18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information
(d) Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or
(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Emphasis mine.
The language is plain. The FBI did not have to prove intent. Hillary’s “carelessness” was enough for prosecution. There are too many Americans that have unintentionally removed, distributed, etc. sensitive information that have been fined and/or jailed. The Democrats remain above the law.
Blogs For Victory 
The Democrats remain above the law.
YUP!
There was a time, not even that long ago, when those who thought nothing in the government could be trusted were a small minority, outliers who blamed the government for everything in their lives they hated. It has been fascinating, in a morbid way, to see that perception of the government become mainstream. The Obama Years have escalated fear and hatred of government so much that it now seems to be the predominant feeling for most people.
I still hope that this can be turned around without an overt revolution and civil war, but it will take enough Americans being forced to see the light, as I think many have been recently, and the will to act and, as George W. said, “stay the course”.
My ideal president would do, as Cruz promised to do, and spend his or her first day in office rescinding every Executive Order by Obama, and yes, by anyone else as well, that was a foray into Congressional authority. Within the next 100 days Congress would pass a bill replacing the IRS with a fair tax or even a flat tax, though I think a consumption tax brings tax scofflaws into compliance because hookers and drug dealers buy stuff. Congress would enact new immigration laws and shift IRS workers into immigration to handle investigations of newly registered illegals, while passing stringent new laws making it a felony to be in the United States without proper documentation unless registered with Immigration and in line to be investigated. That is, every single illegal would have 90 days to register before becoming a felon, and would then be fingerprinted, have retinal scans and DNA testing done, and be investigated for prior wrongdoing while in the country. The president would immediately sign all such legislation.
He or she would nominate a solid originalist to the Supreme Court, and appoint a committee to look into what laws could be passed to make it a legal requirement to rule, as a SCOTUS justice, only in strict compliance with the Constitution. This committee would also be asked to make recommendations on term limits for SCOTUS justices.
He or she would appoint a committee to look into the growing problem of judicial misconduct and ways to deal with it, starting with removing the assumption of judicial protection from lawsuits and legal action when misconduct is proven.
Congress would initiate impeachment proceedings against federal judges who have exceeded their legal boundaries and used the bench to further political agendas, and/or to protect other judges. Our entire judicial system is a mess, and needs to be reamed out, scrubbed and sanitized, and returned to order.
Congress would, at the instruction of the president, examine the abolition of some federal agencies, downsizing of others, combining of some, and streamlining all federal agency activity. Agencies at risk and under scrutiny would be the EPA, the BLM, and of course starting with the DOJ.
Congress would remove statutes of limitations on matters involving national security, retroactively.
That would be a good three months’s start at shoveling out the manure and steam cleaning the system.
It is, perhaps, useful that someone so universally known as Hillary skated – so many people who have connections and/or money already have…but it was mostly out of sight and out of mind. Inherent in Big Government is that people well-connected to Big Government will get special treatment; including a get-out-of-jail free card. The key for us on the right is to make certain average people know that it is the Progressives who set it up this way.
One question I haven’t heard anyone ask is how does the number of Hillary’s emails that the FBI deemed were classified compare to the number of classified emails handled by Condoleezza Rice? If there’s a big discrepancy, and I’m betting there is, it might indicate how well Hillary did her job or how many classified emails she deleted.
That is an excellent point, though relevant only to people who care.
Unfortunately, Condoleezza Rice didn’t use email much so there isn’t a large enough universe for comparison.
So if Rice is somehow known to have used email sparingly and she still had more than Hillary……….
Unfortunately, Condoleezza Rice didn’t use email much
I did not know that, but I checked, and you are correct. Amazing the things you learn on the Internet.
Spook
Indeed, the Internet is amazing. It made me look smart in that post, which is pretty amazing.
Sadly, Bob, a great many people use the Internet to try to confirm a preconceived belief instead of trying to determine the truth. And the former is usually easier to do than the latter.
Oh, confirmation bias pre-dates the internet. I run into it a lot. One thing I haven’t brought up in any discussion – and thus haven’t been tossed out on my ear over it – is the Italian Risorgimento; the unification of Italy in the period 1848 – 1870. During this time frame Italian nationalists worked and fought for Italian unification – only to be outclassed by Cavour, who was serving the Sardinian King, Victor Emmanuel. It is kind of received wisdom that all good people are supposed to applaud this effort and consider those who carried it out as the good guys, those who opposed them (notably the Pope and the Austrian Emperor) as the bad guys…hidebound cretins who simply would not get with it. But I started to ask a question a few years back – why unify Italy? To what purpose?
