Clinton Email Scandal Timeline - don't blame the messenger

[paulthompson]

Looking at the replies to threads about my Clinton email scandal timeline so far, it confirms my fears that many Clinton supporters wouldn't understand why I'm doing this.

Let's look at this quote from the introductory essay I wrote for the timeline, referring to an email send to Clinton by Sid Blumenthal:

In July 2012, he sent Clinton an email about Egypt he said was "CONFIDENTIAL," which is the third level of classified information according to US government regulations. Then he gave this warning: "SOURCE: Sources with access to the highest levels of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and Western Intelligence and security services. THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION COMES FROM AN EXTREMELY SENSITIVE SOURCE AND SHOULD BE HANDLED WITH CARE."

Now, keep in mind Blumenthal was a private citizen with no security clearance at the time. If that's not an email that's clearly marked classified at the time, than nothing is. (The all caps are from the original email.) That pretty much blows away Clinton's main argument that the emails to her weren't marked as classified at the time, doesn't it? I could point out many more such examples.

So what's the problem here? Is the problem that Clinton got emails clearly marked as classified like that and failed to alert security personnel about them, as she was required by law to do? Or is the problem that I'm pointing this out, after it's already been reported in the mainstream media?

I think the answer is obvious. This information is out there already. All I did was compile the info from over a thousand mainstream media reports. Keep in mind that I am just a solitary person with no budget for this, compling these articles in my spare time. You can say I'm doing the opposition research for Trump, but if it's Clinton vs. Trump in the general election, you can be sure they'll spend millions of dollars pushing this scandal story, totally dwarfing my effort. Are the thousand plus articles I based the timeline on "opposition research" too? Or is that just journalism?

My point is, this information is out there already. Look at the sources in my timeline. Yeah, there's the occasional link to a right wing news source (if they were the only ones to report on a speech or a document), but the vast, vast majority are to sources like the New York Times and Washington Post. I'm sure those are my two most common sources, by far.

This information about Clinton's email scandal exists. It's been widely reported on, and it will continue to be a big story, especially with Clinton and her aides scheduled to be interviewed by the FBI soon. What I'm trying to do is make people general aware of this NOW, while the Democratic primaries are still going on, instead of finding out about it for the first time later, if it's the general election against Trump vs. Clinton.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that I'm not making up news, I'm merely compiling what existing news reports already say. The problem is not with me or my timeline, it's with the contents of those news reports, which means there's a problem with what Clinton actually did. If you think this is the same as the Benghazi story, you haven't been paying enough attention. If it's Clinton vs. Trump, it's not like those news reports will be forgotten except for my timeline. You can be sure the Republicans have been keeping close tabs on this scandal all along, and are just waiting for the general election to make this the biggest story they possibly can.

If you're a Clinton supporter, simply trying to mock or dismiss the scandal away won't work forever. There's a real scandal here - Clinton has even admitted she made a "mistake." It's better to highlight this information now, instead of having it potentially come as a surprise to most people shortly before the November election. It actually could help Clinton if it's widely discussed now and thus perceived as "old news" by November.

Consider again the Blumenthal email quoted above. Clinton's argument that no emails to her were marked as classified when they were sent to her can't be sustained once the facts are widely known, just as her original argument that no emails contained any classified information could be sustained. It's better to deal with the reality of what was in Clinton's emails now and come up with new counter arguments and apologies now, instead of waiting for Trump to hit her over the head with more of this as "new news" in November.

I don't want Trump to win any more than you do! The Democrats either need to pick someone else if this scandal is bad enough, or come up with a better strategy for dealing with the real facts of scandal now instead of just being mocking and dismissive. It's called being proactive instead of reactive.

Think of it as lancing a boil. It has to be done. It's better to get it over with quickly, before it grows and gets more infected. Denial doesn't help. I think a lot of Clinton supporters are in denial that there's substance to this scandal, or that it's even a scandal.

