14 Excellent Excerpts From the FBI's Report on Hill's Email (an exoneration)

[Native]

Cross-post from LBN http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141564784

Have you read the entire FBI report on their investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices? No? Well, I have, because that's the kind of professional I am. And I'm going to provide you with all the most interesting excerpts.

Page 11: On January 23, 2009, Clinton contacted former Secretary of State Colin Powell via e-mail to inquire about his use of a BlackBerry while he was Secretary of State (January 2001 to January 2005). In his e-mail reply, Powell warned Clinton that if it became "public" that Clinton had a BlackBerry, and she used it to "do business," her e-mails could become "official record and subject to the law." Powell further advised Clinton, "Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data."

This is important. First, it makes clear that Hillary conversed with Colin Powell two days after becoming Secretary of State, not "a year later," as Powell has claimed. Second, Powell essentially told her that he had just gone ahead and broken the law by "not using systems that captured the data." Hillary, by contrast, chose instead to retain everything as the law required.

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn't prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She's told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn't take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN's end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there's no evidence that her server was ever hacked.

Other excerpts make it clear that while the State Department "recommended" against the use of personal email accts, it was not prohibited & personal accounts were widely used; Hillary did indeed "check in" her Blackberry when she came to her office, it was simply checked into the wrong place - but this is the DS's fault, not Hillary's; how the BleachBit brouhaha came to be (also having nothing to do with Hillary), etc.....

Lots of great info here. Also, a pretty short piece for Mother Jones. Great to bookmark.
http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/14-excerpts-fbis-report-hillary-clintons-email

[Hortensis]

1. Excellent, thanks. Wish Colin Powell hadn't lied so facilely,

but this is an important election year and he is a Republican. Probity is no longer in danger of extinction among Republican operatives, it's dead.

[Native]

2. This would also explain why he was so harsh when confronted with the comments he made to Hill @ the

dinner meeting. He probably didn't want to get dragged into this for this very reason.

[Hortensis]

3. Yes. Powell knew he had involvement all along,

and he had a long time to decide how to respond. He chose to support the lies most conservatives were swallowing eagerly, knowing only a relative few would learn the truth.

[TrishaJ]

4. Sort of like his

testimony on Iraq's nuclear arsenal to the UN.

[Hortensis]

5. Yes. Not to excuse lying in that situation, but

it probably was somewhat different. As secretary of state his job was to carry out W's policy.

He's retired now, though, and this is a purely partisan lie for personal reasons. Any duty to promote that dreadful mess on the right purely in his own mind.