Hillary or Bernie?

[Keirador]

Or its also because of the incompetence of the other side.

I mean, while Bill and Hillary are easily two of the smartest politicians of the last two or three decades, they've made some mistakes and they've been involved in some extremely shady business. Hell, they got one of the main conservative character assassins to go work for them and now he (David Brock) runs two or three of their pacs (Used to be three. Then the Feds pointed out that even though her superpac wasn't officially coordinating, having one guy run everything meant they pretty much were coordinated). "I did not have sex with that woman." Cattle futures and stock. Travelgate. To name a few.

But you can't lie and say the right are pretty incompetent with their attacks. Look at the Beghazi committee. Its like they wanted her to succeed after that. Even their handling of the email controversy, the latest one, has been pretty awful if they want to use that to end her-then again, given all the Republicans are even older and even less technically competent, I'm suprised if they understand what email is. You know, because its not in the Bible-but maybe the Koch Brothers send their orders via email?

You may think I'm conservative or liberal, btw. The truth is, I'd rather think for myself, and thus I'm just cynical since both sides are pretty scummy, care only for themselves, and idiots. I'm just afraid that vthe Republican Party's self-destruction will lead to essentially a one-party system for awhile-or just as bad, a system where its the Democrats and Teabaggers, and the Democrats are too fractured to do anything.

The "other side" isn't incompetent at all if their goal was to demonize and humiliate a person who didn't actually commit a crime. So far the facts of the case indicate that Hillary's big sin here was to take behavior that Colin Powell and Condi Rice's staff also engaged in, and do more of it, at no point endangering the United States, and yet tens of millions of people are sure she should be in jail and is possibly the devil incarnate. You can tell she's awful because of how her husband cheated on her. That's the true mark of a really bad person.

[Keirador]

Thats why the law is so iffy here, because the Espionage acts were made to prosecute people deliberately sharing top sect information. Gross incompetence isnt a route they want to go on either

The laws governing the mishandling of classified information were made to dissuade people from mishandling classified information (and failing that, to punish them so as to dissuade others in the future). Why the information was mishandled should, of course, have a bearing on sentencing, and even the nature of the crime one is charged with, but breaking the law is breaking the law. Should Clinton be charged with espionage and given a sentence comparable to an Ames, a Hansen, or a Montes? Certainly not. But she should be charged with mishandling classified information, and, if convicted, punished. It happens, though only lower ranking officials ever actually get charged. Bill Clinton's own Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutsch, mishandled classified information in much the way Hillary did and retired from public life in disgrace (I forget if Clinton pardoned him or just leaned on the Justice Dept not to prosecute). Kind of illustrates how unevenly the powerful apply the law in this country, which should dismay people from all points on the political spectrum.

As for gross incompetence/ignorance, I'm not buying that defense - especially when you consider the Clintons had experience with a situation pretty much exactly like this with Bill's own DCI. While I don't think Hillary was trying to give the information away (there are frankly easier and less traceable ways of doing that), I think a sense of entitlement and a rules-don't-apply-to-me attitude is what's to blame here. After all, she braved sniper fire in Bosnia for this country - why should she have to wait until she's in a secure area to access classified information?

Be specific about what law she is said to have broken, and specifically how she broke it.

[GregorV]

Thats why the law is so iffy here, because the Espionage acts were made to prosecute people deliberately sharing top sect information. Gross incompetence isnt a route they want to go on either

The laws governing the mishandling of classified information were made to dissuade people from mishandling classified information (and failing that, to punish them so as to dissuade others in the future). Why the information was mishandled should, of course, have a bearing on sentencing, and even the nature of the crime one is charged with, but breaking the law is breaking the law. Should Clinton be charged with espionage and given a sentence comparable to an Ames, a Hansen, or a Montes? Certainly not. But she should be charged with mishandling classified information, and, if convicted, punished. It happens, though only lower ranking officials ever actually get charged. Bill Clinton's own Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutsch, mishandled classified information in much the way Hillary did and retired from public life in disgrace (I forget if Clinton pardoned him or just leaned on the Justice Dept not to prosecute). Kind of illustrates how unevenly the powerful apply the law in this country, which should dismay people from all points on the political spectrum.

As for gross incompetence/ignorance, I'm not buying that defense - especially when you consider the Clintons had experience with a situation pretty much exactly like this with Bill's own DCI. While I don't think Hillary was trying to give the information away (there are frankly easier and less traceable ways of doing that), I think a sense of entitlement and a rules-don't-apply-to-me attitude is what's to blame here. After all, she braved sniper fire in Bosnia for this country - why should she have to wait until she's in a secure area to access classified information?

Be specific about what law she is said to have broken, and specifically how she broke it.

Besides Clinton being unbelievably self-centered in choosing the comfort of carrying one device over national security, which, although stupid, isn't illegal in-and-of itself...

