White House Confirms ‘Criminal Investigation’ Into Hillary Clinton Emails
Makes you wonder how they will spin this and if Sanders will jump on it.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest labeled the investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails as “criminal.”
“That’s why the president, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference,” Earnest said.
Fox News had asked Earnest if President Barack Obama’s endorsement for Clinton for president “might apply pressure to investigators assigned” to her case.
But Clinton, now the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, called the investigation a “security review.” She discussed it on the Today show with Matt Lauer:
“Do you think the FBI and the Justice Department write you a letter and say it was a misunderstanding? We’re sorry, carry on?” Lauer said.
“Well, we’re certainly going to carry on. I think it’s a security review,” Clinton said. “It is a security review and there are lots of those that are conducted in our government all the time and you don’t hear about most of them. You hear about this one because, you know, it does involve me, so that’s why it gets so much attention.”
But FBI Director James Comey said the FBI only conducts investigations:
“I don’t even know what that means, a ‘security inquiry.’ We do investigations here at the FBI,” Comey told Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, reiterating Clinton will not be receiving any kind of special treatment.
Herridge further noted “security inquiry” is an unknown term to the Director.
Despite this, her website states the departments “made a security referral” and the investigation is “not criminal in nature.” Clinton told Fox News on Wednesday she will not face an indictment.
Obama released his endorsement for Clinton yesterday after he met with her opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders at the White House. Clinton declared a victory in the Democratic primary on Tuesday after she won primaries in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota. The Associated Press announced she clinched after she captured the Puerto Rico primary, which propelled her to 2,383 delegates.
Clinton has insisted over and over she did not do anything wrong by using her personal email address when she served as secretary of state. Former State Department watchdog Howard Krongard shot down her claims that her predecessors also used their own emails along with an inspector general report.
The IG report, issued on May 25, found that Rice never once used a personal email address to conduct state business. Colin Powell used his personal email address “on a limited basis to connect with people outside the department.” He also informed and “worked with the State Department to secure the system.”
Clinton never asked for approval from senior State Department officials. The IG showed confidence that no one would have given approval.
The May 25 report found numerous violations during Clinton’s term:
“At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department issues before leaving government service,” says an audit by the State Department Inspector General, obtained by NBC News.
“Because she did not do so, she did not comply with the [State] Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”
The inspector general also lashed out at the State Department:
The report broadly criticized the State Department as well, saying that officials had been “slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks” that emerged in the era of emails, particularly those of senior officials like Mrs. Clinton.
It said that “longstanding systemic weaknesses” in handling electronic records went “well beyond the tenure of any one secretary of state” but the body of the report focused on the 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton sent and received on her private server.
Federal law says everyone must preserve all government records. Clinton claims she did this because the majority of the “emails were sent to people the State Department system.” But the inspector general countered her claim by saying “sending emails from a personal account to other employees at their Department accounts is not an appropriate method of preserving any such emails that would constitute a federal record.”
I wonder how Sanders and his supporters will address this slip of the tongue from Earnest. Last month, supporters told The New York Times they hope the FBI will eliminate Clinton from the race due to her email scandal. Supporter Julie Crowell does not understand why there are no rules that forbids people under criminal investigations from running for president. A few have even said they will vote for presumptive GOP candidate Donald Trump.
In March, Professor Jacobsen mentioned that Sanders has chosen to only stay in the race because of the emails.
Sanders said he will work with Clinton to make sure Trump does not win in November. He also said he will continue to campaign through the DC primary and the Democrat National Convention.
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Comments
“I wonder how Sanders and his supporters will address this slip of the tongue from Earnest.”
They won’t. They don’t hate Hillary because she lies a lot or because she’s corrupt. They hate her because she’s not far enough to the left (believe it or not!).
Nothing to see here. Obama endorsed Hillary. Obama runs the Attorney General’s office. There will be no prosecution. End of story.
It’s sad. I don’t expect anything to come from it, but the only way this would be a major national security breach would be because Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, had numerous officials at the State Department that ought to have known better to illegally declassify material and then send it to her by unsecure means so that she’d have plausible deniability. If Hillary’s guilty, a dozen other people are guilty too. There’s no scenario where it’s just Hillary Clinton who made a “mistake”. It’s all or nothing.
But I can’t believe there’ll be a prosecution, even if the case is there, and even against the lower officials, no matter how much the NSA and CIA scream behind the scenes.
Some pigs are more equal that others
This is a Yuuuuge potential problem.
Imagine the chaos if the President—the Commander-in-Chief—cannot legally receive confidential or secret intelligence. It would be unprofessional and, more importantly, illegal for anyone in any of America’s 100+ intelligence agencies and bureaus to give such information to someone they believe (or, in this case, know) to be a security risk.
And as for the “nuclear football”, who’s going to be fool enough to give Hillary the codes? Nobody; because they know that if Hillary knows them, so will every farmer in Romania with an Internet connection. America’s nuclear deterrent will be rendered useless. And the Russians, the Chinese, the Persians, and even the Norks are all certainly sharp enough to realize it.
For this reason alone—her complete inability (or unwillingness) to grasp the elementary fundamentals of security—Hillary simply cannot be President.
There you go spouting off logic and stuff again. Remember, the Dims and their voters DO NOT GIVE A FUCK about the rule of law, national security, or any of those other pesky concepts that you care about. All they care about is POWER.
Hillary could kick a puppy through the uprights at the Superbowl halftime show and her supporters would still love her.
A little thing like 22 compromised Top Secret messages, each of which could cause grave damage to national security (according to our government) is nothing to the kind of people that are supporting Hillary. It’s free stuff! FREE STUFF! Who cares?
And they ask me why I drink.
It’s almost 5pm on Friday, what are you having?
The talking point there is that those 22 apparently mostly involved the CIA sending information to State about drone strikes n Pakistan. While the Paki military was fine with such, many of the people there were not, and so the drone strikes had a political/foreign relations aspect. So, State got into the decision loop, and if it was over a weekend, they couldn’t be expected to drive to work just to see the emails with the information about a pending strike, so were routinely sent to personal email accounts.
Left out was that we are mostly probably talking about Hillary and her closest minions balking and whining at restrictions the CIA was putting on the information they were being forced to share. The CIA would likely tell them to just drive into work to read the email – they would.
any regular person would have been in federal prison months, if not years, ago.
I wonder what our friends who work in the intelligence community thinks about what Hillary has done?
Hint they know if they did the same thing the FBI swat team would be making an unannounced visit to seize all electronics that have memory. They would be arrested and a very high bail would be set if any. Beyond poor judgement, it’s criminal.
Hillary = liar dishonest untrustworthy
And actually Josh didn’t say what Mary claims. All he said was that any criminal investigation should be immune from politics, not that this specific case was one.
And more bad news for Clinton: “How Clinton Donor Got on Sensitive Intelligence Board”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clinton-donor-sensitive-intelligence-board/story?id=39710624
Yes, it’s a Friday dump. But in a mainstream outlet.
The Criminal party endorsing each other.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
If Comey recommends indictment and the politicos at DOJ refuse, his public disclosure (and or resignation) would create a Nixonian crisis. Kinda fitting since this lying lawyer was dismissed from the Impeachment team for her transgressions
So in other words, Hillary is going to the White House or the Big House.
Guess which one I think is more appropriate…
All is going to plan. All the news comes after she locks up the nomination but before the convention. She will be indicted. She will withdraw. She will get a pardon in exchange for bankrolling the campaign from the Clinton foundation slush fund. Who’s campaign will she finance? Michelle obama’s.