Now, it is true that Austrian rule in Lombardy and Venetia was oppressive and King Bomba in Naples could have done a better job (his real name of Ferdinand II – “Bomba” was an insulting name given to him by his subjects after he used brutal force to break rebellions) – but was what came after all that much better? It’s not like Cavour asked anyone’s leave upon creating the Kingdom of Italy (some rigged plebiscites were carried out); what title did the King of Sardinia have to be King of Italy? Who in Italy wanted to despoil the Church of it’s property? Nothing like a majority of the people. Corruption in government became rather endemic, and poverty remained widespread. Meanwhile, nationalists got nationalist and that lead to a disastrous war in Ethiopia, a costly war in Libya, a horrible time in World War One, Mussolini and crushing defeat in World War Two. It can be reasonably argued that none of these things would have happened had not the various States in Italy been hijacked into the Kingdom of Italy – and Italian unification might have come naturally, over time. Or might not have. Large, unified nations are not necessarily all wonderful…and Italy has now been unified for quite a while and yet we don’t see any sign of the varied genius that arose in Italy when it was a collection of small States.
Now, to be sure, we can’t turn back time – what is done is done; but I don’t see any point is just accepting that what happened was good simply because a formula – essentially Marxist in philosophy – says that the development of States is some sort of immutable law of “History” and can’t be argued with. But try to bring that up in a discussion of history and you’ll likely get hammered…even over something as small beans as the unification of Italy.
People don’t tend to think things through – to really roll it around in the head and see if it all makes sense. I’m guilty as anyone – but I at least see that I might be wrong.
Mark, I don’t think you would have been tossed out on your ear as much as met with a confused look and a ???????????? For someone who thinks the American public would not be able to understand my concept of government being a blueprint for how to govern a nation instead of a popularity contest, of the choice between a federal government severely restricted as to size, scope and power or a Central Authority with ho boundaries on its size or scope, you have come up with an obscure and esoteric foray into European history that seems to require quite a stretch to apply to what is going on here. If that was what you intended.
Interesting, but not quite gripping, if you catch my drift. I know it is easy to get caught up in an element of history—Patrick O’Brian got me fascinated with the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars—-and it’s tempting to tell people all the stuff you think is cool, but the fact is, eyes are likely to glaze over when you try to share your enthusiasm.
It is a bit boring, isn’t it? But it is a thesis I’m slowly working up…it stemmed from the incomplete book Blinded by the Lies and it is becoming a concept that except for a very few instances, what Western humanity has done over the past 250 years or so has been a mistake. Meaning, that with the information available at the time, we deliberately choose to do the flat wrong thing. The underlying cause of this has been our stout refusal to apply Judeo-Christian morality to our decision-making process.
Mark
I agree with your example of confirmation bias. We think Italian or German unification was a good thing because, well here we are with an Italy and a Germany so what else are we to think?
On the other hand, history shows that EVERYthing negative has a positive side. WWII was terrible, but without it the US would not be as dominant as we are. Jesus died a horrible death, but look what that death wrought, The Black Plagues killed most everyone, but those that survived created the Renaissance,
So, Italy unified and some bad stuff happened as a result. Meh. Talk to France if you want to see a messy nation-building experience.
But I liked your analysis nonetheless.
It comes down to, how do we keep getting things to be worse and worse? You’d think after a while of mindlessly shoving ourselves into disaster we’d start to think that maybe we’re just doing it wrong? But, no such thing…we just keep piling error upon error.
“It is a bit boring, isn’t it? But it is a thesis I’m slowly working up…”
That makes sense. It just didn’t track well for me as a stand-alone comment. It struck me as an interesting historical reference but I didn’t tie it in well with what is going on today.
I’m not sure how I feel about your thesis topic. Have nations/people made better choices outside the Western world.? I do go along with your observation that the problems seem based in the refusal to apply Judeo-Christian morality to our decisions.
Not many good decisions have been made. I think the Declaration of Independence was good. The Constitution, too. But even with those two good decisions as a basis, look at how many bad decisions we’ve still managed to make! As for the non-Western world…Japan decided to ape the worst aspects of industrialization and imperialism…China and the rest of the Third World decided that socialism was the cure-all…and then China decided to graft crony capitalism on top of the socialism! That is, indeed, Dumb and Dumber. I mentioned a few weeks back the new Panama Canal effort – my goodness! The economic future of your nation is at stake and you turn the whole thing over to corrupt officials who sell the whole thing out to relatives and friends…who don’t even have the decency to at least pour reliable concrete! Is anyone even remotely trying to get things right?
