Election 2016 Thread

[Forty Two]

As of January, 2016, the number of Classified emails found were 1600, secret were 11, and confidential were 231. In August of 2015, she declared - "I have said repeatedly that I did not send nor receive classified material," If her defense is that the material wasn't "officially designated" by someone other than herself (who is the head of the Department of State and tasked to know what is and is not classified or secret), then she's full of shit.

In this process, she took the liberty to delete more emails than she disclosed from the server she used as Secretary of State to conduct State business. She did this without any independent person verifying her decision on what was personal and what was not personal. If a Republican did that, what would you be saying? That it's fair for George Bush or someone else to determine what documents on their WORK/GOVERNMENT server are subject to review for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act?

The Inspectors General for the State Department and the intelligence community issued a statement saying Clinton’s personal email system contained classified information. This information, they- the Inspector General for the State Department - said, “should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.” The same statement voiced concern that a thumb drive held by Clinton’s lawyer also contains this same secret data. Another report claims the U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that Clinton’s private email account contains multiple instances of classified information, with some data originating at the CIA and NSA. http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2 ... ould-know/

...even if retroactive classification was applied only after Clinton hit “send” (and State’s own Inspector General says it wasn’t), she is not off the hook.

What matters in the world of secrets is the information itself, which may or may not be marked “classified.” Employees at the highest levels of access are expected to apply the highest levels of judgment, based on the standards in Executive Order 13526. The government’s basic nondisclosure agreement makes clear the rule is “marked or unmarked classified information.”

https://www.pdffiller.com/en/project/68 ... =100045934

In addition, the State Department had its own system of classification which, when employees used the State server, required every email sent to be given a designation as to its level of secrecy. The fact that Hillary Clinton CHOSE to use a private server doesn't relieve her of the responsibility to follow state department rules.

The problem for Clinton may be particularly damaging. Every email sent within the State Department’s own systems contains a classification; an employee technically cannot hit “send” without one being applied. Just because Clinton chose to use her own hardware does not relieve her or her staff of this requirement.

Some may say even if Clinton committed security violations, there is no evidence the material got into the wrong hands – no blood, no foul. Legally that is irrelevant. Failing to safeguard information is the issue. It is not necessary to prove the information reached an adversary, or that an adversary did anything harmful with the information for a crime to have occurred. See the cases of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Jeff Sterling, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou or even David Petraeus. The standard is “failure to protect” by itself.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2 ... ould-know/

None of these laws, rules, regulations or standards fall under the rubric of obscure legalities; they are drilled into persons holding a security clearance via formal training (mandatory yearly for State Department employees), and are common knowledge for the men and women who handle America’s most sensitive information. For those who use government computer systems, electronic tools enforce compliance and security personnel are quick to zero in on violations.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2 ... ould-know/

[Forty Two]

[Forty Two]

Crooked Hillary and Drumpf are in a dead heat -- http://www.qu.edu/news-and-events/quinn ... aseID=2363

[Forty Two]

hillary 79% chance to win..... http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fivethir ... d=40213871

[Forty Two]

O.k., Bill Clinton met with the Attorney General Loretta Lynch (head of the Department of Justice, which is currently reviewing Hillary's email bullshit) -- and they met on her airplane for 30 minutes in Phoenix.

Lynch reported the conversation as follows:

“As I was leaving and he spoke to myself and my husband on the plane. Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels. He mentioned the golf he played in Phoenix.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/29/bill- ... z4CzdB3L9M

Nothing, of course, was discussed about the investigation or any government business. LOL. We can believe them.

[Forty Two]

"a great deal" about grandchildren, travel and golf - leaves room for other things.

"Primarily" social, means that secondarily it was not social.

No follow-up question as to what the secondary topics were? Naturally not - journalists are generally idiots. They let these shits get away with weasel language all the time.

[piscator]

Attorney General Lynch specifically said they did not speak about Benghazi, or emails, or anything else pertaining to her job as AGUS.

That probably won't stop you from speculating and fantasizing until you grow hair on your palms, but that was a given. You do a lot of that.

[piscator]

Chris Stevens’s Family: Don’t Blame Hillary Clinton for Benghazi

On Tuesday, the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is controlled by a Republican majority, charged the Obama Administration with diplomatic miscalculations, security failures, and a lengthy delay in rescue efforts, which contributed to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, after an attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. Initially, the State Department believed that the attack was inspired by an anti-Muslim video. The Committee’s eight-hundred page report, which wraps up a two-year, seven-million-dollar investigation, specifically reprimanded the State Department, then under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; the Pentagon, headed at the time by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta; and the C.I.A.

