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Criminal Inquiry Sought Over Hillary Clinton's Personal Email Server 434

Posted by Soulskill from the people-have-jobs-because-of-this dept.
cold fjord writes: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Inspectors General from the State Department and intelligence agencies have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server while she was U.S. Secretary of State. At issue is the possible mishandling of sensitive government information. Dozens of the emails provided by Hillary Clinton have been retroactively classified as part of the review of her emails as they are screened for public release. So far 3,000 of 55,000 emails have been released. The inspectors general found hundreds of potentially classified emails. "The Justice Department has not decided if it will open an investigation, senior officials said. ... The inspectors general also criticized the State Department for its handling of sensitive information, particularly its reliance on retired senior Foreign Service officers to decide if information should be classified, and for not consulting with the intelligence agencies about its determinations."
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Criminal Inquiry Sought Over Hillary Clinton's Personal Email Server More

Criminal Inquiry Sought Over Hillary Clinton's Personal Email Server

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  • Felons (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:27AM (#50174665) Journal

    Felons are barred from running for the office of President, correct?

    You can be a lawyer who has been disbarred, though.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Hilary's team has been running the latest DOD Wipe algorithms on that server non-stop for months now.

    • Felons are barred from running for the office of President, correct?

      If I remember the ending of Eddie Murphy's 1992 comedy The Distinguished Gentleman correctly, and I'm pretty sure I do, they are not. And I dare you to come up with a better citation than that!

    • Nope. You can legally be disbarred from being able to vote, and if you manage to win the presidency you can take office. Consider that a number of Governors and Mayors have been felons from in-office corruption convictions and still won re-election!

      Requirements to be President are laid out in the constitution. As such, additional requirements are very likely to be considered unconstitutional unless placed into an amendment, like the 2 term rule.
      1. Native-born US citizens (being here when the country was

      • Re:Felons (Score:4, Informative)

        by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @02:16PM (#50177031)

        Correct, but there are other prohibitions against holding such an office depending on the crime. Most people have forgotten about USC Title 18, Part 1 Chapter 101, Section 2071 [cornell.edu], specifically paragraph b which says:

        (b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

        In theory, Hillary has already committed an act which if convicted for would disqualify her for any future public office... now actually prosecuting her for that is a separate and rather unlikely matter.

        • In theory, Hillary has already committed an act which if convicted for would disqualify her for any future public office... now actually prosecuting her for that is a separate and rather unlikely matter.

          The quoted law would probably be found not applicable for public, IE elected, office by reason of unconstitutionality. Remember, term limits hasn't been successful outside of the amendment with the POTUS.

          The intent is that you can't just DQ your opponents from public office with targeted laws, but the practical effect is that as long as you're not actually in prison, you can take office no matter your criminal record.

    • Nope. There are exactly six qualifications you must meet to be elected President: a) You must be a native born citizen of the US b) you must be at least 35 years old c) you must have been a resident of the US for at least fourteen years d) you can't have engaged in rebellion against the government of the US e) you can't have been impeached by Congress and f) You can't have already served two terms as President.

  • Obama's Justice Dept. will get right on it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jjo ( 62046 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:29AM (#50174689) Homepage
    We can expect a zealous investigation of these allegations against Hillary by the Obama Justice Department. Not.

    • As if any Justice Dept in the last 30 years has been effective.

      • They might disagree [justice.gov] but they would do better to shine the light on the government itself more often. In that regard, they may as well change their motto to "In Justice We Trust".

      • Re:Obama's Justice Dept. will get right on it (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Feyshtey ( 1523799 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @10:06AM (#50174973)
        It's less a comment about effectiveness, and more about integrity.

        Hell, even if the Obama administration were to prosecute or less likely convict Clinton, Obama would probably pardon her. I dont know if that's more or less sad that that the media would dismiss it, and that millions of intellectually lazy would still be happy to vote for her.

    • Considering that she ran against him in the last election and she's far from his favorite candidate, I would not rule it out. Not only could he hit an internal opponent, he could also claim that he's not playing favorites by pushing a through investigation against a democrat.

    • I think you misread the level of hatred between the Obamas and the Clintons.
      It's widely recognized within the Beltway.

      Now, whether this is just a validation of that, or (wheels within wheels) a prophylactic action by a Democratic president "against" the putative Democratic candidate that's actually intended to protect her by locking the whole story up before the Republicans make it a daily talking point "I'm sorry, nobody can comment on that from the US gov't as it's an 'official' investigation...", well, y

  • Obviously if you investigate far enough into this, you will eventually find the email between Hillary, Obama, and ISIS that orders the attack on Benghazi. It's in there, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ilsaloving ( 1534307 )

      While the parent comment is funny, I wouldn't be surprised if republicans actually believed this. They seem to spend all their time focusing on pet conspiracies, while ignoring the real problems facing the USA. The party has successfully reinvented themselves from being "conservative", to "batshit crazy" and their entire existence revolves around defeating the democrats (when they're not attacking each other).

