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Democrats Government

Judge Orders State Dept, FBI To Expand Clinton Email Server Probe 303

An anonymous reader writes: In a hearing over Freedom of Information Act requests to the State Department, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said that former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't comply with government policies. He ordered the State Department to reach out to the FBI to see if any relevant emails exist on Hillary Clinton's email server. Judge Sullivan was surprised that the State Department and FBI were not already communicating on the issue following the FBI's seizure of Clinton's email server and three thumb drives of emails. More than 300 emails are being examined for containing classified information, and dozens of the emails were "born classified" based on content. Some of those emails were forwarded outside the government. There are also clues emerging about how some of the classified information made its way onto Clinton's server. The email controversy is beginning to show up on the campaign trail, an unwelcome development for Secretary Clinton. Reporter Bob Woodward, who helped bring down President Nixon, said the scandal reminds him of the Nixon tapes. It is interesting to note that the post-Watergate reforms have helped move the investigation forward.
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Judge Orders State Dept, FBI To Expand Clinton Email Server Probe

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  • Lying scum (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tyrannicsupremacy ( 1354431 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @07:32AM (#50378829)
    Watching her act like she doesnt know what a "server wipe" is made me laugh a little. She takes scumbaggery to great heights.
    • Re: Lying scum (Score:5, Informative)

      by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @07:55AM (#50378889) Homepage

      Whether she knows what a server wipe is depends on the meaning of the word "is".

      We've known this family is full of lying scum for at least 20 years. We've also known she (rather than Bill) likes to use informal processes to avoid government openness laws since the HillaryCare shenanigans in the early 90s.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Clearly the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy has gotten to the entire judicial system in the USA, that's obviously the only way anyone would make such a big deal over something that certainly was completely legal and moral at the time...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by romco ( 61131 )

      As an older IT guy/programmer I can tell you most non geeks over 60 have no idea about IT stuff.

      • Re:Lying scum (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @08:20AM (#50378999) Homepage Journal

        That is irrelevant. The disgusting sack of shite had paid advisors and consultants to take care of this stuff. There are procedures in place. Obviously, Clinton decided that she was going to do things HER WAY - and in the process broke a metric shit-ton of laws.

        Her understanding of technology is totally irrelevant to the investigation.

        That said - I strongly suspect that she understands a lot more tech than you are giving her credit for. Who set up that server? Who administered the server? How did she access the server? Who decided what to turn over to the state department? Who made the decision that she would have her own private server, under her own control?

        The unsophisticated old coots down at the community center certainly don't have their own servers.

        • Re:Lying scum (Score:5, Insightful)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @10:19AM (#50379795) Journal

          No we don't know if she violated any laws yet, although it looks more and more like she probably did. We do know she at least violated some government practice documents, she was not obligated to comply with but should have.

          The issue isn't if she broke the law or not. There are bunch of people that would enjoy seeing Clinton in the slam but it won't affect things much beyond that. What matters is she should be losing this election. She was the Secretary of State for the United States of America. She either could have and should have recognized that she was dealing with sensitive information classified or not and cared enough about operation security to do something about it.

          So she knew or should have known the risks of E-mail its not 1998 anymore, everyone has heard the post card analogy with inter-domain mail. If she did not know she should have people around her to tell her that. If she did not listen or only select a bunch of yes men and women that is also a problem.

          Even if all the operational security issues and risks of e-mail were a surprise to her, you'd think her behavior would have very suddenly improved when Bradly Manning and a few other events took place, again nope, so we are left with willful ignorance, or gross negligence. Crime or not, prosecutable or not, there isn't a good spin you can put on it. Even Her own justifications about carry multiple devices etc have been contradicted, she has been evasive about it and her story keeps changing so she is only compounding it with lies and bad ones. She isn't a good candidate to lead the country pure and simple.

          • No we don't know if she violated any laws yet

            Actually we do and she is still doing it. She is a civilian in possession of classified material that she collected while she wasn't a civilian. End of the fucking discussion. She is still breaking the law.

            • Actually we do and she is still doing it. She is a civilian in possession of classified material that she collected while she wasn't a civilian. End of the fucking discussion. She is still breaking the law.

