WaPo: "Hillary Clinton is going to be exonerated on the email controversy. It won’t matter."

[ucrdem]

By Paul Waldman - May 6, 12:10 PM:

The latest news on the Hillary Clinton email controversy reinforces everything we’ve heard so far on this subject:

Prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server have so far found scant evidence that the leading Democratic presidential candidate intended to break classification rules, though they are still probing the case aggressively with an eye on interviewing Clinton herself, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

FBI agents on the case have been joined by federal prosecutors from the same office that successfully prosecuted 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui — and who would handle any Edward Snowden case, should he ever return to the country, according to the U.S. officials familiar with the matter. And in recent weeks, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia and their FBI counterparts have been interviewing top Clinton aides as they seek to bring the case to a close.

That point about her intending to break classification rules is important, because in order to have broken the law, it isn’t enough for Clinton to have had classified information in a place where it was possible for it to be hacked. She would have had to intentionally given classified information to someone without authorization to have it, like David Petraeus did when he showed classified documents to his mistress (and then lied to the FBI about it, by the way). Despite the enormous manpower and time the Justice Department has devoted to this case, there has never been even a suggestion, let alone any evidence, that Clinton did any such thing.

{snip}

As Bill and Hillary Clinton’s entire careers have proven, when you’re trying to take someone down, the next best thing to a real scandal is a phony one. Let’s not forget that when Bill was president, no alleged wrongdoing was too trivial to investigate, complete with dark insinuations about nefarious conspiracies and potential criminal behavior. You think the endless investigation of Benghazi is ridiculous? In the 1990s, congressional Republicans took 140 hours of sworn testimony on the urgent question of whether the Clintons had misused the White House Christmas card list. Seriously. That’s something that actually happened.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/05/06/hillary-clinton-is-going-to-be-exonerated-on-the-email-controversy-it-wont-matter/

[winter is coming]

1. She won't be exonerated. The best she can hope for is

"insufficient evidence to prosecute". And until some named officials who could plausibly know that the FBI investigation hasn't turned up anything step forward, I'll take these "She's been cleared!" "She's going to be cleared!" messages for what they are: propaganda.

[JonLeibowitz]

2. +1.

[Press Virginia]

7. The WaPo seems to have forgotten the actual crime Petreaus pleaded guilty to

which is the unlawful removal and retention of classified information.

Unlawful removal happens when the information leaves the government system or area of control. An e-mail sent via unsecured e-mail, containing classified information is a unlawfully removed when it is received outside the government system.
Retention is storing or housing classified information in an unsecured location.

Both of which occurred with HRCs e-mails

[dsc]

8. He got a plea bargain

no one, and I mean no one, has ever been prosecuted for the crime he actually pled to. Oh, and even that crime, necessitates intent. So far, every bit of classified info in her email was classified after, not before, but after, she emailed it.

[ucrdem]

10. They were probably looking for evidence of such an exchange in all those thousands of emails

and failed. Gotta wonder why they didn't let that be known a year ago. Word searches aren't exactly labor intensive these days.

[Press Virginia]

11. Yeah, the plea was to an actual crime

The IC IG has already reported e-mails that were classified at origination as TS.
She not only kept the information on her server but also provided her attorney with a thumb drive. That's intent

The argument of retroactive classification fails because certain information is classified when originated and the SD review is their first look at what was sent.

Then there's the 22 emails that were withheld in full.

[ucrdem]

9. She hasn't been charged with anything, so not in a legal sense, but in the court of public opinion,

absolutely. And if past is prologue, thinking back to similar fizzles of the 90s, this will quietly leave the front pages, linger a few days among the Op-Eds, and then vanish.

[procon]

3. It doesn't matter, there's this Romanian hacker guy that swears he has the smoking gun... nt

[Happyhippychick]

6. He also has the whitey tapes

[Press Virginia]

4. Unlawful retention is a crime under the US code

[Iliyah]

5. HRC will be OK, and history as well.