Hillary Ain't Gonna Make It. - 06/19/16
I have been posting for a long time that Hillary will not survive her FBI primary.
There is a detailed summary worth reading of the mess she is in posted Saturday on RCP.
Clinton Email Troubles Present Constitutional Crisis John Schindler, NY Observer
Here are some of the highlights:
The Coming Constitutional Crisis Over Hillary Clinton’s EmailGate
The nominee insists her mishandling of State Department email is no big deal—but the real drama is just beginning
By John R. Schindler • 06/15/16
...The president’s praising assessment of Clinton, including “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” should go a long way toward unifying their party as she faces her Republican opponent, presumably Donald Trump, this autumn.
Obama’s praise was salve on the wounds Clinton recently suffered at the hands of the State Department over EmailGate. The long-awaited report by the Office of the Inspector General at Foggy Bottom can be fairly termed scathing and, as I assessed in this column, it leaves no doubt that Hillary Clinton systematically dodged a raft of laws and regulations on the keeping of Federal records and the handling of classified information.
Worse, the IG report leaves no doubt that Clinton has lied profligately about EmailGate from the moment the scandal broke over a year ago. Since the State Department, which Clinton headed during President Obama’s first term, cannot plausibly be painted as part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that Team Clinton sees lurking behind every piece of bad press, this report caused real damage to Hillary’s presidential campaign.
...True to form, she began punching back herself and through surrogates. Their main talking point—that EmailGate remains a nothing-burger, a figment of the overheated FoxNews imagination more than a bona fide story—continues to be peddled daily. As she confidently said to the cameras last week, there’s “zero chance” she will be indicted over EmailGate, no matter what the FBI finds in its still-active investigation of the matter.
For good measure, Clinton stated for the umpteenth time, “nothing I sent or received at the time was marked classified.” This dodge has been employed for a year as cover by Team Clinton to explain how so much classified information, including at least two dozen emails classified top secret or higher, among them enormously sensitive special access programs from both CIA and NSA, wound up in Clinton’s “unclassified” private email.
...Clinton’s evasions aren’t working. A new survey indicates that 60 percent of voters think she’s lying about her emails, versus 27 percent who believe her. Although she still possesses an edge over Donald Trump in polling, EmailGate remains a serious problem for Hillary’s campaign, since it highlights so many Clintonian mores that so many Americans have disliked for so long. Pervasive, carefully planned dishonesty. Lies to cover up corruption and grifting off our political system. Above all, a deep sense that rules are for average citizens, not for Clintons and their privileged coterie.
Yet another revealing intersection of Clinton lies, corruption, and secrets has come to light thanks to EmailGate. This involves the 2011 appearance of Rajiv K. Fernando on the International Security Advisory Board, a sensitive committee that oversees the State Department’s work in counter-proliferation and nuclear matters.
The ISAB sees a lot of highly classified intelligence and consists of seasoned experts in arms control and international security. Its members are largely greybeards with decades of experience in the military, diplomacy, and security.
Fernando was none of those things. A Chicago securities trader with no relevant background, ISAB members seemed perplexed by his appearance in their midst in 2011. “We had no idea who he was,” said one board member. Fernando knew nothing about intelligence or nuclear weapons, but he was a big-league donor to the Clinton Foundation—and that was the fact that mattered.
...To make matters worse for Hillary, it recently emerged that at least one of the emails she handed over to investigators under subpoena in fact did contain classified information that was marked as such.
...This gives the lie to Clinton’s much-repeated mantra that she never sent or was sent anything marked classified in her unclassified, personal email while serving as our nation’s top diplomat. That is demonstrably false, we now know.
...It’s also difficult to see how the FBI can ignore such an obvious violation of the law. It likewise raises questions about what was in the 30,000 emails that Clinton decided to delete. In the nearly five months remaining until the presidential election, we can expect a regular drumbeat of revelations about EmailGate, none of them flattering to the Democratic nominee.
Last week the Associated Press broke a big story about how Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included the true names of CIA personnel serving overseas under cover.
