RE: clintonemails.com: Who is Eric Hoteham?

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16.5 said:
She Lied:

While Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in January 2009, she has said that prior to March 18, she used the email account that she used during her Senate service -- an email account she can no longer access. It was only after March 18, Clinton has said, that she started using a private email address and private server in her capacity as secretary of state.

However, the Obama administration has discovered an email chain between Clinton and retired Gen. David Petraeus that shows Clinton was using her private email account to conduct business by January 28, 2009.

Dozens and dozens more have been discovered since then.

By the way, the smoking guns cited in the IG Report (about hacking and hiding her "personal" communications) were from 2010 and later
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TheL8Elvis said:
I don't recall seeing that. Page ?

ps - maybe someone else needs to ask as I can't tell if 16.5 is still pretending to ignore my posts, or they are just so devastating he has no response. Probably the latter, but IDK ...
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maybe someone else needs to ask as I can't tell if 16.5 is still pretending to ignore my posts, or they are just so devastating he has no response....
 
It's absolutely amazing that there's still people defending Hillary. Even the talking heads on Morning Joe are calling her a liar.
 
Another liberal writer assesses Hillary's situation, including a reminder that she vehemently criticized Bush administration officials for sometimes using private (as I recall, campaign office) emails.
The resulting damage, self-inflicted and staff-enabled, is incalculable. It is a political wound that refuses to heal, mostly because Clinton’s enemies are all too happy to pick at it, incessantly, but also because Clinton has been so compulsively resistant to confessing error.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...bd89a4-2429-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html
 
16.5 said:
I will admit this is speculation on my part but my theory is that she did indeed get an opinion from a lawyer, who gave her exactly what she asked for: an opinion that her maintenance of her correspondence shielded them from Federal records laws, and FOIA based on Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136 (1980), and David Kendall was the lawyer.
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I looked that case up and it seems that the case at least doesn't apply well to the current situation. Kissinger was able to hide his correspondence with the president when he was the national security adviser. As to David Kendall advising Clinton on any part of this: I don't know what led you to speculate that this was possible, but it sure doesn't look like Clinton has been guided by anybody with much skill on any part of this to me.

sunmaster14 said:
Not incompetence. Arrogance. And the confidence that either the scandal wouldn't explode, or that she could contain it if it did.
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I hope it was arrogance and not incompetence but there is overlap between the two explanations and rather sadly I think both is the answer.

...
The sorting process was probably not legal given that the people doing it almost certainly did not have security clearances, and she almost certainly knew that classified material existed on her server.
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Perhaps, but they may have some plausible deniability about when it became known that classified materials were present. Regardless it is another element of this that doesn't reflect well on Clinton. The root problem here seems to be whose advice Clinton is relying on. An objective outside viewer of this situation might have been well aware of the huge risks involved here. It is difficult to say for sure because this is with the benefit of hindsight, but the advice from somebody that thinks like me would have been a lot more pessimistic about the situation and I think that person would have advised a much more open process with strong safeguards about the handling of at least some classified and/or sensitive material. Clinton seems to have tried to walk a middle ground between cooperation and obfuscation. My hypothetical adviser would have counseled that the existence of a middle ground was an illusion. Obfuscation was likely to be ineffective and only succeed in making Clinton look like she was hiding something.
As for her "childish" decision to turn over only paper copies? Well, there was a method behind the madness. She didn't want the State Department to have the electronic header files, which might have contained information which she didn't want to share.
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Possibly so, but if that is what she thought there was very little gain possible. The headers were recoverable in a variety of ways, including recovering the data from her computer, finding the headers on the emails in the computers of the people or on a server of the people she communicated with, subpoenaing the emails from the people Clinton communicated with and, as it happened, there seem to have been backups. So once again Clinton's attempts at obfuscation were defeated by simple mostly predictable ways.
Her strategy has worked for her. She is a hair's breadth away from being the presumptive nominee of her party, despite the fact that this was mostly uncovered before the practical deadline for her potential (and actual) primary opponents to announce their candidacies. It hasn't been so good for her party, though, but since when has that ever taken priority over her own interests?
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This is an interesting theory. Clinton is more competent and more sleazy than I realized if it is true. I've thought about this since I read your post and I'm not sure one way or the other, but I lean to the notion that incompetence is the main explanation and perhaps a very bad adviser embedded some place in Clinton's support group. Maybe the lawyer she turned the hard disk over to. Just because he might have some expertise in the law doesn't mean that he has understood any of the details about how this might play out.

Maybe I put too much stock in to this idea, but I think the Democratic Party leadership must have some idea about where this is going and I think they would have stepped in to stop Clinton's campaign if they thought the email scandal would sink Clinton's candidacy.
 
Bob001 said:
Another liberal writer assesses Hillary's situation, including a reminder that she vehemently criticized Bush administration officials for sometimes using private (as I recall, campaign office) emails.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...bd89a4-2429-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html
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This is another one of those examples of an apologist for Hillary Clinton who wraps her apologetics with muted criticism to make the apologetics seem more plausible. It's the same kind of subtle apologetics that you see when "critics" blame Hillary for handling the situation "poorly." Or not being forthcoming enough. Or not admitting error sooner.

