Marc A. Thiessen:
The Clinton e-mail scandal reached a new level of seriousness when the intelligence community inspector general found classified information from five intelligence agencies in e-mails housed on Clinton’s private server. It isagainst the law to remove classified information from government facilities and retain it after you have left office and have no official reason to possess it.
Just ask Sandy Berger.
In 2003, Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser was caught removing five classified documents from a secure reading room at the National Archives, as he prepared to testify before the 9/11 commission.
A Justice Department investigation ensued and in 2005 Berger reached a plea agreement in which he was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material instead of a felony. He was sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service and was stripped of his security clearance for three years. Prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed on a $10,000 fine, but the judge raised it to $50,000. In 2007, in order to shut down a disbarment investigation by the District of Columbia bar, he relinquished his license to practice law.
That was for unlawfully removing and retaining just five classified documents.
Clinton has apparently been caught removing at least five e-mails containing what we now know to be classified information and retaining them on her personal server in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., after she left office. And in the weeks ahead, that number will probably grow to the hundreds, if not thousands.
The inspector general reviewed only a small sample of 40 e-mails Clinton turned over to the State Department. Yet in that tiny sample, he found that five e-mails contained classified information. Five classified e-mails in a sample of just 40 is a rate of one out of eight e-mails that contained classified information. Clinton has handed over some 30,000 official e-mails to the State Department that she had been keeping on her private server. That means there could be some 3,750 classified e-mails that she removed and retained.
Well, that we were aware of, anyway. That wasn’t his first “research” trip to the archives.
This sort of thing seems to be prevalent around the Clinton’s.