2016 Election - Clinton: The Hillary Clinton Thread

92tide said:

my conscience doesn't bother me at all. i will gladly be pulling the lever for hillary in november.

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92tide said:

my conscience doesn't bother me at all. i will gladly be pulling the lever for hillary in november.

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64met said:

I presume then you are voting for neither? (In response to DzynKingRTR).

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selmaborntidefan said:

1) Other former Secretaries of State aren't seeking the office of President, which I'd call a pretty damned big difference.

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2) The one who is seeking the office is trying to make a big deal about her alleged 'experience,' and that she is somehow 'better' or 'different' than 'all the others.' Well, should I not be able to expect someone posing as being more worthy and better prepared than everyone else on the planet to NOT fall back on an excuse that worked for others? The valedictorian of the class doesn't repeatedly fall back upon the excuse 'the dog ate my homework.'[\quote]OK, so she lacks substantive experience in managing an e-mail server. I don't think she's making that a core part of her stump speech. As for better than all the others, at the moment it's "better than Trump"; prior to that, it was "Better then Sanders". I've no doubt that there were better people out there on both sides of the aisle--they just chose not to run.

This is like seeking office under 'family values' and then having an affair. I could care less where a President sticks it, but if one is trying to argue 'see, I'm different from all them others' and then does something that cuts to the very core of that issue of credibility, they ought to be sent out of the village in shame.

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I think you're over generalizing to make your point here, taking a specific instance and applying it broadly; your infidelity example, by contrast, is more of a 1:1 correlation.

No real argument here. Someone go back and check my posts and see if you can find me ever once attacking Obama or Biden or Clinton on Benghazi; I don't think I've ever even commented upon it. Of course, I bring the burden of having served in the military and had a father overseas whom I worked close to during the Cold War and know that circumstances are never as pristine as TV makes them look. I personally think the attack over Benghazi is right up there with liberals (like Michael Moore) who whine about 'Bush spent seven minutes in the classroom after the WTC got hit.' What was he supposed to do? Come out of a phone booth with a large W on his shirt?

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I don't recall accusing you of attacking Obama or Biden, but whatever. And Ws actions immediately after the WTC don't bother me nearly as much as his actions before and after. No point discussing W any further.

Yes, but that's a two-way street. The very same Democrats now saying "even a Republican FBI director said she did nothing wrong" (which is not what he said) would be saying, "The FBI director is a Republican and is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy to bring down the Clintons!!!"

Do I agree with you on this point? Yes. But it's a double-edged sword.

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Yeah, but at the moment we're discussing what DID happen, not a hypothetical.

I can't sit here and say I'd LOVE to see an indictment because I can't say I do. I will make no bones about the fact I despise Hillary Clinton (unlike Obama, whom I merely disagree with but think is probably a pretty decent fella with ideas for governance with which I disagree). Anyone who wants the most powerful office in the world SO BADLY that she is willing to stick with a philandering husband (perpetual even) and attack those who tell the truth about his peccadilloes, and do the things she's done to it - that person male or female scares the living mess out of me because of what they might do with it. MOST candidates - even with your aforementioned notion of corruption - do have enough of a moral compass (or conscience) that there is a line they will not cross in order to get the office. It might be further from morality than they will admit but MOST of them have a line they're not willing to cross even for the Presidency.

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Now this is an interesting point, and one that might be worth discussing. We've had more than a few philanders in the White House, yet Hillary is the only one who is pilloried for putting up with it. I honestly don't know where that argument goes, but there's some interesting dynamics at work there.

As for a line that people are unwilling to cross, I have four words in response: Lee Atwater, Karl Rove.

I've yet to see that be true for Hillary Clinton (and don't be surprised if she changes her name a few days after the election and before Inauguration; she's done that stuff before). Her supporters were behind the original birther accusation, and I've long suspected the Clinton minions dug up the Rev Wright video, too. (I've also suspected Obama hired her as Secretary of State for two reasons, one of them being the old Godfather mantra of "keep your friends close but your enemies closer.").

