THREAD
I am so sick and tired of @Judgenap and various Trump allies hyping this issue over and over. It’s done, it was investigated, let it be.
However, because Clinton is the obsession of so many, let me walk you through how flawed such a case would be.
I am so sick and tired of @Judgenap and various Trump allies hyping this issue over and over. It’s done, it was investigated, let it be.
However, because Clinton is the obsession of so many, let me walk you through how flawed such a case would be.
First, DOJ would be going against its own institutional policy on bringing prosecutions for mishandling classified information. It is DOJ’s policy NOT to prosecute for non-intentional mishandling of classified information. It would be creating a double standard to prosecute HRC.
Second, although there is a criminal provision for grossly negligent mishandling, successfully prosecuting that argument here would be fraught with challenges.
HRC, in her role as SecState, was an Original Classification Authority and could declassify whatever she wanted,
HRC, in her role as SecState, was an Original Classification Authority and could declassify whatever she wanted,
consistent with applicable Executive Orders and assuming it was State’s information to declassify. Her lawyers would absolutely be filing a motion to dismiss the charges based at least in part on that fact, raising a complex constitutional and bureaucratic legal fight that
has never really been addressed before at that level. It’s the same kind of fight David Petraeus’ lawyers were no doubt planning to raise if he had not been able to strike a plea deal in his case (which was far more solid IMHO).
That challenge aside, the facts do not readily
That challenge aside, the facts do not readily
lend themselves to a conclusion HRC was “grossly negligent”. The email servers were never set up to handle classified information, and there is no evidence she or her aides planned to use it that way. None of the emails or attachments she received or sent were PROPERLY marked
as classified. The emails she received from aides, whether it was an email they were forwarding or they created themselves, were all on their own unclassified State accounts. She had no reasonable basis to suspect these various people were sending her emails that contained
properly classified information (marked or not). Failing to be sufficiently diligent in that respect might be a basis to revoke their clearance but not to prosecute them.
And that brings me back to my main point. Hillary and her aides were absolutely careless in the amount
And that brings me back to my main point. Hillary and her aides were absolutely careless in the amount
of classified information they inadvertently let spill into their unclassified email messages. This concept is unsurprisingly called “data spillage”. It’s a security violation. It’s a basis to lose your clearance. Absent intent, though, it’s never been enough to prosecute AFAIK.
So @Judgenap and @JudgeJeanine can do their rants but in the end they’re simply wrong on the law and on the policy. A prosecution here would be futile, complex, and look absolutely partisan and petty. /end
