Bring up Manafort
Mention that there weren’t any server hacks (caveat: that’s a hedge)
Bring up previous Trump deals involving either email or foreign policy.
Nutshell: don’t fear the reaper
Bollocks!
As I pointed out earlier today, a choice little crack in the Comey bullshitter wall of bullshit press conference appeared thanks to the State Department yesterday (as noted over at the Great Orange Satan, no not Trump)… yesterday afternoon State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the only two e-mails that had a classified marking on them prior to being sent (doesn’t say if it is to or from Clinton) were “call sheets” that were only classified as some sort of internal process:
The State Department says human error was responsible for a pair of Hillary Clinton emails the FBI identified as marked classified when they were sent.
Describing a somewhat opaque internal process, spokesman John Kirby says officials often mark “call sheets” at the confidential level when the secretary of state is considering whom he or she will call. Once the secretary decides to make the call, the call sheets would be no longer classified.
Kirby says the markings on the Clinton emails mentioned by FBI Director James Comey “were no longer necessary or appropriate” as Clinton already had decided to make the calls.
One of the key elements to this story (that she knowingly sent marked classified materials) painting Clinton in a harsh light has been destroyed. So what Kirby said what the State Dept knows is there were 2 emails with Hillary’s own telephone call schedules in them. The call schedules are marked confidential until Hillary decides to make the phone calls, and then they aren’t confidential anymore, but some staffer forgot to remove the confidential marking.
As the New York Times noted…
(the two emails that Comey was spinning on about) were from one of Mrs. Clinton’s close aides, Monica R. Hanley, sent to prepare her for telephone calls with foreign leaders, according to a State Department official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified information.
One email, dated Aug. 2, 2012, noted that Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, was stepping down as special envoy trying to mediate the war in Syria. A second one, sent in April 2012, discussed Mrs. Clinton’s call to the newly inaugurated president of Malawi.
Each was marked with a small notation, “©,” indicating it contained information classified as “confidential.”
These are are call sheets that once the Secretary made the calls, were no longer classified “confidential” but a staffer forgot to remove the small © markings after the Secretary had already made the calls in question.
This is like having a press release that says embargoed for public release until January 1, 2012 being emailed to someone on February 1, 2012 and forgetting to take off the “embargoed until January 1, 2012” stamp then screaming that “Clinton received emails that were embarked for public release” on a private email account on her private email server that in theory someone form the public could potentially been able to hack and read that already email which was no-longer embargoed when it was sent.
Just to add as a reminder, if someone emailed the New York Times article on the classified drone program to Sec. Clinton, she would have “information that is classified at the time of the email” on her hard drive using the Comey standard, even though the entire world can read the New York Times articles about the classified drone program for themselves.
The GOP would hold more investigations of Hillary Clinton no matter what. It’s what they do. It means they don’t have to govern, they get free press coverage, and they don’t even have to know anything. Their problem is that they always over do it, they always over reach. Even as the press corpse, gapes in anticipation of a “kill”; “yeah, this time she’s really gonna get it”; with scavanger-like like fascination and obsession, voters will tune them out as they rightfully conclude that it’s all just politics.
Edit. For another perspective:
This is exactly the way it will be covered, after all, she can’t possibly be innocent!
GOP Congressman: "Director Comey, you said that if someone working in the FBI did the same things Sec. Clinton did, he or she would be subject to disciplinary action. Why isn’t Sec. Clinton being subject to disciplinary action?’
Director Comey: “Um, because she doesn’t work for the State Department any more?”
And there’s this, a minute-long video clip from today’s hearing:
Two thoughts. !. Comey is a Republican. 2. What Clinton did was wrong. Even she admits she made a mistake. If any non-senior level employee had done what she did that employee would have suffered some sort of job related punishment.
I am convinced that Clinton didn’t have any malice in her heart when she decided to use one email server. She wanted to make her life simple and some flunky thought he figured out a way to make her happy. She needs fewer flunkies and more employees who actually think about what is best for both Hillary and the country.
Comey may have given the GOP “fodder” but the GOP doesn’t give Comey a bathroom break over nearly 5 hours. What’s with these goofs and restrooms?
I’m not defending Clinton, but there must be a reason that so many senior administrators have had their own email accounts. Are the government servers dodgy in some way?
is that for real? What idiots.
Quiz: which of these email servers is widely known to have been seriously hacked?
a) Hillary Clinton’s.
b) The State Department’s.
The idea is you don’t have any expectation of privacy if you use a government email server. A lot of senior officials don’t want their emails to be made public. I have no problem with a senior official using a private email account for his or her personal emails. I have a real problem with them using private servers for official business. Like a lot of officials Clinton didn’t want to be bothered with separating the two functions. It is inconvenient.
By the way Hillary isn’t the first high government official to deal with this problem Sometimes they have tried to delete personal emails from a government server. That hasn’t always gone well.
must be b), right? There is only “Guccifer’s” unsubstantiated claim to have hacked Clinton’s server to support a).
I’m shortening Comey’s response, but that was the substance of it.
Not the secure server, but the DOS server has been hacked multiple times, yes.
The idea is, this has nothing to do with which server she used but whether classified material was mishandled or communicated on a non-secure server (which is different from an insecure server). DOS has a secure server that is apart from its workaday system. This investigation would raise the same issues if Clinton had used the DOS workaday server. The issue with the personal server has more to do with FOIA and government record keeping. Obviously, any server should be reasonably secure, but on evidence, Clinton’s personal server was more secure than the DOS (which is not shocking because servers accessed by thousands of people are usually less secure, all else being equal, and the government is almost always at least two generations behind when it comes to state of the art technology).
Very good description of the process today. What the dems noted was the small © with an indent. But these 3 emails did NOT have a header. Nor did they identify the originator, date of the classification or the date of declassification. With out the classified header, they were not classified. This means Clinton DID NOT LIE when she testified that no classified emails were sent or received. She told the truth, but the gop did not admit this. They just covered their ears and hummmed really loud. Also Comey said she had more than one server and more than one mobile device. It was also clarified that she only had one server at a time. One mobile device at a time. Over the four years there were replacement devices. But, she only used one at a time.