It's impossible for Secretary Clinton to commit the felony of intentionally removing classified information if she didn't know that the information was classified to begin with. On the other hand, if she knew there was classified information and chose to remove it, that would be an intentional removal of classified information, which is a felony under Title 18 U.S. Code 793 f.
Indeed, knowledge of classified information is all that's needed to have "intent" to remove it, which is why it was imperative for the secretary to say, "There was no classified information" when first confronted with the allegations on March 10, 2015, and to repeatedly claim ignorance regarding classified information when interviewed by the FBI. Her response to the allegations was essentially "Huh? What classified information?"
Unfortunately, at the time of Ms. Clinton's appointment to secretary of state and throughout her tenure, it isn't plausible that the former two-term senator, or anyhigh-level official, could think her email communication (60K+ emails) would be,entirely free of classified information. Ostensibly, she was aware that her email communication would contain classified information, yet she chose to have it "removed from its proper place of custody" (a felony under U.S. Code 793 f), and "retained at an unauthorized location" (a misdemeanor under U.S. Code 1924 a).
So it wasn't an accident (gross negligence) that the information was removed – it was a fully intentional act to remove classified information from its proper place of storage, thus satisfying the precedent for prosecution under the aforementioned statutes.
Ultimately, it isn't plausible that our nation's secretary of state had a janitor's understanding of classified information, and the secretary's preposterous claim of ignorance is further compromised by the other falsehoods she told. The sheer volume of the secretary's untrue statements indicates that she's intentionally concealing rather than grossly ignorant. Her claim that she only had one device "for convenience" was an obvious, intentional lie (there were 13 smart phones and five iPads), while the claim that she turned over every email was egregiously false, in light of the FBI uncovering 14,900 additional emails.
Again, it's clear that she's consistently concealing with all these issues, rather than being utterly incompetent.
No comments:
Post a Comment