Boardman writes: "It's not yet clear whether Hillary Clinton will be
indicted. It's not even clear in the broader sense whether Hillary Clinton
should be indicted. But it's crystal clear that, even on the limited amount
of credible evidence now available, Hillary Clinton could be indicted."
Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton share
a laugh after Sanders told her that 'I think the American people are sick
and tired of hearing about your damn emails.' (photo: CNN)
Indicting Hillary
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
16 May 16
It's the server, stupid!
It's not yet clear whether Hillary Clinton will be indicted. It's not even
clear in the broader sense whether Hillary Clinton should be indicted. But
it's crystal clear that, even on the limited amount of credible evidence now
available, Hillary Clinton could be indicted. She could be indicted for what
might be characterized as privatizing her government office. That, in
effect, is what the Secretary of State did when she moved pretty much all
her public government communication to a private email server at her home in
Chappaqua, New York. That deployment of a private server for a government
official is, as far as we know, unprecedented. The public business of the
Secretary of State does not belong in anyone's private domain. It's a gross
violation of sane and honest public policy. And it's also illegal.
That's why Hillary Clinton could be indicted. She has committed a unique
offense. But how serious is the offense? Until the FBI completes its
investigation, including thousands of emails as well as the server, we can't
begin to know what weight to give it legally. Politically, we can infer that
the Clinton camp is terrified of any full reckoning, since Clinton and her
surrogates have been minimizing and lying about the case from the beginning.
When Bernie Sanders said in an early debate that people were sick and tired
of hearing about Hillary Clinton's "damn emails," he may well have executed
a shrewd and deft bit of political jiu jitsu. First, he framed himself as
more interested in substantive issues, rather than political gossip. He
surely knew that, if an email of actual importance turned up, the case would
take on a well-deserved life of its own. Meanwhile he could take the high
road, ignoring mere peccadillos. And quite possibly, Sanders understood even
then that the core issue was the server, not the emails, and that the FBI
under James Comey was a good bet to carry out a thorough and honorable
investigation. Sanders successfully took a principled position on the "damn
emails," while knowing that all he had to do was wait to make the move a
win-win for him (if that's the way it would turn out, with nothing to lose
if it didn't).
Is the FBI investigation a ticking time bomb for Hillary?
The FBI investigation seems to have been relatively leak-free since it began
in July 2015. In early March 2016, an anonymous "senior law enforcement
official" let it be known that a Clinton employee had been granted limited,
non-specific immunity from prosecution. Grants of immunity are an indication
of an investigation's progress toward the target, in this case Hillary
Clinton. So far the only known grant of immunity has gone to Bryan Pagliano,
a Clinton 2008 campaign worker who set up her private government email
server in her home in 2009. Spokesmen at the FBI and Justice Department
would not comment, but Pagliano's attorney confirmed the immunity agreement
was in place and his client was cooperating.
The flurry of reactions to the immunity deal at the time were mostly
politically dishonest on one side or another, but C-Span on March 18 spent
some 49 sober minutes exploring the case with attorney Joe diGenova, former
U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia (1983-1988) and now in private
practice in Washington. While diGenova tends to lean right politically, his
discussion of the Clinton case was dispassionate and analytical. Asked what
advice he might give Clinton now, he answered: "Do not be interviewed by the
FBI. If you lie, you will be in the same boat as General Petraeus. When you
lie to a federal investigator, that creates incentive to work harder on the
case."
Curious, perhaps, that diGenova didn't just advise Clinton to tell the FBI
the truth, but he didn't say why. At the time, now almost two months ago,
diGenova believed the FBI had "a locked case," and already knew who was
involved and who was lying. He named several people, suggesting that the key
person might be Patrick Kennedy, a career diplomat who was Under Secretary
for Management under Clinton, without explaining his possible significance.
He offered Hillary Clinton this free legal advice on the air:
"If I were representing Mrs. Clinton, and I think this may be part of her
defense, she will say: 'Look, the State Department knew I had this set-up
all along. They didn't stop me. They didn't tell me not to do it. No one
came and seized the computer [server]. There is no correspondence saying I
should not do this.'"
