Hillary: No, My Intel-Compromising Email Scheme Wasn't An Error in Judgment

She's right in one sense, just not in the way she means. What she means is that this was all just an honest, silly mistake that (cough) "Republicans and their allies

" are blowing out of proportion for political reasons. Sure, she could have been smarter about it, but voters shouldn't worry their pretty little heads over this so-called scandal -- which merely put massive quantities of classified information, including 'beyond top secret' intelligence, at risk for the Russians, Chinese and Iranians to hack and consume. Her statement is correct in that her decision to set up the improper, unsecure server and use it exclusively for official business wasn't an error of judgment. It was her affirmative, calculated plan. The goal was to exert complete control over her emails in order to protect problematic emails from the prying eyes of potential watchdogs or investigators. Shielding herself from political and legal trouble was more important to her than fulfilling her duty to protect highly sensitive national security information, and she acted accordingly. Her bet was that nobody would ever discover the private server, and that if they did, she'd unilaterally wipe away any messages that could get her in trouble, without a paper trail. And that's precisely what she did. She and her lawyers tried to destroy roughly 32,000 emails, then wiped the server clean. She claimed every one of those messages was personal in nature (yoga, wedding planning, etc), but that was a verifiable lie. The FBI has since recovered those emails, which are likely a factor in the bureau's ongoing and expanding investigation into her conduct. None of which even rises to the level of bad judgment, she told CNN viewers last night:

Totally false. The very existence of her private server and the fact that she conducted all official business on it was specifically prohibited. That's been confirmed by the State Department and by a Bill Clinton-appointed federal judge. The national security risks that arise from this forbidden arrangement -- about which she was personally and explicitly warned by State Department security officials -- are the subject of an active federal probe, the scope of which has increased twice. "Nothing that I did was wrong" is yet another outright lie, designed to reassure voters via confident assertion. This is breathtaking arrogance coming from a woman who appears to be confident in her absolute impunity. And then there's this, via Fox News:

A 2013 video, obtained exclusively by Fox News, raises fresh questions about how Hillary Clinton handled sensitive information at the State Department. In the video, veteran diplomat Wendy Sherman reveals that in the interest of speed, Clinton and her aides would share information that "would never be on an unclassified system" normally. The questions surround a 2013 speech in which Sherman compared the technology differences between serving at the State Department in the administrations of President Bill Clinton and President Obama. "Now we have BlackBerries, and it has changed the way diplomacy is done," Sherman, who was undersecretary of state at the time, said in the 2013 on-camera remarks. "Things appear on your BlackBerries that would never be on an unclassified system. But you're out traveling, you're trying to negotiate something. You want to communicate with people, it's the fastest way to do it." ... The secretary of state met with Lady Ashton of the European Union and, according to Sherman, the two high officials used their BlackBerries to conduct Middle East peace negotiations. "So they sat there, as they were having the meeting, with their BlackBerries, transferring language back and forth between them and between their aides to multitask in a quite a new fashion," said Sherman. "To have the meeting and at the same time be working on the Quartet statement."

Here's the video. The key bit starts around the 1:20 mark:

The State Department has said that Sec. Clinton was never issued a secure, government-issued device. In case you missed it earlier, I'll leave you with a Bernie Sanders supporter telling Hillary to her face that many young voters think she's dishonest: