02 Feb 2016, 4:11 pm
rickyp wrote:FateALL of her business email was supposed to be conducted on a government email address. If she had done that, we would not be having this discussion
You are an incredibly obtuse person. Perhaps purposefully obtuse? Or is it a requirement to ignore facts in order to hold your world view?
If you weren't being serious, I would laugh. However, you are just dumb enough to believe what you wrote. Your problem is that you don't know what you're talking about.
Apologies to everyone else for that redundancy.
Was this the law or not?Federal law allows government officials to use personal email so long as relevant documents are preserved for history."
The law was amended in late 2014 to require that personal emails be transferred to government servers within 20 days. But that was after Clinton left office
If all government business was supposed to be conducted on a government email address:
1) Why wasn't there a law or a regulation that made this clear? And why did the law actually say that personal servers were okay as long as emails were transferred within 20 days?
2) Why did Homeland security let her do what she did?
3) Why did Homeland Security let Colin Powell do much the same thing?
If she had used a .gov email address, or whatever the secure server extension was, we would not be having this conversation, would we?
Powell did not have his own private email server at his house.
A better question: why did the PRESIDENT let her do this? He actually used her clinton email address to write her.
There should not be a $700 billion organization that fails to make politicians follow secure procedures. A $700 billion dollar organization should not relent to push back from a politician and her private contractor.
Watch the vicious and unfair (former Clinton chief-of-staff) George Stephanopoulos point out that she signed papers MAKING HER RESPONSIBLE for how she dealt with classified material, whether it was marked or not. Of course, she lies in her response. Otherwise she would not have 22 SAP-classified documents on her server.
This is an institutional failure . Clinton screwed up, but there should never have been the opportunity for her to screw up.
Actually, that's not really a defense. Pay attention and maybe you'll learn something . . . ah, who am I kidding??? It's you! You can't learn!
First, crimes were committed, and the latest revelation about the 22 e-mails withheld by State raises questions about yet another law:Clinton admitted that she set up the private email system for her “convenience” — it was easier than operating another email account through the secured State Department system. As a price for this “convenience,” Clinton seems to have personally retained custody of classified material in both the hardware and database in her house without authorization or proper security, until surrendering both to the State Department and FBI last summer.
Unlawful retention of classified material of any level is a crime under 18 USC 1924 with up to a year in prison on each count. Exposure of sensitive national security data through either gross negligence or malice is a felony under 18 USC 793, which carries ten years in prison on each count. The exposure of NOC-listed agents could violate the Intelligence Identities Act of 1982. Two people have been convicted under this statute; John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent turned whistleblower on waterboarding, got out of prison just as this scandal broke in February 2015.
The Kiriakou case is particularly interesting. One might think that the Obama administration would have appreciated Kiriakou’s efforts to paint the Bush-era counter-terrorism policies in a bad light, and especially since he was a key aide to then-Senator John Kerry when Kerry chaired the Foreign Relations Committee. However, the DoJ went after Kiriakou aggressively in 2012 for leaking classified material to journalists, including the identity of one or more intelligence agents. They initially charged Kiriakou under the Espionage Act (whence come 18 USC 1924 and 793) as well as the 1982 law. It got plea bargained down to the latter, and he did two years for what Kiriakou describes as “whistleblowing” rather than leaking.
Choosing to pursue Kiriakou while taking almost a year to do anything with Hillary raises some interesting questions about politicized prosecution at the DoJ. That also sets up another interesting contrast between Barack Obama and George W. Bush, one that makes Bush look much more supportive of the rule of law than his successor:Joseph Wilson, a diplomat who had opposed the war, wrote a column inThe New York Times criticizing the Bush administration’s analysis of intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons program. A week later, Robert Novak wrote a column accusing Wilson’s wife of arranging Wilson’s assignment for the probe into Team Bush’s much-dissected yellowcake uranium claims, outing her as a CIA employee who had operated under “non-official cover” — a status considered to be classified information, and potentially dangerous to both Plame and national security.
The purposeful public revelation of Plame’s identity touched off a furor in Washington over mishandling classified information and potentially putting American resources, methods, and personnel at risk. The CIA demanded that the Department of Justice begin a criminal probe, which began shortly after Novak’s column appeared. President George W. Bush expressed a desire to get to the bottom of the leak. “I want to know who it is,” Bush declared, “and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.”
Within weeks of the scandal’s eruption, Attorney General had not just called for an investigation, but also assigned it to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. The actual leaker (Richard Armitage) ended up facing no consequences, but Lewis “Scooter” Libby got 30 months for obstruction of justice, as well as a six-figure fine. Bush commuted the prison sentence but declined to pardon Libby, leaving the conviction and the fine in place.
Compare that response to the response of the Obama administration:In the year since the Clinton email scandal was initially exposed, neither the president nor the attorney general have acted at all. Barack Obama has publicly dismissed concerns over the emails, while Loretta Lynch has given no indication as to whether she will pursue the massive and serial violations of federal laws. It is time to ask why. It’s not unreasonable to infer a former Cabinet official and current Democratic frontrunner to succeed Obama rises above the laws applied to other Americans, and that she is exempt from close scrutiny by a politicized Department of Justice.
rickyp wrote:That the American media have never approached the problem this way, is because - Hillary.
(The same reason she probably chose a private server in the first place. The political paparazzi that is cable and internet news. )
She chose a private server to avoid FOIA. That's so obvious even you should figure it out.
And, apparently, every clown in the Democratic party was doing the same thing:
As a senator, Secretary of State John Kerry sent at least one email to Hillary Clinton from his personal account that has now been classified as secret, the State Department confirmed on Tuesday.
The largely redacted May 19, 2011, email from Kerry — then the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — “was sent from a non-official account,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.
That account, Kirby added “is no longer active.”
The message referenced India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was classified for containing information about foreign governments and U.S. foreign relations.
“We all know this will be a troubled relationship because that is it’s [sic] nature,” he wrote in one unredacted section. “But there are real possibilities at this moment to put options to the test.”
Kerry’s email was classified at the “secret” level, which is a higher level than “confidential” but lower than “top secret”
A note at the bottom of the message indicates that it was sent from Kerry’s iPad.
. . .
On Tuesday, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee expanded his probe into the how Obama administration officials used personal email accounts, demanding answers from Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. Carter used a personal email account for months after he took the reins at the Pentagon last year.
