For some months, the Hillary Clinton campaign has carried a page of prevarications purporting to explain the Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. This morning, in the aftermath of FBI Director James Comey’s shameful public exhibition of stump training yesterday, the page has been updated. The result is quintessential Hillary Clinton. It is lie wrapped in a damned lie enclosed in an damnable lie.
Clinton: Clinton only used her account for unclassified email. No information in Clinton’s emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them.
FBI: From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
FBI: Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
In short, both the claims made by Clinton, claims she continues to make, are demonstrably false. She did send and receive classified information on her personal email system and some of that information was clearly marked as classified. We also know that on at least one occasion Clinton ordered a minion to strip classification markings from a document in order to send it over an unsecure system and she did it in such a way that it is obvious that was her standard practice.
Clinton: Classified information was viewed in hard copy by Clinton while in the office. While on travel, the State Department had rigorous protocols for her and traveling staff to receive and transmit information of all types.
This is true but false. Yes, State had a closed system for classified information. No, Clinton did not use it on a large number of occasions.
Clinton: This was not criminal in nature as misreported by some in the press. The Department of Justice is now seeking assurances about the storage of materials related to Clinton’s email account.
Again, the very fact that Comey says he is “referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision” tells you a decision about prosecution needs to be made, ergo, this was a criminal case.
Clinton: Clinton relied on her Blackberry for emailing. This was easiest for her. When the iPad came out in 2010, she was as curious as others and found it great for shopping, browsing, and reading articles when she traveled. She also had access to her email account on her iPad and sometimes used it for that too.
FBI: Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain.
Ruling: Lie.
Clinton: After providing her work and potentially work-related emails, she chose not to keep her personal, non-work related emails, which by definition, are not federal records and were not requested by the Department or anyone else.
Clinton:
Were any work items deleted in the course of producing the printed copies? No.
FBI: The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.
More lies.
Clinton:
Was the server ever hacked?
No, there is no evidence there was ever a breach.
Was there ever an unauthorized intrusion into her email or did anyone else have access to it?
No.
FBI: With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.
So while it is technically true that there is “no evidence” of a hack, we do know that her server was targeted on several occasions and the FBI’s assessment is that an attack by a foreign intelligence service would not be detectable. It also assesses that all of Clinton’s emails were compromised. We know that includes Top Secret information, names of CIA agents, and the name of at least one CIA source.
This, by the way, is just the low hanging fruit. There is much, much more when you begin cross referencing the State Department IG report and the FBI report.
So, even after updating the page giving her spin on her email scandal, she is sticking to the same obvious lies that she’s told for the past year.
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