence community.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Aren’t you the same guy that said that Sen Menendez was a pedophile because of those lies about the underage Dominican hookers?
Hillary’s parsing of English on this issue centers around WHEN information was labelled as ”classified,” vs if it was ”sensitive.”
IF she handled classified matters through her home server, it was hacked.
If it was LATER labled as ”classified,” it had still been stolen while it was on her server.
It therefore makes no difference that she parses it as not officially classified at the time it lay on her server and got stolen.
To get an idea of just how often and how effectively important people in our gov’t are being hacked take a look at this real-time hack-map: http://map.norsecorp.com/
Hypnotic, isn’t it?
War is what it really is.
PS, that imaginary island on the west coast of Africa is our US government getting hacked.
What is nonsensical is the assertion made in the first sentence, followed by a second sentence acknowledging that no one reviewed the documents and classified them until later. Clinton’s private documents weren’t reviewed for classification purposes until her political enemies attempted to force the contents of her server to be made available for public scrutiny.
What the whole thing revolves around are their efforts to find information that could be somehow turned into another political scandal. This is what all republican political strategy now revolves around. It’s all they’ve got. They’ll be facing yet another national election as nothing more than the party of angry contrariness, hating everything, but with no detailed alternative to anything.
It’s been 7 months now that they’ve had majorities in both the House and Senate. Name one of the nation’s problems that they’ve constructively addressed with any meaningful legislation. What happened to their assertion that jobs would be their highest priority? What have they done in connection with the immigration problem? What have they done in connection with ISIS? They won’t vote on Obama’s formal request to authorize the use of military force; they won’t even allow it to be debated. Presently they’re attempting to scuttle the nuclear arms deal with Iran, without having put forward any clear alternatives of their own.
The fact of the matter is that Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server was not in violation of the law. The law requiring that government servers be used exclusively and that any material on private servers be transferred to government servers within 20 days did not take effect until after she left office.
Greg,
All your assertions are based on BS
What are the republicans plans
Well your assertion is tantamount to watching a kid about too drive a nail through his foot with a hammer and letting him do it because you didn’t get his buy in on an alternative
If the deals bad you “Don’t do it”
By the way what has your party done on jobs, immigration the economy when you had majority’s
You gutless liberals passed it on because you were too cowardly to address it when you had power and now your using it as talking points even though by your own standards his highness Barak is the obstructionist.
Again greggie no facts just fantasy talking points
By the way their have been alternatives given for economy job growth health care… It’s just not the solutions the left likes so they don’t acknowledge they exist and then fictitiously state nothing has been proposed
No action is better than handing your enemy exactly what he wants
Which statement is not true? The GOP’s problem is that all of them are true.
BTW, there’s no evidence that Clinton’s server was hacked by anyone, which is a lot more than can be said for a number of official U.S. government servers.
Ha
I listed where your fantasizing
Talking points are not fact Greg
Again your lying
There is absolute evidence clintons server was hacked and been reported on by numerous news services even left wing ones
Do again little Greg spews BS hoping some idiot (ie their constituents) who won’t fact check will buy into it
@Matt, #6:
Nope. There has been widespread speculation that Clinton’s server might have been hacked, owing to the fact that it lacked effective data encryption during the first 3 months she was Secretary of State. Subsequent to that, her e-mail traffic was encrypted. A hacker would have required the encryption key to read her e-mail.
The Department of Justice says that they have NOT been asked to open an investigation. Please also note that neither of the IGs are actually named. Looks like Dr J has again shot himself in the foot with a too quick accusation. Sort of like the underage Dominican hooker story or the Defense of Bill Cosby http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/doj-no-hillary-clinton-criminal-inquiry
Esther Goldberg makes a few important points on spectator.org today:
“The Wall Street Journal reports that the inspector general of the intelligence community has found that at least four emails from Hillary’s personal account contained information that was classified at the second highest level of secrecy at the time that she sent them. Uh…I mean “at the time that they were sent.”
The IG referred the matter to the FBI’s counterintelligence division. The Justice Department first disclosed that the investigation was criminal in nature, but later it inexplicably reversed itself on that point.”
Read more at http://spectator.org/blog/63564/screws-tighten-around-hillary-clinton
She brings up the fact that it looks like the Justice Department first stated that it WAS a criminal investigation but then backed off. Ms. Goldberg’s point is that Hillary is on notice that Justice can pursue this to its end anytime Obama feels like it. Obama can put Hillary in an orange jumpsuit in Club Fed anytime. All he has to do is turn loose the hounds. The gist of it is that Obama has Hillary by the short-and-curlies. The only question is: will he order her to drop out or not?