Professional legal analysis leaves little doubt as to Clinton's Guilt
In January 2016, Clinton had already used a variation of that argument at a
public forum: "I'm not willing to say it was an error in judgment because
what - nothing that I did was wrong. It was not - it was not in any way
prohibited." On C-SPAN, diGenova rebutted this line of argument:
Unfortunately, that's not a defense, because for her, she is one of the ten
people in the United States Government who has the generic statutory
authority to classify information. There's only ten people who can do it.
She has the power to assist in the declassification of that, so her duty in
terms of knowing things about classified information is much higher. So,
when Patrick Kennedy doesn't stop her from putting in an email server in her
home to conduct all government business, even though after January 2009 -
people may not have known right away that Mrs. Clinton didn't have a .gov
account, but within a couple of months everybody knew: isn't it funny there
are no .gov emails from the Secretary or her staff. At that point, what the
department did or didn't do becomes irrelevant to the criminal investigation
because she's in line - as the Secretary of State - to be President of the
United States. And along with her job, not only to conduct foreign policy,
comes the duty to understand and know classified information. That is the
envelope from which the FBI is operating. This is not a GS-2 [employee] who
accidentally slips a piece of paper in the wrong file and it stays out all
night on somebody's desk. This is a person with the highest classification
authority possible, who used a private server to conduct all of her
government business. This has nothing to do with politics. That's illegal,
per se. And the reason is very simple. The government has a classified email
system for a reason: it's to protect the integrity of national security
information, national defense information, and to prevent its disclosure to
unauthorized persons. The existence of that server violates every known
federal law on the protection of classified information.
How many laws have to be how badly broken before it matters?
The crux of the issue is that Hillary Clinton, by using a private server,
took possession of information that did not belong to her. It was the legal
property of the US government and, ultimately, the American people. When
deGenova asserts that Clinton's email server "violates every known federal
law on the protection of classified information," he no doubt has in mind,
among others, these:
. Federal Records Act, starting with section 1301, which requires
that: "The head of each Federal agency [i.e., Secretary of State] shall make
and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the
organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential
transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary
to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons
directly affected by the agency's activities." Clinton's private email
server did not fulfill her mandated public duty.
. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as amended to allow "public
access to information in an electronic format." Clinton's private email
server effectively made this law a nullity. (There are already FOIA lawsuits
proceeding in court based on Clinton's private email server.)
. National Archives and Records Administration's regulations, which
require in considerable detail a systematic method of identifying,
organizing, and preserving government records. Clinton's private email
server violated the intent and letter of this law to "ensure that complete
and accurate records are made and retained in the Federal Government . in
all formats and media" (section 1222.12). (Clinton also appears to have
violated section 1236.22, which requires her records to be kept by the State
Department's record keeping system, not a private email server.)
. US Criminal Code, Title 18, Section 1924 which provides that any
government employee [i.e., Secretary of State] who "becomes possessed of
documents or materials containing classified information of the United
States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and
with the 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." Clinton's private email server was a known unauthorized
location that retained classified documents. Clinton's intent would be
argued at trial.
. US Criminal Code, Title 18, section 793, which applies to the
mishandling of Defense information (presumably shared with the State
Department) and provides that anyone convicted "Shall be fined under this
title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both." (Arguably there is a
prima facie case, a case clear on the known facts, that Clinton has
committed a felony under this and other laws.)
Additionally, when she became Secretary of State, Clinton signed a formal
"Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement" between herself and the
United States. The agreement states that "classified information is marked
or unmarked classified information, including oral communications." The
agreement says Clinton "received a security indoctrination" and understood
it. In the agreement, Clinton agrees to share information only with
authorized persons, and to determine in advance who is authorized, and
further: "I understand that if I am uncertain about the classification
status of information, I am required to confirm from an authorized official
that the information is unclassified before I may disclose it.."
Will we be seeing a July surprise or a September surprise or.?
The FBI has interviewed a number of State Department employees and Clinton
aides, but has not yet interviewed Clinton herself, according to The Hill on
May 8, based on the views of people outside the investigation. The Hill, an
inside-the-beltway journal which calls this "decision time for the FBI on
Clinton," editorializes that it expects a happy ending for the candidate:
"The end of the investigation would be a relief for Clinton and her allies,
who have faced questions for months over her exclusive use of the personal
server." An indictment of any sort, no matter how minor the offense, would
not be such a happy ending for Clinton, and the basis for an indictment
appears minimally solid, since laws have clearly been violated, whether
intentionally or not.
