What if Clinton's indicted?
Hillary Clinton faces a range of high and unexpected hurdles to the Democratic nomination which, a year ago, was seen as hers virtually by monarchical right.
She has failed to get beyond the robust challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian socialist whose political career has until now been more a curiosity than a powerful force.
Despite her efforts, Clinton has also failed to drum up enthusiasm for the idea of the historic election of America's first female president.
And she can't seem to shake the perception that, as a former first lady, former senator, former secretary of state and current establishment favorite, she is part of an elite against whom the base of both parties are rebelling this election cycle.
But perhaps the biggest challenge to her candidacy is yet to come. As the Federal Bureau of Investigation drills down on Clinton's handling of classified information on an insecure email network, the Democratic front-runner faces the possibility that she and her top aides could be indicted for compromising national security.
Even if the odds are against her being charged, it's a possibility that has become less easily dismissed than it was last spring, when it was confined to hopeful whispers in Republican circles. Back then, even as news emerged that Clinton had handled sensitive government secrets, most people still thought she would cruise to the presidential nomination this summer.
But few people other than Clinton's own campaign hands now argue that the former secretary of state's legal situation is entirely secure. Two Obama administration agencies, the Justice Department and the State Department, are pursuing related lines of inquiry about her private email usage. Setting aside the handful of Republican-led congressional probes into her emails, experts say Clinton can no longer credibly make the case that concern about her handling of classified information falls strictly along party lines.
Which leads to certain questions. If accusations against Clinton lead to an indictment, what would follow? Could she continue to run for the White House? What would happen to her delegates? Would the Democrats allow themselves to be represented in the general election by Sanders, or would Vice President Joe Biden or some other champion step in to take her place?
Legal likelihood
While the FBI has been especially tight-lipped about the scope and focus of its investigation into Clinton's emails, the bureau recently acknowledged the probe has a "law enforcement" component, apparently repudiating Clinton's long-standing argument that it is nothing more than a routine "security review."
Michael Mukasey, former attorney general under President George W. Bush, said there's no such thing as an FBI "security review."
"That designation is unknown to anybody," Mukasey told the Washington Examiner . "The FBI doesn't conduct security reviews. They conduct investigations. They investigate possible crimes."
Mukasey said the few publicly available facts about the probe point to a thorough criminal investigation involving Clinton.
"If you've got 150 agents on a case, the FBI has acknowledged it's conducting an investigation, how much more real can you get?" he said. "It doesn't get much realer than that."
Clinton has characterized the lingering intrigue over her emails as a Republican attempt to weaken her prospects. Her national spokesman, Brian Fallon, has even attacked inspectors general appointed by President Obama when presented with details about their nonpartisan investigations into Clinton's private server.
But the Justice Department's involvement has proven increasingly difficult to write off as a partisan witch hunt.
Charles Lipson, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, said the legal issues underlying the email controversy are problematic regardless of how much Republicans have tried to exploit them for political gain.
"It is political only because it is a serious legal matter in its own right," Lipson said. "This is not a fake issue. This is a real issue, and that doesn't mean that Republicans who blow it up aren't seeking political gain. They are, but they're doing it on the basis of something that is quite real."
The reality of the situation was thrown into sharp relief at the end of January, when the State Department announced its intention to withhold 22 emails, totaling 37 pages, because they contained "top secret" information. That decision brought the State Department in line with the intelligence community, which had argued since last July that some of the emails may contain information classified up to "top secret."
Since then, Clinton has had to stop saying the controversy is the result of a dispute between bureaucrats over what should be considered classified, as she and her staff have claimed for months.
Details about precisely how many emails are now being treated as top secret, as well as whether they were classified at the time they were written or only retroactively upgraded in light of subsequent developments, remain unknown. The FBI has a strict policy of refusing to comment on investigations that are still in progress.
But the basic public facts suggest the bureau already has solid grounds on which to recommend an indictment, said Andrew McCarthy, former assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York.
"If the press reporting is to be believed, [the case] looks very strong," McCarthy said. "I say that because the statutes involving mishandling classified information are very prosecution-friendly, and they're obviously intended to be that way."
