Clinton Email Controversy

A good reason to never root for the worst candidate of the opposing party to win, no matter how unelectable you think they are. Anyone is a scandal away from the White House.

Friday’s developments were significant. The State Department, which had previously disagreed or at least withheld judgement, now points to twenty-two emails on Clinton’s servers that contain what they consider to be “Top Secret” data.

The intelligence community’s inspector general had previously indicated that he thought that some of the emails contained top secret material. Until Friday, however, the State Department had declined to concur with that assessment.

State’s reviewers had said that more than 1,300 Clinton emails contained classified material, but the vast majority were just “confidential,” a lower level of sensitivity.

Clinton has also said that the information in question was not classified at the time the emails were sent — a point that intelligence officials have disputed.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Friday that his agency had not yet made a determination on that key question.

Clinton’s position was supported Friday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said none of the emails in question originated with Clinton.

“It has never made sense to me that Secretary Clinton can be held responsible for email exchanges that originated with someone else,” she said in a statement. “The only reason to hold Secretary Clinton responsible for emails that didn’t originate with her is for political points, and that’s what we’ve seen over the past several months.”

The biggest reason why I’m willing to cut Clinton some slack here is that at the time government IT was notorious for being ancient, broken and generally out of whack, and previous secretaries of state had also been running their own email servers. I think they may still have been running lotus notes, or shortly transitioned off of it, with as messy as those transitions can be.

In other words, if she weren’t running for president, this wouldn’t be an issue at all, and would probably be written off to the poor IT infrastructure and the transitional nature of the time.

There is zero chance that the FBI arrests Clinton while Obama is still President.

Just stop and think about it for a second.

The FBI reports to its Director, who reports to the Attorney General, who reports to Obama. A special prosecutor could act independently from Obama, but that would require his prior authorization.

Politically, indicting Clinton would put her candidacy at grave risk, and by extension it would risk undoing everything that Obama accomplished. On the flip side, indicting her wouldn’t give any political advantage to Obama. He is going to be out of power regardless in one year, he has no major projects in the pipeline, he is not worried about re-election, he is not worried about impeachment. His only interest is the survival of Obamacare and his other legacies.

So, in what parallel universe would Obama commit the political equivalent of suicide by cop?

I’m confused, or maybe just obtuse:

Quote from John Kirby from the actual press conference:

The documents are being upgraded at the request of the Intelligence Community because they contain a category of top secret information. These documents were not marked classified at the time that they were sent.

But then he says:

We have worked closely with our interagency partners on this matter, and this dialogue with the interagency is exactly how the process is supposed to work. As to whether they were classified at the time they were sent, the State Department, in the FOIA process, is focusing on whether they need to be classified today. Questions about classification at the time they were sent are being and will be handled separately by the State Department.

And in response to a reporter’s question:

QUESTION: Don’t you think it’s hard for the public to believe that you could be talking about emails that are suddenly classified in nature today but not at the time they were sent? I mean, we’re sort of racking our brains to try to figure out a scenario in which that is possible or plausible.

MR KIRBY: Well, as we’ve said before, even before today, there are reviews and investigations going on about the past email traffic and the degree to which things were classified at the time. What we’ve said consistently is nothing was marked classified at the time it was sent, and that still remains true today and for the tranche that will be released later. But as I said, issues of classification at the time it was sent are now and will be handled in a separate process here at the State Department.

I think he is saying that State determined their classification at the time they were sent and at the time they were sent they were not classified. That status changed at the request of various parts of the Intelligence agencies from the FOIA process. If this is the case, that is not the story in the media right now.

One where (assuming wrongdoing for the sake of the argument) he’s concerned about this being a government of laws and not men?

That is my reading, as well. It will never be the mainstream story on the issue, though, as it requires one to understand too many steps in the process. You won’t catch CNN trying to convey complexity or nuance. That stuff’s bad for the ratings.

QUESTION: Don’t you think it’s hard for the public to believe that you could be talking about emails that are suddenly classified in nature today but not at the time they were sent? I mean, we’re sort of racking our brains to try to figure out a scenario in which that is possible or plausible.

This is where it would be nice to have actual journalists in our media. They’ve apparently forgotten Jeffrey Sterling already. One of the “secrets” he mishandled were instructions on how to dial CIA rotary phones, which were dated 1987 and marked classified in 2006.

This is why I tend to take the “depends on what the material was” when I hear about mishandling of classified information. But then I don’t have a clearance to risk, either.

It’s still amusing to me that 24 winters after “bimbo explosions” and Whitewater first surfaced that people still think that difficult-to-sort scandals are going to take down a Clinton.

The 1993 Congress and the current sitting president have delivered the blueprint to beat Mrs. Clinton, and it isn’t this email scandal and it isn’t Bill’s infidelity and it isn’t questionable investment returns. Wanna beat Hillary? Take her on, on her turf. Fight her politically over policy and out-campaign and out-debate her. Otherwise, no.

Arrest, maybe. But that isn’t what would be necessary to potentially significantly damage Hillarys campaign. While the current FBI director was appointed by Obama, he has not proven to be always politically in step with the administration. So he very well could send up the line a recommendation for indictments related to this controversy if that is the conclusion of the investigation. At that point it won’t matter what Obama and the AG decide because news of the FBI recommendations would be public soon enough. And there would be people swayed by simply knowing the FBIs conclusion.

Yeah, that seemed like a really weird thing for someone to say. Saying that he wouldn’t enforce the law due to political reasons is a fairly strong condemnation of Obama and his ethics.

Obama has already said he won’t enforce laws on immigration for political reasons. I don’t disagree with him on that. But I do think that he has a different view of ethics then you do.

Likewise, he showed no interest in prosecuting Wall Street bankers after the financial crisis, again likely due to political considerations.

Do you really think he is going to sacrifice Clinton to burnish his law-and-order credentials?

Your theory of government seems a little deficient. Here’s some light reading for you. No big deal. Only the philosophical underpinning of every advancement in justice and equality since the dawn of time.

Not a theory, a common sense prediction.

By the way, welcome to America. What did Wikipedia tell you would happen to the cop who shot Tamir Rice?

Should’ve been sent to grand jury. Abuses of prosecutorial discretion are literally exactly what I’m arguing against, whereas we’ve established that you’re for selective enforcement of the law exclusively when it’s for a cause you agree with. Good to know I’m (done) arguing with a totalitarian and a hypocrite.

No, I argued that Clinton didn’t break the law. And I predicted that regardless of whether that’s true, there is no chance that Clinton will be indicted because that’s not how this country works.

I’ve read and heard from enough lawyers to know that the system is quite unfair. I never argued in favor of the status quo.

Wait, rich, famous and powerful people have the law applied to them differently than the rest of us? When did this start?

Apparently when Clinton was first elected. Minds were lost, and continue to be lost, that both aren’t in jail. Along wtih Chelsea too, just out of sheer OT-style spite.

My claim here is that this should not be, and is fundamentally damaging to the whole idea of the rule of law.

I don’t have any practical solutions; I don’t think there are any, or at least no easy solutions. One part of any fix, though, is leaving behind the idea that we should just shrug and look sheepish when someone with money or power gets away with something. (And lawbreaking or not, Clinton is getting off way easier than any average Joe under suspicion would have done.)

(Sorry as usual for my mudslinging and sulphur-tossing. P&R always gets my blood up.)

She obviously broke the law. And just as obviously, she won’t be prosecuted.