RE: clintonemails.com: Who is Eric Hoteham?

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Skeptic Ginger said:
ftfy
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You seem to have forgotten that it is not the Republicans who are investigating Clinton over her "novel" handling of official email. It is the FBI - a criminal investigatory agency within the Department of Justice of a Democratic administration. At last report, there were 147 investigators looking into Clinton's email. Maybe it's a fishing expedition, but, if so, they seem to think there are some pretty big fish available for the catching.
 
TheL8Elvis said:
Sorry, the absurdity is the pretense that everyone didn't know it, and that the state dept "couldn't find" emails.
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Uh, while the malefactors on Mahogany Row knew, the people in the FOIA department (and the Justice Department lawyers representing State in the various litigation preceding the disclosures) certainly did not!
 
sunmaster14 said:
You seem to have forgotten that it is not the Republicans who are investigating Clinton over her "novel" handling of official email. It is the FBI - a criminal investigatory agency within the Department of Justice of a Democratic administration. At last report, there were 147 investigators looking into Clinton's email. Maybe it's a fishing expedition, but, if so, they seem to think there are some pretty big fish available for the catching.
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The FBI got involved because the State and IC IG's asked them to, and they were responding to investigations by, among others Jason Leoplod, The AP, the New York Times and USA Today.

The whole "scary" Republican thing is just another talking point endlessly repeated by the Campaign
 
sunmaster14 said:
You seem to have forgotten that it is not the Republicans who are investigating Clinton over her "novel" handling of official email. It is the FBI - a criminal investigatory agency within the Department of Justice of a Democratic administration. At last report, there were 147 investigators looking into Clinton's email. Maybe it's a fishing expedition, but, if so, they seem to think there are some pretty big fish available for the catching.
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And you seem to be conflating the reason to use a private server with the current investigation.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
And you seem to be conflating the reason to use a private server with the current investigation.
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If there were no private server, the argument that she had run afoul of the law regarding the handling of classified information would be much weaker. As it is, she purposely put classified information into the hands of people not authorized to receive it. To wit, her lawyers and the good people who maintained her server. Worse, from the perspective of national security, the government was obstructed from being able to do an audit of what classified information may exist on unclassified computers because the unclassified computers at issue were not under the government's control.
 
sunmaster14 said:
If there were no private server, the argument that she had run afoul of the law regarding the handling of classified information would be much weaker. As it is, she purposely put classified information into the hands of people not authorized to receive it. To wit, her lawyers and the good people who maintained her server. Worse, from the perspective of national security, the government was obstructed from being able to do an audit of what classified information may exist on unclassified computers because the unclassified computers at issue were not under the government's control.
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You are completely sidestepping the point.

Why use the private server: Because there has been a persistent GOP witch hunt.

Why the FBI is looking at the emails has zero to do with why Clinton would want to use the private server.

I continue to maintain, everything one does wrong at work, even when said work rules are based on laws, is not criminal. Any workplace governed by worker safety laws for example, is almost guaranteed to have employees that are out of compliance. No one goes to jail or gets indicted for workplace activity that is in violation of the law but has no criminal intent.

You Clinton bashers really need to consider how unrealistic it would be to start throwing indictments around every time someone in a job was out of compliance with some law.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
You are completely sidestepping the point.

Why use the private server: Because there has been a persistent GOP witch hunt.

Why the FBI is looking at the emails has zero to do with why Clinton would want to use the private server.

I continue to maintain, everything one does wrong at work, even when said work rules are based on laws, is not criminal. Any workplace governed by worker safety laws for example, is almost guaranteed to have employees that are out of compliance. No one goes to jail or gets indicted for workplace activity that is in violation of the law but has no criminal intent.

You Clinton bashers really need to consider how unrealistic it would be to start throwing indictments around every time someone in a job was out of compliance with some law.
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Instead of using her homebrew server, Hillary should have just hired hitmen to take out Issa and Gowdy, and any other troublesome Republicans liable to go on witch hunts. She could still use the same defense as you're proposing, and the upside is that our national security wouldn't have been compromised.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Why use the private server: Because there has been a persistent GOP witch hunt.
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wow, that is an unbelievable admission.

