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Comment by x0x0

9 years ago

What laws regarding handling classified information were broken?

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0330-mcmanus-clin...

21 comments

x0x0

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at-fates-hands  9 years ago

Here are the two obvious one, and another one that's well. . . more in the vein of the Clinton's being the Clinton's IMHO.

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/03/264655-3-federal-laws-hillar...

- Executive Order 13526 and 18 U.S.C Sec. 793(f) of the federal code make it unlawful to send of store classified information on personal email.

- Section 1236.22 of the 2009 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requirements states that:

“Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record keeping system.”

- MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell believes that the use of a personal emails server appears to be a preemptive move, specifically designed to circumvent FOIA:

  • x0x0  9 years ago

    Nothing that links to the daily caller is a serious news source.

    Plus the article is a pile of stupid innuendo that conflates what Hillary did with Petraeus providing contemporaneously classified documents to his journalist fuckbuddy.

    Further, clearly nobody in government had a contemporaneous problem with it since they saw the email address every time they communicated with Hillary Clinton. Whenever they sent her an email, they saw

       Hillary Clinton <hdr22@clintonemail.com>

    show up in the email composition window, which certainly cannot be mistaken for a state department email...

    • zaroth  9 years ago

      In the just released state department report, there are several instances where staff complained about Clinton's use of a private server, and they were told that she had permission to do it and never to mention it again. In fact, no permission was ever sought or given.

      IT staff reported issues with clintonemail going to SPAM folders and insisted Clinton use her .gov account, and she refused. IT staff further complained of security issues with her email server and were ignored.

      It is simply not the case that no one had a problem with it. Many people did, and they were told to pound sand.

    • rue  9 years ago

      My email client just shows the name…

      And in any case, “nobody complained about it” isn’t actually a valid legal defense.

    • Brendinooo  9 years ago

      Ad hominem?

      Sure, news sources can be biased and we should be discerning when we look at them, but that doesn't automatically mean that the source is automatically wrong 100% of the time.

      1 reply →

gormo2  9 years ago

It's quite possible the law discussed in that article was broken. The author lists the three cases of relevance: (1) whether Clinton knew she was putting classified information into an unclassified system, (2) did she willfully communicate classified information to anyone not authorized to receive it, and (3) did she remove classified information with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location. None of those are settled yet. The headline that "Hillary Clinton didn't break the law" is an opinion, not settled. The author is only citing what Clinton's aides and one government lawyer have said -- those are far from unbiased or conclusive. And after the state department IG's report from yesterday, it is pretty clear the violation was intentional.

  • argonaut  9 years ago

    And the article lists various reasons why none of those would likely apply to her.

    The IG's report only shows incompetence on her part, not criminal intent.

    • spb  9 years ago

      The IG's report is basically just ass-covering by the Department of State, iterating her violations of protocol so that it doesn't look like they were completely incapable of recognizing things that the FBI is about to bring to light.

      The criminal intent part is the FBI's job, and will likely apply, at the very least, to things like Clinton's attempt to delete thousands of messages before handing over the server (messages the FBI was able to obtain anyway due to offsite backups, going by the extrapolations observed and detailed on http://www.thompsontimeline.com/).

      Even if she's not found guilty of violating any major law, this kind of obstruction of justice alone is in a class of behavior we impeached her husband over. I imagine the FBI doesn't take kindly to the people they're investigating putting the bureau through hassles like this.

      1 reply →

    • gormo2  9 years ago

      >And the article lists various reasons why none of those would likely apply to her.

      I guess we have different definitions of "likely" since the only reasons given are:

      (1) Clinton and her aides have insisted that she didn't. They say none of her emails included material that was marked as classified at the time.

      (2) She says she didn't, and there's no known evidence that she did.

      (3) "If all she was doing was exchanging emails with her staff, I don't think they can prove that she had the intent to retain anything," a former top government lawyer told me.

      Like I said, those are hardly unbiased or definitive assessments. Clinton and her aides have every reason to say that there was no wrongdoing. The government lawyer quoted even says "If" acknowledging that it is an assumption. As for the IG report, if it had said the violation was minor and mostly because of regulations implemented only after she left office, which had been claimed before, then it would be looking really good for her. As it stands, there is still an FBI investigation looming.

      6 replies →

slantedview  9 years ago

It depends your perspective and who you ask. The State Department was directed to draft regulations, as is common, as the result of law. The State Department says that Clinton broke those regulations. By extension, it could be argued that she broke the law.