CHRIS WALLACE: In 2011, when an aide was having trouble sending her material by a secure fax, she sent these instructions: "If they can't, turn into nonpaper with no identifying heading, and send nonsecure." Bob Woodward, why is this important?Woodward focuses on what we learn about Hillary's character and methods. Wallace brings in George Will:
BOB WOODWARD, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, because here you have the secretary of state in 2011 saying let's subvert the rules, which say you've got to send -- presumably -- I mean, it's very clear from the earlier e-mails that this was a security issue, and I’ve written about nonpapers or no papers, and this is the way people in the government take the heading off and create something that exists.
WALLACE: Explain that, explain that to the rest of the world here. What's a nonpaper and what is taking the heading off?
WOODWARD: By taking it off, it's just a piece of paper that has a bunch of paragraphs. And there's no classification, there's no subject, so it's not in the system, so no one can discover it through Freedom of Information Act or some sort of subpoena. I mean, look, here is Hillary Clinton, somebody who worked on the staff of the Nixon impeachment committee, and what was the lesson, one of the lessons from that? Never write anything down. She did years of Whitewater investigations where she was the target, and here, many years later, she's saying oh, let's subvert the rules and writing it out herself? You know, whether that's some sort of crime I think is not the issue. The issue is, it shows she kind of feels immune, that she lives in a bubble, and no one is ever going to find this out. Well, now we have.
GEORGE WILL, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I think the question really at the end of the day is a question of legality. The problem with this as a political issue, the force of an issue is upon a function of its simplicity. And when the average voter hears about a server in a closet in Colorado, they say, I know what a closet is, I know what Colorado is, what’s a server? And I think people are kind of unclear about that. But what does this is reinforce a preexisting perception about the Clintons, that whenever they come, they come in a cloud of seaminess of some sort.Will seems to want to talk about it as a "question of legality," because it doesn't work as "as a political issue." Political issues need "simplicity," but this is too complex, other than in the way it reinforces the idea that the Clintons are "seamy." ("Seamy" literally refers to the inside of a garment, where the seams show. Shakespeare created the figurative use, referring to the rough side of life: "Some such squire he was/That turned your wit, the seamy side without/And made you to suspect me with the Moor.")
Will prefers the legal side of it. He reminds us that Petraeus "got in trouble for the mishandling of classified information," but for him the legal question "comes down to the Justice Department." That is, he doesn't try to present the legal case himself. He looks to the authorities and wonders what they will do. He says "the Holder Justice Department was eager to be complicit in covering up certain scandals," but maybe — "if the FBI makes a recommendation to the Justice Department" — "we'll see if [Loretta Lynch is] a different kind of attorney general."
Bob Woodward breaks in, driving his idea the issue is character:
WOODWARD: But going back many years, I have followed the Hillary Clinton -- you know, what she does and biography is character and behavior is character here, and when I read that, I was really surprised that she would type that out and say, "Let's send it nonsecure," and, you know, maybe we'll get answers. In fairness to her, it's not clear what this is about, what the talking points were and so forth...Note how fuzzy it's become at this point. Woodward is intent on getting the facts right, perhaps because Will tried to make it legal. If it's a legal question, we need to get into the details. Here's where Laura Ingraham sees her opening. (Ingraham has a prestigious law background, including a Supreme Court clerkship (with Clarence Thomas)). Unlike the somber, venerable presentation we got from Woodward and Will, Ingraham is fierce. Unlike Will, who relies on the authorities to move forward in the courts, Ingraham puts legal arguments out in the political arena where she expects them to have an effect whether the authorities do anything or not:
WALLACE: Does it matter in that sense? I mean, if it was supposed to be send secure and she, as you say, subverting the law by saying send it -- or at least the regulations by sending it nonsecure, isn’t that --
WOODWARD: The question is, what is it? I’m tried to look into the record and figure out what was going on that day and she was going to give a press briefing. Maybe it was talking points for a press briefing, and there may be not classified information in there. At the same time, she was meeting with the Russians and maybe there was. So, we'll see.
INGRAHAM: Remember, she hasn't released all of her e-mails. She was supposed to reach a threshold by December 31st, she did not. Her staff said, we were working really hard. We are trying -- Lord knows what’s on the other ones. You are not allowed under federal law to act as your own declassifier of information. A GS-15 employee at the NSA tries to do this. Do you think -- why are you scowling? Do you think there would be a legality issue?Those last 2 questions are directed at Juan Williams, and gives an answer — "The secretary of state is in fact the person who decides if it's classified or not" — that Ingraham rejects — "No, no, no." Williams says "I agree with what Bob said. I don’t think it’s a legal issue." And Ingraham says it is:
INGRAHAM: [The FBI is] on the verge of a major revolt in right now with the way this issue is being handled... This is a matter of legality. This goes to the heart of whether we can trust our government to be fully transparent when they're supposed to be, and properly handle this kind of information, and the professionals will have the final say.Williams, echoing Woodword, says: "I think you're lost in the weeds on this when I think the voters." That gets the obvious retort "That's what you hope." Williams says "the voters really don't care," which tags Woodward to bring us in for a soft landing, the character, not the legal, question: "The voters care about whether we're going to find out who she really is and what she did."
Reencountering this discussion in transcript form, I get the feeling Woodward and Will have talked at some length about how hard it is to involve the public in something this complicated. What use can it be? Woodward seems to think people can ponder character even when they don't really understand much of what happened, but he's uneasy with it, and so is Will. It's just a cloud of seaminess that vaguely reinforces preexisting perceptions. Will would like the Justice Department to work in some idealized fashion and get things right, because the people aren't fit to handle it.
Juan Williams is rooting for the issue to die of its own complicated boringness.
Ingraham is the one with the fire. She believes people care, commentators can explain it simply enough, and people will understand. I admired Ingraham in this. I'd like her to be right, for the sake of democracy.
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94 comments:
Shouldn't you be watching the game?
I think this email is even bigger. An email was released Friday in which the Chief of Staff for the Defense Dept. informed State that they were "spinning up" a Benghazi rescue mission. A mission which was never released.