In a separate, forty-eight-page addendum, two Republican Committee members, Mike Pompeo, of Kansas, and Jim Jordan, of Ohio, went even further, alleging that the Administration deliberately covered up the full truth about the attack at a time when President Obama was facing a tough reëlection campaign. “We expect our government to make every effort to save the lives of Americans who serve in harm’s way,” Pompeo said, in a statement. “That did not happen in Benghazi. Politics were put ahead of the lives of Americans.” At a press conference on Tuesday, Pompeo charged that Clinton’s actions on Benghazi were “morally reprehensible.”

Democrats on the House Committee released their own, three-hundred-and-thirty-nine-page report on Monday. They also cited “woefully inadequate” security in Benghazi. But they claimed to have been virtually shut out of the official Committee report. They called the probe, led by the South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, a witch hunt. “Gowdy has been conducting this investigation like an overzealous prosecutor desperately trying to land a front-page conviction rather than a neutral judge of facts seeking to improve the security of our diplomatic corps,” the report said.

There have been other investigations as well. Within the State Department itself, a review board examined the incident and found systemic security shortcomings and issued a series of recommendations for addressing them.


Dr. Anne Stevens, the sister of Ambassador Chris Stevens, has served as a family spokesperson since his death. She is the chief of pediatric rheumatology at Seattle Children’s Hospital. We spoke twice in the past three days, including shortly after the House Select Committee report was issued. Dr. Stevens recalled that her brother had been fascinated by the Middle East since childhood, when he dressed up as Lawrence of Arabia, with a towel and a pot atop his head. He served in the Peace Corps, in Morocco, before joining the Foreign Service, and he served twice in Libya before his final posting there, as well as in Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Riyadh. My interview with Dr. Stevens has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Whom do you fault for the lack of security that resulted in the death of your brother, in Benghazi?

It is clear, in hindsight, that the facility was not sufficiently protected by the State Department and the Defense Department. But what was the underlying cause? Perhaps if Congress had provided a budget to increase security for all missions around the world, then some of the requests for more security in Libya would have been granted. Certainly the State Department is underbudgeted.

I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta. They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had. The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself.


What did you learn from the two new reports by House Republicans and Democrats?

It doesn’t look like anything new. They concluded that the U.S. compound in Benghazi was not secure. We knew that.


What did you think of Secretary Clinton’s conduct on Benghazi?

She has taken full responsibility, being head of the State Department, for what occurred. She took measures to respond to the review board’s recommendations. She established programs for a better security system. But it is never going to be perfect. Part of being a diplomat is being out in the community. We all recognize that there’s a risk in serving in a dangerous environment. Chris thought that was very important, and he probably would have done it again. I don’t see any usefulness in continuing to criticize her. It is very unjust.


After years of congressional investigations, do you feel that your brother’s death has been politicized in Washington?

Yes! Definitely politicized. Every report I read that mentions him specifically has a political bent, an accusatory bent. One point that seems to be brought up again and again is the accusation that the attack was a response to the video. I could understand why that conclusion would be made, because it was right after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. But, frankly, it doesn’t matter that that was the thinking, that night, about why the attack occurred. It’s irrelevant to bring that up again and again. It is done purely for political reasons.

It would be much more useful for Congress to focus on providing resources for security for all State Department facilities around the world—for increasing personnel, language capabilities, for increasing staff to build relationships, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. I would love to hear they are drastically increasing the budget.

...

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk ... r-benghazi

[piscator]

As of January, 2016, the number of Classified emails found were 1600, secret were 11, and confidential were 231. In August of 2015, she declared - "I have said repeatedly that I did not send nor receive classified material," If her defense is that the material wasn't "officially designated" by someone other than herself (who is the head of the Department of State and tasked to know what is and is not classified or secret), then she's full of shit.

I think it's more likely you are. Even assuming your number is correct, they were not classified at the time, nor did the Secretary of State classify them "Confidential" or above at the time.

But some junior employee comes along and classifies some received emails years later at the behest of a partisan witch hunt, and you get a hard dick over it? #desperate

[Scot Dutchy]

As of January, 2016, the number of Classified emails found were 1600, secret were 11, and confidential were 231. In August of 2015, she declared - "I have said repeatedly that I did not send nor receive classified material," If her defense is that the material wasn't "officially designated" by someone other than herself (who is the head of the Department of State and tasked to know what is and is not classified or secret), then she's full of shit.

I think it's more likely you are. Even assuming your number is correct, they were not classified at the time, nor did the Secretary of State classify them "Confidential" or above at the time.

