What difference does national security make? Rules do not apply to Queen Hillary!
This article from the leftist Associated Press was posted at The Stream, and it’s sure to be the big story today.
Excerpt:
Hillary Rodham Clinton relented Tuesday to months of demands she relinquish the personal email server she used while secretary of state, directing the device be given to the Justice Department.
The decision advances the investigation into the Democratic presidential front-runner’s use of a private email account as the nation’s top diplomat, and whether classified information was improperly sent via and stored on the home-brew email server she ran from her house in suburban New York City.
There were classified e-mails:
Republicans jumped on Tuesday’s decision to change course, as well as the additional disclosure that two emails that traversed Clinton’s personal system were subsequently given one of the government’s highest classification ratings.
[…]Word that Clinton had relented on giving up possession of the server came as Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said two emails that traversed Clinton’s personal system were deemed “Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information” — a rating that is among the government’s highest classifications. Grassley said the inspector general of the nation’s intelligence community had reported the new details about the higher classification to Congress on Tuesday.
“Secretary Clinton’s previous statements that she possessed no classified information were patently untrue,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. “Her mishandling of classified information must be fully investigated.”
[…]The inspector general for the intelligence community had told Congress that potentially hundreds of classified emails are among the cache that Clinton provided to the State Department.
No evidence that encryption was used:
There is no evidence she used encryption to shield the emails or her personal server from foreign intelligence services or other potentially prying eyes.
The classified emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contained information from five U.S. intelligence agencies and included material related to the fatal 2012 Benghazi attacks, McClatchy has learned.
Of the five classified emails, the one known to be connected to Benghazi was among 296 emails made public in May by the State Department. Intelligence community officials have determined it was improperly released.
[…]While campaigning for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has repeatedly denied she ever sent or received classified information.
I know she is running for the White House, but I actually expect to see her in the Big House (i.e. – PRISON) come January 2017.
This is from the ultra-leftist Washington Post, of all places.
It says:
The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail setup, contacting in the past week a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the unusual system, according to two government officials.
Also last week, the FBI contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work e-mails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state.
The FBI’s interest in Clinton’s e-mail system comes after the intelligence community’s inspector general referred the issue to the Justice Department in July. Intelligence officials expressed concern that some sensitive information was not in the government’s possession and could be “compromised.”
[…]The inquiries are bringing to light new information about Clinton’s use of the system and the lengths to which she went to install a private channel of communication outside government control — a setup that has emerged as a major issue in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
For instance, the server installed in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home as she was preparing to take office as secretary of state was originally used by her first campaign for the presidency, in 2008, according to two people briefed on the setup. A staffer who was on the payroll of her political action committee set it up in her home, replacing a server that Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, had been using in the house.
The inquiries by the FBI follow concerns from government officials that potentially hundreds of e-mails that passed through Clinton’s private server contained classified or sensitive information. At this point, the probe is preliminary and is focused on ensuring the proper handling of classified material.
The Obama administration will soon find itself in court having to explain to federal judges why it never told anyone former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton used a secret email address, potentially spoiling dozens of open records requests, experts said Wednesday.
And Mrs. Clinton could face up to three years in prison per message if she is found to have broken her word and handled classified information on the secret account, one open records expert told The Washington Times.
The legal challenges have already begun, with The Associated Press filing a federal lawsuit saying the State Department has foiled five years’ worth of requests for Mrs. Clinton’s emails, but never told them or the court that she kept her own server — meaning that her emails weren’t being searched.
The article points out that because Clinton had a secret, personal e-mail server, it will be difficult to prove that she handled classified information unless someone on the other end of one the e-mails shows up.
The State Department itself could face sanctions for refusing to own up to the existence of Hillary’s personal e-mail server when processing Freedom of Information Act requests:
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which for years has battled for access to State Department records, said they are already preparing to ask several federal courts to review whether the Obama administration was skirting the law by not including Mrs. Clinton’s email server in its searches for documents.
“We had hundreds of requests. The State Department knew from the beginning these records weren’t being searched, and no one told us about it, no one told the courts about it,” Mr. Fitton said.
[…]The Associated Press filed a lawsuit Wednesday that could test the limits of the government’s ability to go after emails. Despite five years of questions, the State Department never said it didn’t have control over Mrs. Clinton’s emails, the AP said, suggesting that officials were breaking the spirit of open records when they said they were conducting searches for records.