Without knowing what the email was talking about, who is to say? Hillary knew what was in it and I would give her the benefit of the doubt that she chose the right thing to do.
The people of the United States do not believe there is any way in the world that the Obama justice department will charge a democrat with anything. The only way it happens is if Obama hates the clintons as much as has been reported in the past.
A very sad state of affairs for our country. The Secretary of State knowingly and in writing tried to circumvent classified information laws. Any other person would be doing a perp walk. But somehow we have "journalists" trying to again cheerleader their candidate out of trouble and a justice department and IRS that we have no faith in. Very sad for this country.
I can only hope that trump can take her down, because there isn't another candidate that can withstand the media.
The whole things stinks of corruption and abuse of power. Will is happy to be a cuckold, decade after decade, and won't admit that he refuses to deal with the issue head on. Same with Woodward, who seems to dance around the obvious conclusions.
Ingraham is spot on. It is legal, its complicated perhaps, but isn't that the job of the press to present facts, clearly?
Williams is just another Party Apparatchik, worried about protecting his access to the 'elite'.
I hope this doesn't go away, as so much of the clinton scandals have.
The corruption here, not just with the clintons, but with the dept of justice and the fbi is staggering. In better times, even a hint of such behavior would have resulted in weeks and months of press digging out the truth. But since its the clintons, and obama, all you hear are the crickets.
Laura Ingraham is a political hack. (And no she does not have a prestigious legal background; she clerked with Clarance Thomas for God's sake.)
I pray Republican start up with this Clinton derangement syndrome again instead of focusing on issues that matter to the American electorate. Please God, let that be so! It will be like the 1998 mid-term elections, but this time it will be a Demoractic landslide.
It's not just for the sake of "democracy", for the sake of our REPUBLIC, we can only hope that criminals like Hillary are brought to justice. Unfortunately this will take quite some time to be set straight. Our only hope is that Hillary (and Bill) are never allowed to set foot in the White House ever again.
What people can understand is that delaying and dragging things on past agreed deadlines is unacceptable. The court has set a deadline it must enforce it by holding people in contempt and sitting their behinds in a jail cell. Until that happens, government employees and politicians will feel they can get away with running out the clock.
Clinton on Face the Nation:
DICKERSON: This week, another batch of your e-mails were released by the State Department.
One of them is a back-and-forth between you and a staffer about a secure fax that won't come through. And you directed him to -- quote -- "turn into non-paper with no identifying heading and send nonsecure."
Aren't you ordering him to violate the laws on handling classified material there?
CLINTON: No, not at all.
And as the State Department said just this week, that did not happen. And it never would have happened, because that's just not the way I treated classified information. Headings are not classification notices. And so, oftentimes, we're trying to get the best information we can.
And, obviously, what I'm asking for is whatever can be transmitted, if it doesn't come through secure, to be transmitted on the unclassified system. So, no, there is nothing to that, like so much else that has been talked about in the last year.
DICKERSON: So, in no instance -- what is striking about that particular e-mail is it suggests you were very facile with how to do this, this process. You knew the instructions about how to get around the restrictions for sending classified information.
So you're saying there was never an instance, any other instance in which you did that?
CLINTON: No. And it wasn't sent. So, I think this is another instance where what is common practice -- namely, look, I need information. I had some points I had to make. And I was looking for a secure fax that could give me the whole picture.
But, oftentimes, there's a lot of information that isn't at all classified. So, whatever information can appropriately transmitted unclassified often was. That's true for every agency in the government and who everybody does business with the government.
But the important point here is, I had great confidence, because I had worked with Jake Sullivan for years. He is the most meticulous, careful person you could possibly do business with. And he knew exactly what was and wasn't appropriate.
And, in fact, as the State Department has said, there was no transmission of any classified information. So, it's another effort by people looking for something to throw against the wall, as you said in the beginning of the program, to see what sticks. But there's no there there.
The matter will come to a head (Look that up in OED) when and if Comey resigns in protest. He might. He may see what is coming and that is a wholesale purge of the federal bureaucracy. The Joint Chiefs should have resigned in 1970, at the latest, when LBJ botched Vietnam. HR McMaster has a terrific book about it.
Panetta and Gates both wrote books that slam Obama but nobody reads those.
@pm317: Without knowing what the email was talking about, who is to say? Hillary knew what was in it and I would give her the benefit of the doubt that she chose the right thing to do.
Everybody wants to be a comedian.
George Will proves to be the condescending snot he always was. My bet is that far more than 60% of 'da pipples' know what a "server" is. What a twit!
I don't see that it is "complicated." If there is a FOIA system requiring government documents to be logged into a library system so that they can be identified and retrieved, there are provisions for making it a crime to attempt to defeat the system.
Juan Williams, in the other discussion, said that it was OK for Obama to go it alone, even in defiance of laws that Congress has passed, because "this Congress has not given this President anything he wanted."
This is not how it works, or is supposed to work.
We have had presidents who acted high-handedly before and got away with it, but "King Andrew I" had the people with him, and FDR had both the people and Congress.
The only one I can think of that had Obama's attitude might be Thomas Jefferson, who needed 3/5ths of the slave population to be counted as Southern voters though of course they could not vote, in order to be said to "have the people with him," and Jefferson was obliged to retire to "spend more time with his family" after his second term, or risk having the Northern states secede.
These days, sadly, the problem is not "can people understand it?" I think they can. It's not all that complicated even if the legal case will be. The problem is "do people care?" Have people become so cynical about politicians and criminal behaviour by governmental actors that they can't be bothered to censure an otherwise plausible presidential candidate for it? I know what I hope the answer is, but I do not know what the answer is.
This is what makes Trump so brilliant. The ease with which he says something.
I read through your entire thing above and by the end, my head was spinning. I wanted to change the channel. Ugh, another Clinton scandal, isn't football on?
And I'm an informed voter, comparatively speaking.
