Additionally, if someone puts in a FOIA request having a non-government agent controlling the email makes the situation messy. People found out about Clintons email because a FOIA request was submitted and approved and State came back and said there was no email. Those records should be available for FOIA requests. If the politician is using a private server the situation becomes very fucked up, like having the politicians lawyers pinky swear that all the emails were provided.
Next, those emails were work product. Work product belongs to the employer, not the employee.
Last, it is government policy that government employees use government email unless there is an emergency and no other option works.
Did you read anything about the Clinton email situation? This was all covered.
Slee
Some argued that States email security sucks. It does. However, Clintons was worse. So that excuse goes flying out the window.
Thanks for the explanation - makes a bit more sense. I live in Australia and none of that stuff was covered - we just got “People angry at Hilary Clinton something something private email server” and “People angry at Hilary Clinton something something she lied something something”.
she was part of the impeachment group and researched procedures of impeachmentregarding the Watergate burglary. What hair would like to split on this that changes my point?
I don’t know how any of this plays out with the Executive branch, but I know a number of congressional staffers. As I understand it, working for (and being) a member of Congress involves a fair amount of political and/or campaigning activity. As I understand the rules, such activity cannot be conducted with official government resources.
So every congressional staffer that I know has a “personal” email account for political/campaign business and an official account for official business. They’re also not supposed to campaign during their “official” time, but I’m not sure how that actually works in practice.
It is necessary for White House staff to also be involved in Trump 2020 or RNC activities? Probably not. But it’s going to be pretty common. The point is, of course, that not only are they allowed to do that activity on their personal accounts, they’re probably required to. (Although I question whether a RNC account is really a “personal account”).
That is not true. I wish people would stop claiming that inadvertent loss of control of classified material is a criminal offense. It happens literally hundreds of times every year. It is not criminal. It is a very serious matter and the people responsible suffer serious consequences, but it is not criminal.
There are two things being discussed here:
A leak of classified material: the deliberate release of material known to be classified to people who do not have a suitable clearance and need to know. If the leaker gets paid for it and/or the recipient is a foreign government-that is espionage and even more serious. A leak will result in criminal charges. It however requires that the leaker knew the material was classified and deliberately gave it to someone not authorized.
A spill of classified material: the accidental or careless loss of control of classified material. If one forgets and leaves a classified document unsecured overnight, or says something that is classified in 'mixed" company, that is a violation of security regulations. People being people, it happens 100’s of times every year. It never results in criminal charges. It is an accident. The consequences of this accident are severe-the person who spilled the classified material usually loses their clearance. That almost always means the loss of a career.
Clinton is guilty of a spill. She is not guilty of a leak. She suffered the consequences of a spill. In fact, the system worked exactly as designed. People who are elected or appointed to government positions requiring access to classified material are not given clearances-it would not do for some bureaucrat in the OMB to say, sorry Mr. X can’t assume his elected position because i decided he isn’t eligible for a clearance. What does and should happen is that the people appointing Mr. X to the office, either another elected official or the senate or the electorate, is supposed to decide, based on information provided, that the person shouldn’t get the job. That in fact is, to everyone’s surprise, exactly what happened.
As the FBI confirmed no one ever goes to jail for a spill. The penalties are severe enough.
Now, if Clinton had attached a document marked as classified to an email, or cut and pasted a statement marked as classified (every paragraph in a classified document is supposed to be marked (U), (C), (S) etc.), and sent through a non-secured server, regardless of whether the server was a .com server or a .gov server on the unclassified network, that would have been a leak and a crime. The FBI concluded that didn’t happen. They also concluded that she was careless in how she handled her emails, and frankly she was just lucky, but she wasn’t guilty of a crime.
Isn’t she only guilty of a potential “spill.” There is no evidence that I’ve seen that she sent classified information to anyone not authorized to see it or that anyone unauthorized saw what was sent to her and stored on her server. The whole thing was “something could have happened because you weren’t careful,” not “you spilled secrets.”
Do you have cites for any of those statements? This isn’t GQ, so opinions are OK, but don’t represent your opinions for facts.
“She destroyed evidence…”-evidence of what? She was asked to return all emails relating to Government business to the Government. Which she did. She then destroyed the personal emails that did not relate to Government business. In fact, she was a busy person and she delegated this considerable effort to her lawyers who made the vast bulk of the decisions. It might be your opinion that she destroyed emails containing Government business, but it is certainly not a fact.
She destroyed multiple devices. Yep. she did. Devices she owned. You may be sad to see these devices destroyed, but she is under no obligation to retain obsolete or no longer useful items just to make her critics happy. Again, she returned all the emails pertaining to Government business to the Government which is the limit of anyone’s obligation. The fact that in your opinion she can’t be trusted is just that your opinion, it is not a fact.
Do you have a cite that magic was the reason for the loss of those law firm documents? Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps deliberate. I have no idea. I know she said she undertook an extensive search for those documents and could not come up with them. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. I know that I have lost important papers in my life, hopefully no one is going to accuse me of a deliberate attempt to circumvent the law and attempt to ruin my reputation or charge me with a crime. But it could happen. It has happened to others. I do draw the line at magic though. Magic wasn’t the cause.