Kudos!

Furthermore, you appear to not realize that Hillary intentionally set up the server evade transparency and made no effort to ensure that legitimate FOIA requests, for example, were timely responded to.

All because Hillary's mania over the "vast right wing conspiracy."

Truly remarkable.
 
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16.5 said:
Uh, while the malefactors on Mahogany Row knew, the people in the FOIA department (and the Justice Department lawyers representing State in the various litigation preceding the disclosures) certainly did not!
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More mind reading.
 
TheL8Elvis said:
Sorry, the absurdity is the pretense that everyone didn't know it, and that the state dept "couldn't find" emails.
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You should ask the state department then. That they could not comply with some of the Freedom of Information Act request due to her set up prior to it being made public is known fact. To suggest otherwise means you haven't been following the issue as well as opportune

Since the mind reading theme seems to be the most popular explanation in her defense. i am citing a known example of how it in fact impacted the process on a couplle of known occaisions
 
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Why use the private server: Because there has been a persistent GOP witch hunt.
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Are you saying that she intentionally kept her emails out of reach? Many here have been saying this all along.

Did Hillary not realize that having her own private server and combining work and personal email on it would actually give the evil GOP witch hunt more ammunition to use against her? If so, that is the stupidest thing she could have done!

According to that single sentence:

Hillary sneaky = yes.
Hillary stupid = yes.

Looks like we're making progress here.
 
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sunmaster14 said:
Here's a good analysis, with references:
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The judge (in your cite) has said that it raises questions of... not that it's a given fact as presented repeatedly by 16.5 and others. How far is that from what I asked for a citation of? I asked if 16.5 could show me statements from the investigating parties showing that it is officially held that the intention of this whole set-up was to avoid FOIA requests. (It was a point about mind-reading and the comparison was to 16.5 accusing others of being clairvoyant when he was doing the same thing.)

As you seem to be the imaginary legal mouthpiece for the ISF prosecution team in this case, I'll assume that's the best you've got?
 
sunmaster14 said:
Instead of using her homebrew server, Hillary should have just hired hitmen to take out Issa and Gowdy, and any other troublesome Republicans liable to go on witch hunts. She could still use the same defense as you're proposing, and the upside fringe benefit is that our national security wouldn't have been compromised.
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FTFY

The actual upside would have been that Gowdy annd Issa would no longer be with us. :D
 
Foolmewunz said:
The judge (in your cite) has said that it raises questions of... not that it's a given fact as presented repeatedly by 16.5 and others. How far is that from what I asked for a citation of? I asked if 16.5 could show me statements from the investigating parties showing that it is officially held that the intention of this whole set-up was to avoid FOIA requests. (It was a point about mind-reading and the comparison was to 16.5 accusing others of being clairvoyant when he was doing the same thing.)

As you seem to be the imaginary legal mouthpiece for the ISF prosecution team in this case, I'll assume that's the best you've got?
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As I posted above I did believe the theory that Clinton implemented this scheme so that she could keep using her Blackberry. It seems like the facts have gotten in the way of my theory and I was wrong.

Now I'm back to the theory that she did it to reduce the possibility that her SoS emails would be made available to the Republicans and to others via the FOIA. It seemed unlikely to me that she would have taken such large risks to accomplish this but that is currently the only viable theory that has been put forth and it now appears that Sketic Ginger is entertaining the idea that this is the case (although it seems she thinks it was OK since the Republicans are such evil crafty devils*).

It is possible to relentlessly put forth the idea that the only way you could know that is if you could read minds. I suppose so, but do you give the bank robber a similar out: It looks like he was there to steal money, he did steal money but what was his motivation? Maybe he was looking for adventure. Who can know what motivates people if mind reading isn't possible? As a practical matter it doesn't matter all that much. The law, reasonably enough, doesn't require absolute determination of motivation. It looks to me like the you-can't-read-minds group here has decided that in this special case it's the critical issue. If it isn't possible to have read Clinton's mind her motivation is unknown (and unknowable) so her email scheme was OK. Maybe it was all part of her plan to end world hunger, who knows why she did it? But even after all this time she hasn't put forth a plausible explanation as to why she did it so it's extremely likely that she did it for the obvious reason: to hide her email communications.

