Hillary's less than airtight defense on the emails
Last edited Fri Apr 29, 2016, 03:50 PM - Edit history (1)
When explaining why the emails are a non-issue, people sometimes point to Hillary's own explanation and defense at
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/07/13/email-facts/
You can see even in her own defense why this is not an open-and-shut case, it actually seems to have some pretty gaping holes.
First, she recognizes that it was her responsibility, when using outside systems, to "ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system." She says that the fact that 90%+ of those emails were sent to or from a .gov address means they should have been captured in that recordkeeping system, okay. But what steps were taken to preserve the other 10% or so? None is indicated. If she mis-handled 10% of her email, it's better than mishandling 100%, but it does not absolve her of responsibility. Specifically, if the person she was communicating with did not have a .gov address, she appears to have made no attempt to fulfill the requirement to preserve the email as a public record.
Now let's look at how she arrives at that 90% figure. She explained that they determined what was work related, first, by whether or not it was sent to or from a .gov address, so we're starting off with circular reasoning. Of course most of what they categorized as work-related should have been captured by virtue of it having been sent to/from a .gov account because they determined whether or not it was work-related largely based on whether or not it was sent to/from a .gov account! They basically use the criteria of something having been through an archived system as evidence of correspondence being work-related, and then claim that that shows that most work-related correspondence went through an archived system. Kind of makes your head spin. But the only way to know what percentage of work-related correspondence went through that system (and was archived accordingly) is to be confident that you have found all the other work-related correspondence
So now let's look at how they determined what other emails might have been work-related, besides ones that were sent to/from a .gov address. They say "a number of terms were specifically searched for, including: 'Benghazi' and 'Libya.' " But what could have been missed because it didn't involve a .gov account or a keyword on their list? We already know they apparently did not search for "blumenthal" (or his email address) for example, since he turned over emails that she did not, so those didn't make the cut on her end. What other words were not searched for? Is it actually reasonable to assume that every work related email to/from a non-.gov address would have to have included some word that was on her search list? Is it even reasonable to think that anyone could really come up with such a complete list that would necessarily include every significant word that could ever possibly appear in a work-related email?
Heck, what if someone simply sent a reply that just said "yes" or "no" on some work-related issue, or some other similarly terse response that included only common words. These would not be search terms, and if they were sent to her from a non .gov account and no further action was needed, that would seem to obviously fall through the rather large cracks. You'd have to count on the subject line (indicating the email they were replying to) necessarily including one of the other important key words. And of course, subject lines don't always include the significant content.
But let's even assume that the keyword search is a reasonable approach. You'd still have to grant that it is at least possible she could have overlooked some important word when compiling her search list (even if you accept that that's a reasonable way to find all the other work-related messages in the first place, which is a dubious assertion). How might one address this possible oversight? How could you find some emails, say, related to some other word she had not originally thought to do a keyword search on? Well, one could go back and continue to look through the messages she had not provided as "work-related" thus far. But nope, after never deleting any of these 30,000 or so emails over the previous 5+ years, she decides, now is the perfect time to erase her archive of ostensibly personal emails. Her own specific explanation on that page is specious:
As Clinton has said before, these were private, personal messages, including emails about her daughter's wedding plans, her mother's funeral services and condolence notes, as well as emails on family vacations, yoga routines, and other items one would typically find in their own email account, such as offers from retailers, spam, etc.
This dances around the issue, but doesn't really answer the question. It explains why the emails were not important enough to keep, but not why she chose, at this time, not to keep them anymore, why she decided to suddenly delete them en masse now. That's the real question.
And really, in all those 30k of personal emails that she deleted, was there NOTHING she thought could possibly be worth keeping? If you're reading this and you have an archive of personal emails going back years, could you imagine deciding just to delete them all with no further review? Was there no email with information of any importance to her, even if not work related? No nice remembrance? Nothing she could ever possibly want to use to confirm something she may have told someone? Nothing that might serve as something she could use in a likely forthcoming autobiography? All 100% worthless without further review? The logic of this is questionable.
Regardless, supposedly, some or all of the deleted emails may have been recovered, either from the server directly, and/or from a portion of her data that may have been backed up in the cloud. If any of that recovered data includes any work-related email that she missed handing over, she's got a problem. And if any of it happens to be considered classified once it is found, even more so.
Which brings us to the issue of whether any of the information was classified. Here, her defense is that, while the Inspectors General have said that some of the emails should actually have been classified when they were originally sent, "the State Department has said it disagrees with this assessment." There are a number of issues here.
First, when she says that State disagrees, that doesn't mean the State said there was no need for those emails to have been classified. From what I've seen, they simply have not yet made a determination (for example, "State is still looking into whether they should have been considered classified at the time they were created" ). That's a weak "disagreement." It's not "yes vs. no", it's "yes vs. we're still looking into it." (If State has subsequently determined there was no need to classify them, send me a link and I'll update this.)
But let's even grant the possibility that State ultimately agrees with Hillary that these emails did not need to be classified before sending. So now we might have one agency that says they should have been and another saying it was not necessary. Well, at some point, I expect, a final determination will have to be made. We don't know how that will go, but what if it goes the wrong way? In the mean time, as far as I can tell, no one has given her a pass on this... the question as to whether they should have been marked classified seems to be either "yes" or "maybe, tbd."