“State’s failure to ensure that Secretary Clinton’s governmental emails were retained and preserved by the agency, and its failure timely to seek out and search those emails in response to AP’s requests, indicate at the very least that State has not engaged in the diligent, good-faith search that FOIA requires,” the news organization said in its lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C.
The second way that Hillary Clinton could go to prison is described at Fox News:
A former Justice Department lawyer says Hillary Clinton, despite her claims that she broke no rules or laws, may have committed a violation in leaving the State Department without turning over all official emails and records.
Shannen Coffin, a senior lawyer under the George W. Bush administration, pointed to a “separation” form that he said officials are supposed to sign upon leaving the department.
His argument: If she signed the form, she probably gave a false statement and broke the law; if she didn’t, she ran afoul of department policy.
The form — OF109 — certifies that the person who signs it has turned over all “classified or administratively controlled” materials, as well as all “unclassified documents and papers” relating to official government business.
It’s unclear whether Clinton indeed signed that document. But Coffin told Fox News, “If that’s the case, there’s no question [she broke the law].”
“Making a false statement in this context, knowingly and willfully — which I can’t imagine anything more knowing and willful than knowing you have 55,000 records sitting in your home — if you do that, it is a felony,” he told Fox News’ “The Kelly File.”
The form cites “criminal penalties” for knowingly falsifying or concealing information.
“Every employee at the State Department has to sign this little piece of paper when they leave,” Coffin said. And if Clinton did not sign that document, he added, “why not?”
Here’s the video:
National Review reports that the State Department spokeswoman declined to produce the form:
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki couldn’t tell reporters on Thursday if Hillary Clinton signed an official records form presented to all employees as they leave the department — a crucial question in determining whether the former Secretary of State committed a felony by failing to turn over government e-mail records.
[…]“A former DOJ attorney has asked if, under department policy, Secretary Clinton — like all officials here in this building, when they depart or separate from this office, has to sign something called a form OF-109,” a reporter asked Psaki on Thursday. “It’s a separation statement declaring that when you leave office, you turn over not just classified materials, but any documents for official purposes. Did she sign –”
“I think this has been asked,” Psaki interrupted. “It was more than two years ago. I don’t have an update on that specific question at this point.”
Here’s the video:
Select Committee chair Trey Gowdy is continuing his Benghazi investigation, and the chair of the National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ron DeSantis is thinking of starting his own investigation of Hillary.
HH: I want the audience to know Congressman DeSantis is a Harvard Law grad as well as a veteran of the Armed Services, and knows of which he speaks when it comes to national security. And I believe you were on the National Security Subcommittee of Government Oversight, are you not?
RD: I’m the chairman, Hugh, so this is right up our alley. And we’re definitely going to pursue the security aspect of this, because, and I think it’s been written up pretty well in some of the blogs, the State Department has been hacked before. And they have a lot of resources that they put into to maintaining the integrity of that system. If she used Google or Microsoft or one of those, they put in some resources, too. She set up her own system, and so the question is did she invest any of her personal resources to make sure that this had integrity and was not susceptible to being hacked? And those are answers that we’re going to find out.
HH: How are you going to go about pursuing that, Congressman DeSantis, because I know Trey Gowdy’s got the Select Committee. But their scope begins really with our invasion of Libya, or our intervention in Libya. And the scope of her breaking of official norms begins the day she enters into office if not before with this private email server.
RD: No doubt about it, and I think we’re going to defer for the Libya stuff to Chairman Gowdy. He’s been working on that. But I’m going to urge our chairman, Jason Chaffetz, to use the full committee and as well as my subcommittee to look at all of what she did for her four year period, because we need to know whether there was any type of compromise of sensitive military. You see, in the military, if you send something over unclassified channels that is classified, it does not matter whether somebody actually intercepted. You assume that there’s been a security breach, and you change your affairs accordingly. And I find it hard to believe that she would have had four years as Secretary of State and not discussed sensitive matters over that email. And I think the American people deserve answers to those questions.
Defense analyst Frank Gaffney says that there is no way that Hillary’s claim that she never sent or received classified information is true. So we have to wait for those investigations to find them, then we can hold her accountable.
WINTERY KNIGHT 