Hillary Clinton has tried to confuse the public about the definition of “classified,” but some in the press corps are cutting though the fog. We’re learning, in particular, that Mrs. Clinton’s self-serving decision to use a private email server for official communications may have resulted in far greater mishandling of classified information.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Mrs. Clinton wrote and sent on her private server at least six emails that contained classified information. This destroys Mrs. Clinton’s statement that she never sent any classified information. It also blows up her campaign’s diversionary argument that nothing she sent or received was “marked” as classified.
Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State, with greater knowledge than anyone in her operation about national security secrets, and with a duty to protect such information. Whether the classified material she was sending or receiving was marked as such makes no difference to an official’s obligation. Mrs. Clinton knew this.
Meanwhile, Fox News reports that State Department lawyers have been hiding the extent to which Mrs. Clinton handled classified material on her server. According to the Fox account, career State employees initially marked four Clinton emails as classified. State Department lawyers then stepped in to recategorize the emails as “deliberative.” This meant they couldn’t be viewed by investigators from Congress.