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The allegation is that she was using private email to conduct official government business while she served as Secretary of State (one of the highest-ranking po
by rudolf0 10y ago
The allegation is that she was using private email to conduct official government business while she served as Secretary of State (one of the highest-ranking positions in the government; chief diplomat).
This was likely done to avoid requirements to turn over emails in cases of FOIA requests, or I think a few other conditions. There's supposed to be some degree of transparency in government communications.
By itself, that alone isn't too bad, I think. But the other reason why government officials should use government infrastructure for communications is security.
Messages that were classified after-the-fact (not at the time) were found to have been sent to/from Clinton's private server. I believe some messages that were classified at the time were also there, but were improperly marked, so someone could plausibly claim they did not know they were classified.
EDIT: There were in fact many emails properly marked as classified at the time. Some marked top secret. This definitely demonstrates carelessness. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/286513-fbi-director-clinton-emails-were-marked-and-classified-at-the-time http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/286513-fbi-direc...
Further, after she received a subpoena from the FBI to turn over all emails on her server, 33,000 emails were allegedly deleted. This doesn't necessarily mean anything, but could indicate a cover-up of something shady or even illegal.
For the most part it's just a lot of speculation and character judgment. Even if this second investigation doesn't find anything illegal, it shows someone trying to shield themselves from public scrutiny at best, or potentially trying to cover things up at worst.
- patrickmay 10y ago> This was likely done to avoid requirements to turn over emails in cases of FOIA requests, or I think a few other conditions. There's supposed to be some degree of transparency in government communications. > By itself, that alone isn't too bad, I think. Really? I think it demonstrates clear intent to deliberately avoid a federal law (the FOIA). Clinton appears to value keeping her behavior secret over protecting classified information.
- untog 10y agoThat's certainly not provable, though - she's said she did it so that she could use the device of her choice (Blackberry), not to hide from FOIA. Not sure how easy it would be to establish intent, there.
- patrickmay 10y agoI'd like to see a grand jury get the opportunity to decide.
- untog 10y agoThat's rarely how it works, though. If the prosecution can't find enough evidence to warrant taking the case to court, they won't. The accused being a very famous politician doesn't change that logic.
- rudolf0 10y agoI think avoiding the FOIA is bad (and possibly illegal, if intent is proven?), but not that horrible. The careless handling of classified information is worse, in my opinion.
- trsohmers 10y agoThe FBI reported that 113 emails contained classified information (that should only have been on government controlled servers) that were marked classified at the time of sending. Of the 113, 22 were top secret, again at the time they were sent. The scariest/funniest thing out of all of it is that Comey said that using Gmail would have been more secure. Source: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/286513-fbi-director-clinton-emails-were-marked-and-classified-at-the-time http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/286513-fbi-direc... (Plus you can find the same information from hundreds of other credible news organizations, this was just the one I quickly google'd)
- rudolf0 10y agoApologies, I appear to have been misled from some of the sources I read (like http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/revisiting-clinton-and-classified-information/ http://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/revisiting-clinton-and-clas...). In particular, I wasn't aware there were some top secret emails in there (apparently marked as such?). Apparently some emails were not properly marked, but some clearly were. I've revised my post.
- gragas 10y agofactcheck.org is not a reputable source. Can you think of a site that could possibly be more biased for Hillary than that?
- sanderjd 10y agoSee, this is the rub. If I ask you why you consider factcheck.org more biased than any other site, I won't have any better way to verify the credibility of your evidence than I do to verify the credibility of factcheck.org directly. It wins us nothing but uncertainty! Does anyone have a good algorithm for this problem that does not degenerate at some point to blind faith in some ideology?
- dragonwriter 10y agoOne method would be bypassing intermediate sources like those at issue where the direct source (i.e., the FBI report) is available.