[mmonk]

1. I don't think many of them took the time to read it Paul.

[MisterP]

2. they're not convinced that a Secretary of State has anything to do with US foreign policy

[mmonk]

3. Evidently.

[metroins]

9. I think we only care what the FBI says

I honestly don't care that a top level official wanted to do her work more efficiently and I personally blame the Federal agencies for not having secure mobile methods to do work outside of the office.

We'll let the FBI do their job.

[pdsimdars]

4. Another interesting to think about, on her non-government server things could not have the

markers on them. You had to REMOVE them to get them onto her server. If you tried to send a marked email to her private server, it would have been flagged and alerted. So the markers had to be removed to get them to her.

[paulthompson]

7. Good point

Sometimes, the most interesting evidence is the dog that didn't bark. 30,000 of Clinton's emails have been publicly posted. Out of those, thousands clearly contained classified information. Sometimes, the classification was screamingly obvious, like when British Secretary of State David Miliband sent her a message that he explicitly said was for her eyes only.

Yet, out of all of those emails, I've only seen one instance where Clinton actually questioned whether something was classified or not. That was some information about terrorists using the Internet, and she suggested that should be shared with the mainstream media unless it was classified. So she only worried about it being classified because she was thinking about sharing it with the public. It seems to me that as long as she was communicating with other people in the State Department (or people she trusted like Sid Blumethal), the issue of classification simply never came up for her. It was something for other people to worry about.

That's the problem. Due to that attitude, eventually even above top secret information got discussed in her unsecure emails.

Where are the emails that say, "Hey, we need to move this to a secure channel"? I have yet to see any of those.

[JudyM]

13. I missed that important detail. Pretty damning.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

17. thanks

but can you explain how that works please?

[MisterP]

5. they defend themselves from the scandals by just assuming any bad news has a Republican

source, and that lefties are just born dupes carrying their water

but like the 50s' Birchers or 80s' neocons--to have any accuracy that means that every church, party, university, newspaper, and TV station on the planet except for a chosen and tightly-controlled few are being manipulated by the KGB/Rove

Clinton definitely has a persecution complex, where everything's from Rove or Starr or Brock (hey, waitaminute) and you're thus either immediately a Friend or Foe--like a bunch of magnets sticking together

[FlatBaroque]

6. I expected a fecal tsunami as soon as your post went up

sad to see I was not wrong. Your work is tremendous, exactly for the reason you described. This information is already out there and you can be sure the Republican attack ads will write themselves.

[Cobalt Violet]

8. I think they are lost causes.

All they care about is winning the primary. They just blindly assume she can win any republican.

[ucrdem]

10. Yes, we understand why you're doing it, and wish you wouldn't do it here.

There's absolutely no necessity for pursuing this thing, urgent or otherwise, other than a wish to take down Hillary Clinton. And that kind of militates against the purpose of DU doesn't it? Is that so hard to grasp?

[paulthompson]

12. I don't think you do

I'm motivated by a desire to make sure a Republican isn't elected president in November. Clinton has a major problem. We either need to nominate someone else OR deal with that problem, depending on how severe one thinks the problem is.

Unfortunately, a lot of Clinton supporters here are in denial and claim the email scandal isn't a scandal or a problem at all. If you think that way, then yeah, what I'm doing is counterproductive. But I believe the evidence is overwhelming the scandal is for real and needs to be dealt with, one way or another. I don't think simply wishing the scandal away is going to help elect a Democrat in November.

[ucrdem]

18. LOL, it's not exactly hard to figure out.

Look, you might think your purpose is noble but nothing good can come from this. Let them do their own lousy oppositional research, or do it privately. What possible benefit to Democrats can there be in rooting through Hillary's trashbin other a) lending credibility to a RW witch hunt or b) helping them find scandal? In all likelihood there's nothing objectionable n her correspondence but let's say there is: what good would finding it first do, other than give Inspector Javert a leg up? They don't need help from us. Scandal is their stock in trade.

[paulthompson]

19. Hypothetical

I support Sanders, in large part because of this scandal. I think it's unwise to nominate Clinton when there are other FBI investigation-free options.