The only way this hurts Hillary is if Trump finds a way to smile, make funny noises (Click clack on the keyboard, or something), and shrug his shoulders while he tells us you can't trust Hillary. He needs to make it sinister while also making fun of their excuses all wrapping it into a simple narrative that anyone can understand in under five seconds on twitter.
Sad, but true.
Jefferson, Jackson, and FDR, and now this one, are the only presidents I can think of that have considered the Supreme Court to be their enemy. All the others have at least pretended to respect the Constitution and law and order.
One thing that doesn't get much attention -- She was in possession of substantial emails and other documents long after she stopped being a government employee. That is a serious violation of policy, regardless of whether confidential information was involved.
She broke the law. She exposed our secrets. She lied about it. Any lower-level official would have been sacked or sent to jail. What's so complicated here?
Don't worry. I watched the game.. Very happy our guys won.
----prestigious legal background; she clerked with Clarance Thomas for God's sake.)
Yeah, what supreme court justice did you clerk for, Hortense?
@Althouse, well, I was pulling for our Redskins. But the better team won, no way around that.
you actually need to know something in order to speak cogently:
http://observer.com/2016/01/hillarys-emailgate-goes-nuclear/
I was a custodian of 'only' secret level docs. We had been told in 'basic' about officer’s who’s careers ended and their military prisons sentences began when they accidentally left a safe open. There were plenty of times of butterfly’s in my stomach about failing to do it right. I guess people like me have to follow the law and our rulers don’t.
Eh..Denis McDonough is quite the guest. Wallace was really unable to reign that snake in on exec authority doubletalk.
I have been disagreeing with George F. Will a lot lately. I wonder whether he's been co-opted by the Establishment or just has been losing it since he entered his seventies.
In the end it's a question of stupidity. Either the Secretary of State is handling some of the most sensitive information that the government possesses, or she's just a figurehead that does nothing all day. If the former, then people should be able to get this -- she stored her hyper-sensitive messages on a computer that was so unsecure any fourteen year old who wanted to could penetrate it in a day. All Trump has to do is point out that probably a large number of foreign countries were reading her inbound Emails before she saw them, and reading her outbound Emails as she typed them, and I think ordinary folks will get that.
And if it was the latter, then what does she have to run on? Is she saying that she had a nice office at 320 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC, but otherwise was out of the loop?
Here's his cocky tweet
Among other things, the email shows that Hillary had a very clear knowledge of the classification nomenclature and of the ways to avoid the rules. She also clearly understood issues how email works and the risks of ignoring cybersecurity. For a while she was trying to pretend that these issues where beyond her comprehension and below her Of course that was just another lie.
The issue is indeed character. A significant part of that issue is the fact that our major media media and much of our population do not seem to think that character matters. They seem to think that the right ideology is far more important than character.
"And no she does not have a prestigious legal background; she clerked with Clarance Thomas for God's sake."
Lol. Seriously?
When you compare the security transgressions of Gen Petraeus with those of Hillary Clinton there's quite a gulf. It's almost as wide as his sexual indiscretions compared to those of Bill Clinton......Petreaus has lost his career, and no one will be paying him a few hundred thousand dollars to make a speech anytime soon. There's a moral to this story.
When you compare the security transgressions of Gen Petraeus with those of Hillary Clinton there's quite a gulf. It's almost as wide as his sexual indiscretions compared to those of Bill Clinton......Petreaus has lost his career, and no one will be paying him a few hundred thousand dollars to make a speech anytime soon. There's a moral to this story.
This discussion is bizarre. If a serving member of the armed forces treated a classified document in this way he'd be subject to courts martial, a civilian employee of the government would be subject to criminal prosecution. If the allegation is true the former Secretary and the persons involved in actually sending the classified document are criminals. I suspect there will be a criminal prosecution, but will be the lowest level staffer or employee thrown under the bus as a sacrifice.
Hagar, you are wrong on Jefferson and the 3/5 "of a person" for slaves. It was done because the South slaves to be counted as a "full person" so that the South would have a greater representation in Congress. Go back to History class.
"Once written, twice" the idiot.
"(And no she does not have a prestigious legal background; she clerked with Clarance Thomas for God's sake.)"
Wouldn't that generally be viewed as fairly prestigious?
Who cares if it's complicated, or if voters don't care or even if Bernie Sanders thinks everyone should move on(who the fuck cares what Bernie thinks anyway?) The bottom line is whether she broke laws regarding how classified information is secured, retained or destroyed. That's the bottom line. If she's guilty of breaking any of these laws she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Sometime in the next 6 months, Hillary Clinton will announce that she’s withdrawing from the Presidential race for reasons of health. This will happen after all the Democratic primaries are completed, or at least after enough of them are completed that it would be mathematically impossible for Sanders (or Sanders plus O’Malley) to pick up enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. Although the stated reason for her withdrawal will be health, the real reason will be that the Justice Department will have advised her that if she does not withdraw, she will be indicted for violations of federal secrecy laws and of various bribery and corruption laws during her tenure as Secretary of State (the threatened indictments may also include Bill and Chelsea Clinton, if necessary to assure her withdrawal). After a couple of weeks of shock and pandemonium, and at the urging of President Obama, Vice President Biden will reluctantly agree to allow his name to be placed into nomination for President at the Democratic Convention, and he will be duly nominated. (BTW, Biden will not be aware of, or party to, the threats against Ms. Clinton. He's a decent man).
Unknown said...The people of the United States do not believe there is any way in the world that the Obama justice department will charge a democrat with anything.
But they have.
California state senator Leland Yee (widely touted as CA's next Secretary of State and possible governor), arrested by the FBI in 2014.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, indicted on 19 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion in 2010.
New York state representative Sheldon Silver (Speaker of the Assembly since 1994), arrested in January 2015.
Detroit City Councilor Monica Conyers (wife of U.S. Representative John Conyers), charged and pled guilty in June 2009.
U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson jr, pled guilty in February 2013.
And I can recall at least two additional state representatives (one in Ohio, one in Illinois, both black) who were busted by Obama's Feds.