Of course the case is quintessentially political, made all the more so with
a target who is currently the leading Democratic candidate for her party's
presidential nomination, creating a host of questions for people who must be
under remarkable pressure to get it right, whatever "get it right" means in
a given context:
. Will the FBI present a full and accurate case that withstands
reasonable public scrutiny?
. Will the Democratic Attorney General allow even a compelling case to
lead to an indictment of her party's candidate?
. Will the Democratic President allow such a case to threaten Clinton?
There's no way to know, and much depends on timing. An indictment before the
convention is likely to have a very different impact from an indictment
between the convention and the election. An indictment after the election
would depend for its impact on whether or not Clinton was then the
president-elect.
Similarly, a decision not to indict Clinton would have impact depending to
great extent on the same timing factors. Additionally, a decision not to
indict would have greater or lesser impact depending on the strength of the
evidence, or on whether the evidence was made public promptly. For example,
Clinton running against a Donald Trump screaming "cover-up" is not a pretty
picture, regardless of the validity of the claim.
The failure to indict Clinton would provoke something of a crisis in the FBI
and intelligence services, according to some who claim to know people inside
the agencies who have seen the evidence. This is possibly a bluff, but it
also could be the basis for President Obama's equivalent of the 1973
Saturday Night Massacre when President Nixon tried to shut down the
Watergate investigation.
However the Clinton email server story comes down, the consequences are
uncertain. Full disclosure of all the emails, for example, might answer the
complaints of Haitians in recent years that Bill and Hillary Clinton, and
the Clinton Foundation, have stolen billions of dollars meant to be used for
rebuilding Haiti, still devastated six years after the 2010 earthquake.
Haitians protesting against the Clintons in Haiti and at the Clinton
Foundation in New York have generated little media attention, even though
protestors claim Clinton used her position as Secretary of State to help
loot Haiti. According to Dahoud Andre of the Committee Against Dictatorship
in Haiti:
"We are telling the world of the crimes that Bill and Hillary Clinton are
responsible for in Haiti. And we are telling the American people that the
over 32,000 emails that Hillary Clinton said she deleted have evidence of
the crimes they have committed."
Clinton's indictment isn't the only the elephant in the room. Stay tuned.
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton share
a laugh after Sanders told her that 'I think the American people are sick
and tired of hearing about your damn emails.' (photo: CNN)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Indicting Hillary
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
16 May 16
It's the server, stupid!
t's not yet clear whether Hillary Clinton will be indicted. It's not even
clear in the broader sense whether Hillary Clinton should be indicted. But
it's crystal clear that, even on the limited amount of credible evidence now
available, Hillary Clinton could be indicted. She could be indicted for what
might be characterized as privatizing her government office. That, in
effect, is what the Secretary of State did when she moved pretty much all
her public government communication to a private email server at her home in
Chappaqua, New York. That deployment of a private server for a government
official is, as far as we know, unprecedented. The public business of the
Secretary of State does not belong in anyone's private domain. It's a gross
violation of sane and honest public policy. And it's also illegal.
That's why Hillary Clinton could be indicted. She has committed a unique
offense. But how serious is the offense? Until the FBI completes its
investigation, including thousands of emails as well as the server, we can't
begin to know what weight to give it legally. Politically, we can infer that
the Clinton camp is terrified of any full reckoning, since Clinton and her
surrogates have been minimizing and lying about the case from the beginning.
When Bernie Sanders said in an early debate that people were sick and tired
of hearing about Hillary Clinton's "damn emails," he may well have executed
a shrewd and deft bit of political jiu jitsu. First, he framed himself as
more interested in substantive issues, rather than political gossip. He
surely knew that, if an email of actual importance turned up, the case would
take on a well-deserved life of its own. Meanwhile he could take the high
road, ignoring mere peccadillos. And quite possibly, Sanders understood even
then that the core issue was the server, not the emails, and that the FBI
under James Comey was a good bet to carry out a thorough and honorable
investigation. Sanders successfully took a principled position on the "damn
emails," while knowing that all he had to do was wait to make the move a
win-win for him (if that's the way it would turn out, with nothing to lose
if it didn't).
Is the FBI investigation a ticking time bomb for Hillary?
