They're Missing The Point

In the last 24 hours, the story broke of a memo by General Powell summarizing a meeting held between George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair in 2002 about the possibility of invading Iraq.  The British press is up in arms about whether it means Blair lied a decade or more ago about what happened.  Some in the American media are discussing how it ties to Bush and the run up to the Iraq War.  That's all very, very old news.  The real point is that this memo was disclosed because it was part of Hillary Clinton's emails.  That's right, this document, written by the then secretary of state and summarizing a confidential meeting between the president and the prime minister of the UK, we in Hillary's emails.  We are told that she got it to help her understand the background of the Iraq situation.  But here's the kicker.  The memo is classified.  Anyone who looked at it would know that it was classified.  Indeed, the memo of confidential negotiations between the head of the USA and the UK is the definition of classified.  And to boot, the memo is marked classified.  That means that even Hillary who keeps saying that nothing was marked classified in her emails has again been proven wrong.

So this memo is definitive proof that Hillary Clinton had national security secrets on her email.  It is also definitive proof that she knew that she had those documents on her private unsecured email server.  And that is a federal crime.  After months of what has come to be called the drip, drip, drip of the story we got a day where the drip turned into a flood.  There is no possible excuse for Hillary having this top secret national security document on her email.

Now let me add one note with regard to one of the newest defenses raised by the media today.  The claims is that the memo was old, so it really did not matter that it was on her private unsecured email.  That defense just won't fly.  Classified documents do not come with an expiration date.  They are classified until the process is followed and they are declassified.  If old documents were no longer classified, then consider this:  in the government archives are classified materials that describe in great detail the most efficient process to follow to build a nuclear weapons.  Some of those documents date back to the 1940s.  Are they now no longer classified because they are 70 years old?  Nope.  How about the blueprints for a particular class of submarine which could be used to find a weakness that could let and enemy destroy those subs?  If the subs are twenty years old, do their plans suddenly become unclassified because of the passage of time?  Nope.  This latest defense is incredibly lame.  The very fact that it is now being raised means that Hillary's defenders know that they have lost.