McCarthy points to the case of retired Gen. David Petraeus as an example. Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in April last year after sharing printed classified documents with a woman who was his biographer and mistress. Observers have drawn parallels between the Petraeus and Clinton cases, both of which involved the unauthorized disclosure of classified material.
"I was a critic of the Petraeus prosecution, because I thought he got a slap on the wrist," McCarthy said. "When Congress enacted these laws, the idea was to give the maximum amount of protection the criminal law could give to national defense secrets."
But a growing number of skeptics fear that, even if the FBI were to recommend an indictment, the Justice Department's leadership would decline prosecution of the likely Democratic nominee for political reasons.
"I'm very confident that the the FBI is going to do a thorough investigation and that if there's an airtight case to be made, they'll make it," McCarthy said. "What I'm not confident in is whether the Obama Justice Department will authorize the energetic use of a grand jury and, ultimately, an indictment."
"I know it's nominally Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch's call," he added. "But I think it's ultimately President Obama's call."
Mukasey dismissed concerns that Lynch would suppress charges against Clinton solely out of concern for her party's standard-bearer if the FBI presented her with a convincing case.
"This thing has reached critical mass, and I don't think that she would do that, given the likely outcome, which would be people resigning from the bureau and the Justice Department," he said. "So I don't see it."
Lynch told a House lawmaker that neither she nor other officials are receiving pressure to skew the investigation.
"And I'm also aware of no efforts to undermine our review or investigation into this matter at all," she said.
Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney under President Ronald Reagan, told the Examiner in January that Lynch would have "no choice" but to indict Clinton if the FBI recommended an indictment. That recommendation would come in the form of a confidential memo, DiGenova said, but "the bureau will no doubt let it be known" that such a memo exists in order to increase the public pressure on Lynch to proceed with the case.
Most reports indicate FBI agents are looking into whether Clinton or her staff violated provisions of the Espionage Act that cover the treatment of sensitive information, an offense that can carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
While a number of factors are at play in the unusual case of Clinton's emails, McCarthy said the former secretary of state could be looking at more than one felony charge.
"If it is as serious as it appears to be on its face ... this should be a multiple felony-count indictment and it should involve not only Mrs. Clinton, but whoever else in her circle at the State Department or wherever else knew that this activity was going on," he said.
The road ahead for Dems
If the Justice Department hits Clinton with criminal charges, she faces a difficult decision: withdraw her name from the Democratic primary, or continue to fight the perception of wrongdoing in the court of public opinion while hoping a court of law does not find her guilty.
"There's no legal reason why she'd have to drop out," Mukasey said. "The Constitution lists the qualifications for the presidency. And if you add anything else, it would be unconstitutional."
But most observers agree Clinton would struggle to remain in the race if a grand jury indicted her. At the very least, strategists say, the charges would invite another Democratic challenger into the primary and upend what still looks to be a relatively clear path to the nomination for Clinton.
Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, said Clinton would most likely exit the race if indicted.
"If she withdraws, then effectively she can relieve all of her delegates from their pledge" to support her at the Democratic National Convention in July, Jones said.
A Democratic candidate needs 2,383 delegates to clinch his or her party's nomination. Two days after her victory in the Nevada caucus on Feb. 20, Clinton had already amassed 502 delegates to Sanders' 70, despite virtually tying him in Iowa and losing steeply to him in New Hampshire.
"At that point, we would see a brokered convention, where the most likely scenario would be that someone other than Sanders would be the Democratic nominee," Jones said. "It could be Elizabeth Warren, it could be Andrew Cuomo, Deval Patrick, Joe Biden."
Jones said Sanders' chances would not automatically improve in Clinton's absence, thanks to the Democratic Party's high number of superdelegates. Those are delegates not bound by the results of state primaries.
Superdelegates are already padding Clinton's delegate count. This year, 712 superdelegates will be free to back the politician of their choosing regardless of how their state votes.
"It would really be a return to the pre-modern era, back when the national conventions actually determined who the party's nominee was," Jones said of a situation in which Clinton leaves the race late in the primary.
"The delegates that are elected to support her would still have to support her on the first vote," he explained. "Superdelegates would not have to support her even if they had pledged to her."