ETA: * I agree with SG on this to some degree, we part ways I think mostly in that I don't think it's a legal defense and I don't think it's an ethical defense of her actions although I sympathize with Clinton over the outrageous behavior of the Republicans with regard to the hyper politicized attacks on the Clintons.
 
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davefoc said:
As I posted above I did believe the theory that Clinton implemented this scheme so that she could keep using her Blackberry. It seems like the facts have gotten in the way of my theory and I was wrong.

Now I'm back to the theory that she did it to reduce the possibility that her SoS emails would be made available to the Republicans and to others via the FOIA. It seemed unlikely to me that she would have taken such large risks to accomplish this but that is currently the only viable theory that has been put forth and it now appears that Sketic Ginger is entertaining the idea that this is the case (although it seems she thinks it was OK since the Republicans are such evil crafty devils*).

It is possible to relentlessly put forth the idea that the only way you could know that is if you could read minds. I suppose so, but do you give the bank robber a similar out: It looks like he was there to steal money, he did steal money but what was his motivation? Maybe he was looking for adventure. Who can know what motivates people if mind reading isn't possible? As a practical matter it doesn't matter all that much. The law, reasonably enough, doesn't require absolute determination of motivation. It looks to me like the you-can't-read-minds group here has decided that in this special case it's the critical issue. If it isn't possible to have read Clinton's mind her motivation is unknown (and unknowable) so her email scheme was OK. Maybe it was all part of her plan to end world hunger, who knows why she did it? But even after all this time she hasn't put forth a plausible explanation as to why she did it so it's extremely likely that she did it for the obvious reason: to hide her email communications.

ETA: * I agree with SG on this to some degree, we part ways I think mostly in that I don't think it's a legal defense and I don't think it's an ethical defense of her actions although I sympathize with Clinton over the outrageous behavior of the Republicans with regard to the hyper politicized attacks on the Clintons.
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Well your theories, I gather you recognize, are your theories. You are not presenting them as fact. 16.5 presents his wish list as though they are givens. They are not. Even the learned judge cited by the learned council for the HDS team is citing "maybes".

I am not saying that one does not deserve their own opinions. I am saying that when one is criticizing mind reading, it take amazing hubris to then mind-read Hillary's intentions.... in the same post.

Your analogy fails, by the way. "Intending to rob a bank" as a private citizen is not actually a crime. Robbing a bank is. Intending to divulge state secrets and circumvent security procedures, however, is certifiably a crime.
 
davefoc said:
...ETA: * I agree with SG on this to some degree, we part ways I think mostly in that I don't think it's a legal defense and I don't think it's an ethical defense of her actions although I sympathize with Clinton over the outrageous behavior of the Republicans with regard to the hyper politicized attacks on the Clintons.
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Legal defense is this was a common practice with the biggest difference Clinton did more of it.

You don't indict employees for doing what was a common practice.

I know the right wingers including on this thread are picking apart every action that is not in compliance with the laws they've cited. I'm not sure of their interpretations of said laws but the bottom line to me is, you can find the same thing in any hospital in the country (the area of expertise I'm most familiar with). The law says you must do X [take your pick—patient confidentiality laws, worker safety laws, public health infectious disease laws, fire code, hospital code, et cetera]. No one gets indicted for breaking these laws.

The supposed security breach (keep in mind the State Department email was hacked and Clinton server wasn't) was nothing more than a minor issue in this case. Nothing happened. No criminal intent can be claimed for avoiding FOIA laws, Clinton turned over all her work emails and then the server. There was a difference of opinion as to what was classified and what was work related emails.

This is nothing more than you would find for probably any government worker if you applied the fine toothed comb to their work practices.

I would be shocked if they find anything worthy of indictment here. It's wrist slap stuff, your boss puts a mark on your work performance evaluation and orders corrections.

What was the crime? Hiding from FOIA? Nothing was withheld. Security breach? Didn't happen. Misclassifying information? Welcome to the world of differences in opinions.
 
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