To me, the central issue is not even discussed – because that evidence likely has been completely destroyed: while setting up a server did protect Hillary from FOIA requests, what real benefit of that was there? Sure, it allowed her to do her job without any real oversight, but official and legal business of the SecState is pretty routine…and even if we FOIA’d her e mails, the confidential stuff would all have been redacted. She was hiding something else besides her official business – and/or her official business was closely tied to her unofficial business (ie, raking up funds for her government-in-waiting, the Clinton Foundation). In there we might find some interesting people doing business with her for a lot of interesting reasons…but we won’t find out about it. Ever.
You’re right—in typical Clinton fashion, it has been one distraction after another, a lot of shiny things to go sloping after and a lot of smoke and mirrors. We are supposed to focus on whether her intent was to commit a criminal act, not on why she did what she did.
Sadly, it will take a clear thinker and a coherent speaker to get this across to the American public, and so far it looks like we may be stuck with Donald Trump, instead.
Spook, in line with your comment, this is what Comey said, sounding rather Trumpian in his disjointed sentence fragments, to try to show a difference between the Clinton and Petraeus cases. re: Petraeus:
“Clearly intentional conduct. Knew what he was doing was violation of the law,” Comey said of the former CIA director. “Huge amounts of information. If you couldn’t prove he knew it, raises the inference [that] he did it and effort to obstruct justice. That combination of things makes it worthy of a prosecution. A misdemeanor prosecution, but a prosecution nonetheless.”
Now, back to Clinton. Her setting up of a private server was clearly “intentional conduct”. You don’t just stub your toe on a crack in the sidewalk and stumble into a server installed in your house. It took “intentional conduct” for me to just bring home a router from Staples, and more “intentional conduct” to make it password protected.
“Knew what (s)he was doing was violation of the law…” I can’t believe that someone who had her background didn’t know, and furthermore that a basic briefing on the requirements of the Sec of State—or any high ranking government official—-wouldn’t include the requirements that nothing can be destroyed and that secure transmission of sensitive material is a must. We have a little company that does no government business but we can’t purge our records, which is why we ask that people not use their company emails for personal use—the complaints about Uncle Eddie and the pictures of the drunken birthday party will become part of a permanent and possibly public company record. In a recent lawsuit about an allegedly wrongful dismissal, there was much sound and fury and a whole three day hearing when it turned out that the employee’s computer had accidentally been purged of his data. The data were eventually recovered from a backup, but then the claim was that simply removing it from the original computer was a violation of the law. And this was a little district court case. But the Sec of State didn’t know this and nowhere in any of the briefings she got was it mentioned?
Comey went in, in violation of the First Rule of Holes “…If you couldn’t prove he knew it, raises the inference [that] he did it and effort to obstruct justice. That combination of things makes it worthy of a prosecution.” We clearly had the same combination of the same things, in spades, yet he decided she didn’t qualify.
And then he comes up with “A misdemeanor prosecution, but a prosecution nonetheless.” The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving us his professional opinion that repeated acts of negligence, under circumstances which would lead to the inference that they were the result of a knowing violation of the law, resulting in the leaking of crucial and sensitive information to who knows how many bad actors around the world, would result in a prosecution not much more severe than a jaywalking ticket? I wonder just how big a security breach it would take to rise to the level of a crime?
One would chuckle if this were in The Onion, but this is in the New York Times.
Nothing would surprise me anymore.
That would certainly make it easier to vote for him.
Though it looks like it would give us a President Christie. Eeeuuuwww,
OK, elephant in the room time.
Why is everyone acting as if the FBI opinion is anything more than an opinion? OK, it might rise just a teeny bit in emphasis if we call it a “recommendation”.
But the FBI has no authority in this matter. The FBI is an INVESTIGATIVE branch of government. Really. Check it out. Federal Bureau of INVESTIGATION. Loretta Lynch may have tried to create the impression that she has the authority to hand over the decision to prosecute to the FBI, but she doesn’t. She can consult them for their opinion. Period. It is then up to her to act on it.
She is the Attorney General. Attorneys General prosecute. It’s like a job description. True, it appears that job descriptions at the federal level in the Obama Administration are pretty fluid, given his assumption of legislative powers, as are job duties and responsibilities and legal requirements,, but still….. If she doesn’t want the responsibility of her position, she should step aside and open it up to someone who is. Her responsibility is to evaluate the FBI investigation and its RECOMMENDATION and then make a decision on how to proceed. And she is not bound by the opinion of the FBI. She now has to say that the DOJ agrees with, or does not agree with, the conclusions of the FBI, and from that point on the DOJ has to own the final decision. It cannot be shuffled off to some other agency. The final decision has to have Loretta Lynch’s name on it.
It’s a shell game, it’s been a shell game from the very beginning, and it was always designed to create confusion and spread out the fallout from a foregone conclusion among as many agencies as possible. The administration is playing “Who’s On First?” and it looks like the public and the press are buying it.