The FBI investigation seems to have been relatively leak-free since it began
in July 2015. In early March 2016, an anonymous "senior law enforcement
official" let it be known that a Clinton employee had been granted limited,
non-specific immunity from prosecution. Grants of immunity are an indication
of an investigation's progress toward the target, in this case Hillary
Clinton. So far the only known grant of immunity has gone to Bryan Pagliano,
a Clinton 2008 campaign worker who set up her private government email
server in her home in 2009. Spokesmen at the FBI and Justice Department
would not comment, but Pagliano's attorney confirmed the immunity agreement
was in place and his client was cooperating.
The flurry of reactions to the immunity deal at the time were mostly
politically dishonest on one side or another, but C-Span on March 18 spent
some 49 sober minutes exploring the case with attorney Joe diGenova, former
U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia (1983-1988) and now in private
practice in Washington. While diGenova tends to lean right politically, his
discussion of the Clinton case was dispassionate and analytical. Asked what
advice he might give Clinton now, he answered: "Do not be interviewed by the
FBI. If you lie, you will be in the same boat as General Petraeus. When you
lie to a federal investigator, that creates incentive to work harder on the
case."
Curious, perhaps, that diGenova didn't just advise Clinton to tell the FBI
the truth, but he didn't say why. At the time, now almost two months ago,
diGenova believed the FBI had "a locked case," and already knew who was
involved and who was lying. He named several people, suggesting that the key
person might be Patrick Kennedy, a career diplomat who was Under Secretary
for Management under Clinton, without explaining his possible significance.
He offered Hillary Clinton this free legal advice on the air:
"If I were representing Mrs. Clinton, and I think this may be part of her
defense, she will say: 'Look, the State Department knew I had this set-up
all along. They didn't stop me. They didn't tell me not to do it. No one
came and seized the computer [server]. There is no correspondence saying I
should not do this.'"
Professional legal analysis leaves little doubt as to Clinton's Guilt
In January 2016, Clinton had already used a variation of that argument at a
public forum: "I'm not willing to say it was an error in judgment because
what - nothing that I did was wrong. It was not - it was not in any way
prohibited." On C-SPAN, diGenova rebutted this line of argument:
Unfortunately, that's not a defense, because for her, she is one of the ten
people in the United States Government who has the generic statutory
authority to classify information. There's only ten people who can do it.
She has the power to assist in the declassification of that, so her duty in
terms of knowing things about classified information is much higher. So,
when Patrick Kennedy doesn't stop her from putting in an email server in her
home to conduct all government business, even though after January 2009 -
people may not have known right away that Mrs. Clinton didn't have a .gov
account, but within a couple of months everybody knew: isn't it funny there
are no .gov emails from the Secretary or her staff. At that point, what the
department did or didn't do becomes irrelevant to the criminal investigation
because she's in line - as the Secretary of State - to be President of the
United States. And along with her job, not only to conduct foreign policy,
comes the duty to understand and know classified information. That is the
envelope from which the FBI is operating. This is not a GS-2 [employee] who
accidentally slips a piece of paper in the wrong file and it stays out all
night on somebody's desk. This is a person with the highest classification
authority possible, who used a private server to conduct all of her
government business. This has nothing to do with politics. That's illegal,
per se. And the reason is very simple. The government has a classified email
system for a reason: it's to protect the integrity of national security
information, national defense information, and to prevent its disclosure to
unauthorized persons. The existence of that server violates every known
federal law on the protection of classified information.
How many laws have to be how badly broken before it matters?
The crux of the issue is that Hillary Clinton, by using a private server,
took possession of information that did not belong to her. It was the legal
property of the US government and, ultimately, the American people. When
deGenova asserts that Clinton's email server "violates every known federal
law on the protection of classified information," he no doubt has in mind,
among others, these:
. Federal Records Act, starting with section 1301, which requires
that: "The head of each Federal agency [i.e., Secretary of State] shall make
and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the
organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential
transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary
to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons
directly affected by the agency's activities." Clinton's private email
server did not fulfill her mandated public duty.
. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as amended to allow "public
access to information in an electronic format." Clinton's private email
server effectively made this law a nullity. (There are already FOIA lawsuits
proceeding in court based on Clinton's private email server.)
