Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's violation of law differed from former CIA Director David Petraeus, who was convicted last April in federal court in North Carolina. But, the difference is not what her defenders say. What she did was worse, both legally and ethically. Far worse.
When David Petraeus retained his diaries, "black books" after leaving DOD/CIA, and shared them with his paramour, Paula Broadwell, he put the two of them in legal jeopardy. On April 23, Petraeus pled guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or materials under 18 USC §1924. His indictment referenced a far more serious felony violation of his signed security oath, unauthorized release of Top Secret/Special Access Programs (TS/SAP). Had the former CIA Director not plea bargained down, Petraeus could have been prosecuted under the felony statute, 18 USC § 793, Gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information.
When Secretary Clinton set up a private email server the day of her Senate confirmation hearing, and used it exclusively until after her resignation four years later, she never displayed any sort of warning or disclaimer on the system or her messages to caution others that they were communicating on a non-secure, private system. In so doing, she required her aides to use it to communicate with her -- along with hundreds of other federal officials. This caused them all significant risk, and some may now be prosecuted for transmitting classified information across that unauthorized server.
On at least one occasion, she instructed an aide to strip out classified information from a document stamped Secret and send it to her by unsecured email. After examination by the State Department, the server holds at least 100 documents that contained information that was found by other agencies to have been classified as Top Secret or above, TS/SAP.
If the AG decides to prosecute her and/or some of her staff, those found to have transmitted classified information face felony charges under Section 793, which carries with it a potential penalty of ten years imprisonment. See, http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251552653
But, Hillary may hold a Stay Out of Jail Free card that her staff members don't. As Secretary of State, she gets to classify or declassify her own agency's information. She may be able to claim immunity as head of agency for releasing materials that originated with DOS. But, she could not legally permit information that were originally classified by CIA, Department of Defense, or other originating agencies to be placed on her own server. The server she set up and operated was never certified as secure to contain or transmit secret information.
If her aides are prosecuted, and she isn't, it would be incredibly irresponsible and callous of her to benefit from head of agency immunity for herself for the information she posted that would have otherwise been classified at the moment it was written, while her aides go on trial.
What a shitty boss.
Just wait until she's President and thinks she can claim Executive Privilege for everything she does.
Friday, Mar 4, 2016 · 10:07:42 PM +00:00 · leveymg
Prevented from responding to comments. There was only one specific rebuttal, and that pertained to HRC’s instruction to an aide to strip classified information out of a stamped document and by “unsecure” email. The article cited said that the FBI had not been able to determine in that case whether the aide typed in the information after being told to do so. The fact that she instructed the aide to carry out that action has not been refuted.
Monday, Mar 7, 2016 · 1:17:01 PM +00:00 · leveymg
UPDATE: Coincidentally, late Friday evening The Washington Post published an important follow-up on this story. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-on-her-private-server-wrote-104-emails-the-government-says-are-classified/2016/03/05/11e2ee06-dbd6-11e5-81ae-7491b9b9e7df_story.html
For those Hillary supporters here who by reflex action flagged this diary as “fiction” and “uninformed”, I can only say, read it and weep:
Clinton, on her private server, wrote 104 emails the government says are classified
What we learned from Hillary Clinton's emails
Play Video1:56
The State Department released 52,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails as part of a court-ordered process. Here's what else we learned from the publicly released emails. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Hillary Clinton wrote 104 emails that she sent using her private server while secretary of state that the government has since said contain classified information, according to a new Washington Post analysis of Clinton’s publicly released correspondence.
The finding is the first accounting of the Democratic presidential front-runner’s personal role in placing information now considered sensitive into insecure email during her State Department tenure. Clinton’s authorship of dozens of emails now considered classified could complicate her efforts to argue that she never put government secrets at risk.
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