This is a win? There aren’t many things that make a candidate disqualified to be President. Mishandling classified information is one of them. And now we have James Comey publicly announcing that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information.
Now she’s running against Donald Trump, so she’ll probably win anyway, but let’s be clear about something here: at this point given her reputation, she wouldn’t beat any other Republican. If the Republicans make a change at the convention, she’ll be down by 10 points within a week. Candidates with 41-55 approval and falling do not win Presidential elections in normal times.
The system is rigged. General Petraeus got in trouble for far less. Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment.
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This was already debunked many times, there is not even a fragment of critical thinking left in the Donald. (the following article from USA Today was from last year)
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*FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem
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And even on this the orangegutan is wrong, according to the reports I saw, the director reported that there was no evidence that her server or emails were accesesed. The main point stands, there was no intention by Clinton or others to willfully give secrets to our enemies.
I don’t know what “right-wingers” think or have rebutted. I find it exasperating that such a large proportion of my ideological allies see this issue (and most others) as nothing more or less than a partisan game.
Speaking for myself as a critic of Clinton on this matter, the idea wasn’t that Clinton would, in the future, ignore the advice of her security experts and set up another insecure private server that houses sensitive information and connect to it with a device she was informed was likely to be hacked by foreign powers. Instead, the idea was that her decision to do so in the past reflected badly on her powers of judgment–i.e., essentially the same conclusion reached by the FBI.
Well, we’re in agreement on one thing. Any Republican who says this was a rigged process is being ridiculous. James Comey has always been above reproach and he handled this professionally. I dare say he should be President.
I wasn’t trying to claim that it’s a valid attack - just that the attacks would continue.
I totally agree with you, if the schedule burned is just a printed copy and there is a permanent copy somewhere. Then it’s a ridiculous charge, and in fact I would expect burn bags to be used exactly for that purpose: to get rid of extra copies of sensitive documents. As you say, it would be a routine procedure.
But… If what was burned was the only record of her schedule it becomes a different issue. The schedules of secretaries of state are permanent records that should not be destroyed.
Trump is an idiot. The clear difference between the cases is that Petraeus intentionally and knowingly gave classified information to someone not cleared to read it. The only thing Hillary was accused of was carelessness.
Note, however, that Comey very specifically said that while what she did may not be indictable as a criminal offence, actions like hers might well have led to other sanctions, such as losing her job, losing her clearances, whatever. In no way did he say that this wasn’t a big deal - he clearly thought it was a very big deal - it just didn’t pass the threshold for a criminal offence.
In the real world, there often isn’t any evidence that a system has been improperly accessed. “Possible” is almost certainly understating things, given the sentences leading to that conclusion.
At various points in my career I have mishandled classified information. So has almost everyone I know who spent any significant amount of time working with classified documents (and this would add up to more than a hundred people).
Mishandling classified information is incredibly common. There is tons of it in every format imaginable, and much of it isn’t properly or clearly marked. There are literally, sometimes, blank sheets of paper lying around marked “Secret”. Do I have to treat blank sheets of paper marked Secret as actually Secret? Do I have to treat an email that says “need more coffee” as Confidential? People who deal with hundreds of classified docs each day are going to screw some of them up, just on volume and exhaustion.
This doesn’t excuse everything Hillary did – she arrogantly dismissed or disregarded guidance and recommendations about how to handle her blackberry and other email issues. But the fact that she and her team sometimes misplaced or mishandled classified material only means that they need retraining, unless there’s evidence that they did so either for profit or for treasonous reasons, and Comey makes it clear that there is no such evidence.
And the Clinton lovers will ignore that Clinton and her crew were ’ extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information’. And that Clinton lied multiple times about it. Continuously. Oh, and the whole ‘It is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s email account.’ bit can now be safely ignored. After all, the FBI is not recommending charges so therefore Hillarys actions were perfectly fine and it is all those evil republicans fault anyway!
One thing I don’t get is the point about ‘clear evidence that Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws…’ bit. The whole Ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance of law excuses no one) bit seems to have disappeared these days.
It is kind of a bummer that one one hand we have Clinton, liar extradorinare, and Trump, pimple on the ass of the world, as the major party candidates. Looks like Gary Johnson is getting my vote*.
Slee
*Did a good job as governor of New Mexico when I was living there.
There are two things at play here, neither involves any special treatment of Clinton.
First, the criminal laws require knowing mishandling. That’s different from requiring knowledge of the law (which is what Ignorantia juris non excusat is about). So if she didn’t understand how this constituted a mishandling, then it’s not a crime, in the same way that if you push a button that kills someone but you had no idea that’s what the button did you would not be guilty of murder.
Second, prosecutorial discretion in this area has been very easy on people as a practice, in part because of the things iiandyiiii talks about. It has generally required mishandling the information for some ill purpose, usually intentionally (as opposed to merely knowingly, which is what the law requires).
These are the core reasons that no one well-informed about the issue thought she would be indicted.
Again, the intention is the key, making a mistake that was already acknowledged is not grounds for disqualification. Specially after seeing the jerkish attempts by many Republicans to make this molehill into a mountain
Wishful thinking again, no, the Republicans are stuck with Trump.
Man, probably most of the computer using people in the world have terrible security practices. It’s not just politics. It’s medical information, banking information, legal papers, corporate security - anything to do with secure files. People check their banks on public computers. People bring home a few case files for reading. People surreptitiously forward stuff to their everyday phone. People take secure laptops on vacation.
People are lazy and always looking for workarounds - even the ones who know better. Hillary got sloppy. That’s bad. It’s not illegal. In fact, it’s common as mud.
The important thing is that State’s IT situation will improve after this. They’re the ones who really dropped the ball here. The SoS doesn’t maintain the IT program. There’s no excuse for the IT people not having a secure phone system in place for the Secretary.
I also suspect there’s some benefit of the doubt for non-poor people built into such laws. The concept of “ignorance of the law is no excuse” seems to apply mainly to crimes committed by poor people.
Obviously, I agree this wasn’t illegal and have said that from the beginning. But I think this defense of her judgment is unpersuasive for two reasons. First, she was Secretary of State of the United States. That should cause a reasonable person to be more careful than when you do some private banking in a Starbucks. And second, she was specifically and individually advised that her practices were likely to lead to a foreign government spying on her. She acknowledged this. But continued anyway.
There is an excuse. She asked for it and was denied because it would be prohibitively expensive.
That said, I agree that we should find the money. But that doesn’t excuse just ignoring the problem before Congress found the money.
(And, I think worse than the private phone issue is the fact that our diplomats don’t have access to secure channels at night or on holidays. That is a real scandal, and I suspect the GOP bears a large part of the blame for why we haven’t spent money on it.)