This is all balderdash really. It would be like OJ Simpson's supporters criticizing him for poorly handling the aftermath of the murder of his ex-wife and her friend. The original conduct is so egregious that the evasiveness and dissembling in the aftermath are small potatoes.

I'll just point out one particularly troubling claim in Ruth Marcus' article, which is actually the main claim it seems. Which is that Hillary's quote “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible" means that Hillary wanted to protect her private life. That, in Marcus' words, "... the accretions, the scar tissue built up over years of politically motivated attacks and endless investigations, reinforced Clinton’s instinct for the protective crouch."

I think Marcus has deliberately misinterpreted Hillary's quote. The word personal there does not refer to personal information. It refers to the personal email address. After all, nobody is going to be able to access her old emails just because her email address is made known to the State Department spam filter. The problem, as she saw it, was that she didn't want formal acknowledgement by the State Department of her personal email address. Doing so, in her view, would create a nexus or privity between the State Department and her personal email account, thereby making it impossible to keep her personal email account immune from FOIA searches.

There is absolutely no question that this was the entire rationale for handling all her work through her private email address. Also, it is indefensible. And illegal. There is no way for Hillary to spin that given the information that has come out. Shills like Ruth Marcus will try to help by claiming that there was some magical formula of forthrightness and contrition which would have done the trick, and that it was a shame that Hillary was too mentally scarred to use it, but that's just the equivalent of "blaming" somebody for not picking up a turd from the clean end.
 
sunmaster14 said:
This is another one of those examples of an apologist for Hillary Clinton who wraps her apologetics with muted criticism to make the apologetics seem more plausible. It's the same kind of subtle apologetics that you see when "critics" blame Hillary for handling the situation "poorly." Or not being forthcoming enough. Or not admitting error sooner.

This is all balderdash really. It would be like OJ Simpson's supporters criticizing him for poorly handling the aftermath of the murder of his ex-wife and her friend. The original conduct is so egregious that the evasiveness and dissembling in the aftermath are small potatoes.

I'll just point out one particularly troubling claim in Ruth Marcus' article, which is actually the main claim it seems. Which is that Hillary's quote “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible" means that Hillary wanted to protect her private life. That, in Marcus' words, "... the accretions, the scar tissue built up over years of politically motivated attacks and endless investigations, reinforced Clinton’s instinct for the protective crouch."

I think Marcus has deliberately misinterpreted Hillary's quote. The word personal there does not refer to personal information. It refers to the personal email address. After all, nobody is going to be able to access her old emails just because her email address is made known to the State Department spam filter. The problem, as she saw it, was that she didn't want formal acknowledgement by the State Department of her personal email address. Doing so, in her view, would create a nexus or privity between the State Department and her personal email account, thereby making it impossible to keep her personal email account immune from FOIA searches.

There is absolutely no question that this was the entire rationale for handling all her work through her private email address. Also, it is indefensible. And illegal. There is no way for Hillary to spin that given the information that has come out. Shills like Ruth Marcus will try to help by claiming that there was some magical formula of forthrightness and contrition which would have done the trick, and that it was a shame that Hillary was too mentally scarred to use it, but that's just the equivalent of "blaming" somebody for not picking up a turd from the clean end.
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she also claimed that it was not a smoking gun, because she expressed a willingness to get a separate account. Except she didn't actually get the freaking account!

Remember the whole "can you imagine" line? Can you imagine what would happen if Hillary used email? So she used it and tried to hide it, and refused to cooperate with the investigation.

Totally unfit to be President....
 
TheL8Elvis said:
unamazingly, you can't back that claim up with actual facts.
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Hasn't it been reported that she didn't want to use the government server because she didn't want personal things being looked at?

Wasn't that in an email that she didn't turn over?
 
TheL8Elvis said:
Screwed in what way ?

It's been pointed out numerous times that for consequences to come from the " top secret" information, intent is necessary, and it's not there.

As for the FOIA stuff, it's not criminal.

Beyond those things, she's got to convince people what she did was still better than voting from Trump. I don't think that will be a tough sell.
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There doesn't have to be intent if she was grossly negligent.

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
 
Fudbucker said:
There doesn't have to be intent if she was grossly negligent.

"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
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Excoet for the fact that nothing she did will be considered grossly negligent.

I'm sorry to dash your hopes .... She's not getting indicted. End of story..
 
logger said:
Hasn't it been reported that she didn't want to use the government server because she didn't want personal things being looked at?

Wasn't that in an email that she didn't turn over?
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No. Even if it was , it's still not the same thing as what you claimed.
 
TheL8Elvis said:
Excoet for the fact that nothing she did will be considered grossly negligent.

I'm sorry to dash your hopes .... She's not getting indicted. End of story..
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I see you missed my point: there does not have to be intent for one to be prosecuted for mishandling classified info, as the law I referenced points out. Agreed?

I know you think she wasn't grossly negligent, but your claim was about intent, and your claim is wrong.
 
TheL8Elvis said:
Excoet for the fact that nothing she did will be considered grossly negligent.

