Material that should have been marked “top secret” has been found in seven email chains on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s private server, the US State Department says.
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However, Levin said, the bar to bringing such charges is high: Federal prosecutors would have to prove that Clinton knew she was discussing classified information, even if it wasn’t marked as classified at the time. “We will pursue all appropriate avenues to see that her e-mails are released in a manner consistent with her call last year”, he added, referring to her remarks last year calling on the State Department to make public all her messages. The department’s spokesman, John Kirby, said that exchanges did not involve classified information. In a letter to the US Senate, Mr. McCullough wrote that several of Clinton’s e-mails contained information pertaining to top secret or Special Access Programs (S.A.P.s), and therefore would have to be classified.
Timing was not in Clinton’s favor, as she was scheduled to attend the Iowa Caucuses as part of her presidential campaign. However, it is the responsibility of individual government officials to handle classified material appropriately, including by properly marking it as classified, and the finding means that information deemed highly sensitive passed through the unsecured system that Clinton directed be established for her use. News that Hillary Clinton¿s home email server contained top-secret messages brings renewed attention to the security of her mail system and to the laws and regulations that control classified information.
The Clinton campaign is downplaying the announcement, saying it’s an example of “bureaucratic infighting”.
The Friday afternoon interview came as her campaign issued an official statement about the e-Mails, in which it insists that she wants them released, not withheld by the State Department.
At a news conference at the United Nations last March, Clinton told the press that, “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email”.
“This appears to be over-classification run amok”, it said in statement. More than 1,000 messages on Clinton’s email server have been designated classified.
Clinton forwarded the email to an aide, instructing her to “Pls print” the document. The messages marked top secret are being excluded from the disclosure.
Officials at the State Department have said that the “upgrading” of the classification of Clinton’s emails has been routine. Polls show Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who is an independent in the Senate, neck-and-neck with Clinton in Iowa.
Clinton and her staff could be in danger of having their security clearances rescinded, Levin said. As we’ve explained previously, tonight’s release will not meet the court’s due date for producing all of the remaining emails, but we are still striving to produce as many documents as possible today. But she’s has lied.
When an ABC interviewer mentioned that Sanders was getting “slapped with” the label of “democratic socialist”, which the Vermont senator uses himself, Sanders replied, “Look at the front pages today in terms of what Secretary Clinton is getting slapped with… the emails”.
Clinton initially said the private server was a matter of convenience, but later conceded it was a mistake. It is not just that the intelligence community (IC) understandably wishes to keep top secret national-defense information under wraps.
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“There is a legal process in place which should proceed and not be politicized”.