But let's look at it from a Clinton point of view. If I were Clinton, I would go about this an entirely different way. I would own up to making some mistakes now, and thus try to put it past me now. I would make statements in line with the actual facts. She keeps changing her story as more facts come out. Mainstream publications like the Washington Post have pointed out how her excuses have shifted over time. That's not good. That's a big reason why she has low trust and honesty ratings.

Furthermore, I would take steps now to show that whatever mistakes I made in the past I won't do in the future as president. A big part of that would be officially severing herself and Bill from the Clinton Foundation. I have a whole timeline devoted just to the conflict of interest about that foundation, and that's another huge problem for her. Look at this timeline entry of a recent interview:

March 30, 2016: Clinton says The Clinton Foundation will continue if she is elected president. Clinton is interviewed by MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow. Maddow asks her, "I think it is not unreasonable to suspect that people may give donations to The Clinton Foundation hoping that they will favorably influence your opinion toward them, as a presidential candidate, or eventually as president if you're elected. ... Is there a case to be made, an ethical case to be made that The Clinton Foundation and the [Clinton] Global Initiative should essentially be wound down as a family foundation while you run for president?" Clinton disagrees. She describes the charity work of the foundation in detail, then says, "So, I think the answer is transparency. And there is no doubt that there will be complete transparency about donations." (Newsweek, 3/30/2016)

Maddow is a known Clinton supporter, and you can see from this and the rest of the interview that she's strongly urging Clinton to distance herself from the Clinton Foundaton if she's elected president. But Clinton refuses. She seems to be in denial about the conflict of interest problems with the foundation, and in denial about what she did wrong about her emails too.

Someone needs to point out to her that trying to sweep this under the rug is not a winning strategy. Apparently, she needs to be pressured in order to change. Perhaps in some small way my timeline will add to the pressure on her and help her change in ways that will make her less vulnerable if she faces Trump in the general election. As long as she and her supporters are in denial that her scandals are even scandals, that change isn't going to happen.

[ucrdem]

27. LOL. Hillary is going to go her own way and good luck to her detractors.

If she committed an actionable crime we'd know it. She hasn't. If she took a shortcut to evade the NSA before it was reformed I frankly don't have a problem with that. Someone was salivating at the prospect of blasting her e-mail into the Wikileak-o-sphere and it's possible she saw that coming. But until there's evidence that a crime has been committed I say full speed ahead team Hillary. She has a vision I'm on board with and the haters we'll always have with us eh?

[Bill USA]

11. 'indictment' believers are so much like the "Birther Bugs"...LOL

[JudyM]

14. Pitiful comprehension.

[sadoldgirl]

16. Do you really look forward to a second

Clinton impeachment?

[haikugal]

28. Fuck the Clintons, I'm worried about the country!

[JudyM]

15. FBI has the aides' interviews scheduled? Any clue on timing?

[paulthompson]

20. No clue

It was reported in late March the interviews would happen "within weeks." It's early May already. Legal proceedings can take time, especially if people try to drag them out.

It also was reported in February that the FBI was aiming to end their investigation by mid-May, and it's almost mid-May now. So who knows?

Here's a hypothetical: what if the FBI does recommend an indictment of her and/or her top aides, but doesn't do that until after the Democratic convention at the end of July? If that's the case, they're going to be heavily criticized. The longer they wait, the more it'll look like they're trying to swing the general election. And if they absolve Clinton, they'd look like they're swinging things in the other direction. So they have to be under a lot of pressure to wrap things up soon, no matter what they decide.

[JudyM]

21. It looks like FBI wants an indictment, Paul. Did you see DOJ's statement to the FOIA court last

week about releasing the requested documents? Look at the language-- they happened to say that a "referral" is forthcoming, and that its going to be about *her* use of the email server. A referral is the whole case wrapped up with a bow that an agency (here, FBI) sends to DOJ for prosecution. It has all the evidence, all the exhibits, all the legal justification spelled out to make it easy for DOJ to move forward to litigate. In my experience, a referral, which is a tremendous amount of work, requires a decision by the head of the agency to move forward before staff is given the green light to develop it.