              The documents were not classified at the time. Contrary to the assertion in Routers article, FGI (foreign government information) are not 'born classified' - this is shown both by the wording of the statutes themselves; court interpretation of the statutes and executive orders; and according to the State Department itself.

              It is far from clear what duty, if any, she has in the case of retroactively classified documents, but almost certainly she has no legal culpability.

              • The documents were not classified at the time.

                Im pretty sure the whole point of classifying a document after the fact is to indicate that it is not, from that point on, suitable for viewing by non-cleared / non-need-to-know parties.

                It is irrelevant whether it was classified at the beginning, its classified now, and its classified for a reason.

                • Re:Lying scum (Score:4, Insightful)

                  by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @02:34PM (#50382221) Journal

                  Actually, some documents are classified upon generation / receipt. The term I have heard is "born classified", meaning they are classifed from the beginning. The "Marked Classified" is a lame attempt at obfuscation of the seriousness of the problem here. Hilary knows she's politically dead. The real question is, is she bound for Prison or will Obama pardon her.

              • By that definition no document is classified when it is created. That's bullshit. Classified information is classified information. And Secretaries of State with high levels of security clearance are trained on the handling of classified information. It is her job to classify documents as they are created.
            • She is a civilian in possession of classified material that she collected while she wasn't a civilian.

              If she still has the Clearance and Need to Know, that's not a problem.

        • Re:Lying scum (Score:5, Insightful)

          by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @10:49AM (#50380025) Homepage Journal

          There are procedures in place.

          Yup, from Rice and Powell the procedures were to wipe the server and delete all records of the emails so that they wouldn't be included in any records retention or available for inspection.

          If Clinton had followed the standing procedures, none of this would have happened. ;)

          -Rick

          PS: Don't take this as defense of Hillary. It's offense at the cherry picked nature of this witch hunt.

          • So Rice and Powell wiped the home brew servers they kept in their basement and exclusively used while in office? You're delusional.
            • Re:Lying scum (Score:5, Informative)

              by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @01:15PM (#50381357) Homepage Journal

              From Powell's interview:

              Powel: I started using it [the private email server] in order to get everybody to use it, so we could be a 21st century institution and not a 19th century.

              But I retained none of those e-mails and we are working with the State Department to see if thereâ(TM)s anything else they want to discuss with me about those e-mails.

              STEPHANOPOULOS: So they wantâ¦

              POWELL: (INAUDIBLE) have a stack of them.

              STEPHANOPOULOS: â" theyâ(TM)ve asked you to turn them over, but you donâ(TM)t have them, is that it?

              POWELL: I donâ(TM)t have any â" I donâ(TM)t have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files.

              And, in fact, a lot of the e-mails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and the State.gov domain. But I donâ(TM)t know if the servers the State Department captured those or not.

              And most â" they were all unclassified and most of them, I think, are pretty benign, so Iâ(TM)m not terribly concerned even if they were able to recover them.

              You may also have forgotten the Bush Administration's use of private email servers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

              Seriously, this is record of fact. Powell openly admitted to using a private email server, that he 'thinks' most or all of the emails were unclassified, and that he doesn't think that any that may have been classified were impactful.

              Rice has not openly admitted it, but she was on the Bush admin's private web server and there were records that she "occasionally" used the official state department email system.

              Politically speaking, Clinton's mistake was to keep a backup of the emails. Security speaking, this whole thing has been a wank fest for over a decade. At least Kerry started getting it cleaned up.

              -Rick

        • There are procedures in place. Obviously, Clinton decided that she was going to do things HER WAY - and in the process broke a metric shit-ton of laws.

          Along with the people that allowed it to happen. Email doesn't get forwarded on its own. *If* she broke any rules, someone let and helped her do it and they should be as, if not more, accountable. Part of an administrator's job is to say "no" to things that are wrong. Sure you might get fired, but I know that I would stand by that decision and consequence.

