Hillary's Email Problems Won't Go Away Soon

The State Department reported to a federal judge Monday that at least 305 of Hillary Clinton’s emails have been flagged as containing potentially classified information. These emails, 5% of the total examined so far, will be sent back to various intelligence agencies to confirm their classified level and determine if any information needs to be redacted before public release. It will take months to screen the 30,000 printed emails Clinton dumped on the State Department for review last December when questions were first raised over her handling of official email communications. State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that of the emails released by the agency since early 2015, 63 of them have been "upgraded in some form" since they were turned over by Clinton. Most of these are at a very low level, what we call confidential," he added. The Intelligence Community Inspector General is among those overseeing the reclassification effort, according to Kirby, who said this reflects "the proper care and scrutiny being applied to this." Kirby also acknowledged that the number of emails relabeled as classified will continue to grow as Clinton's work-related mails are carefully scrutinized by officials : "I have no doubt that as we continue to release these emails over time, you'll see additional upgraded correspondence." Initially, the State Department claimed to be overwhelmed by the number of emails -- until a federal judge told State to speed up its review and roll out the Clinton emails in batches. ~~~~~ The FBI’s recent seizure of Clinton’s private server, and the growing demand for answers from the government, media, courts, and the public, now seems to have encouraged examiners to expedite the screening of the 30,000 emails, 20% of which have now been released. As recently as late July, Clinton said she was "confident" that she "never sent or received any information that was classified at the time." ~~~~~ The scope of the inquiry into who had access to the emails has grown to include top Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, as well as Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, who recently revealed that he kept the emails on a flash drive in his office. Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Monday he wants answers from Kendall about what security protocols, if any, he followed to keep the information safe and which, if any, security clearances he has that would permit him to handle classified material. In legal terms, there has been no decision about whether Hillary Clinton's email arrangement and handling was a matter of incompetence or a willful effort to break the law -- and under the relevant federal statutes, it may not make much difference. Further, it may be possible to retrieve the 32,000 emails that Clinton erased because she decided they were personal. We now know that Platte River Services, the Denver company entrusted with Clinton’s server after she left the State Department, says it’s “highly likely” that a backup server exists, so all the erased emails would available if the backup server can be found. ~~~~~ It is significant that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward noted that if you really want to find the emails, you just have to follow the trail. “There are all these emails. Well, they were sent to someone or someone sent them to her,” Woodward said. “So, if things have been erased here, there’s a way to go back to these emails or who received them from Hillary Clinton.” He added that the furor over the Clinton emails “reminds me of the Nixon tapes -- thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations that Nixon thought were exclusively his.” The comparison to Watergate is appropriate, and that it was Woodward himself who first pointed it out is massively important. ~~~~~ We still don't know what impact this scandal will have on Clinton’s presidential aspirations. The big question is whether Obama's Justice Department would pursue criminal charges against Clinton since it would be an admission that Obama's own administration is at fault. Afterall, Hillary was his Secretary of State for four years. And, Obama was seen with Bill and Hillary at Martha’s Vineyard this past weekend and played golf with Bill -- hardly the actions of a President about to give the green light for a criminal case against Hillary. She has been confident enough to joke about the matter. She told an audience over the weekend, “You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account. I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves." Is she so sure of her position that she can mock the whole affair? Even CNN thought her "joke" was misplaced. This scandal is serious, not just a political inconvenience. It could lead to a criminal indictment, as similar actions did for General David Petraeus -- and we can be sure that Petraeus supporters and Obama critics will be watching for evidence of yet another Obama double standard that gives Hillary Clinton favorable treatment that could lead her to the White House, while General Petraeus was driven out of public service, with his presidential ambitions quashed. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Hillary Clinton is already suffering from the never-ending email revelations. The Denver IT firm that managed her retired server before it was seized by the FBI has never had security clearances. That in itself could be a separate offense. I have the impression that what we now have is a situation in which Clinton and/or her staff have violated criminal statutes. It is now a question of who and how, and whether the FBI can reconstruct sufficient proof for a criminal case - without having the Obama White House interfere on her behalf. The thumb drive her attorney had has not been discussed very much. It will be interesting to learn just what is stored there, or was stored and later erased. Also, there is the fundamental matter of how much responsibility Hillary can fob off on staff -- something she did while First Lady -- since she was Secretary of State and bore ultimate responsibility for document security policy and implementation in her department. There is also the matter of whether her private server was initially configured to US government standards for handling confidential documents and information, including labeling, encryption, review, destruction and archiving. To follow Bob Woodward's comparison, it seems to me that Democrats are now sounding a lot like the GOP in early Watergate days -- strong support through rather illogical analysis and a slight "so what" attitude. With the FBI now in charge of the inquiry, even if Clinton pulls out of the 2016 race, it would not save her from the possibility of being indicted or entering into a plea bargain. Bernie Sanders knows that Hillary is looking over the edge of the precipice and he is taking for himself the mantle of legitimacy. But, if Hillary withdraws, even the Democrats would not go into the 2016 general election with a socialist at the head of their ticket. The candidate would likely be Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren.