Hillary Email Problems Not Going Away
The latest in EmailGate
Not only are Hillary’s favorability ratings tanking, but her email woes don’t appear to be dissipating anytime soon.
Here’s the latest:
“Email” defines Hillary Clinton
A Gallup word cloud published Wednesday is probably not what Mrs. Clinton was hoping to see.
Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has offered specific positions on a variety of issues while campaigning. But when Gallup recently asked Americans to say what they recall reading or hearing about her, one word — “email” — drowned out everything else.
Gallup also notes that substance is not what voters, Democrat and Republican alike, associate with Mrs. Clinton.
In the verbatim responses from about 750 U.S. adults familiar enough with Clinton to offer an opinion of her, the word “email” came up 329 times, phrased variously as “email,” “emails,” “email scandal,” “email scandals,” “that email thing,” “email stuff” and “private emails.” Relatedly, there were 83 mentions of “server.” All of these refer to the controversy involving Clinton’s use of private email servers to conduct government business while she was secretary of state.
By contrast, there were few mentions of the substantive themes Clinton has talked about on the campaign trail. For example, “economy” appeared on the list only four times, the same number as for “the middle class.” “Gun control” appeared seven times, with even fewer mentions of “college” and “capital gains tax.” Even the catchall descriptions “policy” or “policies” were mentioned just nine times.
Republicans’ responses were overwhelmingly negative toward Clinton, and Republicans were especially likely to refer to the email issue in negative terms. Republicans also tended to mention “Benghazi,” referring to questions about how Clinton handled security for the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya after the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in a terrorist attack in 2012.
Even when the responses of the 279 Democrats and Democratic leaners surveyed are isolated in a word map, “email” trumps everything else.
State Department asked Hillary to destroy all classified emails
Thursday, Judicial Watch released documents obtained by from the Obama administration that reveal a weird State Department request. Evidently, the DOS asked Clinton to delete classified emails.
Judicial Watch today released Obama administration correspondence containing a letter from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy asking Hillary Clinton’s lawyer to destroy all electronic copies of a classified email found in records Clinton decided to turn over to the State Department six months before. Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, rejected the request as Congress and other investigators had demanded electronic records be preserved. The correspondence also shows Hillary Clinton has ignored a demand to turn over all electronic copies of the approximately 55,000 pages of emails she previously returned in paper form. The correspondence was disclosed by the State and Justice Departments in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in which Judicial Watch is asking a court to issue a preservation order to protect any emails Clinton has yet to turn over, including those emails in which she and her lawyers unilaterally determined to be personal. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (1:12-cv-02034))
The May 22, 2015, letter from Kennedy to Clinton attorney Kendall reads in part:
I am writing in reference to the following e-mail that is among the approximately 55,000 pages that were identified as potential federal records and produced on behalf of former Secretary Clinton to the Depa1tment of State on December 5, 2014: E-mail forwarded by Jacob Sullivan to Secretary Clinton on November 18, 2012 at 8:44 pm (Subject: Fw: FYI- Report of arrests -possible Benghazi connection).
Please be advised that today the above referenced e-mail, which previously was unclassified, has been classified as “Secret” pursuant to Section 1.7(d) of Executive Order 13526 in connection with a review and release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In order to safeguard and protect the classified information, I ask – consistent with my letter to you dated March 23 2015 – that you, Secretary Clinton and others assisting her in responding to congressional and related inquiries coordinate in taking the steps set forth below. A copy of the document as redacted under the FOIA is attached to assist you in your search.
****Once you have made the electronic copy of the documents for the Department, please locate any electronic copies of the above-referenced classified document in your possession. If you locate any electronic copies, please delete them. Additionally, once you have done that, please empty your “Deleted Items” folder.
Clinton lawyer suddenly has a problem with deleting Hillary’s emails
Amazing how this preservation conviction comes and goes. Politico reports:
Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney balked at the State Department’s first effort to erase a newly-classified email from the thumb drive containing about 30,000 messages she turned over to her former agency, according to just-released correspondence.
Clinton lawyer David Kendall said deleting the now-secret message could run afoul of promises he previously made to the House Benghazi committee and two inspectors general to preserve electronic copies of all Clinton’s work-related message from her tenure as secretary of state.
“I have responded to each preservation request by confirming to the requestor that I would take reasonable steps to preserve the 55,000 pages of former Secretary Clinton’s emails in their present electronic form,” Kendall wrote to Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy on June 15. “I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete, as you request, the above-referenced email from the master copies of the [Microsoft Outlook] PST file that we are preserving.”
The letters shed more light on the unusual arrangement State eventually set up to allow Kendall to hold classified information in his law office. The set-up — which has been questioned by Senate Republicans and private attorneys who’ve not received similar approval — involved installing a safe in the office of one of Kendall’s colleagues at D.C. law firm Williams and Connolly.
Kendall’s rebuff of State’s initial request came in response to a May 22 letter from Kennedy that noted a November 2012 email about arrests in Libya possibly related to the Benghazi attacks “which previously had been unclassified, has been classified as ‘Secret.'”