I don't have any use for Obama, but it's clear that being a Democrat, even a black Democrat, is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.
I like Woodward's analysis. Hillary has lived life in a secrecy bubble for herself while she blackmailed the rest of the DC pols with stolen/borrowed FBI files on their lives.
Karma strikes. Her secrecy bubble has popped. The Biden campaign will start soon as her indictment comes down.
If not, then Putin's buddy The Donald will have all that info just suddenly appear just like the U of East Anglia E-mails that disclosed the CO2 faking the data conspiracy ring suddenly appeared.
Sunsong says
Hillary said : ".........But the important point here is, I had great confidence, because I had worked with Jake Sullivan for years. He is the most meticulous, careful person you could possibly do business with. And he knew exactly what was and wasn't appropriate.
Looks like Jake is available to take the hit
Democrats are deaf and blind when it comes to failures in character of their own heroes. Well not exactly true. Democrats can see the failures as well as anyone, but they absolutely don't give a shit. As David aptly points out, "They seem to think that the right ideology is far more important than character."
Leadership starts with character. Bill Clinton was--is-- a lying, philandering narcissist, and his wife is no different. Both of them think nothing is wrong until you get caught, and when you do get caught, you lie about it. When that lie is proven false, make up another lie. Ad infinitum. In a just world, this should matter, but it doesn't, because Democrats absolutely do not give a shit about character as long as the subject is reading from the approved script.
Laura Ingraham is a political hack. (And no she does not have a prestigious legal background; she clerked with Clarance Thomas for God's sake.)
Who did you clerk with?
Approximately 40,000 people graduate from law school every year. Currently, 37 if them are selected to be Supreme Court clerks every year (4 for Associate Justices, and 5 for the Chief Justice). This roughly works out to anyone getting a SCOTUS clerkship being 1 in a 1,000. (And, yes, I know that many/most of the SCOTUS clerks spent a year clerking elsewhere first, but that doesn't change the numbers).
The next couple months are going to be interesting. The FBI director has a 10 year term, and Dir. James Comey started his term in 2013. He was also a US Attorney and Deputy AG under George W. Bush, which suggests that he is either a Republican, or is sympathetic to such. I would suggest that that means that he is probably not all that sympathetic to Hillary and her plight here, and is probably going to do his job, and let the chips fall where they might. No reason, as yet, to believe that he would kill the case for political reasons. And, I assume that his employees are going to follow his lead. Right now, I expect to see the FBI recommend her prosecution. We shall see.
But, the FBI doesn't prosecute - the DoJ does, or, more accurately I think, a U.S. attorney and their staff. They are, almost inevitably, political creatures, which here means a Democrat loyal to President Obama. Most likely though, the person actually calling the shots there, is AG Loretta Lynch, their boss. But she would, I think, do exactly what her boss, President Obama, wants here. And, that is the question - if the FBI recommends prosecution, what does the DoJ do? Do they turn down prosecution (as they have on a number of fairly clear cut cases - e.g. Lois Lerner) They would get a lot of pushback there, since it would make it very hard to prosecute anyone in the future who mishandled classified information or documents. Which would suggest prosecution probably during the time that Hillary would be running for President. Even if she were acquitted, that would likely lose her the election. I also wonder whether the Clintons had something on Obama - why else give her the Sec. of State job, esp. given her lack of training and qualifications for the job. Which could push things towards non-prosecution. For those last two reasons, I almost expect to see a Presidential pardon of her if the FBI recommends prosecution. I just don't see the President letting her go to trial - there would be a lot of bad blood if that happened, and, esp. if that meant that the Republicans retook the White House this year. We shall see.
Only a racist would claim that clerking for Justice Thomas is not an honor and as prestigious as clerking for any Supreme Court Justice.
The FBI has seen what has been redacted. All of it.
We can assume that Ruusia, China, North Korea and Iran have too. What sort of Foundation info is in her email that President Hillary can be blackmailed with?
We have had leaks. The FBI will refer to DOJ. DOJ will do nothing. Comey resigns. Firestorm. What if Comey gives a long press conference?
People want to know if their President is a crook. That's not complicated at all.
And Laura Ingraham is the best conservative radio person out there. She's a genius.
Sometime in the next 6 months, Hillary Clinton will announce that she’s withdrawing from the Presidential race for reasons of health...
I actually find this credible. I don't think that her health is that good anyway, and wonder if part of the reason that she is running is that a lot of money was collected by she, her husband, and their foundation on the implied assumption that she would run, had the Dem nomination sewed up, and had a decent chance at getting back into the big house. If she has valid health issues (or, they can be made to look valid), then this would be an out for both of the Clintons.
I had also forgotten that there is a definite chance at a bribery indictment. There was just too much money sloshing around, with a lot of it ending in either Bill's pockets, or the coffers of their family trust. Sure, her name wasn't on it at the time, but went on it (along with their daughter's name) once she left office as Sec. of State. The foundation today has her name on it, and that is going to look bad when contributions to the foundation can be, and really have been already, tied to actions taken (or not taken) by the State Department while she was its boss. Sounds pretty much like quid pro quo to me.
""(And no she does not have a prestigious legal background; she clerked with Clarance Thomas for God's sake.)"
Wouldn't that generally be viewed as fairly prestigious?"
I expect the poster feels that Clarence Thomas is sub-human, he is a conservative after all. It is terrible how Obama has polarized this country.
If Scooter Libby could be tried for merely lying about a leak of classified information, I think Hillary at least deserves to face the music in court if the FBI can make the case that she either did cause the leak of classified information or if she lied to investigators. I am uncertain how the public will feel over this - my own gut feeling is that the public already knows most politicians are crooked and discounts accordingly. Also, this is a case that involves e-mail misuse, and I get the feeling most Americans probably think this is some sort of stupid technical violation of one of those long EULA forms everybody says they have read after 5 seconds.
Regardless of criminal actions, the whole mess paints Hillary in a poor light.
