nobody seems to nail down: was it legal for Clinton to use a private server for her gov't work? maybe I missed it.

also there's this:

There are serious legal hurdles to overcome for those who would seek to file a charge under this law. First, none of the information she possessed and/or presumably “removes” had officially been declared “classified” at that time. That matters.

from what I've read, it DOES NOT MATTER. A classified doc is one from its birth and doesn't need to be marked. The other issue is that Clinton is one who would classify docs and she should know, whether marked or not, what it is.

Retroactively classifying docs, btw, only means those docs are NOW marked for future handlers. It has nothing to do with the status of the docs going from not classified to classified according what I've read.

So I think we need much more clarity and start over. Was the server legal? When did State know? When did other branches of gov't know (I think they knew pretty much right away) . . .

and will Clinton be able to get away with mishandling classifed docs.

then we can get to her motives, which seem, to me, to be pretty clear: controlling information.

Slowly.

Regardless of silly things like facts, perception is everything in politics and, well, however you want to see it is fair game. Many will see conspiracy, many will see crimes, many will see piffling, pedantic hair-splitting and they will all be right. And, yes, we should be worried. Ostriching aside, this will not go away and you ain't seen nothing yet. Once both parties have a candidate, the full force and fury of the Republican lie machine will be unchained and it won't be pretty and the Pubs have been preparing for years for this moment. Don't think they are not fully prepared with mountains of armament and ammunition.

I hope something brings her down before the Dem. nomination. The left will be in a world of hurt if we get to September or October with this suicide vest strapped to our chest.

Sad days...

This is a great article on the very complex details and the devil is literally in those details.

But to help simplify the crux of the matter: He/she who controls the "email server" controls the information that goes in and out of it. Email servers are backed up regularly, modern ones handling sensitive information (E.g. any corporate server) have journaling and compliance features that insure no email is really ever deleted and can be preserved for legal purposes.

This is true for every large business and email service (office 365, gmail, hotmail, etc) and I am sure with Hillary's server. Only the administrator responsible for the server can truly delete emails to make them "vanish" This means disabling journaling and erasing logs and purging backups.

In a corporation or government agency there are strict rules about preserving this data; and it's outside the hands of normal users (including CEO's in theory). Thus if the organization is sued and has to disclosure, the paper trail can be recreated.

By having her own server, HRC controls what "exists" she can make sure that stuff that is inconvenient for her can be deleted permanently. On a State Department server, FOIA rules would keep this from happening. Every email would be available to be subpoenaed by any authorized person. There would be no guarantee of what they would turn up.

And that's the starting point. Regardless of the many convenience excuses she's given, which this article questions, she was really trying to avoid having people she did not want looking at her emails ever looking at them. She wanted to control what was given out and when. Hence all the missing emails in FOIA requests to the state department, they didn't have the emails until after HRC was gone and they went through hoops to get the emails back, which is how we found out about the server.

Even then, she only turned over what she wanted; she'd deleted everything she didn't want seen and wiped the servers.

And that is the core issue. She was covering her tracks and in so doing, exposed classified documents. There are laws against that. Intent isn't so much the issue as the fact that it was done.

However, then we come to "why was she trying to control the information?" "What was she trying to hide?" And that's where the whole Clinton Foundation and pay for play stuff gets interesting. There is a suspicion that she had her own email server to hide/protect emails regarding these transactions where the CF suddenly got money from a foreign country or company and something "magically" happened at the State Department that was favorable to the donor.

Finally: She says that other secretaries of state used private email. Yes, but as I understand it, they did not have private email servers, they used a third party systems like gmail etc. In which case emails were preserved and could be retrieved with a warrant.

There is a big difference between using a third party system and using your own system. Yes, the classified issue might still be there, that would require investigation. However, using aol or gmail would not give the user the ability to block investigations. Plus, "they did it" is not a legal defense.

Is that, as Bernie supporters, we really really don't want this to be true. If the FBI recommends indictment and the Obama admin doesn't move on it - it will create a Constitutional crisis that may ensnare ALL Democrats - including Bernie. And even if the Obama admin does move on it, the next question will be 'why did the President allow this sort of lawlessness?'. It's bad. I find myself actually rooting for Hillary on this one and hope the FBI just says no harm, no foul. But the realist in me knows this is just wishful thinking.

AB's not a fast reader but even having gotten only 1/3rd of the way through the article it's reading like she must think IOKIYAHRC.

There's no way she's unfamiliar with classified procedure, even before she signed the non-disclosure agreement. Anyone believe she spent the whole time Bill was in office downstairs making pancakes?

She refused to use the secure account the State Dept. set up for her?

Stuff wasn't "marked" classified? It was her responsibility to infer classification by the nature of the material or seek clarification.

IMO, the constitutional crisis will arise if she isn't prosecuted. If the administration doesn't proceed and somehow thwarts an indictment, we may as well call it quits and declare an Absolute Monarchy.

Bernie? Not sure how Bernie could use to his advantage other than to point to the absolute corruption in Washington and the need to thoroughly clean house. Doubt he'd do that though. (At least so far), he's been too "nice".

She set up her very own private server in her basement because it was just too inconvenient to have more than one email address, but when she was traveling she used some other device and email address to address classified information, except she never even set up an email account with the government because reasons. And it wasn't classified yet, and she didn't know it was classified, and there wasn't any classified information anyway, and this business of classifying information is all such a mess you know.

Third, why did she delete over 30,000 emails from her private server? She says the emails she deleted were personal and not work related, and its up to her if she wanted to get rid of them, even if she decided to do so 2 years after leaving the State Department. Because all of her correspondence is in her control and not the government’s, we have to trust that she was forthcoming with what she considered her work-related emails and everything she deleted was truly personal.

[Had to go back up to this tidbit.]

Has unsecured server a high school kid could hack... for four years. Decides to delete 30,000 thirty thousand emails two years after leaving.

Un-fucking-believable.

Where do I send money to the Convict Clinton Now Fund?

Hillary bowing out, and 2 brokered conventions where new candidates come out of the woodwork, with no primary tests? Total government breakdown.

And the Saudi connections, OMG.

To look at material classified under that system, I could not even take a pencil into the room where it was secured...lest I take notes.

For her to say that she "sent no material that was classified" in her emails is a clever smokescreen. If she had, in her head, information that she read on a piece of paper that was marked classified, and she shared that information, via email, smoke signals, or carrier pigeon, then that information was classified, whether it was marked as such in the email, or not. Many people do not understand that. Anyone who has had a security clearance does. What she did would have put me in prison, had I done it.