...To make matters worse for Team Clinton, last week it emerged that several of the classified emails under investigation involved discussions of impending CIA drone strikes in Pakistan.
Clinton aides were careful to avoid hot-button words like “CIA” and “drone” in these “unclassified” emails, engaging in a practice that spies term “talking around” an issue.
However, the salient fact is that the CIA—which has the say here—considers this information to be Top Secret, as well as enormously sensitive. It had no business being in anybody’s unclassified emails.
As the secretary of state, Ms. Clinton and her top staff had access to classified communications systems 24 hours a day. They chose not to use them here—a choice that clearly violated Federal law.
...How the FBI can look at all this and not recommend prosecution of someone for something in EmailGate strains the imagination. Yet President Obama has clearly signaled that it’s all no big deal.
Director James Comey has a tough job before him when he takes the FBI’s official recommendations regarding EmailGate to Attorney General Lynch for action, probably sometime this summer. Since Comey is now under a cloud over the FBI’s embarrassing mishandling of Omar Mateen, the Orlando jihadist mass murderer, perhaps his resignation over that matter would be welcome in the White House, which then could find a new director more willing to bend to Obama’s wishes.
Make no mistake, there are more than a few senior intelligence officials in Washington, DC, who are livid about Hillary Clinton’s willful disregard of clearly defined laws on the handling of classified information. Her misconduct endangered sensitive intelligence programs—and lives.
Even if Comey is a sacrificial lamb here, there are high-ranking spies who are perfectly willing to leak the sordid details of EmailGate to the media if the president pulls a Dick Nixon and tries to subvert our Constitution to protect himself and his designated successor.
And in the unlikely event that nobody in our nation’s capital is willing to go public with exactly what Hillary Clinton did, it now seems the Russians may do so. It’s highly plausible that Russian intelligence services, among others, have many of Clinton’s emails, perhaps all of them, given how slipshod her security arrangements were.
...It would be supremely ironic if the Kremlin demolishes Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations thanks to her own neglect of basic communications security when she was secretary of state.
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor.
There is a detailed summary worth reading of the mess she is in posted Saturday on RCP.
Clinton Email Troubles Present Constitutional Crisis John Schindler, NY Observer
Here are some of the highlights:
The Coming Constitutional Crisis Over Hillary Clinton’s EmailGate
The nominee insists her mishandling of State Department email is no big deal—but the real drama is just beginning
By John R. Schindler • 06/15/16
...The president’s praising assessment of Clinton, including “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” should go a long way toward unifying their party as she faces her Republican opponent, presumably Donald Trump, this autumn.
Obama’s praise was salve on the wounds Clinton recently suffered at the hands of the State Department over EmailGate. The long-awaited report by the Office of the Inspector General at Foggy Bottom can be fairly termed scathing and, as I assessed in this column, it leaves no doubt that Hillary Clinton systematically dodged a raft of laws and regulations on the keeping of Federal records and the handling of classified information.
Worse, the IG report leaves no doubt that Clinton has lied profligately about EmailGate from the moment the scandal broke over a year ago. Since the State Department, which Clinton headed during President Obama’s first term, cannot plausibly be painted as part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that Team Clinton sees lurking behind every piece of bad press, this report caused real damage to Hillary’s presidential campaign.
...True to form, she began punching back herself and through surrogates. Their main talking point—that EmailGate remains a nothing-burger, a figment of the overheated FoxNews imagination more than a bona fide story—continues to be peddled daily. As she confidently said to the cameras last week, there’s “zero chance” she will be indicted over EmailGate, no matter what the FBI finds in its still-active investigation of the matter.
For good measure, Clinton stated for the umpteenth time, “nothing I sent or received at the time was marked classified.” This dodge has been employed for a year as cover by Team Clinton to explain how so much classified information, including at least two dozen emails classified top secret or higher, among them enormously sensitive special access programs from both CIA and NSA, wound up in Clinton’s “unclassified” private email.