. National Archives and Records Administration's regulations, which
require in considerable detail a systematic method of identifying,
organizing, and preserving government records. Clinton's private email
server violated the intent and letter of this law to "ensure that complete
and accurate records are made and retained in the Federal Government . in
all formats and media" (section 1222.12). (Clinton also appears to have
violated section 1236.22, which requires her records to be kept by the State
Department's record keeping system, not a private email server.)
. US Criminal Code, Title 18, Section 1924 which provides that any
government employee [i.e., Secretary of State] who "becomes possessed of
documents or materials containing classified information of the United
States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and
with the 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." Clinton's private email server was a known unauthorized
location that retained classified documents. Clinton's intent would be
argued at trial.
. US Criminal Code, Title 18, section 793, which applies to the
mishandling of Defense information (presumably shared with the State
Department) and provides that anyone convicted "Shall be fined under this
title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both." (Arguably there is a
prima facie case, a case clear on the known facts, that Clinton has
committed a felony under this and other laws.)
Additionally, when she became Secretary of State, Clinton signed a formal
"Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement" between herself and the
United States. The agreement states that "classified information is marked
or unmarked classified information, including oral communications." The
agreement says Clinton "received a security indoctrination" and understood
it. In the agreement, Clinton agrees to share information only with
authorized persons, and to determine in advance who is authorized, and
further: "I understand that if I am uncertain about the classification
status of information, I am required to confirm from an authorized official
that the information is unclassified before I may disclose it.."
Will we be seeing a July surprise or a September surprise or.?
The FBI has interviewed a number of State Department employees and Clinton
aides, but has not yet interviewed Clinton herself, according to The Hill on
May 8, based on the views of people outside the investigation. The Hill, an
inside-the-beltway journal which calls this "decision time for the FBI on
Clinton," editorializes that it expects a happy ending for the candidate:
"The end of the investigation would be a relief for Clinton and her allies,
who have faced questions for months over her exclusive use of the personal
server." An indictment of any sort, no matter how minor the offense, would
not be such a happy ending for Clinton, and the basis for an indictment
appears minimally solid, since laws have clearly been violated, whether
intentionally or not.
Of course the case is quintessentially political, made all the more so with
a target who is currently the leading Democratic candidate for her party's
presidential nomination, creating a host of questions for people who must be
under remarkable pressure to get it right, whatever "get it right" means in
a given context:
. Will the FBI present a full and accurate case that withstands
reasonable public scrutiny?
. Will the Democratic Attorney General allow even a compelling case to
lead to an indictment of her party's candidate?
. Will the Democratic President allow such a case to threaten Clinton?
There's no way to know, and much depends on timing. An indictment before the
convention is likely to have a very different impact from an indictment
between the convention and the election. An indictment after the election
would depend for its impact on whether or not Clinton was then the
president-elect.
Similarly, a decision not to indict Clinton would have impact depending to
great extent on the same timing factors. Additionally, a decision not to
indict would have greater or lesser impact depending on the strength of the
evidence, or on whether the evidence was made public promptly. For example,
Clinton running against a Donald Trump screaming "cover-up" is not a pretty
picture, regardless of the validity of the claim.
The failure to indict Clinton would provoke something of a crisis in the FBI
and intelligence services, according to some who claim to know people inside
the agencies who have seen the evidence. This is possibly a bluff, but it
also could be the basis for President Obama's equivalent of the 1973
Saturday Night Massacre when President Nixon tried to shut down the
Watergate investigation.
However the Clinton email server story comes down, the consequences are
uncertain. Full disclosure of all the emails, for example, might answer the
complaints of Haitians in recent years that Bill and Hillary Clinton, and
the Clinton Foundation, have stolen billions of dollars meant to be used for
rebuilding Haiti, still devastated six years after the 2010 earthquake.
Haitians protesting against the Clintons in Haiti and at the Clinton
Foundation in New York have generated little media attention, even though
protestors claim Clinton used her position as Secretary of State to help
loot Haiti. According to Dahoud Andre of the Committee Against Dictatorship
in Haiti:
"We are telling the world of the crimes that Bill and Hillary Clinton are
responsible for in Haiti. And we are telling the American people that the
over 32,000 emails that Hillary Clinton said she deleted have evidence of
the crimes they have committed."
Clinton's indictment isn't the only the elephant in the room. Stay tuned.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