1. Some supporters, as opposed to Hillary herself. 2. The Rev Wright is by your own admission baseless speculation, which given your professed dislike, has to be taken with a large grain of salt. As far as why Obama tapped her for Sec State, I suspected the same thing, or that Hillary herself lobbied for the gig to shore up her foreign policy credentials.


But at the same time, spare us the minimizing of the carelessness. In one breath, you're arguing, "Even the FBI said it wasn't illegal" and then in the next taking issue with the words of the FBI ("extreme carelessness").

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I suppose that part of the issue relates to "extreme carelessness" ON WHOSE PART? Did Hillary herself make specific decisions as to how the e-mail servers were to be configured and maintained, or were bad decisions made on the part of her e-mail administrators? I haven't seen that level of specifics, but rather, more of a "mistakes were made" scenario.

As far as why I'm still leaning, albeit reluctantly, towards Clinton, it's very simple--the present circumstance reminds me of the 72 election. I was talking with my dad sometime in the early 80s about the election, and he commented that everyone knew Nixon was a crook. I asked "then why did you vote for him".

He looked me dead in the eye and said, Better a crook than a fool."

Have a nice day.

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Tide1986 said:

One certainly shouldn't bite the hand that feeds him.

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Reddit post said:

Comey's Framing
"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 [18 USC §793], or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities [18 USC §1924].”
Relevant Statutes

1. 18 USC §793(f): “Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing...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 (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody…and fails to make prompt report…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
2. 18 USC §1924(a): “Whoever…becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information…knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.”
3. Note: Comey’s description of the FBI investigation does not encompass statutes relating to the potential that confidential information was used against the United States (i.e., as a result of Clinton’s servers being vulnerable to hacking) such as 18 USC §798, or statutes referring to the destruction of classified information (e.g., 18 USC §2071). That he later discusses the possibility of Clinton’s servers being hacked and the methods by which her lawyers disposed of confidential information seems to be solely in the interest of transparency rather than directly related to the explicit purpose of the FBI’s investigation.

Legal Standards
18 USC §1924 requires actual intent, while 18 USC §793 requires "gross negligence." Gross negligence is a somewhat nebulous term - Black's Law Dictionary comes in with the assist, defining it as "A severe degree of negligence taken as reckless disregard. Blatant indifference to one’s legal duty, other’s safety, or their rights."
To Indict or not to Indict?
Evidence in an indictment is viewed through the lens most favorable to the prosecution, essentially asking "is there any way a jury could find this person culpable?" It is important to point out that this is not the only factor in a prosecutor's decision as to whether an indictment is appropriate or not (simply because an indictment is possible does not mean a conviction is likely, or even appropriate). But, as this remains a question about indictment and not conviction, we'll look at the two statutes in layman's terms from the perspective most favorable to the prosecution:
18 USC §793 is violated if Clinton, through reckless disregard or blatant indifference to her legal duty, permitted classified information to be stored on her personal servers (it has already been established that said servers were improper places of custody for confidential information, so that element can be presumed satisfied).
18 USC §1924 is violated if Clinton intentionally transmitted classified materials to her personal servers with intent to retain them at that location (again, imputing that her personal servers would be considered unauthorized locations and her transmission itself unauthorized).
Relevant FBI Findings
A total of 113 emails from Clinton’s private servers (110 from her disclosure to the FBI, 3 discovered in the FBI’s further investigation) were classified at the time they were sent or received. Of the original 110 emails in 52 email chains, 8 email chains contained Top Secret information, 36 Secret, and 8 Confidential. 2,000 additional emails were later up-classified, but not confidential at the time.
No “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,” but “there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
“Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position…should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”
“A very small number of the emails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an email, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”
FBI Recommendation
“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.”
FBI Rationale
It is incumbent upon the FBI and prosecutors in this scenario to consider the strength of the evidence, especially intent, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.
All previous cases prosecuted under these statutes “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.” These factors are not present here.
Is the FBI's Conclusion Accurate?
Forewarning: This is where the objectivity of this post concludes and personal opinion takes the reins.
Yes and no. The FBI is correct observing that an indictment under these circumstances would tread somewhat novel ground in that the intent element in Clinton's case is less substantial than previous prosecutions. There is no evidence that Clinton sought to harm the United States' interests, that she is in any way disloyal to her country, or that she set out with the intent to mishandle confidential information in such a precarious manner. It is also true that great deference is given to previous case law and prosecutions in determining the appropriateness of applying particular statutes to particular actions - if precedence is set following a particular pattern, that is an indication to the public as to how the law is interpreted and applied. It is arguably unjust to apply the law on a wider basis, having already established a pattern for its usage that the target of the investigation relied upon.
However, the flip side is plain to see: Going solely by the letter of the law, 18 USC §1924 was, in a strict reading of the statute and the FBI's conclusions, clearly violated. Clinton intentionally transmitted information that was known to be classified at the time of its transmission to private servers that were not authorized to traffic such information. The question of 18 USC §793 is more opaque, and would revolve around a jury's interpretation of her actions under the gross negligence standard. That said, it is not unreasonable to believe that a jury could view what the FBI termed "extreme carelessness" as a violation of that standard.
In sum - precedent would lean toward no indictment, the letter of the law and the favorability granted to the prosecution by the indictment process would speak to the opposite.