      Actually managing the country seems to be very far down on their priority list.

      • They have whipped their base up into a rabid mob, there is little else they could do to get their attention besides demanding that she be burned as a witch

    • The email the republicans are looking for is the one calling for a force reduction at the embassy. This happened, so the question is, who called for it and why. This question has never been answered. Why was the embassy in a hostile country left undefended in the middle of a riot?

  • Oh boy (Score:5, Funny)

    by PvtVoid ( 1252388 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:33AM (#50174725)

    This one is going to generate a thoughtful, nuanced discussion.

  • What bothers me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:40AM (#50174787)
    is she was ordered to give up her email to investigators. She gave them some of the mail and deleted the rest.

    Whether we'd actually done anything wrong or not, if one of us little people had pulled such a stunt we'd be rotting in jail awaiting trial for destroying evidence, not running for president.

    • Re:What bothers me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:50AM (#50174847)

      She has already been caught deleting emails relevant to State Department. One of her friends (Sydney Blumenthal) turned over emails in another investigation from Hillary and they were not in what she disclosed to Congress. She claimed deleted emails had to do with a wedding or yoga class.

      So she illegally ran a private email server.
      Deleted requested emails after a subpoena for them.
      Emailed classified information from an unsecure server to Sydney.
      Lied to Congress about it.

      Those above have been proven and no one is questioning that they happened. What they are questioning is if doing the above is wrong/illegal and if something should be done about it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Right, They have her on contempt of Congress for certain and possibly purgery, if they want to push it. But politically speaking that won't necessarily keep her out of the race and would look FUCKING TERRIBLE if the GOP tried to pull that stunt.

        I don't know if they could get her on obstruction of justice at this point because I don't know if a congressional investigation counts.

      • It's actually worse than that. She could (plausibly) claim that some were mistakenly deleted. Mistakes happen. The real trouble is that some were *partially* deleted/redacted by her team, which requires positive action. How does one *accidentally* delete one paragraph from an email chain?

      • Furthermore, she only turned over printed versions of (a subset of) her emails and then claimed that was sufficient. I bet that she didn't print out the email headers, which are an important part of the email. Also, what about binary attachments (Word documents, etc)? Were those even included? There is a lot of potentially important information in a Word document that won't show up in a printed document.

        So, in short, even if you play by her rules as to whether she satisfied her record-keeping requiremen

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by adisakp ( 705706 )

        So she illegally ran a private email server.

        Actually, her use of a private email server was legal. The requirement that email servers for official government business must be on a government server was an amendment to the Federal Records Act that was passed in late 2014, *AFTER* Clinton had resigned as secretary of state. It's worth noting that previous Sec of States, including Colin Powell, also used private email servers (legally) for government business although the RNC-hosted services "lost" all of his emails so we'll never see what thoughts we

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DaHat ( 247651 )

          She claims that she deleted only e-mails of a personal nature and handed over all of the "requested" emails. It's your word against hers.

          Well, that and the word (or actions) of Sidney Blumenthal who turned over work emails which she didn't. Oops!

          The information in question was classified at a later date. It was not classified at the time it was transmitted.

          Your information is out of date, from http://www.wsj.com/articles/in... [wsj.com]

          In a letter to members of Congress on Thursday, the Inspector General of the Inte

  • I work in this field. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24, 2015 @09:59AM (#50174913)

    I personally process and load emails for law firms to review.

    I can tell you the following:

    Hillary's actions were legal at the time and followed all the rules.

    They were also unethical.

    The rules have now been changed, so that what she did would now be against the rules.

    Her emails almost certainly contain nothing incriminating. She is a smart women that has a lot of experience dealing with scandals and knows exactly what not to do.

    They probably contain something personally embarrassing - at least a little bit. Anyone that's ever looked over people's emails know you see stuff - dirty jokes, inappropriate websites, angry emails with profanity, etc. Remember it's not just what she wrote but what other people's wrote to her.

    It's obvious why she did what she did. But it's also obvious that if she were of stronger moral character, she would not have done it. She would have taken the slight chance that someone would find something embarrassing and accepted it as part of being a political figure. Because the coverup is always worse than the crime - even when no crime was committed. By giving her enemies this opportunity - where she ACTUALLY did something unethical - she has taken more damage than anything they were likely to have done by uncovering whatever they could find.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 )

      Her emails almost certainly contain nothing incriminating. She is a smart women that has a lot of experience dealing with scandals and knows exactly what not to do.

