Politically Above the Law
America is
doomed if you accept this conclusion from the FBI’s investigation of Hillary
Clinton. What you should accept is the evidentiary findings from this
investigation, because the evidence that was found and presented does not
support the conclusion.
The FBI’s
notion of “intent” and the actions of a “reasonable person” in her position are
clearly supported by the evidence found. In other words, why would anyone in a
governmental position such as Secretary of State, ever use any form of
unsecured communication regarding ANY sensitive information regardless of its
classification? The fact is she used not just one, but several personal servers
to communicate and store any governmental information, when policy and security
prohibits such communications. The willful act to ignore these policies only
raises question of the underlying intent of doing so. Such actions are “grossly
negligent” because the risk of harm, intrusion and security is extensive
operating outside of approved, secured and monitored servers and devices. When
the expectation of a reasonably knowledgeable person decides to operate outside
those policies and securities, there has to be an adverse intent for deciding
to do so. The term of “extremely careless” precludes an implied meaning of not
being intentional. A more proper term of “extremely reckless” better describes
her actions more accurately. But changing one word for another certainly
changes the definition of that action.
In their
own opening statement, he states, “The referral
focused on whether classified
information was transmitted on that personal system.
Our investigation looked at whether
there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or
transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute
making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally
or in a grossly negligent way”. Everything they found and presented as
evidence, points directly to this conclusion. Once a person becomes reckless
with their actions, which is an intentional act of disregarding the risks of
unforeseen consequences, their intent becomes implied by those actions.
She is guilty and should be charged for the felonies under the law. She
should also be held responsible for any future actions resulting from these
reckless acts. Anyone that believes the she can hold the trusted office of
President and act according to the laws and the Constitution of the United
States, is in my opinion, acting reckless toward the future of our country. The events preceding this statement such as Lynch’s recusal to the
FBI’s findings, the Clinton/Lynch secret airport meeting and now a
recommendation of no prosecution by the FBI, all should be red flags to every
American willing to accept the reality of someone being the exception to the
rule of law.
God save us all.
The FBI’s public
statement: (I have highlighted the portions
of this statement that supports my opinions)
Remarks
prepared for delivery at press briefing.
Good morning. I’m here to
give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a
personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.
After a tremendous amount of
work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring
the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would
like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what
we are recommending to the Department of Justice.
This will be an unusual
statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail
about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people
deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not
coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of
Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about
to say.
I want to start by thanking
the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better
sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and
proud of their efforts.
So, first, what we have
done:
The investigation began as a
referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with
Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as
Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted
on that personal system. Our investigation
looked at whether there is evidence
classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that
personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to
mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent
way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified
information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.
Consistent with our
counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine
whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal
e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.
I have so far used the
singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began our
investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used
several different servers and administrators of those servers during
her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to
view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment
were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and
decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as
full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used
for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of
hours of effort.
For example, when one of
Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the
e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but
it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping
the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end
up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched through all of
it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back
together.
FBI investigators have also
read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to
the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly
containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S.
government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so
that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained
classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there
was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified
at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as
“up-classifying”).
From the group of 30,000
e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to
contain classified information
at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained
information that was Top Secret
at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained
Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate
from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them
Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the
e-mails were sent.
The FBI also discovered
several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that
were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional
e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found
traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private
e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail
accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as
Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people
with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.
This helped us recover
work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State. Still
others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail
fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.
With respect to the
thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State,
agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they
were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential
level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of
those we found have since been “up-classified.”
I should add here that we
found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were
intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that,
like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or
e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was
not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there
was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered
e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced
the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.
It could also be that some
of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as
“personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her
e-mails for production in 2014.
The lawyers doing the
sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of
all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied
on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related
e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on
Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search
terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for
example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.
It is also likely
that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State
and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted
all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic
recovery.
We have conducted interviews
and done technical examination to attempt to understand how that sorting was
done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the
electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence
there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.
And, of course, in addition
to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in
setting up and maintaining the various iterations of Secretary Clinton’s
personal server, to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to
those involved in the e-mail production to State, and finally, Secretary
Clinton herself.
Last, we have done extensive
work to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile
actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.
That’s what we have done.
Now let me tell you what we found:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or
her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified
information, there
is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very
sensitive, highly classified information.
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special
Access Program level when they were sent and received. These
chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and
receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable
person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those
government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an
unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to
this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly
classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was
discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).
None of these e-mails should have been on
any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because
all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even
supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and
Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.
Separately, it is important
to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small
number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings
indicating the presence of classified information. But
even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who
know or should know that the subject
matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
While not the focus of our
investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State
Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems
in particular, was generally lacking
in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the
government.
With respect to potential
computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that
Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since
2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of
the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such
direct evidence. We do assess that
hostile actors gained access
to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton
was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that
Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large
number of people and readily apparent. She also used
her personal e-mail extensively while
outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related
e-mails in the territory of
sophisticated adversaries. Given that
combination of factors, we assess it is
possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s
personal e-mail account.
So that’s what we found.
Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice:
In our system, the
prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on
evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our
recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and
engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may
be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the
matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.
Although there is evidence of potential violations of
the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is
that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily
weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious
considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent.
Responsible
decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions,
and how similar situations have been handled
in the past.
In looking back at our
investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot
find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved
some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of
classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a
way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of
disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see
those things here.
To be clear, this is not to
suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity
would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often
subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding
now.
As a result, although the
Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are
expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.
I know there will be intense
public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this
investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation
was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any
kind was brought to bear.
I know there were many
opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation—including
people in government—but none of that mattered to us. Opinions are irrelevant,
and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did
the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here
in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be
part of this organization.
The link to the actual
statement prepared by the FBI:
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