I see that New York Times reporters are still jumping through their rear ends in what should be a futile attempt to avoid the obvious in the, as they put it, “winding” story of Sec. Clinton’s emails:
WASHINGTON — Earlier this summer, the inspector general of the nation’s intelligence agencies contacted the longtime lawyer for Hillary and Bill Clinton with a pointed question. Classified information had been found in a small sample of 30,000 messages from the former secretary of state’s private email account. The inspector general, I. Charles McCullough III, wanted to know from the lawyer, David E. Kendall, where copies of the message collection might still be stored.
Let’s stop right there. Here’s the definition of “sample”:
a small part or quantity intended to show what the whole is like. “investigations involved analyzing samples of handwriting”
The sample examined by the IG was small: 40 emails. 10% of them were found to contain classified material. If the sample was representative of the whole, not necessarily the case but possible, that would translate into 1,000 of the emails containing classified material. That is not small.
In the balance of the examination of the twists and turns in the story, they never hit on what’s obvious to anyone who’s not hopelessly biased: what Sec. Clinton did was wrong. She shouldn’t have done it. It was confessedly a breach of regulations which, if punished even at a nominal level, would result in huge fines and even jail time because of the magnitude of the breach. It was at the very best a grave lapse of judgment and at the worst a criminal conspiracy to hide wrongdoing.
The higher the office held by a public servant the higher the standard to which their behavior should be held, not lower. I’d say that about any Republican, Democrat, and even about someone I liked and with whom I agreed.
Once again, they found zero (0) emails that were marked as classified. 10% of emails had material that particular IG thought should be classified. That said, she (and the others who have done this) should not have done this. I am not sure of the appropriate punishment as we have no precedent. No one else who has done this has been prosecuted or punished. Which particular law has she broken and does that law suggest the appropriate punishment?
Steve
There are a number of them, mostly related to not turning over government property when you leave government service. When the whole affair first came to light the specific laws were mentioned in a WSJ op-ed from a guy (a Democrat) who used to hold the federal office responsible for retaining information and he cited chapter and verse. I linked to it at the time.
I’m just not sure about this one. It seems prosecution for actually breaking the law is a stretch but the Clintons have always excelled at violating the spirit without smashing throughthe letter. What she did was certainly wrong and probably to conceal evidence of the use of her office for corrupt practices — which is not to say for illegal practices. Remember that corruption (use of the position with which one has been entrusted for personal gain) in the United States is, in fact, legal. The Supreme Court has seen to that.
One reason to use a personal email account is to avoid using a government account for personal or political email. If everything goes through the personal email, you do not have to worry about keeping things separate.
Theoretically, all her emails sent to government email accounts should be archived somewhere, but unless there is a central index, it would be practically useless.
@Ben, the crime is “willfully” concealing, removing or destroying government records. Her defense is that she lacked the requisite mental state, which is why we keep hearing things that make her sound like an idiot, i.e. I set up a server in my home because multiple devices are too complicated for me, or I thought the Secretary of State had practices available to store my government-related e-mails.
There are multiple reasons I think her defense is weak not the least is that intent may be inferred from a pattern of action and there’s a clear pattern of action.
I know FSOs who were given three-day to one-week suspensions because they were careless in handling classified information. There was no allegation that the material fell into the wrong hands, but that their security practices were deficient.
They’d get dinged for leaving a classified document on a desktop in a locked and secured office in a locked and secured building. Or, they’d not log-off a classified computer system correctly. Or, they’d leave a classified HD in their PC overnight — until the USMG Security Detail found it.
Three dings meant a suspension. Repeated lapses would lead to the pulling of their security clearances which meant, effectively, that they could no longer serve as FSOs.
We also got clear instruction that classified material was not to be handled on unclassified systems nor transmitted in unclassified email. There was nothing ambiguous about the instruction.
And all of this was well before 2004.
U of Illinois Chancellor revealed to have used private e-mail accounts in order to bypass state records laws, and resigns the next day.
Too bad she wasn’t the Secretary of State.
The gang over at OTB are still whining that Sec. Clinton’s use of a private email server is a phony scandal or a non-scandal. They don’t seem to appreciate that had it been discovered while she was in office it would have gotten her fired if she didn’t resign first.
The classified info isn’t the scandal. The evasion of recordkeeping is the scandal.
The latest I’ve heard on the U of I Chancellor is that they’re refusing to accept her resignation so they don’t have to pay her $400,000 severance package.