        • Maybe she had the same advisers that saw 22 million emails deleted by the Bush/Cheney Whitehouse. Remember the outrage over that affair? Me either.
      • I find it very hard to believe her claims of ignorance. Especially since she is so often lauded for her intellect by her supporters, or given her preexisting reputation for causing documents to disappear.
      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Than maybe someone her age who isn't a geek has no business being the President of the United States in the "Information Age"

      • She sent or recieved 60,000 emails in three years. She knows what she's doing.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24, 2015 @07:57AM (#50378899)

    Even if your a loyal Democrat, this is not good. Keeping highly sensitive documents on personal servers when your a top government official is just wrong. No matter if there is a smoking gun or not. Just the fact this goes against all protocol setup and defined to protect information is very troubling. It shows Mrs. Clinton totally disregarded protocol simply for her own benefit and possibly for a convenient way of controlling history and her legacy in case she messed up.
    This goes far beyond a Richard Nixon moment and I cannot believe how many people still thinks she is the best the Democrat's have for President??
    In my mind, she is just what America doesn't need in the White house. Another politician who makes up her own rules and disobey's government policy. Really?
    We want more of that in government? Hey, if your a Democrat do what you will next year at election time. But if Hillary Clinton is a choice. Do the right thing and don't vote that disgraceful piece of work into office. She has no place in public office of any kind.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Wrong?
      I that a legal term?
      How about using the Republican Party server? It that wrong?
      How about ex post facto?
      Was it illegal at the time?
      Lots of thing were fine at the time and now they are wrong.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        My sister is an Ambassador (not an American) and her eyes opened really wide when she saw the letter encoding on some of the emails and basically stated that if anyone else did that (in our government, likely in hers) - they would be up on charges -- facing serious prison time.

        The breach that occurred with Petraeus was less severe (sharing documents with someone doing his bio - which BTW would still be vetted by US security for things that should be omitted on security grounds) faced lesser charges (a rel

        • sharing documents with someone he was doing

          ftfy

        • And once again, with the Clintons, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. If she had said "whoops, silly me" issued an apology and vowed to do right in the future, this would have blown over by now. Republicans would still harp on it, of course, but Democrats could respond "she made a technical mistake, it was brought to her attention and she corrected her behavior. Move on."

          But she keeps trying to make excuses and tell stupid lies because NEVER SHOW WEAKNESS. It's disgusting.

          Democrats, you have a choice in

    • by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <[slashdot] [at] [keirstead.org]> on Monday August 24, 2015 @08:30AM (#50379051)

      "I cannot believe how many people still thinks she is the best the Democrat's have for President??"

      An increasing number of people think Bernie Sanders is the best Democraft for President.. even if he isn't really endorsed by the party elite.

      • by fey000 ( 1374173 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @09:16AM (#50379329)

        Or perhaps *because* he isn't endorsed by the party elite? The appeal of Trump appears to be largely because he's not cut from the same cloth as the standard politician.

        • Considering how well the traditional/standard mold politicians endorsed by the party elites have done for us in the past few decades, it should come as no surprise that not being one is currently seen as a positive thing.
    • This. Is why I think you americans may already have a winner for your next presidential election.
    • Even if your a loyal Democrat, this is not good. Keeping highly sensitive documents on personal servers when your a top government official is just wrong. No matter if there is a smoking gun or not. Just the fact this goes against all protocol setup and defined to protect information is very troubling. It shows Mrs. Clinton totally disregarded protocol simply for her own benefit and possibly for a convenient way of controlling history and her legacy in case she messed up.
      This goes far beyond a Richard Nixon moment and I cannot believe how many people still thinks she is the best the Democrat's have for President??
      In my mind, she is just what America doesn't need in the White house. Another politician who makes up her own rules and disobey's government policy. Really?
      We want more of that in government? Hey, if your a Democrat do what you will next year at election time. But if Hillary Clinton is a choice. Do the right thing and don't vote that disgraceful piece of work into office. She has no place in public office of any kind.

      Weird, you should say this, because the republicans have been guilty of the same thing in the past and yet nothing came of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      So while everyone is getting on Clinton's ass, this isn't the first time this is happen and I'm guessing she'll get away with it also. Republicans, Democrats, both kinds of politicians that are cheating lying scum. At least we know there is one candidate out there who's had a record of doing what he says and doing what is right.