      Actually, I'm guessing Hilary did the private email setup to conceal her communications vis a vis her husband cutting deals for his foundation, and what she directed state department personnel to do afterwards. If she "really" was a smart woman with a lot of experience dealing with scandals, she wouldn't have been running a private email server at her home. It alone should be a strike against voting for her as POTUS; the problem is we don't know who's going to roll out of the Republican clown car for the

  • Let's be honest here, the only people mishandling sensitive material is the current government. Clinton wasn't hacked, but our Governments has been. She hasn't leaked any info out while our current government has. While what she did might of been wrong, it seems her stuff was in better hand then others. Not to mention the CIA spying on the Senate and other members of our Government.

    If you want a safe mail server, you have to host it yourself.

  • Mailbox (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dkman ( 863999 )
    From what I've heard, and it's not like I'm following it closely, Hillary was not given an email address by the government (using the general term). So she continued to use her own.

    Why isn't the investigation into how someone got appointed Secretary of State and no one thought to create an email account? The fact that months in nobody said "Hey, why doesn't she have an email account?" strikes me as odd. That no one sending her emails rose a red flag saying "why don't you have a government email?" strike

    • Re:Mailbox (Score:4, Insightful)

      by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @11:51AM (#50175889)
      Try that at a company when you first get hired and see how well that defense works out for you. A normal (ie not above the law) person might have asked about the oversight rather than saying "oh well, I guess I'll have to make an email server for myself". The "I wasn't given one" is an amazingly poor defense. It takes a lot of chutzpah to use that with a straight face.

    • Do you have a link to this information? As far as I understood it, she like every other employee was given an email address, she just never bothered to log into it.

  • From Daily Kos:

    "Late Thursday night, the Times published a story claiming that the Justice Department had been asked "to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account," only to quietly change the story to say that the Justice Department had been asked "to open a criminal investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used." As in, the story changed from being about a potential criminal investigation into Clinton's conduct to being about a potential criminal investigation into the mishandling of sensitive information by ... someone not named. "

    So, haven't you guys learned yet to ignore mass media reporting when it involves a Clinton? It's almost like someone with billions of dollars has been trying to smear the leading Democratic candidate for a few years now.

  • "In the course of the email review, State Department officials determined that some information in the messages should be retroactively classified. In the 3,000 pages that were released, for example, portions of two dozen emails were redacted because they were upgraded to “classified status.” But none of those were marked as classified at the time Mrs. Clinton handled them." http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07... [nytimes.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DaHat ( 247651 )

      Um [wsj.com]:

      In a letter to members of Congress on Thursday, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community concluded that Mrs. Clinton’s email contains material from the intelligence community that should have been considered “secret” at the time it was sent, the second-highest level of classification. A copy of the letter to Congress was provided to The Wall Street Journal by a spokeswoman for the Inspector General.

      The four emails in question “were classified when they were sent and are

  • Nice (Score:2, Insightful)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 )

    Dozens of the emails provided by Hillary Clinton have been retroactively classified as part of the review of her emails as they are screened for public release.

    Nice. Retroactively classify information, then open a criminal inquiry over the release of classified information.

    Absolutely no political motivation behind this witch hunt-- I mean investigation.

  • Why not ask the administrator of the server? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zeugma-amp ( 139862 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @11:51AM (#50175895) Homepage

    Since we know that none of the Clintons have the skills to run their own email server, we need to get the administrator of the email server in to testify. He needs to publicly admit before the world that he was so incredibly incompetent that there are no backups of the server.

    Congresscritter: Just to clarify, you're the person who managed the Clinton's email server?

    Admin: Yes.

    Congresscritter: Could you please supply the committee with backups of the email server?

    Admin: There aren't any.

    Congresscritter: Again, just to clarify... You're actually an IT professional?

    Admin: Yes

    Congresscritter: And you're going to go on record, to say that this email server was not backed up?

    Admin: Yes.

    Congresscritter: You realize Mrs. Clinton was a senior administration official whose duties involve, among other things, negotiations with foreign governments?

    Admin: uh....yes

    Congresscritter: And what would you have done if, during negotiations, the hard disk on this computer had crashed, completely wiping out her email?

    Admin: uh....

    Congresscritter: So you're going to state, for the record before the world that as an IT professional, you're completely and utterly incompetent?

    Admin: I'm not incompetent

    Congresscritter: Then provide us with the backups.

  • The Worst Thing Is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sir_Eptishous ( 873977 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @12:05PM (#50176025)
    That we have a choice of either Hillary Clinton OR a rag-tag group of nincompoop Republicans for president?

    What a joke.

  • So, you could have Hilary Clinton vs Donald Trump.

    That's a really crap choice isn't it.

  • Nobody noticed her return address all those years? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DutchUncle ( 826473 ) on Friday July 24, 2015 @12:27PM (#50176223)
    She was Secretary of State for 4 years, and before that a Senator for 8 years, and in all that time NOBODY noticed that emails came from (and went to) a non-government address? And nobody said anything about it? Even assuming that most of the elected officials have less of a clue than the average citizen ("It's a series of tubes!"), they know about handling classified material, because they get lectured about it every year. And nobody seemed to think there was a problem all that time.

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