...Clinton’s evasions aren’t working. A new survey indicates that 60 percent of voters think she’s lying about her emails, versus 27 percent who believe her. Although she still possesses an edge over Donald Trump in polling, EmailGate remains a serious problem for Hillary’s campaign, since it highlights so many Clintonian mores that so many Americans have disliked for so long. Pervasive, carefully planned dishonesty. Lies to cover up corruption and grifting off our political system. Above all, a deep sense that rules are for average citizens, not for Clintons and their privileged coterie.
Yet another revealing intersection of Clinton lies, corruption, and secrets has come to light thanks to EmailGate. This involves the 2011 appearance of Rajiv K. Fernando on the International Security Advisory Board, a sensitive committee that oversees the State Department’s work in counter-proliferation and nuclear matters.
The ISAB sees a lot of highly classified intelligence and consists of seasoned experts in arms control and international security. Its members are largely greybeards with decades of experience in the military, diplomacy, and security.
Fernando was none of those things. A Chicago securities trader with no relevant background, ISAB members seemed perplexed by his appearance in their midst in 2011. “We had no idea who he was,” said one board member. Fernando knew nothing about intelligence or nuclear weapons, but he was a big-league donor to the Clinton Foundation—and that was the fact that mattered.
...To make matters worse for Hillary, it recently emerged that at least one of the emails she handed over to investigators under subpoena in fact did contain classified information that was marked as such.
...This gives the lie to Clinton’s much-repeated mantra that she never sent or was sent anything marked classified in her unclassified, personal email while serving as our nation’s top diplomat. That is demonstrably false, we now know.
...It’s also difficult to see how the FBI can ignore such an obvious violation of the law. It likewise raises questions about what was in the 30,000 emails that Clinton decided to delete. In the nearly five months remaining until the presidential election, we can expect a regular drumbeat of revelations about EmailGate, none of them flattering to the Democratic nominee.
Last week the Associated Press broke a big story about how Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included the true names of CIA personnel serving overseas under cover.
...To make matters worse for Team Clinton, last week it emerged that several of the classified emails under investigation involved discussions of impending CIA drone strikes in Pakistan.
Clinton aides were careful to avoid hot-button words like “CIA” and “drone” in these “unclassified” emails, engaging in a practice that spies term “talking around” an issue.
However, the salient fact is that the CIA—which has the say here—considers this information to be Top Secret, as well as enormously sensitive. It had no business being in anybody’s unclassified emails.
As the secretary of state, Ms. Clinton and her top staff had access to classified communications systems 24 hours a day. They chose not to use them here—a choice that clearly violated Federal law.
...How the FBI can look at all this and not recommend prosecution of someone for something in EmailGate strains the imagination. Yet President Obama has clearly signaled that it’s all no big deal.
Director James Comey has a tough job before him when he takes the FBI’s official recommendations regarding EmailGate to Attorney General Lynch for action, probably sometime this summer. Since Comey is now under a cloud over the FBI’s embarrassing mishandling of Omar Mateen, the Orlando jihadist mass murderer, perhaps his resignation over that matter would be welcome in the White House, which then could find a new director more willing to bend to Obama’s wishes.
Make no mistake, there are more than a few senior intelligence officials in Washington, DC, who are livid about Hillary Clinton’s willful disregard of clearly defined laws on the handling of classified information. Her misconduct endangered sensitive intelligence programs—and lives.
Even if Comey is a sacrificial lamb here, there are high-ranking spies who are perfectly willing to leak the sordid details of EmailGate to the media if the president pulls a Dick Nixon and tries to subvert our Constitution to protect himself and his designated successor.
And in the unlikely event that nobody in our nation’s capital is willing to go public with exactly what Hillary Clinton did, it now seems the Russians may do so. It’s highly plausible that Russian intelligence services, among others, have many of Clinton’s emails, perhaps all of them, given how slipshod her security arrangements were.
...It would be supremely ironic if the Kremlin demolishes Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations thanks to her own neglect of basic communications security when she was secretary of state.
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor.
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