We have someone who doesn't get the computer age, isn't smart enough to hire competent people to manage that aspect of things for her, didn't think far enough ahead about the aftermath of her private server and again had nobody on her staff competent enough to spot the potential pitfalls, ran a cover-up worthy of a Three Stooges routine when people started asking questions, and has been unable to put together a consistent story to explain herself since.
As far as I'm concerned, the above tells the public exactly what kind of president Hillary would be - behind the times, short-sighted, incompetent but unwilling to move far enough outside her inner circle to surround herself with competent people, someone who will try to cover things up but won't be good at it, someone afraid of the truth yet incapable of being a good liar.
In any sane political climate, Hillary would not be a serious contender for the Democratic nomination. The fact that there aren't really any serious alternatives other than Bernie Sanders does not speak well of the party. The fact that she still gets north of 40% support in the general election polls does not speak well of the public.
If Hillary is indicted - or to put it another way, if President Obama permits the DOJ to do what it usually does in similar cases and indict her at the least for negligent handling of classified information - then I don't think the public will find it very confusing at all, Juan Williams notwithstanding.
Freeman Hunt - Yes, any Supreme Court clerkship is very prestigious. Only the top 1/10 of 1% of law school grads get them. Even clerkships for weak justices like Blackmun are considered prestigious, let alone one for Justice Thomas whose impact on the Court is large and growing over time.
Will is right about this. Either there will be legal proceedings brought against Clinton or else this just remains one other confusing dispute that will mean something to people who are already well informed and predisposed to vote for or against her, but will not in itself be big reason for the undecideds in purple states to vote for or against her in November. I thought Woodward's explanation sounded like gibberish. I suspect Ingraham is way overstating the turmoil in the FBI over this but, like Will says, we'll see. The NY Times revealed all this server stuff in March 2015. We're about half-way from there to election day.
The ONLY way these people derive their power is from the consent of the governed. When we fail to comply with this, they have no power. Even if they can fool 50%, is that enough for this Republic to continue to function ? I for one no longer think they govern legitimately.
I may not live to see the revolution, but it is coming.
Hillary's best case argument is that she didn't know that what she was doing was illegal, and did not think any leak of those communications would be a national security risk. But if that were the case, it suggests that she either has no one advising her on these things (e.g., not breaking laws, keeping classified information secure), or no one willing to speak up when these things happen, or someone does speak up and she ignores them. None of those possibilities suggest anything good about a future president.
@Rostrum: In other words they are great at indicting black people, asians and the occasional token (Jewish!) white whose egregious acceptance of graft was undeniable.
It is possible that Obama's Justice Department might indict Hillary, but only if under tremendous pressure. I do not expect it to happen, regardless of the merits of the case.
"I don't have any use for Obama, but it's clear that being a Democrat, even a black Democrat, is not a get-out-of-jail-free card."
Unless that black Democrat is Obama, or Holder, or Jarrett, or Rice, or...
If this is as reported, it's a crime. She instructed a subordinate to commit a crime.
I do think the voters care. I do not think this is too abstruse.
The law is pretty simple in this respect. It governs information. However, removing the security classification and retransmitting is specifically criminal.
There are many government employees and contractors with security clearances who know this. This story will not be swept under the rug.
I can't understand this idea that the American people will not understand unless there's an indictment. It's silly. If the FBI recommends an indictment - which would be on hundreds of violations, most likely - Clinton is toast regardless of what DOJ does. Everyone will understand it.
I think one has to believe that eventually, the FBI will recommend a prosecution for HRC, and that the AG will decline. What that portends for HRC's nomination is, at least to me, unknown, because her...brazen behavior seems to have no boundaries and I can see her just trying to fly right through the storm. A last minute Biden pinch hit might happen. I can see that too. It's all just too muddled. I cannot see the Democrat Party allowing either of the two remaining candidates actually representing the party in the election. But a government that shut down a potential for Petraeus to run for office with the somewhat tenuous charges will just have to do something about Hillary and her rather embarrassing flouting of statute, given the Chinese water torture nature of the revelations which promise to go on, and on.....
Regardless of your take on Laura Ingraham's politics, you don't get to clerk for a USSC justice without something on the ball, something special. Denigrating her intellect just marks you as a moron yourself, and unable to respect reality. Ted Cruz and Chuck Schumer are reportedly the two brightest members of the U S Senate, first class minds capable of truly original thought, which should tell us something about intelligence and likability, and maybe how these two choose to use that intelligence. BTW, two of the supposedly dimmest bulbs were John Kerry and Joe Biden. Look where it got them.
MaxedOutMama said...
If this is as reported, it's a crime. She instructed a subordinate to commit a crime.
Is it? ( I'm not defending her, I honestly don't know. ) If she instructed a subordinate to commit a crime, and he followed her instructions, then she is guilty of conspiracy, plus once she received the information she certainly would be guilty of mishandling that.
But what if the subordinate refused to commit the crime? Conspiracy requires some positive act beyond just talk. If the subordinate didn't follow through then I don't think there is a case for conspiracy.
Of course what she attempted to do should disqualify her from public office. And there are certainly plenty of other criminal violations. But legally, I think this one depends on the fax actually being sent. Do we know if that happened?
18 U.S. Code § 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
(c) Whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, receives or obtains or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain from any person, or from any source whatever, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note, of anything connected with the national defense, knowing or having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made, or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this chapter;
I've had security clearances ranging from Secret to TS/SCI for 35 of the last 40 years. If I did what she is accused of doing or what she advocated in that email, at the very least, I'd lose my clearance and my job. At worst, I'd be in jail as a convicted felon. Why should she or anyone else get a break?
One of the pretty lies we like to tell one another is that the US has "equal justice under the law." We all know that's bullshit - the rich and connected seldom have to pay for their crimes because the law only applies to the "little people".
Interesting - it looks more like the bribery investigation is going after Bill for selling pardons as he left office (America, Cut Him Loose.) I still think though that there is enough quid pro quo in Hillary's handling of Bill's and the foundation's contibutors' business for a bribery indictment. We shall see.
