Obama pretty much signaled Justice to lay off Hillary
How does he know that national security was not compromised?
That’s my reading of this interview on 60 Minutes (emphasis added).
Steve Kroft: Did you know about Hillary Clinton’s use of private email server–
President Barack Obama: No.
Steve Kroft: –while she was Secretary of State?
President Barack Obama: No.
Steve Kroft: Do you think it posed a national security problem?
President Barack Obama: I don’t think it posed a national security problem. I think that it was a mistake that she has acknowledged and– you know, as a general proposition, when we’re in these offices, we have to be more sensitive and stay as far away from the line as possible when it comes to how we handle information, how we handle our own personal data. And, you know, she made a mistake. She has acknowledged it. I do think that the way it’s been ginned-up is in part because of– in part– because of politics. And I think she’d be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly. But–
* * *
Steve Kroft: This administration has prosecuted people for having classified material on their private computers.
President Barack Obama: Well, I– there’s no doubt that there had been breaches, and these are all a matter of degree. We don’t get an impression that here there was purposely efforts– on– in– to hide something or to squirrel away information. But again, I’m gonna leave it to–
Steve Kroft: If she had come to you.
President Barack Obama: I’m going to leave it to Hillary when she has an interview with you to address all these questions.
How does he know all this? Has he been briefed by the FBI about the investigation? There’s been no indication from those entities that the investigation is concluded.
Note to Obama: The FBI is still investigating whether or not Hillary's email server was a security risk. http://t.co/dl0zCxgHse
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) October 12, 2015
It’s always questionable when a President comments on a pending investigation, precisely because it can been seen as interference.
I think he sent a loud and clear message to the Justice Department — put this one to bed, it’s all politics.
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I don’t think that he is sending a message to them. Sounds to me like he’s just trying to cover all bases. Not a very powerful statement from a President. I would think that he would have sent a message to the Justice Department through other avenues other than through TV.
Last time I checked, FBI Director Comey is pretty independent.
Last time you checked ? where pray tell did you do this check ? you don’t have a clue about any of this … as usual you are just blowing smoke with BS …
Don’t you realize that trying so hard to cover for Obama you’ve turned your mind to mush ? not that it wasn’t halfway there already …
you are a moron and an ignorant one at that …
I’ll post this one again:
I don’t know what you mean “as usual” .. All of my prior comments on this website have shown anger about what Mrs. Clinton did. Go check. I think what she did was criminal. No need to make a personal attack on me.
Agreed. But why dignify that First Lady of the Lowest Order any more than anyone else in public life by referring to her “Mrs. Clinton?”
“Clinton,” will do just fine.
Shrillary or Hitlery are the preferred names.
How is FBI Director Comey is pretty ‘independent?’ Like, he can take the bus by himself?
Come on!
I agree. I read this as he is sending the message to Gowdy to keep going. Sure, we all know it has a political element. What he didn’t give is cover for her. It was more of a “Well, she should have made different choices. And I don’t know if she committed a crime, yet.”
This dovetails with the recent NY Post article saying Hillary went to Barack and demanded he “call of his f***ing dogs!” To which he replied it was out of his hands and she should have made different choices.
Obama wants what Hillary and Bill have- the control of the HUGE money coming into any foundation Obama sets up, his cementing of his legacy and control of the DNC for twenty years. NONE OF THAT can happen if Hillary is elected.
So Obama will make sure she isn’t. His position is she did something wrong, doesn’t know if criminal, but if it is, oh well…
Obama was always going to do this, you can thank that idiot and Boehner’s buttboy, Kevin McCarthy for providing him with cover.
Ok how does he know whether she endangered national security? They are still retrieving her emails!
So why is he opening his mouth?
Since when have facts ever been related to what Obama says?
Once: he said he wanted to create a civilian security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as our military.
Trust him on that one.
As we all know, Heinrich Himmler said the same thing about the SS. Laventri Beria said the same thing about NKVD.
“How does he know that national security was not compromised?”
1. he DOES know it was. Hell, I know it was!
2. he does not give a rat’s ass
3. it doesn’t matter whether it was or not. LAWS were broken. Repeatedly. Often. And callously.
The law criminalizes the mishandling, improper storage, and unauthorized possession of classified information. The law is meant to discourage actions that could lead to actual compromise. Actual compromise is not necessary to violate most laws protecting classified information. Even a lay person (although an informed one, like the gentle readers here) already knows that Hillary has broken several laws regarding the handling, storage, and possession of classified data.
Compromising national security is Barack Obama’s favorite hobby. Even more than golf.
Yes, Hillary Clinton compromised national security. And Obama is grateful for the assist.
Obama is no good at golf. So he picks number 2.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is no good at anything. Not even stealing.
I not so sure she always get away with it !
