Hillary Clinton email megathread

[Torie]

Yes, I really do at this point think the email issue is a sword of Damocles hanging over her. And although I know nothing out IT, my impression is that the FBI, with its forensic tools, will be able to recover the deleted emails now that it has her computer in hand. If they do, then the issue is if and when they are disclosed (and of course what is in them). But even absent that, given about 10% of the emails reviewed were classified, and 5% top secret, more of those will be uncovered.

Keep an eye on Biden.

[Torie]

If it is found that she handled classified e-mail on her dot-com server (as appears to be unavoidable to me), she will surely face charges for violating Federal law.  I think she should end her campaign now and focus her energy on defending herself.  Also, she could provide a credible Democrat with time to organize an effective campaign.

Do you really think Obama's AG will go after Clinton in a serious way?

The problem for Hillary is the FBI that is doing the actual investigation with subpoena power, which is pretty insulated from political pressures. If it is clear she has been lying and covering up as the evidence emerges, it's rather irrelevant whether or not she is prosecuted.

[Torie]

So far, it appears most responders don't view Clinton's mishandling of classified information to be a serious matter.  Whether the average voter cares or not, mishandling classified information is a crime that Federal employees must acknowledge when they accept a security clearance.  I believe the penalty is a $10,000 fine, 5 years in prison, or both.

If the 10% rate of classified material that the IG reportedly found in the first forty e-mails checked continues, the AG would be hard pressed not to prosecute.  Even if they just strike a plea bargain (likely for her to have no further access to classified material ever), how is she supposed to continue forward as a credible candidate?  (And, if you think about it, how would the government be able to prosecute or penalize others who breech classified information if they don't go after her?)  

Sure, the 40% of hard-core Democratic voters won't care, but a solid majority will take note and she will be mercilessly hammered for this during what is turning out to be a 15 month campaign   I'm not a Democrat and won't likely vote for whoever might run in her place, be it Warren, Biden, Cuomo, or even Webb.  But I can't believe it is too late for a strong candidate to emerge to take her place.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/08/12/clinton_campaign_seeks_to_calm_supporters_about_emails_127750.html

My prediction: her defense is going to be that someone else screwed up, and she had no idea there was all that classified information on her server.  And it'll play well enough that the only people who will care will be people who would never vote for her in the first place.

That will be hard to believe if a bunch of the emails were top secret, and if you or I viewed them, we would know that they are top secret (e.g., very high resolution satellite photos of Iran's nuke facilities or something). Then she is left saying that she didn't read those emails, or read them, but thought since she didn't send them it was not necessary to take some action, or that she just had really bad judgment. And this is all after she said she was confident nothing was secret on her server. And that still leaves open the matter of the potential recovery of her deleted emails. Apparently if not recoverable, that means some IT expert took extraordinary measures to make them unrecoverable (all for chit chat about Chelsea's wedding and such - really?). That won't look too good either.  

[Torie]

There is a newer topic on this matter that future comments should perhaps be placed in:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=217446.0

We could ask Morden to merge this thread into mine, and perhaps rename my thread the Hillary email mega-thread perhaps. If you like that idea, I will PM Morden suggesting it.

[Torie]

I may as well throw this one on Hillary's potential funeral pyre. The punch line, as I suggested elsewhere, is that even if the DOJ is politicized, and it was (whether it still is as much, or whether Obama would still his neck out for Hillary, remains to be seen), the CIA and FBI investigations will box the DOJ in, and if there were serious security leaks, Congress one way or another is going to find out about it. Drip, drip, drip. And in the meantime, how will Hillary be able to face the press, when all it will be interested in, is hammering her about all her inconsistent statements about the emails?  It is just not good enough for her spokespeople to just tell her financial donors that Everything is GoinG to Be OK (EGGBOK). In fact many of them might begin to think that it is not going to be OK at all absent a major course correction, and she needs to come clean with everything, and soon, or they will cut bait before it is too late.

[Torie]

This is starting to remind me of the countless "Is Obama DOOMED?" threads from 2008.

Who did Obama beat again to secure the Dem nomination? Are you on board the EGGBOK express BRTD?

[Torie]

This is starting to remind me of the countless "Is Obama DOOMED?" threads from 2008.

Who did Obama beat again to secure the Dem nomination?

And that's relevant exactly how?

I was being snarky honey.

[Torie]

This is starting to remind me of the countless "Is Obama DOOMED?" threads from 2008.

Who did Obama beat again to secure the Dem nomination? Are you on board the EGGBOK express BRTD?

Eggbok?

Didn't know of that definition, which is two words. See my post above on this page for mine.

[Torie]

Well, it's nice that the Dem primary now has the potential to be a chaotic as the Pub primary. Maybe this election will get as interesting as the one in 1968, which if a novel, would be dismissed as absurd.

[Torie]

Here is this morning's morsel of Dem insider hand wringing (the article uses the language panic mode) over Hillary to savor with your coffee and Danish.

[Torie]

It appears per the NY Times that some of the emails deleted by team Hillary will likely be recovered. Also of interest is determining whether the emails were captured by hackers. So there is some hope that if Hillary was trying to cover stuff up, we shall find out what it was. Hillary seems to be rapidly losing control of this situation.