    • I got news for you, friend: There are no candidates from ANY party that are suitable to be POTUS. Anyone who gets elected will be a deeply flawed pile of shit that will just make things worse.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @08:47AM (#50379141)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by fey000 ( 1374173 )

      I'm not sure where you have been raised, but in 'Murica, the law, much like the bus, is for poor people.

    • by pz ( 113803 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @09:44AM (#50379543) Journal

      I don't know the relevant law (or really much of any law) in detail, and hope that someone here who does can express an informed, educated opinion.

      Stuff that is TS/SCI (Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information) is what commonfolk call state secrets. It's stuff that is so important to national security that we call people who share it with non-cleared foreign folks spies and charge them with treason, and the punishment is up to and including death. It is a Big Frelling Deal. That's the heavy hammer that's being threatened and used against Assange, Snowden and Manning for doing the same thing, albeit on a larger and wider scale. Just storing it on a non-secure system within the government is considered Bad Form and subject to disciplinary action or worse. Printing it out and taking it home is Particularly Bad Form. Doesn't forwarding it over private email systems amount to all of that and much more?

      Why aren't we calling for Hillary's political head, if not sending her to jail?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1) From all accounts the material wasn't marked classified and apparently wasn't classified till after the fact and even that state may be in question.

      2) Having a private server means nothing in this context. An unclassified server is an unclassified server, whether Hillary or the Government owns it. The violation would be the same.

      3) No matter where the emails were republican operatives would pour over every tiny dot trying to find a way to destroy her. In fact this nasty political climate may have been

    • by Nyder ( 754090 )

      Even the average person who reads the news knows by now that TS/SCI materials can't legitimately end up in unclassified email systems. The very best she could argue is "I had no idea what it was and deleted it immediately" at which rate she's still guilty of not handing over the machine(s) to the federal government to verify that the data is actually gone.

      She needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law because the alternative is that we live in a country where contractors and lower level civil servants go to Leavenworth while the elite gets to make cutesy jokes about destruction of evidence in a national security scandal.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Nothing came of that, nothing will come of this.

      • Don't forget the Palin email thing. It seems to be a standard practice in US politics: There is just so much secret activity of dubious legality going on that needs to be kept away from the prying eyes of the media, everyone seems to have a desire for some off-the-record personal or unofficial communications channel. Occasionally someone gets caught, and the other party doe their best to exploit it to the fullest without reminding people that they were caught doing the same not long ago.

  • "He ordered the State Department to reach out to the FBI to see if..."

    What the FUCK is with this language.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Reuters is engaged in a witch hunt that much is clear. The only thing Clinton is guilty of is bad email practice. There has been no smoking gun; nothing that come close to treason or giving away state secrets. Jesus Christ, check every member of Congress and see how they handle email, are they all in compliance.
      • by fey000 ( 1374173 )

        Reuters is engaged in a witch hunt that much is clear. The only thing Clinton is guilty of is bad email practice. There has been no smoking gun; nothing that come close to treason or giving away state secrets. Jesus Christ, check every member of Congress and see how they handle email, are they all in compliance.

        Okay, let's translate this:

        "Hillary isn't guilty of anything. Her crime is far from being on the same level as treason. You can't convict Hillary for her crime until you convict the congress members who are committing the same crime."

        Forgive me if I chuckle a little.

      • by Nyder ( 754090 )

        Reuters is engaged in a witch hunt that much is clear. The only thing Clinton is guilty of is bad email practice. There has been no smoking gun; nothing that come close to treason or giving away state secrets. Jesus Christ, check every member of Congress and see how they handle email, are they all in compliance.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      "He ordered the State Department to reach out to the FBI to see if..."
       

      You'd prefer reach around ?

  • I still don't understand why this is so bad, especially to the point of being compared to the Nixon tapes. (I'm a Dem, but not really a Hillary fan)

    The emails in question were believed to not contain classified info, so they would have been sent on the official unclassified server anyway. It wasn't against the law to have her own server, but possibly against policy. If she fired people for doing the same, that makes her a hypocrite, not a criminal. (although, hypocrites don't make good leaders either)

    Th

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24, 2015 @09:37AM (#50379481)

      The emails were subpoenaed by Congress for an investigation. She deleted them 14 months AFTER the subpoena, which she then claimed she never got. The Congressman who subpoenaed them came on news the next day showing what he sent her requesting the emails. She deleted evidence during an investigation (obstruction of justice).

