The FBI is not recommending charges be brought against Hillary. But it’s still pretty damning:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).
None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.
Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
…
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
Can someone who is that careless with the security of our country be trusted in any position of government? Well, I might give consideration to her taking a position of a toilet scrubber in a public park.
So I’m with Hillary! because the FBI said she is NOT a corrupt, lying, thief. She’s just sloppy and incompetent when handling our nation’s most sensitive information!
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000531734&play=1
Banana republic BS
welcome to the banana republic. there is no law, when “law” is not applied evenly or when its plain import is ignored on behalf of “elite persons.”
Read the FBI statement. They claim they reviewed other prosecutions and were unable to find prosecutions where there was no intent to mishandle the material. Even though the law says intent is not required for it to be considered a crime no one was prosecuted unless there was evident it was willful carelessness.
That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have been fired from a lesser job and blacklisted from further government service. But it may mean that she isn’t being given special consideration because of her political position.
They didn’t review them very well, since they didn’t even go a whole year back.
https://www.fbi.gov/sacramento/press-releases/2015/folsom-naval-reservist-is-sentenced-after-pleading-guilty-to-unauthorized-removal-and-retention-of-classified-materials
The result of this is that Trump is going to hammer “rigged rigged rigged rigged” until November, and he will persuade enough people that we will one of two results:
President-elect Trump
or
Civil war.
DING DING DING we have a winner!
That’s not even to speak of the violations of federal records retention laws….
That case is a little different in that he didn’t intend to distribute but he did deliberately store it on unsecured media and unsecured locations. According to the FBI Hillary didn’t do either.
I’m not saying Hillary shouldn’t be prosecuted. It is clear to me that Hillary and her staff did commit criminal acts and even that her acts were probably even of greater consequence than in the case of Nishimura which you linked to. But I haven’t, yet, seen that the FBI has spoken untruthfully about this case.
Bullshit.
We’re talking about mens rea. They both knew what they were doing was against the law. She just didn’t think that she was harming national security with it (if you assume, which I don’t, that she’s that stupid). That was his excuse as well. “I didn’t mean any harm.”
He deliberately stored it on unsecured media. She deliberately stored it on unsecure media (her server hard drive.) There is no difference.
If I read the statement correctly none of the material was marked as classified even though anyone with even cursory training should have known some of the material was considered classified. The material Nishimura stored was marked as such. This blurs the line a significant amount. Hillary apparently claimed she was so stupid or ignorant to know the material was considered classified even if it wasn’t marked. Nishimura would have to had claimed he was unable to read.
Marked or unmarked makes no difference. The law says transmitting classified stuff is illegal. Period. It does NOT say “stuff marked as classified.”
I think Hillary may have over-played her hand. My gut sense is that there will be a major backlash over this, regardless of what the media says. They will be caught flapping their gums on election day and Trumps margin of victory, thinking the change and results came out of nowhere.
They didn’t. They’ve been building for years. The media are just paid to not see it.
I didn’t say the law distinguished between marked or unmarked. Only that the FBI claims previous prosecutions depended on deliberate mishandling versus careless mishandling. If the material was unmarked one can plausibly claim they weren’t paying proper attention to the type of information they put on an unsecure server. If the material was marked then the plausibility argument fails.
I am of the opinion people in high positions should be held to higher standards. Hillary broke the letter and the spirit of the law. People in high positions set examples for those in lower positions. That she gets away with weasel wording her way through a prosecutorial discretionary loophole set a terrible example and encourages those of similar low moral standards to break the law to their advantage as well.
Comey stood there and lied. He knew that they had prosecuted others for the same crime without the supposed “intent”. He basically said in his statement that anyone else but Hillary would be prosecuted.
Since I don’t hold the FBI to any particular regard, I can’t say that the corruption surprised me.
But it does show that Obama has corrupted every single agency and LEO in the Federal government. Something Nixon never dreamed possible.
Even if it’s accurate, the fact that prior prosecutors have not applied the law as written does not justify current prosecutors ignoring the plain words of the law.
This whole mess makes the Lynch/Clinton meeting all the more interesting. Especially since FBI personnel were involved in the attempt to conceal that meeting.
I also wonder if there’s still an investigation about the Clinton Foundation going on.
Finally, interesting:
In other words, a violation of the federal records laws.
Joe, you said none of the material was marked classified. But in Comey’s statement, he says, “For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received.”
I read that to mean they were marked as such.
You are correct. I was working from memory. Even the portion of his statement I quoted says some of the emails bore markings that indicate they were classified.
