Hillary's latest attempt to pretend she didn't lie is really something

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives August 8, 2016

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There's an old Richard Pryor routine about kids when they're lying. It starts with a parent demanding to know, "Who broke that?" The kid proceeds with an exercise in dissembling, rationalizing and parsing of words that's so impressive, the parent ultimately turns and walks away even though he knows the kid was the culprit. I don't know if the Clintons ever heard that routine, but they have mastered the art of such dissembling, so much so that they've ridden it to political careers that would seemingly be impossible for two such corrupt and dishonest individuals - especially when their corruption and dishonesty so often becomes obvious to the general public.

In his she-did-it-but-we're-letting-her-off-the-hook press conference last month, FBI Director James Comey clearly and unmistakably told us that Hillary lied when she said she never sent or received any classified information on her schlock, homebrew e-mail server. He also told us clearly and unmistakably that she lied when she said all the e-mails she deleted were personal. Hillary has been trying in recent weeks to claim that Comey's statement actually vindicated her, a claim so preposterous that even her media defenders can't let it go without challenge. So when she was asked specifically late last week about the claim that Comey vindicated her no-e-mails-marked-classified whopper, Richard Pryor's kid suddenly showed up: The most important dodge to deal with here is the one in which she tries to pretend we're only talking about three e-mails, and she claims that they were marked classified in error. Nonsense. Here is Comey's full statement on that:

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail. Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.

Ever since this story began, Hillary has clung to a meaningless distinction between information with classification markings and information that was clearly classified but not marked as such. Comey confirms what many have said throughout this whole thing: That's a distinction without a difference. Classified information is born classified, and anyone operating at a level as high as Secretary of State has an obligation to a) recognized classified information when it appears before her; and b) protect it, which you do not do by letting it come and go on a schlock, homebrew e-mail server. In a criminal sense, Hillary got away with this because her party controls the Justice Department. That is the only reason. In a political sense, she's getting away with it at the moment because her party controls the news media, which is more interested in hyperventilating over whatever Donald Trump did on Twitter today.