It’s against the law to store classified information on a computer connected to the Internet. Read up on the John Deutch case. He was ready to plead guilty until Mr. Hillary Clinton pardoned him.
When he was pardoned he wasn’t facing jail time though. The Justice Department said a plea bargain was in the works that wouldn’t include it. His lapses also seemed much more serious.
Was it classified at the time she received it? That stuff can be re-classified days/months/years later.
What classified information did Clinton store on her computer?
Her claim is that it wasn’t “marked classified”. Much of it was classified though, as some types of correspondence are classified automatically, such as diplomatic correspondence.
Should still be marked though, right?
A thing cannot be marked before it is written or said. If Clinton has a chat with Vladimir Putin and then tells someone else about that chat, it only gets marked later on. But it’s still classified information.
If it was as simple as classified materials being marked she wouldn’t have needed extensive briefings on what’s classified. They’d just issue a post-it that says, “Dont share stuff that’s marked classified.”
This is correct. No one can simply have classified information on a personal computer connected to the web without security measures to maintain its integrity. And those security measures must be provided via her employer, not some third party, off the shelf security package.
This is true, and is an important question. Retroactively reclassifying something AFTER the fact is wrong, and should not be done to make a case. Fabricating evidence should not be tolerated, and anyone who does so should face charges themselves. However, based on what I’ve read, this is not the case. If we ever get a chance to see what is actually in those emails, she might be in line for real prison time. And she should be held accountable just like anyone else.
Based on HRC’s position at the time, there would be very little that would NOT be at some level of classification if it was a work-related email. Unless all she was doing was making dentist appointments, or sending a note to a friend about something personal (here’s a recipe you should try!) with this account, it would be amazing if she didn’t break the law.
[QUOTE=DSeid;19155567Sanders? Has never been at that level, has never been targeted by the professional oppo teams. What is there that would be used to Swiftboat him? Who knows? But it would all be fresh and his ability to handle that sort of attack has never been tested. [/QUOTE]
As I said in another thread, presumably Hillary has “professional oppo teams” who have examined Sanders’ record with a fine-toothed comb. If there was anything explosive there, they would have used it.
More accurately, if they thought he was a real opponent and not a sparring partner, they’d have used it.
I don’t believe that is true. Sanders is still a senator and a Democratic president will need his votes. If they can win the election without being shit bags to Sanders they are better off.
Exactly. If the Clinton people used something ‘explosive’ (as Thing put it), they’d be accused of–to continue the boxing metaphor–hitting below the belt. And Clinton wants Sanders’ supporters to transfer their support to her if she’s the nominee.
Also: is there any record of HRC having used “anything explosive” about any opponent? Granted, she doesn’t have dozens of political campaigns under her belt–just the two Senate races that she won, and the 2008 Presidential race that she lost. But even so, do we have any evidence that she would be prone to using ‘explosive’ stuff?
She’s probably figuring Trump will provide it all himself.
Pretty much piling on the responses here.
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Something explosive would have been overkill. He never reached a threat that large. There was never any cause to bring such out.
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Indeed you want to be able to end with unity. Avoiding going negative if at all possible places you in the best possible position for the general. Going negative comes with a cost. There was cause to keep whatever you had held in reserve.
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I have no doubt that Team Clinton has their oppo teams but I doubt they do Swiftboat style work like the GOP teams do. There’s oppo and there’s oppo.
From what I understand from campaign books I’ve read, they do gather the data, but the campaigns decide whether or not to use it. According to Game Change, Clinton’s campaign uncovered a lot of stuff that would have been useful towards portraying Obama as “the other” but most of the campaign didn’t want to go there. It should be noted that Clinton herself never made a moral argument about using that kind of material, she just accepted the campaign’s consensus that it was a very bad idea.
Yeah I’ve read likewise over the years, most professionally run campaigns do a ton of opp research on their opponents and Sanders is probably a big enough opponent that this was done, maybe even O’Malley too “just in case” he had gotten a surge. They try to keep pretty good security on this stuff and may even destroy it once it isn’t needed, because if it leaks it can be really damaging later on.
The marking on a document is only one way classified information is protected. “Classified” refers to a category of information, not particular documents.
Example: Suppose Jim is read into a classified program that covers “methods of securing the embassy gate”. Someone will mark classified all the existing documents related to securing the embassy gate, and obviously Jim can’t give those to someone outside the program. But if Jim emails his cousin that he snagged his pants on the hidden row of spikes that protects the gate, then he has mishandled classified information. Whether there was a marked document involved is irrelevant.
Another example: if Jim finds a document describing how to open the gate in an emergency, and the document happens to have been stripped of its classification markings, Jim is still responsible for knowing that the document is classified. If he takes it home in his briefcase, then he has mishandled classified information. In fact, if he doesn’t promptly secure the document and see that it is re-marked then he has…you guessed it…mishandled classified information.
It’s possible that the type of information she stored was retroactively classified, in which case she would not be guilty. But “no marked documents were stored” is not in itself a defense.
Plus she was briefed on what was classified and she knows that classified info is not limited to what is marked as such.
She knows that, she’s just counting on enough people to be stupid, which should insult 100% of Dopers if no one else.
Classification can be more art than science. There are probably news articles in the Washington Post and NY Times every week that contain classified information – emailing those articles could technically be emailing classified info. There are numerous other intricacies that can result in reasonable behavior that could be technical violations, but would never warrant prosecution.
In my career in active duty and civilian work for the Navy, I’ve known dozens of people who have gotten in trouble for mishandling controlled information. None of these cases resulted in prosecution, and the vast majority resulted in a temporary loss of access to controlled information, and a retraining program. It is an incredibly common occurrence. When people say that “regular” folks would go to jail for mishandling classified information, they’re full of shit. In general, only criminal intent leads to prosecution for mishandling classified information. Boneheaded moves just result in retraining, for the most part.
Yep. There will be an ass-chewing (or two) an audit, a report and some additional training.