A Democratic strategist who declined to be named in order to speak candidly guessed a Clinton withdrawal would benefit Biden more than Sanders because most superdelegates would flock to the vice president, not the Vermont senator.
"The superdelegates give Biden something to play with," the strategist explained.
Delegates at national conventions select their party's nominee using several rounds of ballots, if needed. But more than one round is not typically required, thanks to the primary elections and caucuses that precede the conventions.
"What is interesting is that we've been talking quite a bit about the prospect of a Republican brokered convention," Jones said. "But if Hillary Clinton is indicted, it's extremely likely that someone who has not been competing at all in the primary process would be the Democratic nominee."
Jones said Clinton would have little choice but to leave the race if indicted because she would be unable to paint the charges as a partisan attack.
"If the evidence is so strong and so damaging that Loretta Lynch moves to indict, that says something," he said. "Because the default for the Obama administration in general and Loretta Lynch in particular would be not to indict. The last thing they want to do is indict Hillary Clinton. They would only do it if there was such strong evidence that there was no gray area or wiggle room whatsoever."
Lipson said he thinks the possibility of Clinton being indicted is "very real."
"Indeed, the only reason she wouldn't be indicted, I think, is if there was a political decision at the Department of Justice and the White House to prevent it, assuming that the FBI recommends such an indictment," Lipson said. "Of course, the Republicans are trying to make political hay out of this, and I think the American public is buying it, not because Hillary's avid supporters have changed, but because undecided voters now think she is fundamentally dishonest — not only because of the email scandal, but because the email scandal reminds them of so many other things that she's done."
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-if-hillary-clintons-indicted/article/2584119
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The bitch is going down!
She's not above the law!
Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile the circle jerk shit show republican campaign rages on.
Deflection does not serve justice.
no deflection, just context
Well said. And true.
Get real, nothing will be done until after the election, and if she makes it to the top, it will never happen. If she IS charged with a crime, Obama will pardon her anyways.
Yep. She's too big to indict...
Nice long article we can throw on the fire with all the rest of them.
Ruth Marcus, a national affairs writer for the Washington Post, put it plainly on television earlier today. Clinton is most likely not going to be indicted, because there is no evidence of an intent by her to break any laws regarding e-mails and national security, and there is strong precedent that criminal referrals in this area should relate to intent. In other words Clinton must have knowingly broken some law. There is no proof of this, no matter how the right wing may pant so after it.
If Clinton still worked in government, maybe she would be reprimanded or otherwise dealt with administratively, but she doesn't.
The hopes and dreams of the Hillary haters will fade unceremoniously away.
there is no evidence of an intent by her to break any laws regarding e-mails and national security
Intent is not a factor. As an example: The submarine crewman who took selfies of himself with secret sonar screens visible in the background. No intent to take pictures of them. Not sent to anyone. Found on a discarded phone in a landfill. He's going to trial. National Security issues do not require intent to prosecute. She signed a form acknowledging her requirement to safeguard information. Failure to safeguard is itself a violation.
You will be disappointed. Numerous experts in the field as well as legal authors have said intent is a factor. There are cases of people who did something similar as Clinton and were not charged criminally because there was no intent.
In the USAF I handled Confidential, Secret and Top Secret material. Piece of documentation comes to me with no classification. I read it and hand on down the way to the next person or reply to it or whatever I'm supposed to do depending on what it said. Later it's determined that it should have been classified something or other before I got it. I'm in the clear.
Not if you sent it to your home server without getting a classification review. No intent required.
She didn't send it to her home server. Information was sent to her to her home server by other personnel at the State Department. This information was not classified at the time it was sent and received anymore then if it was the latest recipe for raisin bread. She had no reason to believe it should have been classified. After this kerfuffle popped up upon further review some of the information was retroactively classified by another agency. No indictment. There is no there, there.
Information is born classified. She had a responsibility to have it reviewed first. They teach this every year in classification refresher course.
Information is received classified or not. It was received by her as unclassified. She had no responsibility to see if it should have been classified. That is the responsibility of the person who sent it to her. If she did receive the latest recipe for raisin bread on her home server from a State Department employee would she have the responsibility to determine if that recipe was classified or not? Or was that recipe "born classified"? No indictment.
Duh. Recipes don't meet any of the classification guidance. Nice ad absurdium deflection.
