Latest email disclosure is just more proof that Clinton lied By Andrew C. McCarthy
http://nypost.com/2016/08/31/latest-email-disclosure-is-just-more-proof-that-clinton-lied/
On Tuesday, The Post’s Daniel Halper broke the news that Hillary Clinton continued recklessly mishandling classified information even after stepping down as secretary of state. The revelation is bracing — but hardly surprising.
We already knew Clinton’s email practices remained a national security vulnerability after she left the State Department at the end of President Obama’s first term.
For nearly two years, she maintained the servers through which her unauthorized, non-secure homebrew communication system had operated. As we now know, about 62,000 emails were stored on those servers, over 2,000 of which contained classified information, including some of the most sensitive national defense secrets — and the highly classified sources and methods for acquiring those secrets — maintained by our government.
The latest classified email disclosure is a joke. The document is so chockablock with classified information — meaning it is so thoroughly redacted — that the State Department might just as well have issued a blank page. This reminds us of how cynically the Democrats’ presidential nominee looked the American people in the eye and assured us, for over a year, that she never sent or received classified information.
Officials with security clearances know the categories of information that are classified pursuant to an executive order — whether they’re “marked” as such or not. Clinton not only knew the rules, she was in charge of enforcing them throughout her department.
And in any event, as FBI Director James Comey conceded, Clinton did send and receive some emails with classified markings.
We are also reminded that Clinton repeatedly vowed she’d surrendered every single government business-related email upon the State Department’s request.
This was an extraordinary lie: She hoarded and attempted to destroy thousands of emails which, like the one The Post describes, involved government business — some of it highly sensitive and significant (such as the 30 emails related to the Benghazi massacre that the FBI recovered but the State Department has yet to disclose). Converting government records to one’s own use and destroying them are serious crimes, even if no classified information is involved.
Of course the Obama Justice Department was never going to indict the Democrats’ nominee (who, if she wins, would be positioned to reappoint Loretta Lynch as attorney general). But, in recommending against the filing of criminal charges (which he could only do by contorting statutes under which Clinton was clearly culpable), Comey noted that officials in Clinton’s shoes normally face “security and administrative sanctions.”
Translation: They have their security clearances revoked and are fired.
How could someone who should not be allowed to work for the government, much less have access to classified information, be permitted to stand for the presidency? It’s a question Congress should very publicly be exploring, even if the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign seek to sweep it under the rug.
Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor and a contributing editor at National Review.
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