Since the Clintons and O’bama have never been cordial I’d be looking for an Obama endorsement of Joe Biden if her polling heads any more south
Considering Joe has been an extraordinary boot licker these two terms it logical to be replayed in this fashion
Criminality? I can’t figure out why were’ not talking about treason.
OK then, lets have a look at how she communicated information that at the time she deemed classified and not appropriate for email. Did she jump in the car and run over to communicate in person? Did she use that personal phone of hers? Or perhaps write a letter and send it US mail or courier?
Show me a pattern of how she communicated sensitive information in a secure way and maybe I will be a believer.
@Greg:
If they were classified information once they were reviewed it proves how flagrant and reckless she is with classified information but you’d agree, Greg, that she should surrender the server, right?
They only probed 40 emails and found 4 out of those 40 having sent that should have been marked ‘secret’.
In actuality Hillary sent 100’s of emails over her server despite being ‘secret and classified’ – out of those 30,000 she personally selected to be state department related.
Think about the thousands she deleted and despite her claim that they were ‘private’ – I am convinced that they were the most damning and would have imprisoned her immediately – that is why she deleted them in the first place.
Additionally – remember – if it weren’t for the hacker ‘guccifer’ nobody would have ever known that she conducted her business as SOS only on her private server.
It was he who put her on blast about her criminality and he also published two of Sid Blumenthal’s emails to Hillary in which he informed her about the intelligence he had about Benghazi, Libya and Ghaddafi – advising her to take note and write him back. It is known that she manipulated intelligence, lied about it to enable her and her desired war in Libya. A phone call were captured and published about her duplicity in Libya as well as her ‘keeping the DOD out of the loops’.
Her own friend – Mike Morrell – the intelligence chief – admitted that all the classified emails Hillary sent or distributed were also captured by many ‘foreign’ governments!!!!! – Read that again and let it sink in!
Hillary is more than just a criminal – she is a traitor and enemy of the US!
@john:
That is pertinent… how? The National Enquirer broke the story of John Edwards knocking up his mistress while he pulled America’s heartstrings over his dying wife but no one believed it. Now, the NYT, the shining beacon of leftist propaganda, breaks the story of classified data being on Hillary’s secret, private, illegal server, all illegal as a mo-fo and you want to try and divert attention? Hillary is a corrupt, lying, scheming fraud. She is, as Benghazi proved, incompetent as well. Name ONE qualifying characteristic she legitimately possesses.
So, you would expect this corrupt DOJ, as part of this corrupt administration, to initiate an investigation? My, you ARE a moron.
@Greg:
Is there a college somewhere that they specialize in courses teaching missing the point? Are you a professor there? SHE HAD CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ON A PRIVATE SERVER SHE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE USING. Of COURSE this was not discovered until her private server was scrutinized; she kept it SECRET. Damn, how hard is it to understand that SIMPLE fact?
They negotiated and compromised with Obama to pass the agreement to not oppose the Iran agreement until it has been examined by Congress… only to be lied to and undercut; typical of liberals.
Use of private email discovered by hacker “Guccifer”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/investigation/hillary-clinton-private-e-mail-account-897531
Emails shown on Blumenthal’s email (when hacked by Guccifer) are not among the emails released by State, given them by Hillary
http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/26/2-of-hillarys-libya-emails-are-missing/
@Doramin: Obama has the excuse he needs to renege on his agreement to endorse her candidacy in exchange for not challenging him. Obama would never pursue any charges against her unless there was political benefit; Constitutionality, national security or simple law enforcement means nothing to this administration.
@Bill, #15:
If there is, those on the right have either all attended it or muddled their way through correspondence courses.
The “classified documents” in question are her e-mails, not atomic bomb plans, secret submarine blueprints, or the text of secret treaty agreements with the Republic of Freedonia. They didn’t even exist until she sent them . There was no reason for them to be reviewed for sensitive information and classified until republicans demanded full access to them, because until then there was no risk that they would be spread all over the public media.
Republicans have pretty much worked up this latest instance of imaginary wrongdoing from scratch, from nothing more than the fact that use of a private server by a government employee for official business became unacceptable after the point in time when Clinton left office. That’s the central fact. The rest is little more than loud and repeated assertions of wrongdoing, and the same old claim that evidence is being hidden because no evidence can be found. It’s the same damn story with every investigation that the GOP has recently rolled out. There’s nothing there at the end, but their audience is left with a muddled impression that they’ve actually seen something.
