Hillary Clinton has gotten herself in some deep water. It’s yet to be determined whether or not she will be able to swim out of it. If she does make it safely to shore, is she still morally and ethically fit to serve as president (in the event the American public is still foolhardy enough to elect her)?
The FBI requested and finally received the private email server Clinton used to conduct government business during her stint as secretary of state. And it has now come to light that some of the emails she ran through her private servers contained classified information, in spite of her many claims to the contrary:
Word that Clinton had relented on giving up possession of the server came as Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said two emails that traversed Clinton’s personal system were deemed “Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information”—a rating that is among the government’s highest classifications. Grassley said the inspector general of the nation’s intelligence community had reported the new details about the higher classification to Congress on Tuesday.
“Secretary Clinton’s previous statements that she possessed no classified information were patently untrue,” House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. “Her mishandling of classified information must be fully investigated.”
Those two emails were among four that had previously been determined by the inspector general of the intelligence community to have been classified at the time they were sent. The State Department disputes that the emails were classified at that time.
So, given this new information, will Hillary Clinton go to prison? For an “ordinary” person, maintaining classified government information on a largely unprotected private server is illegal. Destroying evidence of it (which she appears to have done) is a felony. Lying about it under oath (which she also certainly has done) is perjury.
An ordinary person — or even a well-known leader like General David Petraeus — would be prosecuted for moving classified information onto a private system. And that is just the beginning of her legal problems.
Clinton not only allegedly exchanged classified information via private e-mail, but also destroyed her emails before handing them over to the State Department before the government could determine for itself which were personal and which were job-related. That could constitute a felony, with a three-year prison sentence attached. And that is just the beginning of what is known.
But, more than likely, a few people will hem and haw over this for a few minutes, and then we’ll go back to business as usual — giving Hillary a free pass. Is there really any end to how intrinsically corrupt our governmental system is at this point?
Cross-posted at Eagle Rising