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Comments
Thus, the sycophant Establishment Media has their job laid-out for them…
For Grandma, make the big words smaller and the small words bigger…
For Trump, exactly that same…
Lets see if they are up to the task, shall we?
thats the ticket … take a shot at Trump in EVERY comment … lets see if that works out for you … moron …
I believe MJN was indicating that “word clouds” are maps that can be followed by the MSN to both revive Clinton’s candidacy and to destroy Trump’s. He was not advocating for Hillary nor against Trump, but condemning the media for its interference with the electoral process.
What about traitor or treason or firing squad? My choices.
‘If you locate any electronic copies, please delete them. Additionally, once you have done that, please empty your “Deleted Items” folder.”‘
Another senior-level government officer who doesn’t understand how an operating system and its file management works. This process will not actually remove a file from a drive.
Which is good as that will make convicting him for violating the Espionage Act so much easier.
“I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete, as you request, the above-referenced email from the master copies of the [Microsoft Outlook] PST file that we are preserving.”
DING DING DING! Kendall did have a PST file of Hillary’s mailbox. That means that the metadata for all of the emails on the thumb drive is still intact.
The $64,000 question is, whether the PST is a copy of her mailbox before they cleaned up the personal mail or after.
OK, boys and girls, let’s review.
“…Judicial Watch today released Obama administration correspondence containing a letter from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy asking Hillary Clinton’s lawyer to destroy all electronic copies of a classified email found in records Clinton decided to turn over to the State Department six months before.
…The May 22, 2015, letter from Kennedy to Clinton attorney Kendall reads in part:
‘Please be advised that today the above referenced e-mail, which previously was unclassified, has been classified as “Secret” pursuant to Section 1.7(d) of Executive Order 13526 in connection with a review and release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In order to safeguard and protect the classified information…'”
Basically, Kennedy is admitting that Clinton, and now by extension the DoS and the Obama administration which is taing ownership of this scandal, did not safeguard and protect classified information. But just to cover all the bases, here’s how Section 1.7(d) of that E.O. begins:
“(d) Information that has not previously been disclosed to the public under proper authority may be classified or reclassified after an agency has received a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552)…”
But it has been released to the public. If it hadn’t been, then Kennedy wouldn’t be asking an attorney in private practice to cover his @$$ for him. If it hadn’t been released to the public it would be on a State Dept. email system and the attorney in private practice wouldn’t have access to them. And cleared State Dept. personnel would be reviewing the documents for classified information on an information system appropriate for such review.
Recall the June letter from the Inspectors General for the Dept. of State and the Intelligence Community recommending that the FOIA reviewers use a system authorized to process Top Secret information. Private law firms do not have such IT systems.
There are a ton of people without security clearances who would have had access to those emails once Hillary Clinton and her minions put all of it on an unclassified, non-governmental, public internet-based email system. The horse has left the barn, ladies and gentlemen, at this point.
This is an interesting letter as it incriminates Kennedy. You can ignore the empty words that make it appear Kennedy is interested in protecting and safeguarding classified information. If that were the case he wouldn’t be asking Kendall to destroy the classified. The State Dept. would have seized whatever thumb drives or other potential classified information might be in this attorney-in-private-practice’s possession. Including every single piece of office IT equipment because, folks, once you put classified information on a private computer that computer is now government property. Just like the classified information is government property, which you have compromised by doing so.
Then Kennedy would notify his own security and intelligence professionals to begin a damage assessments. Such as establishing a chain of custody. There has already been a great deal of reporting, some of it emanating from Kendall himself, that uncleared office assistants reviewed those emails not for classified but to determine if the emails were purely private in nature. And are we supposed to believe that only the two high-priced attorneys (Kendall and another lawyer named Thomason, I believe) at that firm printed off those 55,000 emails and boxed them up and kept custody of those boxes of emails while they were shipped from their office to the State Dept.?
Kennedy’s failure to secure the classified information within government facilities and government systems where it belongs indicate he is only interested in destroying the evidence that this classified escaped into the wild, and he’s trying to obstruct any investigation into the matter.
How is Kendall not guilty of violating this statute?
18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
(f)Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
This classified information is not in its proper place of custody. It has been delivered to an unauthorized person in violation of Hillary Clinton’s trust. Just because Kendall and another attorney at the office have clearances does not mean they are authorized access to the information Clinton gave them.
The formula is clearance + need to know = access. The attorneys had no need to know. Authorized government personnel determine that, not former Secretary of State turned private citizen Clinton.
Kennedy is writing this letter because he is aware of all the above, yet is deliberately avoiding taking any of the actions necessary to comply with the law.
There is a reason this is not going to go away. The question no longer isn’t did Hillary Clinton break the law. Actually it never was if you’re familiar with this sort of thing. It’s how many laws were broken and by how many people.
Actually the law says Kennedy should have notified his superior officer, who is John Kerry. And then Kerry should have taken those steps necessary to bring that classified information back into government control and begin the investigation.
