It seemed that things could not get worse for Hillary Clinton with regard to her seemingly illegal handling of classified material on her private unsecured email system, but they just did. Fox News broke the story that the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community reported to Congress that Hillary's email system had on it some classified information of the highest level of classification. A copy of that letter from the Inspector General to the Congressional committee is included as part of the Fox story. According to multiple sources, there is no way that anyone could mistake the information in question as unclassified because of the clearly secret nature of the data.
For months now, Hillary Clinton has been saying that nothing on her server was marked classified. The implication of that statement is that she did not know that items were classified. A few weeks ago we learned that Hillary directed her staff to take classified markings off of a document and to send it to the unsecured email system. That was bad enough. Now, we have confirmation that there was ultra secret classified information that Clinton would necessarily know to be classified on that same system.
Remember, whether or not the documents were marked classified is not a defense to mishandling of secret information by Clinton. Negligent handling of national security information by itself is a crime. With this latest revelation, however, we have moved way beyond negligence. Now, according to what the Inspector General is reporting to Congress, Clinton had to know that she had the highest level of classified information on her unsecured private email system. This is information which, if disclosed, would likely lead to the death or imprisonment of the source. Obviously, we still don't know all the facts, but from what has been disclosed, it certainly seems likely that Hillary will be indicted. Even president Obama cannot allow this sort of action by Hillary to be excused.
Who knows? Maybe Obama will issue a pre-emptive pardon for Hillary and try to proceed as if this was nothing important. Such an action, however, would release a firestorm of a magnitude not seen in Washington for many decades.
It's looking more and more like we will soon see Joe Biden "reconsider" his decision not to run.
For months now, Hillary Clinton has been saying that nothing on her server was marked classified. The implication of that statement is that she did not know that items were classified. A few weeks ago we learned that Hillary directed her staff to take classified markings off of a document and to send it to the unsecured email system. That was bad enough. Now, we have confirmation that there was ultra secret classified information that Clinton would necessarily know to be classified on that same system.
Remember, whether or not the documents were marked classified is not a defense to mishandling of secret information by Clinton. Negligent handling of national security information by itself is a crime. With this latest revelation, however, we have moved way beyond negligence. Now, according to what the Inspector General is reporting to Congress, Clinton had to know that she had the highest level of classified information on her unsecured private email system. This is information which, if disclosed, would likely lead to the death or imprisonment of the source. Obviously, we still don't know all the facts, but from what has been disclosed, it certainly seems likely that Hillary will be indicted. Even president Obama cannot allow this sort of action by Hillary to be excused.
Who knows? Maybe Obama will issue a pre-emptive pardon for Hillary and try to proceed as if this was nothing important. Such an action, however, would release a firestorm of a magnitude not seen in Washington for many decades.
It's looking more and more like we will soon see Joe Biden "reconsider" his decision not to run.
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