      Since then they have gotten more evidence of why she deleted them. This is all based on her original obstruction of justice and now they want to find out what she is hiding by not turning them over. She has lied at every step for not giving them over.
      1. I wanted to use 1 device. She used 3
      2. They were private emails to husband. Bill Clinton doesn't use email
      3. No classified documents. There are classified documents
      4. No documents were classified at time. They included signal intelligence which is classified at all times
      5. Server protected by secret service at her house. It was in a Denver apartment that didn't have an alarm.
      6. There are no backups. There is a backup server in New Jersey that is still not in government control.

      • To be classified it does not need to be stamped "classified" -- it is automatically classified by the fact of the source information at the top.

        Often in the foreign service you communicate things that would not necessarily be classified - such as talks or communications in confidence with others in power etc. (off the record) -- and this lack of taking security seriously put both them and their lives at risk in some cases. What this teaches the world is that the US cannot be trusted with confidential or
    • by cbraescu1 ( 180267 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @09:41AM (#50379511) Homepage

      By avoiding government systems Clinton potentially put lives, diplomatic relations, and US secrets at risk.

      The emails in question were believed to not contain classified info

      That's simply not true (and I'm surprised you could believe Clinton's utterly false claims). As per State department rules, anything related to foreign countries is classified by default, without any need for such marking.

    • I still don't understand why this is so bad, especially to the point of being compared to the Nixon tapes.

      It's the cover up (wiping the servers) which make it just like the Nixon tapes.

    • Maybe because it's part of a pattern of "willful" coverup under her tenure?

      http://gawker.com/state-department-finds-thousands-of-philippe-reines-ema-1724560491 [gawker.com]

      "Over two years ago, the department claimed that 'no records responsive to your request were located' - a baffling assertion, given Reine's well-documented correspondence..." "Last last week, however, the State Department came up with a very different answer: It had located an estimated 17,000 emails responsive to Gawker's request."

      It took a lawsuit t

    • The emails in question were believed to not contain classified info, so they would have been sent on the official unclassified server anyway.

      Not sure where you are getting this. I see several sources confirming that her email did in fact contain classified information. They certainly contained sensitive FOUO content. We are talking the head of the State Department here. Her server was more than likely already compromised by several foreign intelligence organizations. Can you imagine their glee when they reported to their superiors that they have access to all the emails sent by Secretary of State of the US of A?

  • by LetterRip ( 30937 ) on Monday August 24, 2015 @10:04AM (#50379683)

    Read the effin statutes. The emails are not automatically classified if they are from a foreign government. They are only classified if the foreign government has stated they are classified.

    The courts have ruled that being from a foreign government is not sufficient to be classified. The State Department argued that it was in a FOIA case and lost.

    The case and the law are discussed in this link,

    This provision of Executive Order 12,958 was a significant factor in a 1998 decision by the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that rejected the government's claim that a communication from the United Kingdom could be withheld from a FOIA requester because it had been classified by the Department of State. Weatherhead v. United States, 157 F. 3d 735 (9th Cir. October 1998), vacated as moot, 528 U.S. 1042 (1999) . The Ninth Circuit found that the government was unable to demonstrate that there was any specific reason for withholding the documents at issue and, therefore, without a presumption that foreign government information should be classified, the government could not justify withholding this document under the 1995 Order. The Court of Appeals panel also examined the letter, and found that its contents were innocuous and disclosure could not reasonably be expected to result in damage to the national security.

    http://www.bushsecrecy.org/pag... [bushsecrecy.org]

    • by sycodon ( 149926 )

      The very fact that an email originates from the SoS means that it is at least potentially classified.

      It is HER dutyto mark it as such if it contains sensitive information. Are you saying that she is too stupid to recognize classified information? So if some source tells her that Iran will be attacked at X hours, she can send that inform over plain email because, "it wasn't marked classified"?

  • She was an intern for the Senate Judiciary committee....

  • I cannot believe that an intelligent, average human being would think they can still run and win in the 2016 election under those circumstances. There's something wrong with her head. Clinton for prison 2016.

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