This one: 18 U.S.C. 793

"Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it."

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed..."

As I see it, you're now trying to argue that Mrs. Clinton did not, at any point, transmit any information whatsoever to anyone who was not cleared to receive it. She had 2093 confidential emails on that server, and 22 (or 23, I forget) which were Top-Secret. Can you possibly argue with a straight face that none of those had any classified material when she got them, nor could she have expected that they would be retroactively classified? It's an argument of reductio ad absurdum.

If anything else, the "gross negligence" section was violated when she went against departmental policy to create a private server which she did not adequately protect.

[The O]

So did she transmit classified documents to anyone who did not have clearance? If so, what was the document and to whom did it go? I also found some irony that you stated in a previous post that she should be in jail and then a few sentences later you complained that the constitution was not being upheld. I'm pretty sure that she would have a right to a fair trial and is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Both things are pillars to our constitution. But hey... you don't like her, so toss her straight into jail, right? With all of the war crimes committed by our politicians (especially in the Bush administration) that were not prosecuted, it seems strange that this alleged crime would garner this much attention.

At any rate, I'd like to know the answer to my first question, as I haven't paid a ton of attention to this story.

[I Love Italy]

So did she transmit classified documents to anyone who did not have clearance? If so, what was the document and to whom did it go? I also found some irony that you stated in a previous post that she should be in jail and then a few sentences later you complained that the constitution was not being upheld. I'm pretty sure that she would have a right to a fair trial and is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Both things are pillars to our constitution. But hey... you don't like her, so toss her straight into jail, right? With all of the war crimes committed by our politicians (especially in the Bush administration) that were not prosecuted, it seems strange that this alleged crime would garner this much attention.

At any rate, I'd like to know the answer to my first question, as I haven't paid a ton of attention to this story.

I'm with you on that. Let us know, please.

[GregorV]

I did a bit more digging. Haven't looked at this thread for a few pages, with the exception of my response above.

Inspector General's Statement

"The IC IG found four emails containing classified IC-derived information in a limited sample of 40 emails of the 30,000 emails provided by former Secretary Clinton. The four emails, which have not been released through the State FOIA process, did not contain classification markings and/or dissemination controls. These emails were not retroactively classified by the State Department; rather these emails contained classified information when they were generated and, according to IC classification officials, that information remains classified today. This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system."

Non-Disclosure Agreement signed by Hillary Clinton

"I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of SCI by me could cause irreparable injury to the United States or be used to advantage by a foreign nation,"

You mentioned the assumption of innocence - This removes that. 10% of a sample of the emails had classified information that was classified at the time. By the NDA that she signed, she was required to use "the highest judgement" in determining whether the material was or could be classified. Yes, there have been criminal prosecutions where the defendant transmitted retroactively classified material.

"I understand that it is my responsibility to consult with appropriate management authorities in the Department … in order to ensure that I know whether information or material within my knowledge or control that I have reason to believe might be SCI,” the agreement says.
...
According to government security experts, the type of information that receives a TS/SCI designation is sensitive enough that most senior government officials would immediately recognize it as such.

“TS/SCI is very serious and specific information that jumps out at you and screams ‘classified,’” Larry Mrozinski, a former U.S. counterterrorism official, told the New York Post in August. “It’s hard to imagine that in her position she would fail to recognize the obvious.”"

Maybe more later, if I feel like opening it up more. The purpose was to show the reader that Mrs. Clinton certainly held classified material in an unsecured location, and that this was both in violation of the NDA she signed, Executive Order 13526, and 18 USC 793 d, f. This evidence should be sufficient to remove the presumption of innocence beyond a doubt.

P.S.: Total time spent wasted in class trying to prove someone on the Internet wrong this week - 15 hours and climbing.

[Keirador]

Be specific about what law she is said to have broken, and specifically how she broke it.

Besides Clinton being unbelievably self-centered in choosing the comfort of carrying one device over national security, which, although stupid, isn't illegal in-and-of itself...

This one: 18 U.S.C. 793

"Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it."

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed..."

As I see it, you're now trying to argue that Mrs. Clinton did not, at any point, transmit any information whatsoever to anyone who was not cleared to receive it. She had 2093 confidential emails on that server, and 22 (or 23, I forget) which were Top-Secret. Can you possibly argue with a straight face that none of those had any classified material when she got them, nor could she have expected that they would be retroactively classified? It's an argument of reductio ad absurdum.

If anything else, the "gross negligence" section was violated when she went against departmental policy to create a private server which she did not adequately protect.