But moreover, this specific argument has to do only with whether or not the emails should have been marked classified when they were sent. But even the State Department, who may not yet be ready to say whether or not they should have been marked classified before being sent, says that it was still classified info. (i.e. "the State Department designated 22 of the messages from her account 'top secret.'"). Hillary keeps saying that there was nothing marked classified, but that's not the entire issue. A government official (and certainly a top level one) should be able to recognize sensitive, potentially classified info whether or not it is so marked. If State considers 22 of the messages Top Secret, it may be a weak defense to say, "well, they weren't marked that way," and that seems to be largely what she's hanging her hat on.
So while Hillary looks to the State Department's uncertainty to support her claim that nothing needed to have been marked classified before it was sent, she remains at odds with State about the further issue of whether the emails ended up including sensitive information regardless of how they were marked, and that question isn't addressed at all anywhere on her explanation and defense page.
In addition, in trying to use the credibility of the State Department to back her up on her assertion that there was (or at least may have been) nothing that had to be marked classified, she is saying in effect, "hey, if you don't believe me, believe them." But if we're supposed to consider the State Department as a source of credible information to back her up, what are we supposed to make of the fact that the State Department says that 22 of the messages contained Top Secret information? This is another weakness in the defense, where she asks us to rely on what the State Department says when it backs her up, but not where it doesn't.
I expect some people may respond with reasons they think the email investigation will ultimately go nowhere (or come back with some straw man or ad hominem reply, this being DU), but what I'd really be interested to see is where anyone thinks any of the specific points here are off the mark. Because I have a hard time seeing how people can look at her own defense and not see any chance whatsoever of her suffering some consequence from this.
= new reply since forum marked as read
These are not opinions:
She knows that all emails had to be preserved in the gov't system (she says so in the section of her page labelled "Is it allowed?"
, she explains there that over 90% of them were. The fact that she offers no suggestion of any method for having archived the balance is not an opinion, and so her defense has a gaping hole.
She explains that the 90% were properly archived because they were sent from or to a .gov address (fact). Once you combine that fact with the fact she lists elsewhere--that they determined what was likely work-related primarily by searching for emails that were sent from or to a .gov address--it becomes evident that, logically, this is the equivalent of a self-fulfilling prophecy... that the existence of archival copies for 90% exists because she specifically searched for emails that would have archival copies (i.e. the ones with .gov addresses), that's primarily how she determined they work work-related in the first place. That's a fact. So it's a claim that sounds more substantial than it is. It doesn't truly account for how many work-related emails may have existed outside the system.
The idea that you could capture 100% of the non .gov work related emails by searching for a list of key words defies reason. But I will grant you that that last sentence is opinion... albeit opinion based on what I think is a large dose of common sense. The fact that it is impossible to now search the archive for any "new" keywords that someone may think of is, well, another fact. As is the fact that the reason that is the case is that she took the step of deleting all the rest of the emails. Her explanation there for why she deleted them (that they were unimportant) does not answer the underlying question of why she deleted them now, that's a fact, and that's the part that will raise people's eyebrows, that's the hole in the defense.
Along the same lines, she hadn't been culling her inbox before, she let it accumulate to 30k plus messages, and then decides, at this particular time, to just indiscriminately wipe them all with no regard to their content. That, again, is fact, as she has claimed that they were all deleted. I think it is logical to at least consider the motivation of someone who intentionally wipes out 5 years of saved emails with no consideration to whether there is anything worth keeping, shortly before a subpoena might have prevented her from deleting anything. It is a question inherently raised by the facts presented on that page, and it is not addressed, so I see that as a hole in the defense. The explanation that they were not important does not explain the mass purge at this particular time, which is the real question.
I've typed enough. But the remaining points, about what "disagree" means in the context that she used it (not what it first seems), about how she addresses whether things were marked classified or not (but not whether there was sensitive information regardless of markings) are sourced facts as well. What I've done, really, is lay out known facts where her explanations on that page simply do not provide thorough answers to the underlying questions. Maybe she does have better answers... but they are not found on that page.
Picking up from what I was saying before, my OP mentioned the fact that she deleted all the personal emails, and pointed out that her explanation (quoted there as an excerpt) did not actually explain the reason why she suddenly decided to delete all 30k of them at this particular time. I did not put forth any theory, conjecture, or conclusion as to why she deleted them, I only pointed out that there was no full explanation in her answer.
Subsequently, in relevant conversation here, I did give my opinion about that. But my OP was specifically designed to try to stay away from opinions, and only offer facts and logical perspective about her answers. I'm sorry you didn't see it that way, but I think if you look more closely at what I wrote, you'll see that it really is not a post of opinion and conjecture after all. Though I'm glad to offer it when asked.
I have a feeling that words like "foundation" and "contribution" were likely not on the list of words that they used to find emails that were "work related." Since we are now going into the area of conjecture, my *opinion* (Hi, Procon!) is that the wholesale data wipe, timed as it was, was designed to cover up *something*. What was being covered up may or may not have anything to do with anything the FBI or anyone else is investigating, but it is something she did not want to risk having discovered.
As to why she chose to use her own server, I actually didn't talk about that... but then, on that page, neither does she.
