For nearly a year Hillary has been claiming there was no classified information on her unsecured home-based email server. Now that a number of double-secret emails have been found on it, she puts forth two excuses: 1) the information wasn’t so classified when she received it and 2) there’s an ongoing inter-agency dispute over the proper classification.
Even if both are true, Clinton still showed remarkably poor judgment in maintaining so many tens of thousands of emails in Chappaqua. First, as discussed previously, she violated the plain language of the Code of Federal Regulations which, as of 2009, required government officials using a non-government email address to preserve their emails on their agency’s recordkeeping system. Second, as a long-time government insider, she had to know that information is routinely reclassified – sometimes at a higher level. For this reason, even absent 36 CFR 1236.22(b)(Oct 2, 2009), Clinton should have made sure all of her government emails were secured at the State Department.
Shade
Hal
aji chili lover
Bird
This is so much worse than Dems, including you, are willing to admit. Here is a good summary of the issues: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/01/13/hillary_clintons_coming_legal_crisis_129293.html
“The FBI reportedly has assigned some 100 agents full time to the investigation and another 50 temporarily. The bureau would not commit such massive resources unless the initial investigation raised troubling questions of potential criminality.”
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And from here: http://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2016/01/14/two-smoking-guns/
“The obligation of those to whom state secrets have been entrusted to safeguard them is a rare area in which federal criminal prosecutions can be based on the defendant’s negligence. Stated differently, to prosecute Clinton for espionage, the government need not prove that she intended to expose the secrets.”
The author also claims he has ” learned from government sources that the FBI is investigating whether Clinton made any decisions as secretary of state to benefit her family foundation or her husband’s speaking engagement.” He claims “several teams of independent researchers … …have amassed a treasure-trove of documents demonstrating fraud and irregularities in fundraising and expenditures, and they have shown a pattern of favorable State Department treatment of foreign entities coinciding with donations by those entities to the Clinton Foundation and their engaging former President Bill Clinton to give speeches.”
One has to question why it was that Hillary chose to keep her emails off of government servers. One is easy to guess – it thwarted Freedom of Information requests. Was it illegal activities that the Clintons were trying to hide? BTW, the Clinton Foundation has to some extent been used to park and pay Clinton political operatives during the “off-season”.
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Clinton’s Email Evasions
The FBI has plenty to investigate if it wants to get serious. Aug. 6, 2015 7:12 p.m. ET http://www.wsj.com/articles/clintons-email-evasions-1438902775
“The Espionage Act, which is part of the U.S. criminal code, makes it a crime for any government employee, through “gross negligence,” to allow national defense information “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.” Mrs. Clinton’s email on a private server was not in its proper place of custody and was at plenty of risk of being lost or stolen. We also know she edited some of the email that went to State, which means pieces of it have been destroyed. Plenty of government officials have been prosecuted for less.”
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Clinton’s personal email server was vulnerable to hackers October 13, 2015 at 10:17 AM EST
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/clintons-personal-email-server-vulnerable-hackers/
Clinton’s server had Microsoft Remote Desktop installed on it that Microsoft had repeatedly warned was safe only on an internal network, but that was instead exposed to the Internet where it was exposed to multiple easy-to-implement known exploits that potentially gave hackers remote access to Hillary’s entire server . “…in 2012, the State Department had outlawed use of remote-access software for its technology officials to maintain unclassified servers without a waiver. It had banned all instances of remotely connecting to classified servers or servers located overseas. The findings suggest Clinton’s server “violates the most basic network-perimeter security tenets: Don’t expose insecure services to the Internet,” said Justin Harvey, the chief security officer for Fidelis Cybersecurity.”
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Hillary Clinton’s Felony. The federal laws violated by the private server
October 13, 2015 at 10:17 AM EST
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/28/1416309/-Hillary-Clinton-s-Felony-The-federal-laws-violated-by-the-private-server
“Hillary Rodham Clinton has committed a felony. That is apparent from the facts and in the plain-language of the federal statute that prohibits “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information”, 18 U.S. Code § 793(e) and (f). This offense carries a potential penalty of ten years imprisonment. It’s up to prosecutorial discretion by the US Attorney as to what charges may be filed and when. Nonetheless, Mrs. Clinton is clearly chargeable for violation of federal law. As of right now, the matter is under FBI investigation. This isn’t just about violation of Departmental policy.”
What happens if Hillary bows out? The result might not be as good for Bernie as one might initially expect. This is because the primaries and caucuses do not choose all the Democratic Party convention delegates; there is another large class of powerful unelected “superdelegates” that will also be voting at the convention drawn from already established party operatives and officials. Superdelegates are not legally bound to any particular candidate regardless of the results of the primaries and caucuses.
Because of from where superdelegates are drawn, Hillary already has a 15% lead amongst them – even before the first primary or caucus has occurred. In a Nov 2015 AP poll of the superdelegates, Hillary already leads Bernie by 359 to 8 (with 2 for O’Malley)… 210 were not yet committed, and 133 were not surveyed. As you can see, regardless of how things play out, the party has already stacked the deck against Bernie by a substantial amount.
So back to the question of what would happen if Hillary should drop out. While 712 superdelegates represents under a third of the 2,382 total delegates necessary to win the nomination, at this point Bernie would not likely receive their vote even if Hillary does drop out. Instead the likely result would be a backroom brokered convention. Given that scenario, it is likely we would see a party insider like Biden emerge as the candidate, perhaps with Senator Warren as the VP to appease women and the left. Though not my first choice, I do have to admit that this option sounds like an acceptable compromise as opposed to the risk of splitting the party or of forming a third party – either of which could easily lead to a Republican win or a President Bloomberg.
The long and the short of the above? Bernie had better establish himself fast and early as a viable candidate – even if one thinks that Hillary will ultimately be forced by an indictment to bow out. And upon reflection, I realize that Bernie running against a increasingly politically damaged Hillary might actually assist him to attract supporters and thus to get more delegates at the convention than any alternate scenario. The slow drip of unfavorable press against Hillary is taking its toll, and as we move forward it begins to appear that Bernie not directly attacking Hillary re her emails was a brilliant move. But regardless of how things play out for Hillary, Bernie’s best shot at this point is to establish such a convincing string of primary wins that come the July convention, the superdelegates will not dare to put their thumb on the scale for fear of splitting the party. http://www.npr.org/2015/11/13/455812702/clinton-has-45-to-1-superdelegate-advantage-over-sanders
Thanks Shade. As I understand it, the super delegates can always shift allegiance. But I agree that these influential players are not likely to find a Democratic Socialist who wants to return power to the people. In any case, I don’t think the computer issue will end Clinton’s campaign unless/until there’s an indictment or something really obviously wrong is revealed to be on her unsecured home server. Best case for Sanders as you point out is for him to win states early and often.
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