Sure, let’s investigate Hillary on this trumped up story and while we’re at it, let’s investigate Benghazi for the 10th time…..as long as we can nail Bush/Cheney for lying us into a war and war crimes. They are the real criminals.
If, as a federal employee I sent classified information on NIPR net, knowingly sent secret information, I would have been fired and arrested as a suspect of treason.
@JisterJ:
Wow, that’s your best retort? Trumped up indicates fiction. look at the facts my friend.
@Greg:
They contained CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. They didn’t simply BECOME classified because she had them. Do you know specifically what was on them? And, how about the information about Benghazi, the weapons, the terrorists and the attacks she and Blumenthal (someone her boss had directed her NOT to utilize) passed back and forth? Further, this is not Republicans scouring her emails; this is the IG. She’s dirty, you know it and you would excuse murder to suit your ideological delusions (oh…. you already have).
@Bill, #20:
She didn’t have them. She created them. They were her e-mails. Any that contained sensitive content became classified as a result of her political enemies’ efforts to get their scandal mongering hands on them. Consequently any such information has not become public, which is the entire point of document classification to begin with.
I guess that leaves the republican lynch mob coming up empty handed yet again. Serves them right. There are few things dirtier or fouler than a lynch mob. They would expose sensitive information themselves as a means of gaining some measure political advantage. To hell with them. I’d support Clinton just to rub their noses in the manure they’re spreading.
@Greg:
They did, did they? Then why not simply release them if they weren’t classified? Greg, don’t you agree that she should simply turn over the server and allow us to see what’s on it? She was not supposed to use a private server for government business and she herself said it was the wrong thing to do.
@Greg:
That’s IT? That’s your explanation? There is no “classified” information involved, only information that the Republicans have suddenly redefined as classified in order to get poor little Hillary in trouble? Remember “silly and weak”? This has got to be the silliest and weakest response to a left wing scandal as I can remember. Congratulations for raising the bar on lap-doggery and sycophant-asy (I think I just coined a new word!!)
Your view here is that Republicans are scandal-mongering for digging into information that Hillary is trying to keep hidden. Does it not make just a little sense to you that if there is no scandal involved, why doesn’t Hillary RELEASE the data? Why did she have it on a secret, private server to begin with? Why erase half of it before anyone else got to judge its relevance? If you are going to continue to be a far left devotee, you had best develop either a better way to evaluate their actions or better excuses.
You support Hillary because that is your liberal duty. Any liberal running for office, regardless of the level of incompetency, dishonesty, scandal, distrust, integrity or credibility WILL be fully supported by liberals because effective and useful governance is not the goal; electing liberals is the goal. Socialism is the goal.
@DrJohn, #22:
The change in the law requiring that official e-mail be transferred from private servers to government servers within 20 days did not take effect until 2014. Clinton left office as Secretary of State February 1, 2013. Clinton broke no law. Even FOX News analysts concede she broke no law, and they would like nothing better than a conclusion that she did so.
@Greg: From the link you cited”
Did she preserve all her emails, Greg?
Thousands of pages official email documents were turned over to the State Department. After review for sensitive information, nearly 3,000 pages were recently made public by the State Department. More are to follow as the review proceeds. Documents containing sensitive information will not be made public. That’s because they contain sensitive information.
The legal requirement is that all records pertaining to official government business be retained. Clinton has stated that she deleted only her personal email correspondence. Inquiring minds may doubt that’s all she deleted, but they may be out of luck proving otherwise. Most likely her personal correspondence was not simply deleted, but reduced to digital confetti. There are readily available software utilities for that purpose. Given the GOP’s history of relentless persecution of their political enemies by way of endless fishing expeditions and official investigations, that’s certainly what I would have done.
No doubt the GOP has teams of backroom fact-finders sifting through the released material looking for the equivalent of the Nixon tape’s missing 18 minutes to build conspiracy theories on. I hope they’re not once again doing this on the taxpayers’ dime.
@Greg:
Keep in mind, Greg, that if this was in fact true, it would be the only thing Hillary has not been PROVEN to have lied about thus far. So, as to what pertinent and vitally important details and information may have been destroyed, just chew around on that likelihood for a bit.
