Via the Wall Street Journal:
An internal government review found that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent at least four emails from her personal account containing classified information during her time heading the State Department.
In a letter to members of Congress on Thursday, the inspector general of the intelligence community concluded that Mrs. Clinton’s email contains material from the intelligence community that should have been considered “secret”—the second-highest level of classification—at the time it was sent. A copy of the letter to Congress was provided to The Wall Street Journal by a spokeswoman for the inspector general.
As a result of the findings, the inspector general referred the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence division. An official with the Department of Justice said Friday that it had received a referral to open an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information.
There has been a back-and-forth about whether the IG referral called for a “criminal” investigation or not. The Justice Department originally said it was a criminal referral, then backtracked. No matter — it’s the political, not the legal, problems that will be most damaging. And there’s no reason to expect that we won’t be hearing much more about this. Note:
The inspector general reviewed just a small sample totaling about 40 emails in Mrs. Clinton’s inbox—meaning that many more in the trove of more than 30,000 may contain potentially confidential, secret or top-secret information.
At that rate, we can expect 3,000-plus emails containing classified information. The sheer volume would suggest that the State Department’s protestations —
“To our knowledge, none of them needed to be classified at the time,” said Mark Toner, a department spokesman. Mr. Toner acknowledged that the department had determined that many of her emails now contained classified information but believed it was unclassified at the time.
— are unlikely to stand up. And a spokeswoman for the IG stated that the emails “were classified when they were sent and are classified now.”
With Hillary’s “trust/distrust” numbers already enormously lopsided in at least three swing states — Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia — these revelations are particularly timely. Undecided voters would do well to note what Madam Secretary said at her Emailgate presser in March:
I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.
Well. This is awkward.