And again, it said it was about her use of the server, so no ambiguity about who they intend to prosecute. Maybe more than her, but certainly including her. I doubt they'd throw a statement like that out in public, and to a court, no less, without being certain of the words they were using.

If they haven't done the interviews yet (do we know this for a fact?) it will unfortunately take longer to put together.

[YouDig]

22. Blumenthal using the word "confidential" doesn't make something classified.

He is a civilian, he has no authority to classify anything. This is about as relevant as if I post something on DU and label it "classified" and tell everyone to handle it with care.

[paulthompson]

25. Except

Except for a couple of things. One, Blumenthal used to work in the White House, so he knows what classified information is. Two, he clearly got his information from the CIA and NSA. In one case, he quoted an NSA report word for word about an event in Sudan that took place just the night bfore. This is shown in the way his emails were redacted. Some of his emails were completely redacted. Some were marked "secret," the level below "top secret." I challenge you to post something on DU and have the US government classify it as "secret."

Finally, his warnings were meant for Clinton, for her to determine how sensitive to treat the information. Clearly, she believed his information and its importance, judging from the way she forwarded it to others. In some cases, she forwarded his emails to Obama. Whenever she was sent classified information, she had the legal responsibility to treat it as such. Blumenthal couldn't have been any more clear that he was sending her classified information that was coming from outside the State Department, which meant Clinton didn't have the power to deem it unclassified.

Here's a relevant timeline entry:

January 22, 2009: Under penalty of perjury, Clinton signs a pledge to safeguard classified information whether "marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications." The very first paragraph of the "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement" she signs states, "As used in this Agreement, classified Information is marked or unmarked classified Information." According to Executive Order 12958, which is in effect at the time, since she is the secretary of state, she is given the authority to classify or declassify any State Department information she wants. However, as part of her nondisclosure agreement, she has the legal responsibility to identify and safeguard any classified information originating from other government agencies, whether that information is marked classified or not. (The Washington Post, 2/4/2016) (US Department of State, 11/5/2015)

It's the content and sourcing of the information that matters, not whether or not someone slaps a word like "classified" or "confidential" on it. Blumenthal doing that was just another indicator. If you read the rest of his all caps source warning, that should have been more than enough warning for Clinton.

[YouDig]

26. Except nothing. He was a civilian at the time. Him saying that something

is confidential at that point meant nothing. It also doesn't matter that Hillary thought it was important, because "important" and "classified" are not the same thing. And the fact that someone decided to retroactively classify that information and redact it from the release doesn't matter either.

[GeorgeGist]

23. Your opening example is such a pitiful stretch ...

I just couldn't give the rest of it a damn.

[EndElectoral]

24. Bottom line Paul, they simply don't care. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

[haikugal]

29. It's like a cult.

[grasswire]

30. I can tell you what Republicans are thinking.

Spent an hour over at freerepublic tonight reading articles and comments. They expect that Hillary will be forced to step aside AFTER the convention, and that Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren are prepared to step in, giving Republicans no time to thoroughly vet them in the eyes of the public. Hillary's deal for stepping aside will be no prosecution but she will have to step out of the race. But she can keep the bazillions of dollars raised. They expect Trump to lose the GE to Biden and Warren.

[ALittleBirdie]

31. Can this be done? Not a single primary vote

would have been cast for either of them!

[grasswire]

33. I know.

Yes, it can be done if party heads so will.

Not my preference, of course, but certainly preferential to Trump.

This is what freepers are saying is their nightmare scenario.

[Babel_17]

32. The media is mostly being cutious, and deferring to the official investigations

When the results are public then the media has all the cover they might want to discuss it all in depth.
There has been some official cover from the executive branch for Secretary Clinton so that is an obstacle to a media that treasures its ties to government sources.

I agree with Senator Sanders concentrating on the issues, and not an ongoing investigation, but that too added to the scales of the media apparently, imo, deciding to hold off.

[bobthedrummer]

34. ^^^^^^^