The Chronicles of Hillary, Book the Third: Felon or Cipher?

The Hillary email travesty becomes more of a travesty by the day.

Hillary keeps repeating her mantra: none of the email was marked as classified when she received or sent it.

Yes, she thinks you are that stupid. Or maybe she is that stupid, and doesn’t recognize the difference between a sufficient condition and a necessary one. Keeping information marked as classified on her private server would be sufficient to violate the law. But it’s not necessary. The relevant statute defines classified information of the United States as:

information originated, owned, or possessed by the United States Government concerning the national defense or foreign relations of the United States that has been determined pursuant to law or Executive order to require protection against unauthorized disclosure in the interests of national security [emphasis added].

Hillary was Secretary of State, the officer of the government responsible for the “foreign relations of the United States,” and who dealt with national defense issues as part of that job. So, if Hillary wrote anything in an email pertaining to her job that would have damaged the United States had it been disclosed, or received any email pertaining to her job that would have damaged the United States had it been disclosed, she violated the law.

So Hillary’s defense would have to be: “All I did as Secretary of State–or at least, all I did via email–was discuss frivolous matters that would not have mattered in the least had they been disclosed.” In other words, she was a total cipher as SoS whose electronic correspondence (sent and received) was utterly trivial and required no protection against unauthorized disclosure. Not some of it. All of it.

Well Okay then! Who am I do disagree that Hillary was a cipher?

But if that’s her defense, why the extreme measures to prevent disclosure of this information? Why protect the banal and irrelevant? Why have a private server in the first place? Why fight tooth and nail to delay and impede turning over even paper copies of the allegedly trivial email? And most tellingly: why wipe the server clean? The latter act particularly suggests guilt.

All of these questions answer themselves. It was impossible for her to perform her official duties without keeping information that required protection against unauthorized disclosure on her precious server.

The wiping of the server raises another serious issue. It seriously impedes, and perhaps makes impossible, any forensic examination of the server to determine whether it had been hacked.

It’s also worth noting that apparently Hillary’s server utilized a spam service that opened, decrypted, and read every email to make sure it wasn’t spam. (Heaven forfend Hillary get unsolicited ads for yoga pants!) Well, what if her spam service was hacked? Just how many potential holes were in her email system, anyways?

Further, it now appears that the classification designations had been illegally removed from things sent to Hillary. Very sensitive things, including information related to satellite intelligence/national technical means. As an aside, Jonathan Pollard spent decades in prison for revealing information related to intelligence satellite capabilities.

The legal violations are self-evident.

The appalling lack of judgment is also evident. But it’s important to note that she is not just guilty of lack of judgment as the term is usually used, to indicate thoughtlessness, carelessness, or negligence. She made the conscious judgment to place her own selfish interests above those of the country. It’s not so much bad judgment, as malign judgment.

One wonders how long this can go on. There are two mechanisms for terminating her political career, as is only just and necessary. The first is political: voters will realize that she is unfit for any office, let alone the presidency. The second is legal: the Justice Department will prosecute her.

I have my doubts that either mechanism is sure-fire. The second is particularly interesting. Obama does not like Hillary: his Svengali, Valerie Jarrett, positively hates her. Will he let her twist in the wind for a while and then let a prosecution proceed? Or will he decide that the blowback from a war with the notoriously vicious Clinton machine (a) could distract him during his last year in office, and detract from his precious legacy, and (b) increase the odds that the even more hated Republicans could take the presidency, and undo some of his actions.

I can see it both ways, but think it more likely that Obama will stay the Justice Department: taking her on would be an extremely risky move. I therefore think that the more promising mechanism is a political judgment by the American people that Hillary is categorically unfit for the presidency. Promising, but not inevitable. Intense partisanship, combined with the fact that the Republican party is currently a mess and being ripped apart by whatever the hell Trump is doing, could mean that despite her manifest flaws as a person and a politician, Hillary could become the next president.