Best Bruce Hayden comment ever.
You need a "Why is this woman not in prison?" tag.
The people who elected Barack Obama President of the United States could not care less what laws the Democrats break. The Democratic Party has turned the federal code into a giant Pinata for Democrats. And as long as the little pieces of candy keep falling out, they aren't worried about what is being smashed beyond redemption.
The 3/5ths clause was the slave-holding colonies' price for joining the Union in the first place under the Articles of Confederation and for staying in under the newfangled Constitution.
Without it, they would have been outvoted in Congress and in the Electoral College, so no "Virginian dynasty of presidents."
Even more interesting than the fact that Clinton's being investigated for bribery, is the fact that the opinion piece (Cut Him Loose) was written by Bob Herbert. For just a moment there, my faith in the bottomless cynicism of the Democrat Press wavered. Could Bob Herbert, a hack's hack if ever there was one, actually have a scruple hidden somewhere behind that blotchy visage? But no. It turns out that Clinton is merely past his sell-by date;
"The Clintons may or may not be led away in handcuffs someday. But whatever happens with the criminal investigations, it's time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose. Cold turkey. No more talk about his political genius, his fund-raising prowess, his ability to captivate audiences. He was president for eight years and the bottom line politically is this: For the first time in nearly half a century, the Republican Party controls the presidency and both houses of Congress.
Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing."
He was a good Democrat while he lasted.
Most politicians at least pretend to operate on a standard of "avoid the appearance of impropriety". The Clintons (and Obama really) operate on "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt". For them and their legion of sycophants (some of whom are not in the media), if it's not proven in court and upheld on appeal with cert. denied by the USSC, then it didn't happen. And if a couple of witnesses have to die or flee to non-extradition countries, then that's just bidness. And if you don't agree then you're a racist rethuglican nutbar who hears black helicopters.
Federal ethics laws and rules need to be changed so that married couples are treated as a single legal entity. Same for parents and offspring (unless estranged). The current system is just a joke - on us.
Freeman Hunt said:
"(And no she does not have a prestigious legal background; she clerked with Clarance Thomas for God's sake.)"
Wouldn't that generally be viewed as fairly prestigious?
Actually, the prestigious clerkship is with ClarEnce Thomas. ClarAnce Thomas was a personal injury lawyer in Hoboken.
I thought Woodward's explanation sounded like gibberish.
Trying to defend the indefensible and still keep your credibility as a best-selling author and one of the team that brought down Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate burglary is tough and is a recipe for obtuseness. Also, Woodward has never been a good panelist in those times I’ve seen him on TV. He usually gets way too deep in the weeds with irrelevant details about little of nothing. But his rep ensures he’ll get heard, however disjointed his presentation.
Don't worry. I watched the game.. Very happy our guys won.
Aaron Rodgers sliced and diced. I was happy for him. His injuries are apparently much better these days.
LYNNDH said...
Hagar, you are wrong on Jefferson and the 3/5 "of a person" for slaves. It was done because the South slaves to be counted as a "full person" so that the South would have a greater representation in Congress. Go back to History class.
"Once written, twice" the idiot.
Yes, and while the Constitution was being drafted, Jefferson was our ambassador to France. He did follow what was going on at the Constitutional Convention via correspondence and likely submitted suggestions, but he wasn't a direct participant in drafting the document. Given the weeks (or months) long timeframe it took for correspondence to make a round trip across the Atlantic in the wooden sailing ships of the era, his input would've naturally been quite limited.
Contrary to Will's assertion, it's not that complicated. Most people under the age of 40 know what a server is. The "it's too complicated, let's not talk about it" argument gets trotted out every time someone wants to change the subject.
The story is simple. Hillary Clinton sent and received classified information on a private, unsecured email system housed in a closet in her home. Other people that sent or received or otherwise mishandled classified information have gone to jail.
Why isn't she in jail?
Well..at least she's not...
Satanic
Liar liar pantsuit on fire!
[quote]Without knowing what the email was talking about, who is to say? Hillary knew what was in it and I would give her the benefit of the doubt that she chose the right thing to do.[/quote]
How many lies does someone have to tell before she is no longer given the benefit of the doubt?
I just cannot imagine an Obama AG ever indicting Hillary. I try to form an image of that in my mind and it just does not work. But hey, if it happens, it's good for my candidate, Trump - so bring it on.
On the other hand I can easily imagine a tearful Hillary presser with her withdrawing after Obama holds a potential indictment over her head – such a threat from Obama would be private, not public. But how long will Obama wait until he deals the deathblow to Hillary?
Obama must know that if Trump can so easily shut her up about sexism that she is a fragile candidate.
Someone did break his pledge of confidentiality and sent Jefferson a preliminary draft of the Constitution, and Jefferso wrote back that it appeared to be the most perfect instrument of tyranny he had ever seen.
Of course, this should be taken with a grain of salt, since Jefferson had a way of writing to his correspondents what he thought they wanted to hear.
But he did become the leader of the Anti-Federalists, i.e., the opposition to the Constitution.
"what’s a server? And I think people are kind of unclear about that."
Uhm, if you are from a generation that played MMOs and used a teamspeak server or game server, the term is very familiar to you. Also if you held a white collar job in the last 10-15 years...
That's whats killing Hillary on this - people KNOW what a server is, they deal with them daily, along with the relevant internet security issues. And they know that if they pulled what Hillary did, they would get fired. And maybe arrested too.
George Will channels Sean Penn in his sputtering technophobia. I think in 2016 people know what a server is.
They are also less likely to be BS'd by Hillary's lame excuses on convenience of devices and are aware the State Department under Hillary saved less than 2% of all emails, so the only reason for her rogue server was to give her (a) full control to avoid FOIA or (b) mix dodgy Clinton Foundation pay-to-play solicitations with her official role. Or both.
Either that or she was trading cattle futures like a Boss and needed her own device for that.