I asked a two-part question: what law did she break, and how did she break it. You pointed out a law, and then basically said "come on you just know she broke this law, it's ridiculous to think otherwise," without actually specifying how she broke it. There are more than a couple problems with this line of attack. Let's start small. It's not Clinton's job to anticipate what information might eventually get classified as confidential, nor is it her job to ensure all information she sees is properly marked. That is many people's full-time jobs; expecting Clinton to do it herself is tantamount to saying "we don't actually need a Secretary of State at all, we need another classification authority." Nobody could possibly do their job well if they also needed to be the original classification authority on all information they saw.

It is (part of) Clinton's job to ensure that information marked classified is not shared with people who are not authorized to receive it. There is no evidence that Clinton shared information marked classified with unauthorized people. You are not alleging a specific case of this happening, instead you are relying on the sheer number of emails as evidence that she must have. That my friend is the reductio ad absurdum. Is there a proper number of emails a Secretary of State should send or receive? Like over 500 emails per term, you must be sending classified information to unauthorized people because math? I'm imagining a token system in which each incoming Secretary of State is given a discrete number of email tokens to spend, and when they've used them all up they go to jail for treason.

So then we change the argument, and say OK maybe she didn't share classified information with unauthorized people, but let's say that using private email at all is somehow the same thing as sharing state secrets with unauthorized people. That's more than a bit of a stretch, and not clearly a violation of the letter of the law you just cited. But even if that's where we want to go, the problem with that argument is that while Clinton's exclusive use of private email is unusual, her use of private or unsecured email to communicate classified information is far from unusual. If Clinton should be in jail for transmitting classified information over unsecured e-mail, then for a start, so should Colin Powell and Condi Rice's chief aids, if not Condi Rice herself. So, too, should be several hundred or possibly several thousand government employees. I mean just working off the Clinton emails themselves, a Washington Post analysis found:

Clinton was typically not among the initial recipients of the classified emails, which were included in back-and-forth exchanges between lower-level diplomats and other officials and arrived in her inbox only after they were forwarded to her by a close aide.

For federal employees other than Clinton, nearly all of the sensitive email was sent using their less secure, day-to-day government accounts. Classified information is supposed to be exchanged only over a separate, more secure network.
. . .

The analysis raises difficult questions about how the government treats sensitive information. It suggests that either material is being overclassified, as Clinton and her allies have charged, or that classified material is being handled improperly with regularity by government officials at all levels — or some combination of the two.
. . .

[T]he bulk of the emails that State Department reviewers deemed classified were sent by career officials engaged in the day-to-day business of diplomacy.

Some diplomats point to the volume of classified email as evidence of systemic flaws in deciding what information is sensitive rather than an indictment of Clinton’s actions.

“If experienced diplomats and foreign service officers are doing it, the issue is more how the State Department deals with information in the modern world more than something specific about what Hillary Clinton did,” said Philip H. Gordon, who was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and was the author of 45 of the sensitive emails from his non-classified government account.

Now if you think simply using unsecured email at all should be a jailable offense, fine. But don't pretend that Clinton is somehow getting off easy because of who she is: it is very much the opposite. Sending classified information over unsecured email is downright routine, and the only reason we're talking about it now is BECAUSE Hillary Clinton did it. At least she'll have an awful lot of company behind those bars.

If you would rather not incarcerate the bulk of our diplomatic corps for doing their jobs, you need to produce something unique that Hillary Clinton did that hundreds or thousands of diplomats aren't routinely doing. Actually sharing sensitive information with someone unauthorized to see it or otherwise concretely harming the United States would be a great start. That's what the FBI is currently investigating. Insinuations about how she just must have hurt the United States without any evidence of how are starting to sound, to me, a lot like saying "you can tell she's dirty because of her bitch face."

[musashisamurai]

@Keirador

Seeing how far the post is in Clinton's camp, I don't think using Jeff Bezos as support is really a good idea.

There is an email in which Jack Sullivan ordered an aide to take the header off a fax and "send it unsecured." though records don't indocate whether it (the fax) was sent or not. That is illegal-he just ordered someone to commit a federal crime.


Now you are correct, that Hillary unless she's actually a double-agent working for Russia, then sending emails using a private, unsecured email is not illegal. However, even Hillary felt it was unusual-theres an email that was released where she asks where some official worked-she didn't think it was @State because he used a private email.

However, the major issue I have is twofold and occurs afterward (and also what the FBI is investigating with regards to intent): First, storing the emails on a separate server outside State could have been a very effective way of avoiding Freedom of Information Act Requests, wIorking around the law. I'm going to have to say that probably was the intent-you don't set up a private server for convenience. Seriously. Next off, is that there is a FOIA protocol for using private and government emails-basically one of Hillary's staffers and someone in State would go through the emails and determine which related to her role as Secretary of State and which her roles as private citizen-Clinton Foundation, personal emails, and such...given that she helped Obama handpick her successor, and any of her scandals would reflect poorly on Obama, he's not going to throw her under the bus however much they may not get along. Especially not when she resigned because they and the Party had settled on her as a nominee...theres absolutely no way they would release the bad emails, or make a big deal of them.

