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Panic: Dems Spinning Madly Amid Serious New Hillary Email Revelations

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  February 01, 2016 10:01 AM

Friday was a very bad day for Hillary Clinton, as her email scandal deepened in several serious ways. Remember when her campaign angrily insisted that the intelligence community's Obama-appointed Inspector General had wrongly identified two pieces of intelligence classified as 'top secret' among the (non-deleted) emails on her improper, unsecure private server? They tried to cast the conclusion as the product of an abstruse and benign interagency squabble with the State Department -- the first of several egregious attempts to question the watchdog's motives and integrity. Not only was the IG correct at the time, as Christine posted just before the weekend, the State Department has now flagged 22 of her emails as top secret -- so sensitive, in fact, that they cannot be released, even in redacted form:


Fox News has also reported that some 'beyond top secret' information is also being withheld entirely. The "innocuous" damage control fairy tale is dead, killed off by the Inspector General and the Obama State Department. Team Clinton's preposterous "Republicans and their allies" conspiracy theory suffers yet another body blow:

The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging" to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding. The determination was first reported by Fox News, hours before the State Department formally announced Friday that seven email chains, found in 22 documents, will be withheld “in full” because they, in fact, contain “Top Secret” information...the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press that the seven email chains would be withheld. The department has since confirmed those details publicly. The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton's personal server. Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from "special access programs," or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.”

Intelligence community sources confirm that this intelligence was top secret and above from the very moment it hit her vulnerable server; it was not upgraded retroactively.  And then there's this crucial detail:


That would be the same Sidney Blumenthal who'd been barred from official service by the Obama White House because of his unethical reputation, the same Sidney Blumenthal whose email correspondence Hillary has claimed was strictly personal and not at all work-related, and the same Sidney Blumenthal whom Hillary swore under oath was not an adviser of hers, "official or unofficial."  Lie upon lie.  This man was trafficking in extremely secret US intelligence while working as an off-the-books advisor to Mrs. Clinton, in direct violation of Obama's wishes (while being paid by the Clinton Foundation), and his emails unquestionably related to her work as Secretary of State.  That's even clearer now that the Obama administration has decided to withhold an entire email of his due to its top secret contents, calling it too dangerous to release.  Keep in mind that he did not have access to secure government email systems through which to send such intelligence, as required, because he was explicitly banned from government service.  He was sending this stuff from his unsecure account to Hillary's unsecure account.  And yes, his unsecure account was hacked -- which is how we found out about the work-related emails Hillary withheld and destroyed in the first place.  This series of disastrous revelations prompted panicky Democrats to kick their partisan spin into hyperdrive.  Hillary's spokesman blamed the situation on "over-classification run amok," pretending as though the top secret and SAP intel his boss compromised shouldn't have been classified at all.  Out of curiosity, even if this ridiculous argument were true, how on earth would he know?  Has he personally seen this 'need to know' intelligence, which requires top-level security clearance?  And while we're looking through the "how would they know?" file, check this out:


The White House is simultaneously insisting that there's been no political influence in this case whatsoever, yet Obama's press secretary is telling reporters that they don't expect an indictment...a decision-making process that is supposedly the sole purview of the allegedly non-political Justice Department. Something smells rotten already; this marks the second instance of apparent White House interference.  One hopes FBI Director James Comey is paying attention.  For what it's worth, the crew at MSNBC's Morning Joe has been hearing the opposite from their sources.  (Quote: "All of our sources high up are telling us … that this investigation is far more advanced than we the public knows").   Meanwhile, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- who has been known to indulge in shameful hackery when the politics call for it -- has put out a "nothing to see here" statement that avoids a slew of inconvenient details:


This is utter garbage. The "marked classified" excuse is totally bunk, as acknowledged by Hillary Clinton herself.  She signed a binding nondisclosure form upon assuming office that specifically stated that she was required to recognize and protect all classified material, "marked or unmarked."  These secret emails were born classified at the very highest levels.  Her handling of them appears to have been flagrantly reckless and negligent, which is a federal crime.  All the verbiage about the emails "originating" from someone other than Hillary is also irrelevant nonsense.  The reason this problem exists is that she exclusively used an unsecure, private server to conduct all of her official business.  This violated "clear-cut" rules, according to data security experts and a Clinton-appointed federal judge.  In 2011, she was personally and explicitly warned by State Department security officials that foreign hackers were seeking to infiltrate US officials' systems by targeting their private emails. She chose to carry on with her appallingly under-secured scheme anyway.  This entire scandal "originated" with Hillary because she's the one who ordered the server set up and activated in the first place.  She's the one who used it year after year, knowingly putting national security at risk.  And she's the one who's lied about it at every turn.  Her story has morphed from (a) 'there was no classified material on the server' (false, roughly 1,600 times over), to (b) 'I didn't send or receive anything that was classified' (false), to (c) 'nothing was classified at the time' (false), to (d) 'nothing was marked classified' (irrelevant, and still possibly false, depending on what she deleted), to (e) 'that top secret and beyond material didn't originate from me.'  And even that isn't true:


I'll leave you with a few facts, and an assessment from a former NSA official who's intimately familiar with classification laws and protocols:


The seriousness of the classified material confirmed to be on her private server is escalating. The final (ludicrously delayed) email dump ought to be a real doozie. And again, these court-ordered disclosures only entail the messages she and her lawyers didn't unilaterally delete without any oversight, and about which she's lied. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is all over it.  This is far from over.