Did Kennedy notify Kerry? And if so what did Kerry do about it?
The other attorney at the firm who along with Kendall had a clearance is Kathleen Turner. I say had because their clearances should have been suspended while this matter is under investigation. That’s how it works when these matters involve mere mortals.
Ante the IGs wrote their letter instructing the State Dept. to conduct the FOIA review on a TS codeword system on 23 July 2015.
There is just so much about this that is really, really hinky. We could end up seeing everyone around Clinton such as Pagliano, Abedin, Miller, Sullivan, Kennedy, and Kendall (possibly his partner Turner) under criminal investigation. Yet Hillary Clinton would continue to play both dumb passive victim AND the most highly qualified presidential candidate EVAH, David Brock would keep calling this a bunch of nothing burgers, and Democratic loyalists would still vote for her.
Too many agencies and people are now involved, so it is a group grope full of misunderstandings and poor communications. As a classification expert, I claim Hillary knew of her illegal acts of convenience and, when caught, proceeded immediately to use language in her “defense” that would both confuse non-experts while making it possible “to defend in court” that specific language. This approach was/is very impressive and clever. I doubt that the FBI has been fooled by this trick, so I am simply waiting for them to find a way to bring charges against Hillary and for Obama to “pardon” her as he thanks her for her service. -Technidigm
Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton the classification system just isn’t complicated. It costs a lot of money to do the Single Scope Background Investigation required before one can get a TS/SCI clearance. And 20 year old Army, Navy, Air Force, etc., intelligence specialists (among others) have them. And the intel community doesn’t want to trip anyone up with a complicated system of rules.
It’s all pretty straight forward. For instance, there were two E.O.s issued numbered 13526 on 29 December 2009. The first was titled Classified National Security Information. The second implemented section 1.3 of the first and was titled Original Classification Authority (OCA). It designated Hillary Clinton by title as the OCA for the State Dept.
An OCA can not only recognize classified information whether its marked or not. An OCA is responsible for marking that classified information appropriately in the first place.
Which blows her defense that she didn’t send or receive any information that was marked classified. That doesn’t matter in any case. But as an OCA, in Hillary Clinton’s case it’s an added indictment.
An OCA goes through a six step process to decide how classified information should be marked. The first step is, has another OCA already made that determination? If so that ends the matter.
So her attempted defense that agencies are always arguing over whether or not or how highly information should be classified also blows up. If she gets information from CIA or DoD and it’s already classified there is no argument. The Dept. of State doesn’t get to second guess another OCA.
It’s not complicated. Teenagers can and do understand it. Maybe one of them should be President instead of this demented old woman.
Excellent post! Previous original classifiers in DOS would of course include perhaps previous secretaries, but such authority can and often is delegated to underlings. The classification determinations of original classifiers are collected into guides for derivative classifiers and derivative declassifiers to use in applying classification markings to new documents, even to emails. Typically, an original classifier does not get to review new documents and apply the markings. They just get to determine what specific information is to be protected and for how long as well as what level. That only applies to National Security Information (NSI), of which Foreign Government Information is a part, but FGI falls outside the authority of the original classifier since such information always has to be protected in accordance with the markings/wishes of the foreign government involved. Without a pardon, she should get the 10 years and not presidential campaign. With the pardon, no jail time but no presidential campaign, either. Thanks for the comment. ———- Technidigm
The gentlemen at Power Line helpfully remind us that Obama doesn’t need to wait for the FBI to finish their investigation to know he needs to pardon Hillary Clinton. He might as well do it now as we know she, not her underlings or her flunkey lawyers, committed crimes.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/form-sf-312-and-its-potential-consequences-for-hillary-clinton.php
Good thoughts. I think they are all holding their breath waiting for the FBI’s document review (which includes many referrals to several other agencies) to conclude. The FBI task is a mixed bag since they have to try to minimize damage to national security, which is likely in conflict with prosecuting Hillary. I suspect Hillary realizes that the FBI is between a rock and a TS hard place on this, so her best bet is to play dumb and play the victim who has done “everything possible” to straighten all of this out since “day one”. She has so far done everything possible to obfuscate the crimes without saying things that can be used against her in court. Every time she says her emails “contained no classified or marked DOCUMENTS” she AVOIDS saying her emails “contained no classified INFORMATION”. She knows she cannot say the latter and defend it in court. She can say the former since not only is it true, but it is actually the PROBLEM! The INFORMATION in her emails was often classified and SHOULD HAVE been reviewed and MARKED as classified DOCUMENTS, but first all of that should have been on a CLASSIFIED server and properly protected. The world of classification recognizes the difference between information and how that information is transmitted, which is often in DOCUMENTS, which must be formally reviewed to see if they contain classified INFORMATION that needs to be protected, and if so must then be marked as to their classification level and duration of classification from the date of the document.
The lawyer understands it is one thing for her to do stupid stuff and a completely different thing WHEN HE IS LIABLE.