2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Here's what you need to know about the 7 Clinton emails ... [View all]askew
(1,464 posts)Every single one of them.
1. President Obama issued an explicit directive to not use personal email for government work. Hillary violated that directive and never told the WH what she was doing. There is also regulations requiring the DHS to be notified of any outside server being used for government work. She failed to do that. She was also expressly forbidden from using Apple products (iPad and iPhone) by State Dept's IT and legal multiple times and she used both anyway in violation with State Dept security regulations. These rules were so serious that President Obama was not allowed to keep an iPhone after elected.
2. Colin Powell did not have the same set-up. He didn't have a personal server that only he had access to in his home without the proper security on it. He also didn't give his top aides email accounts on these same servers. He also did not go against his president's explicit instructions and keep a private server.
3 & 4. This one is so wrong that I don't know where to start. Nothing was backed up from Hillary's server to the State Dept. server. If a State Dept employee used a .gov email address, then that email exchange was backed up. However, State's system would not be able to pull that email for FOIA requests because it wasn't stored under Hillary's name. Also, Hillary gave her top aides emails on her private server so any communication between them and Hillary was not captured at all on the State's system. Also, most of Hillary's problematic emails were with individuals outside of State. State's system had no way of capturing those emails. In one case, we only found out about the email exchange from the Benghazi committee's subpoena of Sydney Blumenthal's email. Hillary had deleted her end of the conversation from her private email server but Blumenthal turned over his to the committee.
5. There has not been a complete investigation yet of this but her IT company admitted that she went at least 3 months without any protection on her server. It was discussed in emails with her staffers that have been FOIA'd. The FBI investigation will be able to tell us more about secure her server really was.
6. Again, until the FBI investigation is completed we have no way of knowing how secure her system was. However, her email system was naked without any protection on it for 3 months according to her IT company. She also involved multiple companies that were not cleared to handle classified information in housing/maintaining her server. So, it wasn't a tiny group of people that were aware of her server. She opened up US secrets to people who were not cleared to handle government work.
7. Again, that hasn't been determined yet. The State Dept is opening up an investigation to determine the classification at the time they were sent. Hillary's team can lie about this all they want but they don't get to make the final determination. Also, it doesn't matter if the email was marked classified or not. Hillary was trained on how to handle classified material and how to recognize it without being marked. She also signed a non-disclosure agreement that stated she understood she had to handle marked and non-marked classified material appropriately and report any breaches to the proper people.
8. Again, it doesn't matter that Hillary's team or State thinks there is overclassification. They don't make those determinations. The agency where the Intel originates from gets to make that determination period.
The idea that this is blown out of proportion is insane. This is subject to an FBI, IG, multiple Senate/House and now a State Dept investigation. Hillary and her supporters can keep trying to pretend it is a VRW conspiracy, but the fact of the matter is this is very, very serious.