Not sure if others have been following the Hillary email scandal, but it didn't end. Rather, the phase it has been in since the summer is periodic releases of the emails after scrubbing of classified information (and therefore cataloging the number that were classified at the time, should have been and now should be). A smoking gun appears to have been in one of the emails:
On June 16, 2011, top Clinton aide Jake Sullivan wrote to Clinton to say she would get "tps" -- presumably short for "talking points" that evening. The subject of the email is redacted so it's not clear what topic these points covered.
The next morning, Clinton wrote back to say she hadn't received them yet, and after a few minutes Sullivan responded that staff were having issues sending the document in a secure fax but that they were "working on it."
"If they can't," Clinton replies, "turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure."
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/08/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-2016/index.html
So it sure sounds like Hillary is explicitly instructing her subordinate to remove the security headers and send the message non-secure, which would be a felony for both Hillary and her subordinate. Now, there's still a little wiggle room. Lemme back up and summarize the narrative from Hillary's camp:
russ_watters said:
Yes, I heard she said that, but it is my understanding that that claim is now proven false/obsolete and that's why the narrative has been changed:
That would explain the narrow wording I quoted in my post. She's squeezing herself into a tighter and tighter corner.
Yes, my understanding of the morphing of the narrative is (paraphrase):
"I didn't send any classified emails"
Then:
"I didn't send any emails that were classified at the time I sent them"
Then:
"I didn't send any emails marked as classified [even those that were classified at the time I sent them]"
The first two, if true, would indicate that there was no crime committed. The third is a crime, just not necessarily by her.
[separate post]
So now, the question is: why weren't the classified emails she sent/received marked classified and who removed the markings?
[separate post]
There is another subtlety of the new narrative that msnbc didn't catch and that is that one phrase says "sent" and the other "received". Not sure what she's after with that.
[emphasis added]
So it would appear that she's been morphing the message, backpedaling with statements that weren't quite lies as information gets released that pushes her further and further into a corner. She may have had exactly what we've found out in mind when shaping the narrative and both of those bolded questions have now been answered:
-Jake Sullivan
-Because she found the secure way inconvenient.
And for the last bit: she may have known exactly what she was referring to when she said "received": she only
received the illegal email. If it included talking points for a speech, it is reasonable to assume she didn't re-send it. And she's still trying to split that and other hairs:
CNN said:
A State Department official declined to comment on Grassley's statement, but told CNN earlier in the day that the department has "no indication at this time that the document being discussed was emailed to her."
"I'm not going to speculate about whether the document being discussed was classified," this official added. "Generally speaking, I can say that just because a document is sent via a secure method doesn't mean that it's classified. Many documents that are created or stored on a secure system are not classified."
A spokesperson for Grassley's office says it is working under the assumption the email was classified, since Clinton's aides would have had other ways to send the document to her if it wasn't, such as through email.
Sure -- so at this point, we apparently don't have the email itself. We don't know for sure that the crime was committed, just that Hillary ordered her subordinate to commit it. And yes, it is possible that the document wasn't classified but was sent over a secure system, but that doesn't actually help her much: regardless of the content of the message, she's defeating the secure system, violating security procedures.
Gee, [former] Madame Secretary of State, I'm sorry you find the maintaining of the national security of the United States to be a personal inconvenience, but perhaps you shouldn't have taken a job where national security was in the job description if you don't consider it as important as your personal convenience?