Dozens of Hillary Clinton Emails Were Classified from the Start, U.S. Rules Suggest

Hillary Clinton's falsehoods in regards to her private email server and classified information are discredited weekly as even more information comes to light.  A few excerpts from an exclusive by Reuters..... 

Exclusive: Dozens of Clinton emails were classified from the start, U.S. rules suggest

For months, the U.S. State Department has stood behind its former boss Hillary Clinton as she has repeatedly said she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.

MSNBC Fact Checks Hillary Clinton’s False Statements About Classified Emails dated 7/27/2015

While the department is now stamping a few dozen of the publicly released emails as "Classified," it stresses this is not evidence of rule-breaking. Those stamps are new, it says, and do not mean the information was classified when Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, first sent or received it. 

But the details included in those "Classified" stamps — which include a string of dates, letters and numbers describing the nature of the classification — appear to undermine this account, a Reuters examination of the emails and the relevant regulations has found. 

The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton's emails from her time as the nation's most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department's own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not. 

Hillary Clinton quote from the U.N. Press Conference March 10, 2015

In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own "Classified" stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts. 

This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be "presumed" classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters 

"It's born classified," said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House's National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

What kind of information ?

FOR THE SECRETARY'S EYES ONLY 

Clinton and her senior staff routinely sent foreign government information among themselves on unsecured networks several times a month, if the State Department's markings are correct. Within the 30 email threads reviewed by Reuters, Clinton herself sent at least 17 emails that contained this sort of information. In at least one case it was to a friend, Sidney Blumenthal, not in government. 

The information appears to include privately shared comments by a prime minister, several foreign ministers and a foreign spy chief, unredacted bits of the emails show. Typically, Clinton and her staff first learned the information in private meetings, telephone calls or, less often, in email exchanges with the foreign officials. 

In an email from November 2009, the principal private secretary to David Miliband, then the British foreign secretary, indicates that he is passing on information about Afghanistan from his boss in confidence. He writes to Huma Abedin, Clinton's most senior aide, that Miliband "very much wants the Secretary (only) to see this note."

Nearly five pages of entirely redacted information follow. Abedin forwarded it on to Clinton's private email account.

Read the article at Reuters... 

Hillary Clinton's Email Server Answers Avoid Key Questions

Byron York of the Washington Examiner has been following the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal closely and the reporting seems detailed and fair.  The following article is no exception.

Clinton email answers don't answer key question

It was lost amid news of President Obama's Iran deal, but this week Hillary Clinton released a 3,500-word explanation of her secret email system. While it is by far the most extensive statement the Clinton campaign has made on the issue, the explanation does not touch what has become a key question, if not the key question, of the email affair: Did Clinton withhold information from Congress?  

The statement is in question-and-answer form. In it, Clinton asserts that she carefully followed every law and regulation that applied to her emails as secretary of state. She did absolutely nothing wrong, she says. 

One of the questions asked is: "Did Clinton delete any emails while facing a subpoena?" Clinton's answer is no, she did not. According to the Clinton campaign: "The emails that Clinton chose not to keep were personal emails -- they were not federal records or even work-related -- and therefore were not subject to any preservation obligation under the Federal Records Act or any request. Nor would they have been subject to the subpoena -- which did not exist at the time -- that was issued by the Benghazi Select Committee some three months later." 

The subpoena to which Clinton referred was issued March 4, 2015, after the committee learned that Clinton kept her emails on a separate, secret server. Clinton seems to be confirming that she destroyed her email records (and all backups, according to her attorney) in early December, which would be three months before the Benghazi committee subpoena. So Clinton's argument is: There's no way I was subject to a subpoena because I destroyed everything before the subpoena was issued. 

Putting aside the question of whether Clinton's emails were already covered by an earlier subpoena -- Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy maintains they were -- there is still the question of whether Clinton, all along, had a legal obligation to preserve her emails and hand them over to Congress. And on that question, there seems no doubt Clinton was legally required to do just that -- and despite that obligation destroyed the emails anyway.

On September 20, 2012, nine days after the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Clinton asking for "all information…related to the attack on the consulate." The letter told Clinton, "In complying with this request, you are required to produce all responsive documents that are in your possession, custody, or control, whether held by you or your past or present agents, employees, and representatives acting on your behalf." The letter specified emails as documents covered by the request.

The letter was clear. In response, the State Department produced not a single email to or from Clinton. The world now knows, of course, that Clinton did in fact possess emails covered by the request and did not turn them over.

How does Clinton's new explainer explain that? It doesn't. The campaign's new statement simply ignores that 2012 congressional letter demanding documents.

Continued:

..... For Clinton to argue that her "personal" emails were "not subject to any preservation obligation…or any request" is a non sequitur because the congressional request, beginning in 2012, was always for Benghazi- and Libya-related documents. Clinton had them and did not turn them over.

The Clinton explainer says that on December 5, 2014, she sent the State Department "30,490 copies of work or potentially work-related emails" from her time as secretary. But the Libya-related portion of those materials didn't make it to the Benghazi committee until recently, and even now a few documents are being withheld on some sort of claim of executive privilege.