But some junior employee comes along and classifies some received emails years later at the behest of a partisan witch hunt, and you get a hard dick over it? #desperate

Yep. It must be bad when you a daily infuse of lies and conspiracy theories in order to get up everyday.

[Forty Two]

As of January, 2016, the number of Classified emails found were 1600, secret were 11, and confidential were 231. In August of 2015, she declared - "I have said repeatedly that I did not send nor receive classified material," If her defense is that the material wasn't "officially designated" by someone other than herself (who is the head of the Department of State and tasked to know what is and is not classified or secret), then she's full of shit.

I think it's more likely you are. Even assuming your number

It's not "my" number - that's the Inspector General's numbers -- part of the Obama Administration.

is correct, they were not classified at the time,

Dude -- emails are not classified by someone other than the sender before or after being sent. They contain classified information if the information is classified information, whether the email is "labeled" classified or not. That's not a surprising or weird law - that's that all government employees with clearance are trained on, heavily. The information WAS classified at the time.

Moreover, the State Department's official system required, at the time, that the sender give it a classification level before pressing send. The fact that Hillary used a private server was an "end around" that obligation and system -- but, it did not absolve her of the obligation.

nor did the Secretary of State classify them "Confidential" or above at the time.

She didn't classify them AT ALL because she was improperly using a private server at the time. Had she used the government system, she would have been tasked to label them before pressing send.

But some junior employee comes along and classifies some received emails years later at the behest of a partisan witch hunt, and you get a hard dick over it? #desperate

Not at all - that isn't what happened. The inspector general reviewed them and found that they CONTAINED confidential information AT THE TIME they were sent. Period.

You're just ignoring the facts. The whole "they weren't labeled confidential at the time" argument has been long debunked as absolute bollocks. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/43 ... ings-worse

Recall the state of play: Mrs. Clinton originally insisted no classified information was ever transmitted on her servers. When this became untenable, she changed her story to claim that she never personally sent or received classified emails – a claim that, even if true, would be of little legal relevance since she caused the creation of the private server system via which, because of the way she ran her office, the transmission of classified emails by her underlings was inevitable. But of course, we now know for sure that the claim is not true: Wholly apart from what she may have received, Clinton personally wrote and sent those aforementioned 104 emails containing classified information. So the final evolution in this bogus defense is that there were “no classified markings” on emails stored or sent via the private server. Obviously, this is offered to intimate that she had no way of knowing she and her subordinates were handling classified information with criminal recklessness.

....this is an absurd suggestion: Government officials with security clearances are trained in categories of information that are classified pursuant to executive order, and documents that incorporate national defense secrets are “born classified” regardless of whether they are marked classified – e.g., if a government official takes notes at a classified briefing or from a classified document, the notes are classified even if not marked as such; or if information comes from foreign governments, it is presumptively classified under President Obama’s pertinent executive order (which mainly repeats longstanding categories of information deemed classified). For instance, former CIA director David Petraeus’s highly classified journals were not marked classified, but he pled guilty to mishandling them anyway because he well knew the lack of markings were not a defense.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/43 ... ings-worse

[Scot Dutchy]

This is really

[Forty Two]

Sure, because it involves Hillary Clinton. It would be really a big deal if it involved some other candidate. This is the kind of thing that had Democrats all up in arms relative to the General Petraeus incident. No white knight democrats were racing to the General's defense, stating that the documents were not "marked" confidential.....

[Forty Two]

Hillary broke the law - http://nypost.com/2015/09/27/yes-hillar ... e-the-law/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/3/3/ ... y-Violated

Now that the IT guy who set up Hillary’s private email server has been granted immunity, I decided to research the law to see if this whole fiasco has teeth. A few things I learned:

First, what Colin Powell did and what Hillary did are different, because...

(1) the law regarding personal email use for government business changed in 2009
(2) Powell documented his messages for record keeping in a timely manner
Second, Hillary clearly violated regulations regarding personal use of an email server for government business

Since 2009, personal email is to be used for government business only in instances an emergency, where access to government email is unavailable
Third, whether emails were marked classified at the time is irrelevant

Clinton signed a Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, in which she pledged to protect classified information whether it was marked or unmarked. Thus, thus an email that was not marked classified at the time might still be a message that was classified at the time.
My general source for this diary is the malicious, anti-liberal smear machine, NPR. Supporting articles are from the New York Times and Politico Magazine

[Forty Two]

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... ouse_watch

The tables have turned in this week’s White House Watch. After trailing Hillary Clinton by five points for the prior two weeks, Donald Trump has now taken a four-point lead.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds Trump with 43% of the vote, while Clinton earns 39%. Twelve percent (12%) still like another candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)