That’s because, LADY PARTS!
I’m sorry, isn’t this what Obama has to say because he HASN’T been briefed on the investigation? For that matter, to appear aloof and not involved so that if/ when the FBI comes out with something really bad, he can be shocked when he reads about it in the morning newspaper, the same as the rest of us?
He said the controversy is legitimate and Hillary made a mistake. Hardly ringing endorsements.
All b.s., like everything else that comes out of his mouth.
Everyone hates Hillary Clinton, especially Obama. At least we have one thing in common with the traitor-idiot.
The simple answer is that strings are being pulled for Biden to enter the race, and Hillary Clinton to be humiliated. Not very hard to do. Enjoy the show.
I think he’s been briefed on the counter-intelligence/security aspects of the investigation – because he has to be briefed on that, and that what he was told was:
So far, no known damage to national security, i.e., no leaks from the server.
Not exactly “no harm, no foul,” but no known harm (of any consequence.) And he can say that.
[That doesn’t mean that Hillary Clinton wasn’t deliberately harming something related to national security affairs!!]
But merely having this private e-mail – he can say that doesn’t seem to have done anything that anyone should worry about: The server does not appear to have been penetrated; nobody who had custody was a Russian or other foreign spy and so on like that; and there’s no reason to assume anything (of significance anyway) was compromised because it was on that server.
He probably hasn’t been briefed on any legal aspects of this, because he’s not supposed to be, but he still can speak to the (presently assumed) national security consequences.
Obama is saying that it doesn’t actually amount to a national security problem, but still, there was a legitimate reason for having the regulations or standard procedures that she violated. He also claims that she not have any untoward motive.
It’s probably correct that if Hillary Clinton did only what is known – that is, use a private e-mail but not send any messages, either private or government business *, that she otherwise would have been afraid to send – it is probably not a national security issue.
The laws about classified information don’t require that it actually be a problem. What General Petraues did was not that kind of a problem. Saying that there was no attempt to squirrel information is only possible if you assume 1) this was all an accident and 2) nothing would have been revealed to other people if she had done things the proper way. (The Blumenthal e-mails would and could have been sent to her private e-mail address anyway. They weren’t official business.)
* One very logical reason to Hillary to do this, is the possibility she would leave or get an incriminating, or ethically questionable, or politically damaging message on the wrong system, so everything was off the record and on her own private system. Even so, there were things Hillary didn’t e-mail. She often said she would speak on the phone to someone.
I guess the private server is another thing he found out about by watching the news…..just like everyone else.
I become so enraged when people who either know little to nothing about the law pontificate on how a crime was never created or know the law was violated but lie to the public for political reasons. I had a security clearance for many years and I have seen people go to jail for less than what Hillary did.
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What people lose sight of is that Hillary chose to have her own server. This makes her completely and solely responsible for everything on it as well as to whether or not it meets the minimum requirements for storing government records- classified or otherwise. She clearly violated federal record laws as can be seen by treating communications with Blumenthal as private even though they were used time and again as sources of “intelligence”. She also violated secrecy laws by having classified material on an unsecured server for which she was responsible. She was likewise guilty of disseminating classified information to uncleared people when she contracted to have the server backed up by two different companies and the list goes on and on.
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When will the world wake up to the fact that the media is spinning lies, that Hillary is a criminal and that she deserves to be in jail not the oval office? It sickens me the double standard being set and shows the depths of corruption in both the left leaning media and this administration.
“She was likewise guilty of disseminating classified information to uncleared people when she contracted to have the server backed up by two different companies and the list goes on and on.”
Not to mentions leaving copies with her attorneys, and (presumably) using them to determine private v.s. work emails. (On, I’m sure, a pre-filtered set of emails already scrubbed of the most criminal evidence.)
The first filter, of course, was to discuss some things only by voice, in person or over the telephone.
We have an interesting situation: Anything communicated orally is never recorded, but anything communicated in written form, even if it never printed out on paper, is supposed to be preserved – if it is government business.
The person with custody of the e-mail (either as sender or recipient) gets to decide what is a government record.
That’s Hillary’s defense for not including some email. She says, she could have done that anyway by choosing not to send those emails on the government system. Of course, what she did has the added defect of the decision as to what is government email and what is private email not being made contemporaneously.
I think it is quite possible her lawyers found out things that could be incriminating – and then changed the search terms so as to avoid hitting it. She wouldn’t have had to hide that from her lawyers.
And maybe, yes, there were one or two trusted associates who even pre-deleted the very worst things.
That may be why she claimed they were unsolicited. That would establish them as personal communications unrelated to government work. If solicited, it’s probably more of a gray area.
They became government records when she forwarded them to Jake Sullivan, and those she printed out on paper and delivered to the State department.