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chanson78 said:

I blatantly stole the following from a Reddit thread, you can search for it if you wish. The title is "The F.B.I Recommends no charges against Hillary Clinton for use of personal email server."

I think it sums up my feelings on the issue.

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Tide1986 said:

I'm glad you agree that she broke the law.

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chanson78 said:

I've always maintained that had I done what she did, I would at the very least have been out of a job with severely limited job prospects, possibly in jail. I'm not too keen on one rule, two outcomes depending on who you are.

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DzynKingRTR said:

you guessed correctly.

Gary Johnson has my vote so I will sleep better.

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ValuJet said:

Just thinking through the politics of this, Obama and Hillary were on AF1 en route to Charlotte when Comey announced her exoneration. Suppose he announced the indictment. Would it have been a big beautiful sight for Obama to be seen with her upon landing and at the campaign rally fresh off an indictment?

This appears to have been all orchestrated in advance. Obama has once again poked his political adversaries in the eye with political drama.

Sort of makes me also wonder what dirt he threatened to expose on Comey.

I haven't heard this speculated any where- yet. I may be wrong but Comey's closest associates could make no sense of his action. His credibility and the entire FBI is now in doubt.

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92tide said:

once comey saw how obama and the clintons took care of ken starr, he knew who he had to serve.

eta: looks like speaker ryan is going to hold hearings to get to the bottom of comey's lack of performance.

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Bama Reb said:

Another dog and pony show, no doubt.

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RTR91 said:

Not going to get into a huge back and forth over this, but I saw several people pointing out today how David Petraeus was fired for having less classified documents than Hillary sent.

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Importantly, Petraeus was well aware of the classified contents in his journals, saying to his biographer, Paula Broadwell on tape, “I mean, they are highly classified, some of them. They don’t have it on it, but I mean there’s code word stuff in there.”

When questioned by the FBI, Petraeus lied to agents in responding that he had neither improperly stored nor improperly provided classified information to his biographer. As Mukasey also highlighted, the key element is that Petraeus’ conduct was done “knowingly.” That is, when he stored his journals containing “highly classified” information at his home, he did so knowingly. Petraeus knew at that time that there was classified information in the journals, and he knew they were stored improperly.

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92tide said:

i'll be surprised if they can actually get a dog and pony there on time.

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jthomas666 said:

Unlike Petraeus, Clinton did not knowingly store or share classified information in violation of the law.

This article was written by Anne Tompkins, the US attorney who prosecuted Petreus.



This does not, of course, mean that Clinton didn't didn't do anything wrong--just pointing out that there is a difference--an important one--between her case and the Petreus case, as that seems to be the meme du jour.

Sorry to have interrupted the daily outrage. Please do continue.

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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.”

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