"Computer experts said it was likely that F.B.I. technicians would be able to recover from the server at least some of Mrs. Clinton’s deleted personal emails.

"In addition, specially trained cybersecurity investigators will seek to determine whether Russian, Chinese or other hackers breached the account or tried to transfer any of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, including those containing the classified information, several officials said."

[Torie]

The degree to which some Democrats go "there's no story here!" based on pure partisanship is distressing. Clinton was a Cabinet official and this is an offense any anonymous mid-level bureaucrat would be fired for. The degree to which rules everyone else has to follow get regularly flouted by the Clintons is appalling and I hope this is finally the story that nails these vipers.

I don't know if there's no story but there's no likely effect on the election. This won't keep her form being nominated or, come the general election, rank high on the list of voters' concerns. As others here are saying, this fits the pattern of the GOP outrage machine pouncing on what they think will be a politically fatal scandal that ends up not mattering.

It sort of depends on how the facts evolve doesn't it? Anyway, Hillary has taken a hit in the polls, and certainly here on this Forum, at least for the moment. And when two thirds of the independent voters say they don't trust her (so said a Fox News poll of yesterday), that's a problem. Those voters are the least likely to return to base as it were, because they aren't part of a base.

[Torie]

The degree to which some Democrats go "there's no story here!" based on pure partisanship is distressing. Clinton was a Cabinet official and this is an offense any anonymous mid-level bureaucrat would be fired for. The degree to which rules everyone else has to follow get regularly flouted by the Clintons is appalling and I hope this is finally the story that nails these vipers.

I don't know if there's no story but there's no likely effect on the election. This won't keep her form being nominated or, come the general election, rank high on the list of voters' concerns. As others here are saying, this fits the pattern of the GOP outrage machine pouncing on what they think will be a politically fatal scandal that ends up not mattering.

It sort of depends on how the facts evolve doesn't it? Anyway, Hillary has taken a hit in the polls, and certainly here on this Forum, at least for the moment. And when two thirds of the independent voters say they don't trust her (so said a Fox News poll of yesterday), that's a problem. Those voters are the least likely to return to base as it were, because they aren't part of a base.

Yeah, just like working class whites would never vote for Obama after the Wright saga.

Oh wait...

Was there some poll at some point, with numbers stating that a large majority of independents did not trust Obama as a consequence of doing things that appeared to be untrustworthy px? I mean, perhaps comparing apples to apples, rather than apples to chopped liver, might be a bit more apropos here, don't you think?

Again, I know futilely, I suggest that perhaps waiting for the facts to emerge over time, might be wise, before jumping to any definitive conclusions here.

[Torie]

Interesting revelations. Hillary was claiming all along that nothing she originally sent was classified even though it may have become so later on. I suppose that no longer holds:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/21/us-usa-election-clinton-emails-idUSKCN0QQ0BW20150821

Hillary is in deep, deep trouble. Thus the Biden meeting with Warren. It's rather unbelievable, but I put the odds at close to 50-50 now that Hillary will drop out. That is because the odds must be approaching that, that at some point she will be indicted, and that her lawyers are going to begin telling her that.

[Torie]

Hillary is in deep, deep trouble. Thus the Biden meeting with Warren. It's rather unbelievable, but I put the odds at close to 50-50 now that Hillary will drop out. That is because the odds must be approaching that, that at some point she will be indicted, and that her lawyers are going to begin telling her that.

Hillary's supporters must be sweating bullets after Torie's prediction. He is after all well known for his objective and felicitous analysis.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=179457.0

How many times have you linked that post? Anyway, the play is not yet done on Obamacare, as the premium increases roll in, but yes, it has worked better than I thought, and I do agree with its basic intent, that everybody needs medical care - everybody.

Anyway, when I put odds at about 50-50, no matter what happens, my "prediction" is not all that bad.  Clever of me, no?

Do you think Hillary is in any legal trouble px? Instead of putting folks down, why don't you enter into the brave new world, of actually offering something up that is new and interesting out of your mind? Just a suggestion.

Congrats on using the word "felicitous." Grand word, isn't it?

[Torie]

While this story (from an admittedly partisan source) is about the Hillary emails, what I found interesting about it, is nothing to do with Hillary's legal and veracity travails emanating from it all, but rather it is about her management style. And it's not good. She wants praise, not honest give and take, and folks around her with the guts to tell her when she's screwing up. Good managers want folks around them that are smarter than themselves, and not afraid to tell their boss when they're wrong. That's just not Hillary.

Anyway, I suspect Hillary will be dropping out before the season gets too far along, so it is more likely than not a moot issue.

[Torie]

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/042f508d2f5a4c9e806b9900e0fc7c77/so-far-legal-experts-see-no-criminal-trouble-clinton

Experts in government secrecy law see almost no possibility of criminal action against Hillary Clinton or her top aides in connection with now-classified information sent over unsecure email while she was secretary of state, based on the public evidence thus far.

Some Republicans, including leading GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, have called Clinton's actions criminal and compared her situation to that of David Petraeus, the former CIA director who was prosecuted after giving top secret information to his paramour. Others have cited the case of another past CIA chief, John Deutch, who took highly classified material home.