Given all that, it seems beyond dispute that Clinton withheld Benghazi-related information from Congress beginning September 20, 2012. There are laws that govern such behavior. To give two examples: 18 U.S. Code 1505 says that anyone who "obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede…the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House, or any joint committee of the Congress" could face a five-year prison term, while 18 U.S. Code 1001 states that anyone who "falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact" in the course of "any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress" could face a prison sentence of up to eight years.

 While Mr. York goes on to say that he is not recommending charges necessarily be brought against Hillary Clinton and this is more evidence that merits and justifies further investigation of the former SOS Hillary Clinton. by Trey Gowdy.  I will have to say that her actions and intent were always criminal and the charges should be filed and a trial should begin forthwith. 

A few blogs to consker reading on Benghazi and the Coverup:

Hillary Clinton Denies Being Subpoenaed: Investigators Release Subpoena
Hillary Clinton Email Scandal - Obfuscation & Obstruction
@AP 's FOIA Request Shows Extent of Hillary Clinton's Email Coverup 
A blog on the Benghazi - Syria connection
Obama Arms the Syrian Rebels & 'Overlooks' Their Use of Chemical Weapons
A blog on the first days of media 'coverage'
Obama Media Machine in Full Deflection Mode after Embassy Attacks

Hillary Clinton Denies Being Subpoenaed: Investigators Release Subpoena

In a CNN interview on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton was caught in yet another lie.......

When CNN's Brianna Keilar asked Clinton in an exclusive interview on Tuesday about the decision to delete 33,000 emails while under investigation by a House panel, Clinton said other secretaries of state had done the "same thing." 

Keilar asked if her predecessors had also been subpoenaed, to which Clinton responded, "You're starting with so many assumptions ... I've never had a subpoena. Again, let's take a deep breath here." 

But House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy said Wednesday, "It couldn't be more plain." 

"To state that you never received a subpoena, you did get one, in March. Your lawyer was on notice months before that, that this committee of Congress wanted your work-related emails," the South Carolina Republican told CNN Wednesday. 

Gowdy requested Clinton's emails last December, but did not subpoena Clinton until this past March, following reports that she had maintained a personal email server.
Clinton lawyer David Kendall responded to the subpoena on March 27, writing that Clinton was awaiting approval from the State Department before providing them to the committee.

More from the Washington Free Beacon

Clinton conducted official business on two personal email accounts hosted on a “home-grown” server in her New York home. 

“There was no law, there was no regulation, there was nothing that did not give me the full authority to decide how I was going to communicate,” she told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Tuesday. 

That is inaccurate, according to Daniel Metcalfe, who ran the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy during the Bill Clinton administration. 

“Anyone at [the National Archives and Records Administration] would have said you can’t use a personal email account for all of your official business,” Metcalfe told PolitiFact in March.
According to Gowdy, Clinton also skirted federal rules designed to preserve official documents and communications. 

“Secretary Clinton had a statutory duty to preserve records from her entire time in office, and she had a legal duty to cooperate with and tell the truth to congressional investigators requesting her records going back to September of 2012,” he said in his statement.

Select Committee on Benghazi Releases Clinton Subpoena

July 8, 2015
Press Release

Washington, DC—The House Select Committee on Benghazi today released its March 4, 2015, subpoena to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in response to her inaccurate claim she had not been subpoenaed. The committee subpoenaed Clinton directly after it became aware of her exclusive use of personal email and a server and that the State Department was not the custodian of Clinton’s official record. The State Department failed to reveal this essential information to the Benghazi Committee or any other investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks until days before a media outlet was going to publish the information, meaning no investigation prior to the Benghazi Committee’s had access to the Secretary of State’s communications as part of its review. 

“The committee has issued several subpoenas, but I have not sought to make them public," said committee Chairman Trey Gowdy. “I would not make this one public now, but after Secretary Clinton falsely claimed the committee did not subpoena her, I have no choice in order to correct the inaccuracy. The committee immediately subpoenaed Clinton personally after learning the full extent of her unusual email arrangement with herself, and would have done so earlier if the State Department or Clinton had been forthcoming that State did not maintain custody of her records and only Secretary Clinton herself had her records when Congress first requested them.” 

“The fact remains, despite when this subpoena was issued, Secretary Clinton had a statutory duty to preserve records from her entire time in office, and she had a legal duty to cooperate with and tell the truth to congressional investigators requesting her records going back to September of 2012. Yet despite direct congressional inquiry, she refused to inform the public of her unusual email arrangement. This information only came to light because of a Select Committee request, not a voluntary decision to turn over records almost two years after leaving office, records which always should have been in State’s custody." 

"Moreover, the timing of the Secretary's decision to delete and attempt to permanently destroy emails is curious at best. The Secretary left office in February of 2013. By her own admission she did not delete or destroy emails until the fall of 2014, well after this Committee had been actively engaged in securing her emails from the Department of State. For 20 months, it was not too burdensome or cumbersome for the Secretary to house records on her personal server but mysteriously in the fall of 2014 she decided to delete and attempt to permanently destroy those same records." 

The subpoena to Clinton can be found at the link.

Hillary Clinton has always denied, delayed, obfuscated and obstructed the Benghazi investigation.



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