For Hillary Clinton’s Campaign, “Extremely Careless” Is a Soundbite to Celebrate

July 6th, 2016

Awake Goy

When Hillary Clinton first acknowledged in March 2015 that she had indeed used a private email account — and her own server — to conduct official government business as Secretary of State, it would have been hard to imagine that her campaign would 16 months later pronounce itself “pleased” that an FBI investigation concluded that she and her aides “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

But that is precisely what happened on Tuesday, after FBI Director James Comey announced that the Bureau had recommended to prosecutors at the Department of Justice “that no charges are appropriate in this case,” despite finding that 110 of Clinton’s emails did “contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.”

Of course, it was not the criticism that Clinton’s campaign was pleased about — or the fact that Comey presented evidence that the candidate’s repeated claim that she “never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time that it was sent and received,” was demonstrably false.

Here, for the record, is Clinton saying, on March 10, 2015, “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email.”

Four months later, that talking point was revised slightly, as Clinton began to say that she was “confident” that none of the 30,000 emails she turned over to the State Department contained classified information.

More recently, Clinton has been using a more carefully worded version,telling reporters and voters that “nothing I sent was marked ‘classified,’ or that I received was marked ‘classified.’”

In his summary of the FBI investigation, Comey said that the “110 emails in 52 email chains” that contained information at the time they were sent or received,” included “a very small number” that also “bore markings indicating the presence of classified information.”

By ignoring the damning information uncovered by the FBI — that Clinton’s elaborate system for avoiding the requirement that public servants should make their official correspondence available in public archives had exposed dozens of messages containing secret information to potential interception — the candidate clearly hoped to put the matter behind her.

While that satisfied many of her supporters — and predictably angered most of her detractors — treating the FBI director’s conclusion of “not criminal” as a seal of approval seemed to leave many Americans feeling queasy, and others wondering if the laws on mishandling classified information just do not apply to those in power.