2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumEvidence from the IG Report: Clinton violated the law, but committed no crime.
* * *
Most crucially, the inspector general directly contradicts Clinton's repeated assertions that she complied both with federal law and State Department policies. "At a minimum," the report finds, "Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act."
The report goes further, noting that while Clinton's subsequent production of 55,000 pages of emails in response to State Department demands partially corrected these violations, the records Clinton turned over were incomplete. Remarkably, the report includes reference to a previously unreleased 2010 email in which Clinton, responding to her deputy chief of staff for operations, Huma Abedin, directly addresses her lack of an official State Department email account and voices a fear of the "risk of the personal being accessible" if she had one. In a briefing, State Department officials were unable to confirm the source of this email, but if it was omitted from the records Clinton produced, it again would raise questions about the process she used to distinguish between "federal records" and "personal records" before destroying the latter.
The inspector general also reveals the comments of State Department records management staff in late 2010 expressly raising concerns that Clinton's private email server "could contain federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy federal record-keeping requirements." A senior official rebuffed these concerns, claiming that Clinton's email arrangement "had been approved by the department legal staff" -- an assertion the inspector general concluded was untrue -- and directed staff "never to speak of the secretary's personal email system again."
Such facts undermine the argument that the significance of maintaining a private server and the negative effects it could have, including on responses to Freedom of Information Act requests or congressional subpoenas, were simply overlooked.
* * *
Yet the inspector general's report also highlights the uncertainty that surrounds the precise scope of the current FBI investigation. To the extent the FBI has limited its inquiry to security issues and the possible mishandling of classified information, for example, the inspector general's report finding violations of the federal records laws potentially implicates a different criminal statute.
Removing, concealing, or destroying federal records, regardless of whether they are classified, can constitute a federal felony. But again, courts have generally required prosecutors pursuing this charge to prove that defendants knew they were violating the law, for which the evidence against Clinton appears to be lacking.
* * *
Based on the publicly available evidence, the reality appears to be nuanced in a way that is satisfying to neither side.
Clinton violated the law, but committed no crime.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/26/opinions/clinton-email-server-ig-report-opinion-cox/
The problem is that we know that the FBI has dug deeper than the OIG. Hillary and her inner circle refused to cooperate with the OIG, but the FBI has access to the personnel and emails that the OIG could not get. The focus of the respective investigations is different as well.
The fact is, we don't know what threads the FBI has followed. Picking up from where the OIG left off, the FBI would want to know why the personal emails were destroyed, by whom and what was in them. What the FBI found in those self-selected emails deleted as "personal" could prove to be the make or break point.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
polio2
(98 posts)Guccifer's doodles prove it was hacked. Hence why the State Department rep was forced to retract his statement after trying to cover up for Hillary.
If this story picks up momentum, not even Obama can save her.
apnu
(8,755 posts)He could have tried and succeeded hacking state.gov's email servers. We presume that is a harder target and less likely to be hacked, but we have no statement from the State Department detailing hacks against it systems and any data breeches that did occur.
The real smoking gun is Hillary's server was an easier target, effectively low hanging fruit, for hackers to compromise and possibly steal classified and/or confidential material.
As for Obama saving her, I have my doubts. He seems to be staying above the fray and letting Hillary Clinton hang herself on this. Don't forget all this was kicked off by John Kerry's State Department, any suggestion that the Obama administration is in the tank for Hillary is laughable.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Hiding shady dealings from FOIA is one thing; getting agents killed is another thing entirely.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)It could be some serious dealings which are both in violation of federal records law and wrong for other reasons.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Either one will destroy any chances she has in the GE.
Jester Messiah
(4,711 posts)I think we've found the new "depends on the definition of is."
restorefreedom
(12,655 posts)its fork time.
she is DONE
Response to morningfog (Original post)
NowSam This message was self-deleted by its author.
NV Whino
(20,886 posts)
global1
(25,241 posts)
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)But the search for that illusive needle in the haystack will surely continue.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)Nothing in your oh so important bold changes anything in the OP or the article.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Clinton failed to comply with a policy (see earlier in the article). That in and of itself is not a crime. No matter how badly some folks would like it to be.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)As of now, there is no evidence that she committed a crime. That is not confirmation that she, or someone under her, did not commit a crime.
But, this is not the end of the story. I hope that there is no evidence of a crime to come out of the FBI investigation.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)Use a magnet.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)You can use a magnet, or set the haystack on fire ... you still won't find a needle.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)that in fact has several solutions.
LiberalFighter
(50,888 posts)When emails are sent it also means they are received. In most of those cases they were received by someone else generally also in the State Department. And for email that was received by HRC that was not sent by someone in the govt she copied to someone that was in the State Dept. Why turn something over when it was already in possession of the State Dept?
morningfog
(18,115 posts)And you have the facts wrong. The report makes clear that there were government business emails sent and received by private accounts. In fact, more than 7.5 gigabytes of data were found by the IG, in addition to Hillary's data.
State had NO access to any of this data until they forced HIllary and her people to turn it over. And there is no way for State to verify or even inspect whether they provided all the government records.
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)documents, not know the law? In addition to her SoS role, Clinton is also a trained attorney.
If that's what this law professor is hanging his hat on, I call foul.
As SoS, Clinton was one of the few people outside the US Intelligence Community that had the power to classify documents and make decisions on their status. If she didn't know she was violating the law, what does that say about her judgment skills and her so-called "smartest person in the room" aplomb.
hollowdweller
(4,229 posts)They violated it but there was no penalty.
TheBlackAdder
(28,183 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Does that work to get out of a traffic ticket?
"Vote for me! I'm not smart enough to know that deleting and destroying public records is a crime!"