Instead, she hid them, once the issue became a thing, she tried to downplay it, and delayed turning them in (first law). She only turned it in after deleting half of them against the law and its protocol.

[Keirador]

I did a bit more digging. Haven't looked at this thread for a few pages, with the exception of my response above.

Inspector General's Statement

"The IC IG found four emails containing classified IC-derived information in a limited sample of 40 emails of the 30,000 emails provided by former Secretary Clinton. The four emails, which have not been released through the State FOIA process, did not contain classification markings and/or dissemination controls. These emails were not retroactively classified by the State Department; rather these emails contained classified information when they were generated and, according to IC classification officials, that information remains classified today. This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system."

And from the next paragraph of that statement:

"An important distinction is that the IC IG did not make a criminal referral - it was a security referral made for counter-intelligence purposes."

Nobody is disputing that Clinton's exclusive use of private email was unusual, and certainly the intelligence community has a right to investigate that unusual use. What's uniquely at issue with Clinton is whether that was a crime, and whether she actually made sensitive information available to unauthorized people.

There's another issue here as well: transmitting classified information over unclassified systems. That Clinton definitely did, but so did her predecessors at State and so do many diplomats, as discussed above. If she is jailable for this, so are many others.

According to government security experts, the type of information that receives a TS/SCI designation is sensitive enough that most senior government officials would immediately recognize it as such.

“TS/SCI is very serious and specific information that jumps out at you and screams ‘classified,’” Larry Mrozinski, a former U.S. counterterrorism official, told the New York Post in August. “It’s hard to imagine that in her position she would fail to recognize the obvious.”"

Is this not very obviously personal opinion? And the personal opinion, at that, of a Bush appointee and Tea Party congressional candidate. Since aides to his prior boss, Condi Rice, did the exact same thing and he is not calling for their arrest, I suspect his comments are politically motivated.

[Keirador]

@Keirador

Seeing how far the post is in Clinton's camp, I don't think using Jeff Bezos as support is really a good idea.

Yet Greg uses the New York Post and we're cool with that?

There is an email in which Jack Sullivan ordered an aide to take the header off a fax and "send it unsecured." though records don't indocate whether it (the fax) was sent or not. That is illegal-he just ordered someone to commit a federal crime.

I'm not familiar with this, though I'd point out 1) the header may have been the classified item 2) sounds like a Jack Sullivan problem.

Now you are correct, that Hillary unless she's actually a double-agent working for Russia, then sending emails using a private, unsecured email is not illegal. However, even Hillary felt it was unusual-theres an email that was released where she asks where some official worked-she didn't think it was @State because he used a private email.

Oh yeah, the idea she didn't know it was unusual is pure propaganda. The Department went through months of trying to align Clinton's personal preferences with normal security routines and ultimately just gave up. To me the single most disturbing part of this story is that allegedly she was offered a desktop computer that was compatible with security routines and her own email preferences, but (allegedly) she nixed that idea because SHE WAS UNFAMILIAR WITH THE USE OF A DESKTOP COMPUTER. WHAT. WHAT. NO. THAT CAN'T BE.

However, the major issue I have is twofold and occurs afterward (and also what the FBI is investigating with regards to intent): First, storing the emails on a separate server outside State could have been a very effective way of avoiding Freedom of Information Act Requests, wIorking around the law. I'm going to have to say that probably was the intent-you don't set up a private server for convenience. Seriously.

Agree completely. It was a "mistake" the same way a husband tells his wife he has a business trip and then takes his mistress to Cancun. Yeah, I guess that was a "mistake" . . . but some real planning and intent went into making that mistake.

Now I'm kinda sympathetic to Hillary's tendency towards secrecy. It's not like the media has treated her real well over the last quarter century so I get wanting to be private and control the information that comes out about you. But regardless, this was a pretty clear run around the spirit of the law.

Next off, is that there is a FOIA protocol for using private and government emails-basically one of Hillary's staffers and someone in State would go through the emails and determine which related to her role as Secretary of State and which her roles as private citizen-Clinton Foundation, personal emails, and such...given that she helped Obama handpick her successor, and any of her scandals would reflect poorly on Obama, he's not going to throw her under the bus however much they may not get along. Especially not when she resigned because they and the Party had settled on her as a nominee...theres absolutely no way they would release the bad emails, or make a big deal of them.

Instead, she hid them, once the issue became a thing, she tried to downplay it, and delayed turning them in (first law). She only turned it in after deleting half of them against the law and its protocol.

This is straightforward speculation, right? Is there any evidence that relevant records that should have been turned over were instead deleted? Or is this just more "you can tell she's dirty just by looking at her bitch face?"