I'm sorry to dash your hopes .... She's not getting indicted. End of story..
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The more likely situation that the FBI report is damaging but doesn't drive an indictment. I think it is very unlikely to not be at least somewhat damaging. Just how damaging is the question. If the FBI determines that an actual security breech occurred where classified US data was transferred to a foreign power then Clinton's candidacy may be ended. If they just find she was sloppy and that she made some bad decisions her candidacy may survive wounded but alive.

Of course, if the FBI identifies Clinton to have played a knowing role in seriously jeopardizing classified data not being president may be the least of her problems. I still think this is unlikely to be the result of the FBI investigation. The Democrats are not idiots and no matter what they claim if the FBI report was likely to go here, I think, they would have ended Clinton's run long before now.
 
Fudbucker said:
I see you missed my point: there does not have to be intent for one to be prosecuted for mishandling classified info, as the law I referenced points out. Agreed?

I know you think she wasn't grossly negligent, but your claim was about intent, and your claim is wrong.
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I did not mean the post I made above to disagree with your point here. However, grossly negligent may be in the eye of the beholder and without some clear cut intentional violations by Clinton I think she will not be indicted and I don't think she is going to be indicted.
 
davefoc said:
The more likely situation that the FBI report is damaging but doesn't drive an indictment. I think it is very unlikely to not be at least somewhat damaging. Just how damaging is the question. If the FBI determines that an actual security breech occurred where classified US data was transferred to a foreign power then Clinton's candidacy may be ended. If they just find she was sloppy and that she made some bad decisions her candidacy may survive wounded but alive.

Of course, if the FBI identifies Clinton to have played a knowing role in seriously jeopardizing classified data not being president may be the least of her problems. I still think this is unlikely to be the result of the FBI investigation. The Democrats are not idiots and no matter what they claim if the FBI report was likely to go here, I think, they would have ended Clinton's run long before now.
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It's also possible she did something really stupid (i.e., grossly negligent), like, say, sending/receiving emails with the identities of undercover agents on an unsecured server. After reading takeaways from the IG's report, this doesn't seem unlikely. Clinton used a personal email exclusively for government business, and we know top secret information was found on her server. Who knows what else the FBI has found on there?
 
davefoc said:
I did not mean the post I made above to disagree with your point here. However, grossly negligent may be in the eye of the beholder and without some clear cut intentional violations by Clinton I think she will not be indicted and I don't think she is going to be indicted.
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They don't have to be intentional, that's the point. If I'm texting and driving and kill someone, I might not have intended to kill that person, but my actions were grossly negligent, and I will be held accountable for the person's death. I might not have even had an intent to act in a grossly negligent matter. Maybe I just wasn't thinking and started texting and hit the person. I might not even have known what I was doing was illegal. Doesn't matter.
 
Fudbucker said:
It's also possible she did something really stupid (i.e., grossly negligent), like, say, sending/receiving emails with the identities of undercover agents on an unsecured server. After reading takeaways from the IG's report, this doesn't seem unlikely. Clinton used a personal email exclusively for government business, and we know top secret information was found on her server. Who knows what else the FBI has found on there?
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This is where how you interpret something in the gray area is going to take over. Assuming the leaks are correct, Clinton ended up with some stuff that was classified on her server. A lot of it seems to be stuff where the situation is ambiguous, public information that is classified, stuff that arguably shouldn't have been classified, etc. OK, let's assume that some of it was of such a sensitive nature that it obviously was classified just by its existence. Then the issue comes as to what Clinton did to correct the situation and were her actions in keeping with the laws governing this kind of thing. I don't disagree with you that some people will see what comes out of the FBI report as justifying an indictment of Clinton. My guess is that the FBI report will not contain information that can drive a finding that Clinton unequivocally violated the rules concerning the handling of classified material in a way that an indictment is justified.

The person in the hot seat will be Janet Lynch and she may well have the least desirable job in Washington when it comes time to figure out what to do about the FBI report.
 
Fudbucker said:
They don't have to be intentional, that's the point. If I'm texting and driving and kill someone, I might not have intended to kill that person, but my actions were grossly negligent, and I will be held accountable for the person's death. I might not have even had an intent to act in a grossly negligent matter. Maybe I just wasn't thinking and started texting and hit the person. I might not even have known what I was doing was illegal. Doesn't matter.
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I seem to be having trouble using exactly the right words to convey my meaning. By intentional, I meant intentionally taking an action that was negligent with regard to the handling of classified material. I do not disagree with what you are saying. Our disagreement I think was semantic.
 
davefoc said:
I seem to be having trouble using exactly the right words to convey my meaning. By intentional, I meant intentionally taking an action that was negligent with regard to the handling of classified material. I do not disagree with what you are saying. Our disagreement I think was semantic.
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I honestly don't know. Suppose I have a thumbdrive with the names of undercover agents, I put it in my briefcase, set my briefcase down in a hotel lobby, get distracted, and it gets stolen. Nothing I did there was intentionally negligent, and I may not even remember putting the thumbdrive in there. Would I be prosecuted if an agent was killed because of my negligence? I don't know. Like you say, it's in the eye of the beholder.
 
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