Duh. Recipes don't meet any of the classification guidance. Nice ad absurdium deflection.
According to what YOU said all information is born classified. Not some, all. Where do you draw the line? Where is she expected to draw the line? So if it's not all, then how is she supposed to know that something that she receives unclassified would be considered classified retroactively by another agency? It was not a deflection at all. I mean hey, the recipe could be a secretly coded message. Or is it not true that all information sent to her server is not "born classified" like you claimed it is? It's all or nothing or is it you who get's to decide what was or was not "born classified" at the time it was sent to her?
Wrong. Classified information is classified at birth. Not all information is classified. It does not seem likely that you have had classified matter training in the last decade or so.
If it's not classified when it is sent to her, then there is no way for her to know that it's classified, therefore she can not know that it has been classified at birth. She is blameless if a different agency decides later that THEY think it SHOULD have been classified at birth. No indictment. You can not retroactively charge someone with breaking a law that was legal at the time it was committed. You also can not retroactively decide something should have been classified and then arrest or indict everyone who was exposed to it BEFORE it was decided that it it should have been classified.
If that were true then the USAF can suddenly decide that a particular piece of information I handled in the Air Force is now classified and therefore I should be indicted for passing it on unclassified because it was classified at birth.
When I had been out of the Air Force for 4 months I was visited by the FBI. They asked me a bunch of questions about a project that I had worked on while in the the USAF. Parts of it were classified Top Secret and parts of it passed through the system unclassified. I was asked if anyone had asked me about the project, what they asked, who they were, etc. Then they told me that all of the information was now to be considered Top Secret and I had to swear an oath (I was still in the Inactive Reserve) not to reveal any of the information associated with the project. Under your version of handling classified material I should have been arrested because I had talked with some other Air Force members about some of the unclassified parts of the project because it was necessary to complete the project since all of the now Top Secret material as classified at birth. It does not work like that. The FBI visited me again about 7 years later and we went over the whole thing again and I swore another oath that I had not discussed any information abut the project with anyone.
Send the FBI to arrest me!
Details about precisely how many emails are now being treated as top secret, as well as whether they were classified at the time they were written or only retroactively upgraded in light of subsequent developments, remain unknown. The FBI has a strict policy of refusing to comment on investigations that are still in progress.
You, nor I have all the information to make that judgement Randy. Also, it's not just a matter of whether the Email itself was classified, but whether the material discussed was classified and known to be sensitive when emailed. If you read a classified document, and then discuss it in an email, that email is then supposed to be classified, and encrypted. I know this from personal experience being a Civilian Employee of the US Army. All of our emails, when we hit the send button, cause a pop up window to come up which gives choices for classifications based on my clearance level. If I had a Top Secret clearance, was discussing top secret info in an email, and I chose "unclassified" so the email would not be encrypted, I would be in violation of the law. THAT is the issue with much of her email.
However, so far, it's not been shown that any of the emails sent to her were classified OR that the information in them was classified at the time she received the email.
If none of the emails were classified at the time she received them, then she would have no reason to believe that any the information in the email was classified. Unless it can be shown she knowingly passed on classified material, or had information on her home server that she knew to be classified at the time it was on there she will not be indicted.
Prove that statement Randy. You can't. That's talking points from the Clinton camp. I can't prove otherwise either. Why? Because it's still an ongoing investigation. However, the fact that it is STILL ongoing, that the Justice Department is starting to give immunity for testimony all adds up to big problems for Clinton. As the article says, they can no longer claim this is just a security review. It's already been officially acknowledged to be a criminal investigation.
Nothing says it's a criminal investigation of her. Besides, I believe her when she says nothing was classified when it was originally on her home server.
Of course it's a criminal investigation! That's what the FBI does!
It does not say it's a criminal investigation OF HER! It says there is a law enforcement component to the investigation, which involves the whole issue of how material is handled in the State Department. They do NOT say there is any criminal investigation of her.
First, read this link:
All of the emails that have been redacted and classified as Secret or Top Secret contain information, much of it cut and pasted from documents on this network. This is a fact. To say that the info she was discussing was not classified at the time, but is now, is ignorant.