But in both of those cases, no one disputed that the information was highly classified and in many cases top secret. Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor; Deutch was pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

By contrast, there is no evidence of emails stored in Hillary Clinton's private server bearing classified markings. State Department officials say they don't believe that emails she sent or received included material classified at the time. And even if other government officials dispute that assertion, it is extremely difficult to prove anyone knowingly mishandled secrets.

"How can you be on notice if there are no markings?" said Leslie McAdoo, a lawyer who frequently handles security-clearance cases.

How can Hillary not know that high resolution satellite photographs are not highly classified? That is the problem with those arguing she has no criminal exposure - that she had no knowledge of the secrecy of the content. Some of the content suggests that such knowledge should be imputed to her. The documents are per se classified, and don't need to be stamped. I don't think the law says the material needs to be stamped as an element of the crime. The former prosecutor who is an admitted Hillary donor does the best she can, but she is being an advocate for her here, and sliding over Hillary's vulnerabilities.

[Torie]

Emailgate news of the day. CIA and GSIA say Hillary's email server had "top secret" material on it. This special investigation finding is in accord with the finding by the inspector general for the intelligence agencies that the emails contained highly classified information when Mrs. Clinton received them. The State Department and the Hillary campaign disagree with the findings of the other three agencies.

[Torie]

This is rather big news. Apparently, Hillary's server was not professionally wiped clean. Rathe, the emails Hillary deemed personal were just deleted in the ordinary course, in the way you or I would do it. That means they are probably recoverable, and we will find out whether there were emails deleted that were in fact not personal, but rather related to government business.

If a lot of emails are government related, and many embarrassing, then it will be hard for Hillary to claim it was just inadvertent error that some emails were deleted that should not have been. In fact, it will confirm that she is a liar. On the other hand, if the deleted emails are in fact personal, or just a few were government related, and not embarrassing, suggesting inadvertent error, then she will get a new lease on political life. So a lot rides on how this one turns out - a huge amount in fact.

It is odd that team Hillary has been stonewalling on this one. Why didn't they say long ago that there was no professional wipe, but ordinary deletion, that looks far less sinister? It suggests that team Hillary really did not want to clarify that the deleted emails would be relatively easy to recover. Which sort of suggests that there is some worry about what might be found there.

We shall see.

[Torie]

This is rather big news. Apparently, Hillary's server was not professionally wiped clean. Rathe, the emails Hillary deemed personal were just deleted in the ordinary course, in the way you or I would do it. That means they are probably recoverable, and we will find out whether there were emails deleted that were in fact not personal, but rather related to government business.

If a lot of emails are government related, and many embarrassing, then it will be hard for Hillary to claim it was just inadvertent error that some emails were deleted that should not have been. In fact, it will confirm that she is a liar. On the other hand, if the deleted emails are in fact personal, or just a few were government related, and not embarrassing, suggesting inadvertent error, then she will get a new lease on political life. So a lot rides on how this one turns out - a huge amount in fact.

It is odd that team Hillary has been stonewalling on this one. Why didn't they say long ago that there was no professional wipe, but ordinary deletion, that looks far less sinister? It suggests that team Hillary really did not want to clarify that the deleted emails would be relatively easy to recover. Which sort of suggests that there is some worry about what might be found there.

We shall see.

I think you're missing the most likely scenario.

I typed the scenario out, so it is not as if I missed it. But then, Hillary not stating there was no professional wipe, and she has nothing to hide, and looks forward to that being demonstrated, really makes no sense to me. Why would she have stonewalled when asked that question?

[Torie]

Not sure what to make of this, but the NY Post allegedly quotes an unnamed Hillary legal advisor as saying it's time for her to lawyer up, because she is so legally vulnerable, but that Hillary is in denial. The article says that the investigation is moving along quickly, and should be finished by the end of the year.

[Torie]

Not a fan of Ed Klein I see. You think he made it all up?

[Torie]

FWIW, Fox News claims a source told them the FBI is focusing on whether Hillary committed gross negligence or not (pushing the fact pattern into the criminal zone), with obstruction of justice also on the radar screen.

[Torie]

Check out her guffaws.  http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/257214-clinton-cracks-up-over-question-about-fbi-investigation-into-email

What is she conveying?

Is she telling us this is so silly; a right-wing extremist crusade?

Is she asking him to come up with an original question?

Is she laughing because she doesn't want to cry in public as she is very afraid that she is heading to jail?

Other possibilities are too numerous to mention.

She is losing it.

Stay classy [deleted].

You see any irony at all in your post, px?

[Torie]

Check out her guffaws.  http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/257214-clinton-cracks-up-over-question-about-fbi-investigation-into-email

What is she conveying?

Is she telling us this is so silly; a right-wing extremist crusade?

Is she asking him to come up with an original question?

Is she laughing because she doesn't want to cry in public as she is very afraid that she is heading to jail?

Other possibilities are too numerous to mention.

She is losing it.

Stay classy [deleted].

You see any irony at all in your post, px?

No.

IC. You are most probably going to get infracted for it.