Whatever problems former First Lady, U.S. Senator (D-N.Y.) and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has with her emails, she’s on the defensive, explaining how classified and top-secret government emails wound up on her private server. Hillary insists she never knowingly received or transferred classified or top-secret government emails, despite the State Department’s Inspector General finding four classified emails. “Once she resigned as Secretary of State [Feb 1, 2013], she needed to return classified documents and other government-owned documents, which in this case would have included the server,” said veteran Diplomatic Security Service Special Agent Raymond Fournier. Fournier insists that Hillary was trained to know “key words” that indicated State Department memos were indeed classified or top-secret, without carrying written designations about their status.
Hillary’s State Department work, especially about the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi, Libya terrorist attack, has been widely publicized on GOP-leaning print and broadcast news outlets, especially Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Fox News. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) formed a Select Investigative Committee May 5, 2014, headed by 51-year-old GOP partisan Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). Tasked with getting to the bottom of the security breakdown in Benghazi, Gowdy—and the GOP—knew that Hillary would likely run for president. Spending untold hours whipping up a national media frenzy over Hillary’s emails, the GOP-driven media has succeeded in putting Hillary on the defensive and distracting her campaign. Ferreting out the political from factual has been a full-time job for journalists trying to figure out where the email scandal would end up.
Technical experts like Fournier can make strong case against Hillary’s misuse of top-secret or classified email transmissions. Much of what’s been reported by the GOP-leaning media—including Gowdy’s committee—has been designed to sabotage Hillary’s campaign. Regardless of all her problems, she’s still considered on power-rankings the odds on favorite to win the White House in 2016. No technical case by former government document experts of Hillary breaching her duties is going to mean much to voters comparing key political positions when deciding for whom to vote on Election Day. Before the Feb. 1, 2016 Iowa Caucuses, the GOP continues to hammer away on Hillary’s email controversy. Once primary voting starts, the scandal will fall off the radar, giving priority to election results. Hillary’s tried to stay focused on issues but keeps getting derailed.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace, former Attorney Gen. Michael Mukassey said Hillary’s problems go beyond her email server directly to the heart of her credibility. “The FBI doesn’t investigate machines,” said Mukassey, confirming that Hillary is indeed under criminal investigation. “It investigates people,” referring to the FBI’s inquiry into whether or not the former Secretary of State broke the law in mishandling classified or top-secret data. Finding four emails out of 30 that supposedly contained classified information on Hillary’s emails doesn’t equate to what Mukassey sees as a criminal probe. No one at the FBI has confirmed that that they’re conducting a criminal probe of the former Secretary of State. “You have a bureaucratic tangle over what counts as classified or unclassified “at the margins,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon.
Speaking on Fox News, Mukassey’s statements should be taken with a grain of salt since he advises former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s campaign. Apart from the meteoric rise of real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump, Bush has always been concerned about beating Hillary. Even with Hillary’s email problems, she still beats her Republican challengers in head-to-head national polls. “It’s inconceivable that that a great deal of the information was unclassified,” Mukassey told Fox News, hinting at a possible FBI indictment. GOP pundits often compare Hillary to former Centcom Commander David Petraeus who was forced to resign as CIA Director Nov. 9, 2012 for admitting to an affair with his 42-year-old biographer Paula Broadwell with whom he apparently exchanged classified information. Hillary’s email breaches don’t come close to the peccadillo that brought down Petraeus.
Mukassey admitted that the FBI would have to show that Hillary intended to breach the government’s rules on classified or top-secret. Getting government doc experts to try-and-convict Hillary in the court of public opinion only goes so far. Without an FBI indictment, it’s doubtful the controversy will do anything but fade out. “I did not receive any material marked or designated classified, which is the way you know whether something is [classified], said Hillary, giving her best excuse. “That’s total BS,” said retired Army Col Larry Mrozinski, a security expert serving Clinton and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Hillary’s detractors on Fox News have tried-and-convicted her for months, politicizing the story. “We can quibble about what [emails] should be re-classified, when they go to the public, but that’s dancing on the head of a pin,” said Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.). “That’s partisan politics.”
