As promised by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Wikileaks has released a large amount of information taken from Hillary Clinton’s private server.
Wikileaks notes, “On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for 30,322 emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The final PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016.”
Assange said that the emails should contain enough evidence to indict Clinton if the government wished to do so.
“There’s very strong material, both in the emails and in relation to the Clinton Foundation. For example, we published an email where Hillary Clinton is instructing her staff to remove the classified document and send it by non-classified fax. So that just requires one more thing, which is to show that the document was actually sent. But she instructed her staff to violate those classification procedures in the United States,” Assange said. “She (Head of U.S. Department of Justice Loretta Lynch, who was also part of Bill Clinton’s legal team during the Whitewater corruption probe) is not going to indict Hillary Clinton, that’s not possible. But the FBI can push for concessions from the new Clinton government in exchange for its likely indictment.”
True That….
The FBI Decision
In a news briefing posted on Tuesday, July 5, FBI announced that they had completed a thorough and intensive investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system. Comey deemed that ultimately they would not recommend criminal charges in the investigation. While the burden of proof may have seemed to high for an indictment, extraordinarily, the F.B.I. did go out of its way to confirm that Clinton sent and received numerous e-mails on her private server which contained top-secret information, “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said.
The F.B.I. investigation did determine that 110 e-mails, in fifty-two chains, contained information that was deemed classified when it was sent or received.
“Eight of those chains contained information that was top secret at the time they were sent; thirty-six chains contained secret information at the time; and eight contained confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification…two thousand more e-mails were ‘up-classified’ to make them confidential,” Comey said. The F.B.I. also determined that three other emails contained classified information at the “secret” amd “confidential” level.
The F.B.I. also noted that they believe “hostile actors” probably hacked Clinton’s account, “…including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.”
Senator Rand Paul bluntly echoed the discomfort felt by many who have worked in government, and have taken oaths that come with the privilege of holding a security clearance, “Today the FBI announced Hillary Clinton violated classified procedures, carelessly and recklessly endangered national security – and had done so repeatedly, over 100 times. The FBI then announced she would face no charges. This is an outrage and the rule of law has been turned upside down. This weekend, we learned former President Clinton met with the Obama Administration Attorney general – the FBI director’s boss – in private. Three days later the FBI director announces no charges are being brought against Hillary Clinton. The appearance is terrible. The decision is astounding. People have gone to jail for less severe breaches of classified information and national security. Today Director Comey and the Obama Administration Department of Justice made it clear to the American people, and all those being unfairly prosecuted by the DOJ, that there is no accountability, no justice, and the Clintons are allowed to live by a different set of rules. This is a loss for the rule of law and further degrades Americans’ faith in the justice system. ”
For almost everyone working in this environment, Clinton’s action would constitute a fairly egregious ‘spill’, which would more than likely lead to a loss of a clearance (not to mention your job), and it would make it fairly difficult to ever get another one. So, how do you actually allow someone to become president who has proven that they are not qualified, or cannot be trusted to hold a clearance? This dilemma, of course makes the FBI and Justice Department’s rulings more understandable. It’s Catch-22. This is nothing more than, to quote Ian Gregson, the “brutal operation of power“….
“Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. “How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?”
“The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. ‘Did we do anything wrong?’ they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. ‘Then why are you chasing us out?’ the girls said. ‘Catch 22,’ the men said. All they kept saying was ‘Catch-22, Catch-22. What does it mean, Catch 22? What is Catch-22?”
“Didn’t they show it to you?” Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. “Didn’t you even make them read it?”
“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”
“What law says they don’t have to?”
“Catch-22.”
About the Author
‘Her’ protection is ‘His’ protection.