Email Scandal: Hillary Clinton’s Last Defense Just Blew Up

Investor’s Business Daily

National Security: The Washington Post, of all places, found that not only did Hillary Clinton send and receive classified material on her unsecured email server as Secretary of State, she wrote dozens of classified emails herself.

To understand the implications of this revelation, let’s rewind the clock to almost exactly one year ago, when Clinton first addressed her private email controversy at a press conference held in the United Nations building.  

A reporter asked Clinton whether she was “ever specifically briefed on the security implications of using your own email server and using your personal address to email with the president?”

Her answer was emphatic: “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.”

Then she went on: “I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.”

The first claim had been proved false long ago, once the State Department started releasing what would end up being 2,093 of Clinton’s emails that it said contained classified material.

Once those emails started emerging, Clinton changed her story to say that she never “knowingly” sent or received classified information, because none of the messages were so marked. That excuse fell by the wayside when emails turned up containing information deemed “classified at birth.” Then several showed up that couldn’t be released at all because their classification rating was so high.

The Post’s latest revelations, however, are particularly damning. It found that three-quarters of the classified emails she sent were written by Clinton herself.

Saying she didn’t know the information was classified because it wasn’t marked makes no sense, since she was the one who would have been responsible for marking it in the first place.

And, since she claims that she was “well aware of the classification requirements,” she can’t now claim that she was ignorant of the nature of the information she was sending.

As this story has unfolded over the past year, Clinton has tried to brush it aside as a partisan witch hunt. When that didn’t wash, she tried to blame the State Department for “over classifying” information, or charged that it was just the result of interagency squabbles.

Clinton also tried to smear the inspectors general for State and the intelligence community, both of whom were appointed by President Obama.

But what she has never done is admit the truth. Namely, that she set up her private email account as a way to shield her communications from public scrutiny — a tactic that worked for a time — and that in doing so she gave little thought to the national security implications.

Her cavalier attitude apparently set the tone for the department. The Post notes that top aid John Sullivan “was the most frequent author of classified emails,” and other top officials, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, “authored dozens of such notes.”

Under the law, gross negligence in handling classified material is all that’s required for a government official to face criminal charges. At this point, is there anyone who can honestly say that Clinton wasn’t being grossly negligent?

Investor’s Business Daily