During the Democratic debate two nights ago, team Hillary tweeted out the message that there should be “no individual too big to jail.” Privately, Mrs. Clinton is almost certainly hoping — and perhaps even on her knees praying — she’s wrong about that.
Her email headache got substantially worse today with the Fox News bombshell regarding the top-secret nature of some of the emails found on her unsecured, homebrew server. According to I. Charles McCullough III, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, “several dozen” additional classified emails have been identified on Clinton’s server. These include specific intelligence known as “special access programs” (SAP), a classification level that goes “beyond top secret.”
The SAP in question was so sensitive, “McCullough and some of his aides had to receive clearance to be read in on it before viewing the sworn declaration about the Clinton emails,” an intelligence official told NBC News. Think about that.
As former NSA analyst John Schindler said on Twitter, “normals go to prison for this.” Ten days ago, Schindler wrote in a bombshell piece, “Hillary’s EmailGate Goes Nuclear,” at the New York Observer that one particular email to Mrs. Clinton from her long-time hatchet man Sidney Blumenthal on June 8, 2011, regarding Sudan had “explosive material in it.”
Remarkably, the report emailed to Hillary by “sbwhoeop,” which was Mr. Blumenthal’s email handle, explains how Sudan’s government devised a clandestine plan, in coordination with two rebel generals, to secure control of oil reserves in the disputed region of Abyei. This is juicy, front-page stuff, straight out of an action movie, about a region of Africa that’s of high interest to the American and many other governments, and the report is astonishingly detailed.
On Twitter today, Schindler touted his story in the Observer as the precursor to today’s revelations.
EXCLUSIVE: The power of the pen — I’m proud to say that this: https://t.co/V8JULmNDUA Caused this: https://t.co/w74n8Zq2Lq cc @observer
— John Schindler (@20committee) January 19, 2016
Via Fox News’ Catherine Herridge:
While the State Department and Clinton campaign have said the emails in questions were “retroactively classified” or “upgraded” – to justify the more than 1,300 classified emails on her server – those terms are meaningless under federal law.
“Retroactively classified” or not, as someone who was supposedly trained in the handling of classified information, Clinton should have been able to immediately recognize emails that contained classified material, and as someone who signed a nondisclosure agreement promising to protect intelligence, she was derelict of duty.
As a former senior law enforcement official told Fox News: “There is absolutely no way that one could not recognize SAP material. It is the most sensitive of the sensitive.”
The former federal law enforcement official said the finding in the January IG letter represents a potential violation of USC 18 Section 793, “gross negligence” in the handling of secure information under the Espionage Act.
On CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday, Clinton waved off charges that she directed subordinates to direct classified material to her home email account. “In fact, as the State Department has said, there was no transmission of classified information,” Clinton said confidently. “So, it’s another effort by people looking for something to throw against the wall… but there’s no there, there.”
However, as Herridge notes, the top-secret classification of at least two emails on her server (which was challenged by the State Department) is now considered a “settled matter.”
Former CIA official Charles Faddis said, “These are the crown jewels of the American intelligence community of the United States government. If this information’s compromised, we’re going to suffer very serious national security damage. People are going to die, quite frankly.”
Schindler said on Twitter, “I know some of the stuff in HRC emails…. there is no sugar-coating it”
Echoing Washington insiders like former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova, Catherine Herridge reported, “Fox News was told that FBI agents will be ‘screaming’ if prosecution is not pursued because many public corruption cases have been made and prosecuted with much less evidence than what is apparently emerging in this investigation.”
Just ask General David Petraeus.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSUypaJca4A]
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