Trey Gowdy in his letter to Elijah Cummings has a doozy of an example of a violation of secrecy laws. (page 13 referring to an e-mail that Sidney Blumenthal sent to Hillary Clinton on March 18, 2011)
It seems like:
Person A (at the CIA) spoke to Person B (retired CIA employee Tyler Drumheller telling him Top Secret 1 (about how the agency had been reliant on only one kind of source. Possibly they both knew about that source before.)
Person B then told Person C (Sidney Blumenthal) who e-mailed this information to Person D (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) at her private e-mail address, who then forwarded it to Person E (probably Jake Sullivan.)
He told the FBI to continue to ‘investigate’ forever but to take no action since the DoJ will never follow up. But the key point is to present the illusion of an investigation until Joe Biden jumps in the race, or, Obama picks Keith Ellison or Corey Booker to replace him.
This is almost certainly the case.
This makes complete sense if you realize what Obama’s long term intentions are.
Does he have the goods on Hillary? Of course he does, but it is crucial for him to lower the boom on her at the right moment. And that moment is right after she has clinched the nomination, thus forcing her out of the race and creating a DNC convention where an unvetted candidate can be selected from the ashes.
And that unvetted candidate? Michelle Obama.
Despite the MSM’s love of all things Clinton, the Clintons are done in American politics. Hillary is not the chosen one and seems to be rather slow at grasping the concept that the party has moved on from the Clintons. They didn’t have the stroke to get it done in 2008 and they sure as hell don’t have it now. At this point HRC’s political future is not one of self determination. Obama owns all the tools of torture here. Not exhibiting bloodlust for Hillary’s political death during a 60 Minutes piece doesn’t mean those tools aren’t being used. All that’s really left for Hillary is the manner in which she exits.
The Clintons need to figure out a way to salvage their family’s influence peddling business. Current and potential clients are not blind. They have to be discovering that the empress has no clothes. No ROI for investors here. I see a withdrawal due to unforeseen “health concerns” in Hillary’s not to distant future.
I know nothing: President Sgt. Schultz.
The justice dept under O, is corrupt. Unless you’re a republican.
Of course Obama would deny national security has been compromised. To suggest otherwise would reflect badly on him for appointing Clinton to SS. The truth is Hillary compromised national security and has violated numerous laws others have been prosecuted for. I’ve heard the Director of FBI is pretty independent. But we’ll see. I’ve read Hillary is dispised by Jarret and Moochelle. Hence, the hat tip to Joe while the deck is being cleared.
Top law firms across the country should be scooping up these reporters. They ask some tough questions don’t they? They would be like secret weapons dealing with witnesses, and those sharp critical thinking skills would do wonders at direct & cross examination.
And there’s every reason to believe Obama didn’t know it was going on at the time. I mean, would he even agree to this? Why? And not just him – there are other people at the White House, some of whom ruled out letting her put Sidney Blumenthal on the payroll. They knew it violated the rules -or at least everyone’s assumptions as to what the rules were.
Anyone at the White House who corresponded with her probably didn’t know, because she may have set out to fool them by forwarding a copy to a state.gov address (that wasn’t used by her)
That she had no government e-mail address at all would not occur to anyone very readily. It didn’t even occur to the House Committee after they saw some e-mail that came from [email protected].
The State Department – those people who came after Hillary – probably found out about it sometime in 2014.
When Secretary of State, John Kerry or anyone else, told Obama about her exclusive use of a private server is unknown.
The lawyers could easily have seen – and withheld – incriminating evidence in the emails.
They were submitting government records, not criminal evidence, and something can be criminal evidence without being a government record.
And the lawyers had reached some kind of an agreement with the State Department as to what was a government record.
So – suppose somebody sent a email (something like this probably did not happen but let’s say it said) that blatantly said:
“I’ll give $2 million to the Clinton Foundation if matter X is handled satsfactorily”
That wouldn’t be a government record. That would be a private e-mail!!
Or suppose Hillary Clinton forwarded a classified report to Sidney Blumenthal. That’s not a government record. Incriminating maybe, but not a government record.
And it probably wouldn’t be turned up by a supplementary text search because that only looked for words like Libya or Benghazi in the body of the message — not an attachment, at least if it didn’t deal with Libya.
The whole pack of them are a bunch of liars. They should be in prison. They don’t think any LAWS apply to them. Obama’s friend Holder is still calling the Racist shots there.
An interesting take on the interview can be found here:
http://freebeacon.com/politics/heilemann-obama-hung-clinton-out-to-dry-because-he-is-furious-about-her-private-email-server/
From the article:
Halperin and Heilemann later said that Obama’s weak defense of Clinton may indicate whom he would support to be his successor.
“We call that in the political parlance ‘minimal cover,’” Heilemann said.