You seem to look at this strictly in the view of someone attacking a liberal. Perhaps you need to think of it in terms of vetting someone campaigning for the Presidency of the United States and would it be proper and best for the nation to have someone that wants to have their official correspondence kept secret, even from the government itself, so she can eliminate the bits that reveal mistakes, corruption and ineptitude.
First of all, secret and above classifications of information can only be legally sent on a system deemed secure by the Federal Government. There are many ways of determining the level of classification of information. There are lists that describe information that is automatically classified such as movements of certain people, negations of treaties, conversations with heads of state or conversations concerning the US Government analysis of discussions.
Classified information can only be sent through secure means. Classified information can not be accessed by anyone not having a security clearance at least equal to the level of classification of the information. Personal email servers are not considered secure unless vetted by appropriate sources. Clinton’s servers were not vetted. None of the people who had access to her emails and servers prior to turning them over to state department personnel had the need to know and the level of clearance required to access the classified information.
There are severe penalties for persons who purposely or who inadvertently allow access to classified information by those not having the proper clearance. Those penalties range from administrative actions to life imprison or death if the act was treasonous.
This has nothing to do with requiring state department personnel to all use state department emails. It has to improperly securing classified information. Nearly all the Sec of State does is classified at some level. This is a crime and the only thing left to determine is how severe the breach of faith and oath to her office.
@Greg: Greggie Greggie Greggie, you believed Obola when he said if you like your health insurance and/or doctor you can keep them “period”!! That was a lie he got caught in and had to apologize for it!! If Hilldabeast DOES get caught sending classified Emails on here private server would you admit that she is in violation or will you attempt to make ridiculous excuses like you did with Obola?
The NYTimes admits that they published the Original Story (Hillary was under investigation) based on highly placed sources in Obama’s Administration.
Hmmmmm…..
Could there be more?
Probably.
Could it come out in other media than the Times?
Most likely.
Hillary had a chance to quit her campaign with a modicum of dignity still intact had she done so after this story broke but what now that she pushed back with demands from the Times for ”corrections?”
IF other stories come out in other media Hillary will not be able to twist a correction out of these outlets.
Question is:
O’Malley?
Warren?
Saunders?
(Oh! and lest we forget the utterly forgettable, Webb?)
@Nanny G: Jim Who? That’s what Conservative heart throb and Prez favorite George Allen Jr.said in 2006.
Where is Jr. now?
@Randy, #28:
What people? What classified information? There’s no evidence that anyone had improper access to classified information.
People talk as if they know details about some crime that has been committed. The fact is that they don’t .
This is the pattern of every high profile investigation and fake media scandal republicans have cooked up since Obama was elected. There have been nothing but unproven accusations to begin with, and there have been nothing but unproven accusations in the end.
Clinton didn’t break any law by using a private server for her official email. That’s why nobody is citing the specific law that was broken. Further, there’s no evidence any classified information was compromised. Classification of her routine email itself wasn’t considered necessary until her political enemies demanded access to it. Of course it was reviewed for sensitive information at that point; suddenly a risk existed that her correspondence would indiscriminately be made public.
Yes, she deleted email that she deemed personal and other than official business. There is no requirement that a federal official’s personal, non-official correspondence must be preserved. Even with the changes that have occurred since Clinton left office, personal correspondence may still be removed. The following paragraph from a 2013 federal bulletin concerning document preservation requirements addresses that specifically:
Greg,
Please read what I wrote carefully. You obviously do not understand what is classified information and how information is classified. Clinton failed to protect classified information by communicating on non-secure email servers. In addition, anyone who knowingly sent classified information to her non-secure server failed to protect classified information.
Please study up on what “classified ” information” is and the requirements for securing that information before you make more of a fool of yourself.
Here is an example of “classified information”. I was in northern Kuwait watching a CNN reporter describe removal of the earthen berm separating Kuwait. The 3rd ID was poised on the border ready to move into Iraq within minutes. I had released that information to a non government agency, I could have been court marshaled for revealing potential movement of troops. The simple act of revealing the movement of diplomatic personnel is classified. Even the inspector General had provided examples of Clinton failing to secure classified information.
@Randy: Your example reminded me of when Geraldo Rivera drew our plans and positions in the dirt while he was on the air in Iraq.
He was banned from any covering of an active zone for a long time afterward.
Worse, the military lost all respect for him.
When you look at photos of Hillary the world-traveler Sec State you see an old party animal.
She’s often drinking or tipsy looking.
Her campaign is showing us all that she would rather be doing anything else……grandchild maybe?