Has anyone pressed Loretta to make a formal decision, as required by her office, on the matter? Even if she tried to pass the buck to the Bureau, she still has to be the one to sign off on it. And she doesn’t want to. Nobody wants to.
As it stands right now, when there is blowback, Comey can say all his agency did was make a recommendation, don’t blame them if nothing happened, and Lynch can say she turned it all over to the FBI so don’t blame the DOJ and no one will have a formal official decision hanging over the head of any person or agency.
This season is insane. We have someone claiming to be the nominee before the convention, and party officials going along with it, in an effort to run a shell game of their own. We have an investigative agency making a recommendation to the prosecuting agency not to prosecute and everyone is accepting that as the final decision. It is government by illusion.
I wonder how people convicted of manslaughter, who served or are serving time, feel about Comey’s explanation?
Manslaughter—–the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought….
Does Comey mean that if I am driving while drunk and hit someone and kill him, I can only be prosecuted for driving drunk but not for vehicular homicide because I did not get behind the wheel with the intent to kill anyone? What if I don’t feel impaired, and therefore did not even have the intent to drive while under the influence?
He must have been VERY well compensated for destroying his entire professional reputation and that of the FBI.
The Clintons are just an extreme example of the two-tier justice system – OJ Simpson is another extreme example. The former gets off because of their massive connections; the latter because he could afford a legal team which was ruthless and dishonest enough to make the trial about anything other than what OJ did. Our #BLM people think it is a race-based two-tier system, but the fact that OJ got off (and Obama is President, and Lynch did the final close-out on Hillary’s e mail issue) demonstrates conclusive that race isn’t the underlying factor. It all depends on who you know and/or how much money you’ve got – but it only works because the people running the show lack all sense of honor…they just don’t believe in right or wrong and thus calculate everything entirely upon how it helps or hinders them in the quest for power and wealth.
Maybe I am just dense, but it appears to me that NO ONE has done a “final close-out” on the Clinton indictment issue. Lynch said she would depend on the FBI recommendation. She got it, Now she has to make an official decision and sign off on it, and I haven’t heard that she has done so. As I said, it is a shell game, set up so nothing is done and there is no one to blame. When the criticism piles up, Comey will say “Hey, they asked us for our opinion and we gave it, but we are not the agency to make the final decision”. Lynch will say “I turned it over to the FBI, you all saw that, and you saw what they said. Case closed.”
Senator Cory Gardner, junior Senator from Colorado and a rising star in the conservative movement, said in his newsletter to his constituents that if DOJ will not indict, Congress will. No details, just that comment. Now we wait and see. The problem with that is that it will be a completely partisan decision, purposely so, and will be seen and portrayed as more of that vile right-wing conspiracy stuff the Left gobbles down with their cornflakes.
I always saw the OJ verdict as more racist than anything else. Yes, the Dream Team was vile and despicable and stooped to anything they could find, or rather invent, and the prosecution made many mistakes. (re: the glove. Aside from the foolishness of letting OJ try it on, and play to the jury with it, one thing has never been mentioned, as far as I know. The claim was that the glove shrunk, and there was ample testimony about leather shrinking, etc. What they never touched on was what I called the Girdle Effect. All they had to do was bring in an elastic foundation garment, which looks pretty small, and show the woman it is designed to fit, who would be pretty large. What looks small stretches, which is the very definition of “elastic”, to fit. I have had several pairs of leather gloves which fit very snugly. They stretch to fit. If something happens to take away that elasticity, they would not stretch. The leather in that glove did not shrink so much as lose its ability to stretch. It was the same size it always had been. Every time the glove was handled, you could see that it was stiff, not flexible. Someone pulling an identical glove on one hand and then trying to get that glove to stretch to fit the other would have taken that argument off the table.) But I digress. My belief, that that of many others, is that absolutely nothing could have changed that verdict, once that jury was seated in that jurisdiction. As a friend said, an entire busload of Japanese nuns could have videotaped the entire murder including OJ trying to get in the bus to get to the cameras, with his bloody handprints all over the bus, and that jury would have acquitted. It was 100% racial, “Up Yours, Whitey” blacks protecting their own.
OK, not quite 100%. There was some element of starstruck fandom at play, what we might in today’s environment call the Trump Factor. But it was really about race, and racial hatred.
Lynch said she would depend on the FBI recommendation. She got it, Now she has to make an official decision and sign off on it, and I haven’t heard that she has done so.
She made the announcement Wednesday afternoon.
Thanks for that update, Spook. I have started to avoid the “news” lately as it just seems to be background music to the death spiral of the country. Lynch still has someone else to point a finger at, when challenged for her abandonment of the responsibilities of her job.