My apologies for dredging this up again. I only check this forum once every few weeks, and GuitarStv is a guy I like and I'm really not trying to get into an internet fight here. Really I'm not.
You seem to be arguing that since the emails didn't have "TOP SECRET" stamped across them there's no problem with discussing top secret materials in them? I don't agree with that read at all. That would make in impossible to keep matters of national security secret.
My take is that the emails weren't top secret documents by any reasonable standard, and that this was all a load of crap. I guess I'll explain.
But let's grant this anyway. To assume that these were "classified documents", it requires that the whole email stream becomes "classified" the second someone blabs something something classified.
Yes. When people who have security clearance are emailing discussions of matters of national security . . . that certainly does mean that the emails become classified.
Fair enough in theoretical terms. Moving on...
But not a single one of them was marked as classified. In fact, there weren't even any classified markings in any of them; just a tiny handful that had "confidential" markings, which Comey falsely claimed were actual classification markings. The entire case is that the Secretary of State was at fault for being CCed on an email that might have technically had classified information, or something.
That's not true.
https://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-fbi-report-classified-markings-2016-9 - Three of the email chains were clearly marked as classified before they were sent. In her defense, Clinton claimed ignorance - saying that she didn't know what the classified marking on the emails meant.
This turned out to be incorrect.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/08/hillary-clintons-claim-that-zero-emails-were-marked-classified/"Clinton, in her tweet, suggests none of her emails were marked classified. That’s technically correct. Whether those emails contained classified information was a major focus of the investigation, but a review of the recent investigations, including new information obtained by the Fact Checker, shows Clinton has good reason for making a distinction with Trump."
Technically correct is a
kind of correct, I think.
But to be scrup-fair, this all comes down to whether the "classified" markings were classifications or were "confidential" markings. I don't want to nitpick these things, but since you seem to think that there were massive matters of national security at stake, I suppose the specific markings have to matter.
Recall that there were two servers, one that actually had to do with matters of national security, and then the other one that was for normal jibber-jabber, which is what Clinton's server dealt with. Some of her interlocutors on, I think in a few occasions out of tens of thousands of emails, put a (C) to indicate that some statements were confidential (or classified if you really insist). Her excuse was that this looked entirely like they were just putting subheadings on things, like (A), (B), and so on. That sounds entirely reasonable. You know why? Because none of it had any serious security implications, and if it did, everyone knew to put it on the other email stream.
The denouement of all of this found that some of her staff were sloppy and shouldn't have discussed those things on those handful of email threads. That was the extent of it.
If you look at page HRSC-20 of the FBI report (https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/Hillary%20R.%20Clinton%20Part%2001/view) you'll note that it indicates that at the time it was completed, at least 68 of the emails were still considered classified. Can you provide a source for your claim that every document on the email server had been retroactively declassified?
As noted already in the article that I linked to, every single thing that her staff was made testify about had already been declassified (remember, the entire issue is what her staff talked about on the email stream, not her). Can I prove that every "document" that ever passed through her server was declassified? Of course not.
As mentioned in the article you linked:
The review did not encompass a separate collection of emails that Clinton’s lawyers withheld from the State Department and that she later destroyed, saying they were private and did not pertain to government business — a determination that was not verified by State Department officials.
That would seem pretty fishy coming from Donald Trump's team, I think it's fair to say it's pretty fishy coming from Clinton as well.
This is where it gets really weird. A person can have their own personal email conversations, perhaps? If it wasn't part of official State Department email, then who cares? So it was on the same server. Being on the same server is...neither here nor there. And yes, Donald Trump in an analogous situation would have every right to privacy of his emails too, and could delete them off his server, if he had one.
FWIW, I don't hold any ill will towards Hilary Clinton, and think she would have made a far better president than Trump.
Clinton was Secretary of State to the US. She is an intelligent woman and had significant security training in this area. I think it's fair to say that she made a mistake in judgement setting up this private server to handle emails used for government business.
Do I think it was done for nefarious purposes? No. Do I think that the lapse is as big as what happened at in Trump's basement? Again, definitely not. But I think it's reasonable to argue that there were certainly mistakes made on Clinton's side and there's some valid reason for concern.
Agreed. She shouldn't have done it regardless of the triviality of it. It
could have been a security issue, and that's not okay.
