From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:
There Is ‘No Doubt’ Hillary Violated Federal Law on Classified Information
Maybe Hillary Clinton won’t skate after all. To hear former NSA officer John R. Schindler tell it, the facts of her wrongdoing aren’t really in dispute anymore:
What, then, does all this means for Hillary? There is no doubt that she, or someone on her State Department staff, violated federal law by putting TOP SECRET//SI information on an unclassified system. That it was Hillary’s private, offsite server makes the case even worse from a security viewpoint. Claims that they “didn’t know” such information was highly classified do not hold water and are irrelevant. It strains belief that anybody with clearances didn’t recognize that NSA information, which is loaded with classification markings, was signals intelligence, or SIGINT. It’s possible that the classified information found in Clinton’s email trove wasn’t marked as such. But if that classification notice was omitted, it wasn’t the U.S. intelligence community that took such markings away. Moreover, anybody holding security clearances has already assumed the responsibility for handling it properly.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had no authority to disseminate IC information on her own, neither could she make it less highly classified (a process termed “downgrading” in the spy trade) without asking IC permission first.
We’re now getting an open admission that government business was done from private accounts:
The 2016 Democratic front-runner on Monday told a federal judge that Abedin — long considered her boss’s keeper and even dubbed her “shadow” — had her own email account on Clinton’s now infamous home-brewed server, “which was used at times for government business,” Clinton acknowledged. That’s an unusual arrangement, even for top brass at the State Department.
Abedin had been granted “special government employee” status, allowing her to work both for Clinton and the private sector — and it’s unclear if she continued using the server that appears to have held classified information following her departure from her full-time State gig.
Abedin’s “special government employee” status, enabling her to function both as Clinton’s right-hand woman at State and as a consultant to private firm Teneo Holdings seems like one the biggest, loudest, flashing-neon-sign conflict-of-interest in the history of government. Why did she get that special status? Other than the fact that she and Hillary really wanted her to have it.
Our Brendan Bordelon has more on Abedin’s troubles – for example, I had completely missed this:
On July 31, Grassley exposed the State Department inspector general’s finding that Abedin owed $9,858 to the government for unauthorized vacations and leaves of absence. Abedin’s lawyers dispute the claim, saying she was working even while on vacation in Italy and during her maternity leave. The probe, which Grassley says may be criminal in nature, is ongoing.
Here’s Slate’s Jamelle Bouie:
Among Democrats? She’ll be fine. But if some start to rethink her electability, I won’t blame them. The press distrusts Clinton and holds her to a different standard than other politicians, while Republicans just despise her. Given that, she should have used her official email account, as a way to prepare for the worst and avoid undue scrutiny. Put differently, the choice to use a private email account was an obvious blunder with consequences that have marred her campaign, even if they don’t ever end it.
Finally, our Charlie Cooke asks, why are so many people greeting a prosecution of Hillary Clinton for this as utterly unthinkable? Doesn’t that attitude an effective endorsement of the idea that she’s above the law?
Perhaps it’s because of the surreal question, “If Hillary Clinton went to prison, would the Secret Service protect her there?”