320 Years of History
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- #121
Seems that Hillary's deletions of emails, calendar events and other activities were designed to protect her from prosecution and this is evidence of criminal intent.
Mrs. Clinton's deeds don't rise to the level of criminality. That is the point. Nobody is saying setting up a server and sending/receiving classified information via it isn't wrong or ill advised. The law does not care if it was ill advised. The legal question one must ask is not "did the person knowingly set up a server that may have sent/received classified content?". The questions, in order to establish criminality, are:
The simple answer in Mrs. Clinton's case is that she did not implement the server to avoid the stipulations of Title 18 or anything else. As has been repeatedly noted, at best, her intent was convenience, and not the convenience of trading classified content with anyone.
- Did the person know that setting up a server to send and receive DoS emails was illegal?
- Did the person set up the server with the intent of sending/receiving classified content?
- Did the person set up the server intending to circumvent the provisions of Title 18 or other regulations/laws?
Dir. Comey used the "extreme carelessness" language and, understandably, one might ask, "Well, isn't 'extreme carelessness' synonymous with 'gross negligence?' Mrs. Clinton's deeds could fit into the language of 793(f). Couldn't that then be used to prosecute Mrs. Clinton's deeds as criminal?" The answer, is that, yes, one could use that as a basis for prosecuting, but it would be the first time the DoJ has done so. Most importantly, to prosecute her on that basis is to do so for the purpose of weakening or destroying her political prospects, not because she was criminally motivated to do something that is illegal.
Our criminal system doesn't aim to prosecute people because "this or that" statute allows one to be prosecuted. Our system of jurisprudence does not go "witch hunting," even if politically that's what people do in the interest of bringing down their political opposition.
Hillary’s political foes note that the State Department buck should stop definitively with Madam Secretary; as the head of the department, a systemic lack of security should be blamed on her. Reasonable people could certainly debate the level of responsibility a cabinet member should bear for such a failure. Still, such a theory of liability would never lead to a reasonable conclusion that Secretary Clinton should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. While Hillary-haters will undoubtedly fixate on the finding that her department was “extremely careless” with the handling of sensitive information, the bottom line is that such a failure just isn’t criminal.
What has the Supreme Court said about Title 18 Section 793(f)? In Gorin v. United States, the Court said:
[W[e find no uncertainty in this statute which deprives a person of the ability to predetermine whether a contemplated action is criminal under the provisions of this law. The obvious delimiting words in the statute are those requiring intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation. This requires those prosecuted to have acted in bad faith.
The Supreme Court clearly never envisioned a prosecution under the Espionage Act without “intent” to injure the United States and in “bad faith.” FBI agents found that Clinton had no intent nor bad faith to mishandle classified information when she used her private email server. Furthermore, prosecutors are not obligated to indict every person who has done something wrong; they are expected to exercise prosecutorial discretion to make informed choices about which cases make sense to bring. The imagined and sought after case against Hillary Clinton has never seemed particularly compelling, except to those who have disliked her for years, hoping for any excuse to watch her crash and burn.
They do so 320 , and I proved that to you CONCLUSIVELY in the other thread about this. Traditionally charges are just not brought when the convening authority has sanctioned the person involved. IE the person who did it was fired and or stripped of their security clearance by whatever agency they worked for. That was obviously not done here. Stop stupidly claiming she didn't break the law when in fact she did.
"They" who or what?
You convinced yourself, but I happen to think you had your mind made up before the FBI made its announcement. Did I agree that you proved something in the other thread? If so, please refresh my memory; what post(s) are you talking about?
I'm sorry, but I don't recall "who writes what" in these discussions; I just respond to remarks folks post. Might the discussion to which you're referring be the line of discussion about the government not wanting to have certain information disclosed in open court?