George Will: "whats an Iphone? And I think people are kind of unclear about that"
This is nothing new. We already knew that there was something in the classified system that she said to send unclassified. That was apparently a transcript of a speech by José Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, or maybe this is a statement by Tony Blair. (the sources are unclear to me)
Jake Sullivan, at that time, in February 2010, replied that it just wasn't technically possible to do that.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/09/cbs-news-reports-aide-refused-hillary-clinton-demand-to-send-classified-info-to-her-home-brew-server/#!
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/01/msnbcs-joe-scarborough-stunned-by-hillary-clintons-response-to-staffer-who-told-her-he-couldnt-send-her-classified-email/
There were apparently a lot of things that first arrived on the classified system, but really weren't classified at all, except maybe for the names of officials.
She said: “It’s a public statement! Just email it.”
Jake Sullivan replied; “Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can’t even access it.”
There is another e-mail released in August in which Hillary Clinton refers to a statement by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on the idea of a Palestinian state as a means of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as "certainly worthy of being top secret." (Blair had forwarded a copy to the State Department - Hillary wanted to issue a similar statement)
It does get sent it to her after about ten minutes - the version with George Mitchell's edits. That's when she responds that it was certainly worthy of being top secret - the complaint apparently being as to why the whole thing was on the classified system in the first place. It was, because it was all confidential communications.
In the later, just released, e-mail, from June 2011, she's telling him exactly how to send something to her by fax that she wants to see. They are having trouble using the secure fax. She says to cut off all the official markings, and fax it to her nonsecure.
This might be perfectly all right and Hillary was perfectly comfortable saying turn it into nonpaper (meaning non-official paper, without headings) because it was perfectly legal as she understood it, because the underlying material itself was not classified.
The key point there maybe is that somebody seems to have kept secret what that was about. They seem to be talking points on something or other. Talking points are themselves are never released contemporaneously, but everything in them is cleared for release, although it may be that it is not supposed to be attributed to any person.
Will said...1/11/16, 2:07 PM
the State Department under Hillary saved less than 2% of all emails,
That's of course, something Hillary Clinton will be very careful NOT to make clear to as many people as possible.
so the only reason for her rogue server was to give her (a) full control to avoid FOIA or (b) mix dodgy Clinton Foundation pay-to-play solicitations with her official role. Or both.
I think a lot of the reason was the possibility that "dodgy Clinton Foundation pay-to-play solicitations" might appear in her state.gov e-mail, or she might make a mistake and use the wrong system to send something incriminating, so she solved that problem, or Bill Clinton solved that problem, by not having a state.gov address!
Everything was off the record. She didn't have to worry about using the right e-mail address.
Unknown said... 1/10/16, 8:45 PM
This discussion is bizarre. If a serving member of the armed forces treated a classified document in this way he'd be subject to courts martial, a civilian employee of the government would be subject to criminal prosecution.
But she was the boss of the State Department, with authority to declassify anything that originated in the State Department.
This document consisted of "talking points" which are things that can be made public orally, on background, and probably sourced as well.
The document itself might still be classified, but the contents are not, because that is a list of things that the CIA and others involved with intelligence have indicated can be stated publicly. Turning it into non-paper removes all official U.S. government authority for what is in the talking points, as well as any names of anybody who might have signed off on it.
holdfast said... 1/11/16, 10:09 AM
Most politicians at least pretend to operate on a standard of "avoid the appearance of impropriety". The Clintons (and Obama really) operate on "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt".
That's for them, and Democrats in general. For their opponents, or for Republicans in general, it's innocence that has to be "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" once the dots have been connected - and they look for dots to connect, truthfully or falsely. Plausibly or not.
There was nothing more implausible than attributing anything Cheney did to his prior role at Halliburton. He had severed ties and nothing depended on the company - maybe a little depended on its solvency, but it wasn't about to go bankrupt.
The story is simple. Hillary Clinton sent and received classified information on a private, unsecured email system housed in a closet in her home.
Not sure when, but her server apparently ultimately moved to a bathroom in Colorado.
There was another thing that looks really bad.
Hiullary Clinton forwared an email from "Diane Reynolds" - which was Chelsea's Clinton's alias at clintonemail.com - to somebody at the State Department. It was about an outbreak of diarrhea and measles in Haiti.
Then she sent another email saying that by mistake she had forgotten ro delete the original sourcem and the recipient should not forward it any further, and also delete after reading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/us/hillary-clinton-email-state-department.html?_r=0
In January 2010, she admonished two officials not to forward a message she had just sent them, and to “delete after reading” because she had failed to remove the email addresses of the original senders.
The instructions were sent to Rajiv Shah, then the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and Cheryl D. Mills, Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, five minutes after she had forwarded them email messages from her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky. Her daughter had written under the alias Diane Reynolds about an outbreak of diarrhea and measles in Haiti
How can she tell someone to delete an e-mail that arrived at a state.gov address?
It would be one thing to say it was a mistake and not to read it, but reading it surely makes that a government record.
The New York Times doesn't say what the e-mail from Marc Mezvinsky was about, and whether it was that two different officials got two different e-mails, one a piece.
I go back and forth here. She really could be technologically naïve enough that she didn't really understand servers, the Internet, etc. I am a couple years younger than she, but spent 15 during my late 20s and through my 30s writing data communications code, including an attempt in the late 1980s of implementing TCP/IP over X.25. But, there are a lot of people of her generation (and older) who never quite got it. I remember our senior VP and corporate patent counsel having his secretary print out all of his email, and then he would dictate his responses, which she would dutifully key in and send as email. Actually, my next corporate patent counsel wasn't much better. And, these guys were supposed to be tech savvy. Then, when I joined a large firm 6-8 years ago, I found some of the partners younger than I doing the same sort of thing. And, so, I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary were fairly ignorant in terms of modern technology that we all take for granted.