Sorry about that.
“Can someone who is that careless with the security of our country be trusted in any position of government?”
Congratulations to the FBI, which just joined the “careless with the security of our country” category.
So, if they are not obligated to play by the rules, is there any reason anyone else should be?
“…the only rules are what you can do to them and what you can stop them from doing to you…”
They couldn’t find a case. Damn. Does that mean the first one to break a law gets a free pass?
What’s the statute of limitations on this kind of law?
You can’t be tried twice for the same crime, but a determination by one AG not to prosecute is not a trial. A different AG could find differently.
Assuming, of course, that Hillary doesn’t get elected and whoops, all the records of the investigation were completely coincidentally put into the burn bag.
Of course, if Hillary gets elected, she’s going to be operated like a drone from China and Russia thanks to all the blackmail material they have but we don’t. Also, they could just make up any damned thing they like, and format it, right down to the headers, to look like it came from clintonemail.com and release it through wikileaks. Nice Presidency you have there, Mrs Rodham-Clinton, it’d be a shame if evidence of outright treason came to light that completely fits all available and remaining retained records and some physical evidence uncovered elsewhere…
How do you believe that Crooked Hillary could be blackmailed? If the Russians released video of her sacrificing infants to Molech and then devouring the corpses, not one in a hundred of her supporters would care; and as the corrupt President of a corrupt regime, any prosecutor who dared to make noises about indicting her would suffer an unfortunate accident,
She’s ironically unblackmailable; not because she’s innocent, but because no one who could touch her cares if she’s guilty.
Can someone who is that careless with the security of our country be trusted in any position of government? Well, I might give consideration to her taking a position of a toilet scrubber in a public park.
I wouldn’t.
She’s basically shown a reckless disregard for securing the country’s most sensitive sh!t. No telling what kind of crap would get leaked under her watch.
I don’t understand the FBI’s claim that cases had not been prosecuted.
Is it not the FBI’s job here to determine, officially, if laws were broken, and which ones they were? Why does the FBI care if anyone would take the case, or what chance they might have of winning?
From that perspective, this FBI decision stinks. Having said that, I agree that this outcome – a “no indictment” that even some Democrats believe stinks to high heaven – is much preferable to charges being pressed and then dropped, which otherwise seems reasonably likely.
Hillary must now run for the Presidency as “the unindicted”. Now THAT’S damning with faint praise.
Comey agreed to take the heat off of the corrupt Lynch.
Yes. and he didn’t suffer any unfortunate barbell accidents, swimming accidents, hunting accidents, boating accidents, incidents of food poisoning, heart attacks, suicide by multiple gunshots, fireworks accidents, or inexplicable sharknados. His family is reportedly fine as well.
He did what he knew he had to do.
It’s possible that a President Trump will order something different.
She is guilty as Hell.
Given our corrupt government will not prosecute her, can the Democrats at least acknowledge that she is totally incompetent and unfit to hold any political office?
Except they lack a moral compass. I’m convinced that the Hildabeast could sell state secrets to China while at the same time conducting televised child sacrifices, naked, in the Oval Office, and Democrats would just yawn. The fact that ~50% of voters think she is a viable candidate speaks volumes about them. They are NOT fellow Americans. They are scum, each and every one of them.
Guess that airport meeting went well for our honorable DOJ head.
Will be interesting to see her reward after she leaves .gov
So, did they show Comey that his ex wife would swear he was beating her and sexually abusing their children if he didn’t call off the investigation? That press conference was more startling than the ending to an O. Henry story, or the end of “The Sting”.
It isn’t his brief to say what a prosecutor would or would not do.
And the issue about “marked classified” is what Sherlock Holmes dubbed a red herring. Everything out of the mouth of the Secretary of State has been classified confidential even before it gets transcribed and marked classified ever since Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State for President Washington.
The claim about lack of intent is clearly nonsense, for this reason:
Hillary set up her email server at the start of her term as Sec. of State. She kept it for the duration, presumably as intended. She used it as her only email address.
Could even someone as dishonest as Hillary plausibly claim that she expected to receive or send zero classified email message during her entire term as Secretary? If not, then that establishes intent: she did what she did (set up the server) expecting it to process classified messages.
She knows where the skeletons are, and is willing to offer goodies to loyal supporters. They know they are selling their souls. But now that she got what she wished for, here’s to hoping the backlash is so epic she pulls a Mondale to Trump’s Reagan, and the press is left stuttering worse than O with a broken teleprompter.