John Sexton:
What a difference an Inspector General’s report makes. Prior to today the silence and secrecy around the FBI investigation of Clinton’s private server meant there was relatively little detailed information in the public domain. And that meant that Clinton and her team could say almost anything about the matter without fear of contradiction.
For instance, she could claim, as she did last March, “I fully complied with every rule that I was governed by.” She could claim (again from last March) that she set up the server because “I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.” She could claim, as she did two weeks ago, “I’m more than ready to talk to anybody, anytime.” And she could claim, as she did early on, that her private server was perfectly secure because it was guarded by the Secret Service. Well, Hillary can’t say any of those things after today. From the Associated Press:
Despite guidelines to the contrary and never seeking approval, Clinton used mobile devices to conduct official business on her personal email account and private server. She never sought approval from senior information officers, who would have refused the request because of security risks, the audit said.
“By Secretary Clinton’s tenure, the department’s guidance was considerably more detailed and more sophisticated,” it concluded. “Secretary Clinton’s cybersecurity practices accordingly must be evaluated in light of these more comprehensive directives.”
That’s the set up. Clinton is being held to the standards that were in place when she was in office. The report concludes she violated those standards. From Politico, which also has an early copy of the report:
“Therefore, Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary,” the report states. “At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”
So that’s one headline coming out of this report. Here is another one, also from Politico. Clinton and her personal aides did not cooperate with the investigation:
The report states that its findings are based on interviews with current Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessors – Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, but that Clinton and her deputies declined the IG’s requests for interviews.
Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, and Huma Abedin are among those who did not cooperate with the investigation.
We’ve actually known since February that Cheryl Mills had declined to speak to the IG, but (so far as I know) it was not know that Clinton, Mills and Sullivan were also refusing to cooperate.
There are two more significant tidbits of information being reported today which come from the IG report. The first was broken into a separate story by Politico. It’s a reference to a 2010 email chain in which Clinton and Huma Abedin discuss getting her a State Department email account but Hillary appears reluctant:
Further proof that her illegal handling of classified material was intentional and not just gross negligence. Anyone of lesser position would be planning for their stay at a federal penitentiary.
I hope you like Bernie Sanders.
@Greg: I don’t. He’s another socialist fool that has no idea where wealth comes from, only how to waste it.
When Bernie becomes the focus, he too will be disposed of. While he lacks the cornucopia of scandals Hillary has, he has nothing in the way of accomplishments or capabilities.
@Greg:
HRC will dispose of Bernie one way or another.