But, then she ruins this when the State Dept. denies FOIA requests because she had all of her emails. With the Clintons, that is just too convenient to be an accident. And, then we find her deleting what she (or, legally, worse, her attorneys) determine to have been private emails. Either she had someone use search terms, or intentionally deleted incriminating emails, or she had uncleared attorneys (and paralegals?) doing the searching. Again, too convenient - for anyone else, government technicians would have done this. Then, there was the shifting story about there not being any classified emails on her server, then there not being any marked as classified, etc. Again, a Clinton too obviously getting caught in their lies. And, now, maybe a smoking gun with her directing a top minion to remove security markings to send classified information to her when they had problems getting it otherwise. This reminds me that she was one of a half dozen or so original classifiers (or whatever they call them) at the time in the Obama Administration, who are required to take extra classes involving data security and secrecy. Which she apparently acknowledged that she had taken. And, where they no doubt discussed why using private email accounts was forbidden. Could she actually be that ignorant and naïve after that?
Which is why my thoughts are right now Hillary's use of a private email system in order to thwart FOIA (etc) was intentional, from the start. Notably though, the FBI has not only what we know, but a lot more information and evidence concerning her tenure at the State Dept, and probably have a much better idea by now whether this was ignorance and naivety or intentional misbehavior.
The source may be considered a bit right wing, but still an interesting article here: FBI Expands Hillary Clinton Investigation to Include Public Corruption.
First, in regards to corruption: Fox News reported:
“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one source said.
The development follows press reports over the past year about the potential overlap of State Department and Clinton Foundation work, and questions over whether donors benefited from their contacts inside the administration.
And, FBI agents with experience investigating cases like Clinton’s are pressing for prosecution.
Inside the FBI, pressure is growing to pursue the case.
One intelligence source told Fox News that FBI agents would be “screaming” if a prosecution is not pursued because “many previous public corruption cases have been made and successfully prosecuted with much less evidence than what is emerging in this investigation.”
The FBI is particularly on edge in the wake of how the case of former CIA Director David Petraeus was handled.
...
It is unclear which of the two lines of inquiry was opened first by the FBI and whether they eventually will be combined and presented before a special grand jury. One intelligence source said the public corruption angle dates back to at least April 2015. On their official website, the FBI lists “public corruption as the FBI’s top criminal priority.”
Fox News is told that about 100 special agents assigned to the investigations also were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, with as many as 50 additional agents on “temporary duty assignment,” or TDY. The request to sign a new NDA could reflect that agents are handling the highly classified material in the emails, or serve as a reminder not to leak about the case, or both.
“The pressure on the lead agents is brutal,” a second source said. “Think of it like a military operation, you might need tanks called in along with infantry.”
Separately, a former high-ranking State Department official emphasized to Fox News that Clinton’s deliberate non-use of her government email address may be increasingly “significant.”
“It is virtually automatic when one comes on board at the State Department to be assigned an email address,” the source said.
“It would have taken an affirmative act not to have one assigned … and it would also mean it was all planned out before she took office. This certainly raises questions about the so-called legal advice she claimed to have received from inside the State Department that what she was doing was proper.”
Sorry - should have used italics to distinguish between what I said and the article said. It looked good before I posted, but Blogger stripped out the leading blanks.
, including an attempt in the late 1980s of implementing TCP/IP over X.25.
LOL! What for? Wouldn't that be like implementing foi gras with bologna?
How many lies does someone have to tell before she is no longer given the benefit of the doubt?
I think that Mark Twain talked about the power of the "second lie" in Tom Sawyer, but who knows about the power of the thousandth lie?
LOL! What for? Wouldn't that be like implementing foi gras with bologna?
We had implemented our own protocol running on top of X.25 for the USDA (X.25 because the USDA had awarded a large X.25 contract to Sprint for replacing what was essentially TTY protocol). That was back when several hundred nodes was a big network, and we had connected several thousand mainframes and minicomputers. We had implemented something similar to FTP to move bulk files between mainframes and minicomputers. It worked well, but was pretty limited, plus, we had to port it to run on maybe a half dozen architectures. The thing that really killed our attempt was our inability to pass X.25 addresses down the protocol stack, and then use that protocol as the link layer. A couple year later, with advances with DNS, it became trivial. But, this was at a time when TCP/IP were running on top of IMPs, and not yet over Ethernet, which also means that DNS was also in its infancy.
"One of the three sources said some FBI agents felt Petraeus was given a slap on the wrist for sharing highly classified information with his mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell, as well as lying to FBI agents about his actions."
Using the IRS to target your political opponents? Meh. Lying to an FBI agent? Now that really pisses our lords and masters in Washington off.
I was watching this as it happened. Somewhere in the discussion Will mentioned that we, the common people out here in flyover country, didn't even know what a server was. Excuse me, Mr. Will, but we are probably all as knowledgeable as you about servers. Most people have email, they know about servers, they know about emails on servers and in the cloud I don't think most people are as dumb as Mr. Will and his co-hort (not on this show) Dr. Krauthammer think they are.
Valerie over at Legal Insurrection (FBI Expands Hillary Clinton Investigation to Include Public Corruption)said: I don’t know how you avoid the appearance of impropriety with an entity such as the Clinton Foundation, when it takes money from foreign donors. They are even more up-front than Donald Trump about expecting a quid pro quo.
My response was:
The interesting thing here is that when they were doing the quid pro quo, while Herself was Sec. of State, it was the Bill Clinton foundation. Now, the name of the foundation includes her name, as well as the name of their daughter. Which means that that is the name that is being used now, and would (I think) likely be the name used at trial. Which means that you have the State Department doing nice things for parties who gave a lot of money to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton foundation. There is a possibility that they could keep her name out of the foundation’s name at trial, but I think it would be hard to keep the tie out. Not that it probably matters, since at the time the quid pro quos were done, he was her husband (and was taking large sums personally from parties with business before her State Department for speaking).
I don’t think that they worked this through, esp. by putting her name on the foundation, and giving her some management duties. Not that it didn’t stink to high heaven before that. But, now, I think that it is too blatant to ignore. What must be kept in mind here is that money is fungible, which ultimately means that her department was doing favors for entities that contributed millions to a foundation that shortly thereafter had her name on it, and she partially controlled.
It should look interesting.
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