Second, this IS a criminal investigation:
But did she KNOW it was classified! Was it marked classified! And a probe is not a criminal investigation. If she did not know it was classified then she can not be charged just because what she was looking at was retroactively classified. It has to be shown that she knew the information was classified. Classifying it after the fact doesn't cut it.
A probe is the FBI trying to determine IF a crime has been committed and therefore a criminal investigation is warranted. It doesn't become that until the FBI determines that a crime has been committed and they haven't determined that.I was arrested once (well, more then once) but before the DA could say it was a criminal investigation of me there had to be a preliminary exam where the DA has to prove to the judge that a crime had been committed and that there was a reasonable chance that I had did it. They were unable to prove a crime had been committed (mostly because one had not been) so I was exonerated and my arrest record expunged as if nothing had happened. I was never investigated as a possible criminal because the case never reached that point and neither has the FBI probe. The FBI has to probe to find out if there is a chance that a crime has been committed. That is what they are doing now. Then, if they decide that a crime has been committed and there is a reasonable chance that she committed said crime, then it becomes a criminal investigation of her. Not until then. As far as the FBI is concerned no crime has been committed. Yet. That's why they say there "is a law enforcement component involved" and not a criminal investigation.
I can confirm that as part of this monthly production of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, the State Department will be denying in full seven e-mail chains found in 22 documents representing 37 pages. The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information. These documents were not marked classified at the time that they were sent .”
And …
One really key issue here is when the emails were classified
This might seem unimportant. If it's top secret, then it must be really sensitive, right?
Not necessarily. A large proportion of documents that our government classifies are not actually that sensitive — more on that below. So the key thing now is to try to figure out: Were these emails classified because they contain highly sensitive information that Clinton never should have emailed in the first place, or because they were largely banal but got scooped up in America's often absurd classify-everything practices?
Born classified. Case closed.
Not if you sent it to your home server without getting a classification review. No intent required.
A number of the "classified" items were not classified at the time they were received … they were classified within the last few months.
Nope. Born classified. She failed her responsibility to get a review or announce a security incident. When did you last take classified matter training? It was two months ago for me.
John,
please list these similar cases where a government employee set up a private server to intentionally avoid using secured government systems to handle classified information. I'd really like to see those "similar" cases.
a private server to intentionally avoid using secured government systems to handle classified information.
You only wrote two sentences and you are off track. There is no evidence of your assertion.
What are you talking about? She intentionally refused to use a safe server to do her job, which would obviously require the handling of classified material. The criminal standard is gross negligence, it's not hard to show that given her planned refusal to use a safe system.
Where are the similar cases?
to intentionally avoid using secured government systems to handle classified information
That's speculative, Sean. "Intent" as you characterize it has not been established.
Bad idea … sloppy, dumb … I agree. But "intent to avoid," for what purpose other than possibly convenience might that be?
The Bush White House email controversy surfaced in 2007 during the controversy involving the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys . Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an email server not controlled by the federal government. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Hatch Act . [1] Over 5 million emails may have been lost. [2] [3] Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove emails, leading to damaging allegations. [4] In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been lost. [5]
The administration officials had been using a private Internet domain, called gwb43.com, owned by and hosted on an email server run by the Republican National Committee , [6] for various communications of unknown content or purpose. The domain name is an abbreviation for " George W. Bush , 43rd" President of the United States . The server came public when it was discovered that J. Scott Jennings , the White House's deputy director of political affairs, was using a gwb43.com email address to discuss the firing of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas. [7] Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com (registered to "Bush-Cheney '04, Inc." [8] ) and rnchq.org (registered to "Republican National Committee" [9] ), but, unlike these two servers, gwb43.com has no Web server connected to it — it is used only for email. [10]
________________________________________________
What was the intent?
Ah, the other side did it argument. Always a classic.
Ah, the other side did it argument. Always a classic.
You need to follow the discussion; Sean asked a question which I answered …
Where are the similar cases?
What if Clinton's indicted?
The likelihood is somewhere between zero and ain't gonna happen.
I'd actually prefer a Joe Biden.
Republicans should be careful what they wish for.
True. Indict Hillary and get Biden the next 8 years. Either way works for me.
Enjoy your fantasy. Prepare to hail Trump.