Posted on 01/15/2016 10:00:16 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
Clinton's private lawyer got his way when he pushed back after being asked to delete all copies of a classified email-a level of deference an expert calls 'far from the norm.'
The State Department put up virtually no resistance when Hillary Clinton's private lawyer requested to keep copies of her emails-even though those emails contained classified information, and even though it was unclear whether the attorney was cleared to see such secrets.
Experts on the handling of classified information tell The Daily Beast that the seemingly chummy arrangement between Clinton's lawyer and her former State Department aides was "quite unusual."
Newly released documents, obtained by The Daily Beast in coordination with the James Madison Project under the Freedom of Information Act, include legal correspondence and internal State Department communications about Clinton's emails. Those documents provide new details about how officials tried to accommodate the former secretary of state and presidential candidate.
In May 2015, a senior State Department official informed Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, that government reviewers had found at least one classified email among the messages she sent using a private account, which she used exclusively while in office. That email was only part of the "first tranche" of the review, a State Department employee noted at the time, leaving open the possibility that more classified information would be found, which it was.
Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, who had worked under Clinton, asked Kendall to delete all electronic copies of the message in his possession. (Copies were sent to the State Department.)
But Kendall resisted, saying he needed a full record of his own of the 55,000 pages of emails Clinton had sent, in order to respond to information requests from a House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on U.S. officials in Benghazi, Libya, and from the inspectors general of the State Department and the intelligence agencies.
"I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete" the email from the "master copies" that Kendall's firm was maintaining, he wrote.
There is no indication that Kennedy, who oversees physical and information security for the State Department, protested the private lawyer's position or tried further to persuade Kendall to delete the classified email. The message had been forwarded to Clinton by one of her senior aides, Jacob Sullivan, in November 2012 and contained references to the attack in Benghazi two months earlier.
Rather, within a few days, State Department employees were told to develop a system that would let Kendall keep the emails in a State Department-provided safe at his law firm in Washington, D.C., where he and a partner had access to them.
"The arrangement with Kendall was far from the norm," Steven Aftergood, an expert on classification and security policy at the Federation of American Scientists, told The Daily Beast. "There are a number of attorneys around who handle clients and cases involving classified information. They are almost never allowed to retain classified material in their office, whether they have a safe or not. Sometimes they are not even allowed to review the classified information, even if they are cleared for it, because an agency will say they don't have a 'need to know.' In any event, the deference shown to Mr. Kendall by the State Department was quite unusual."
As early as May 2015, Kendall had been made aware that at least one email in Clinton's archives included classified information. But that didn't become public knowledge for some time, and when the Clinton campaign became aware of it is unclear.
As late as July 1, Clinton campaign spokeswoman Karen Finney was pushing back against the notion, telling MSNBC that "the assumption that there was classified information being communicated on this BlackBerry I think has been shown in these emails to just be simply untrue."
Kendall and a State Department spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, noted that Kendall had an obligation to retain the former secretary's emails in order to respond to various government inquiries. "David Kendall was adhering to a preservation request from the FBI, State Department inspector general, and the House Select Committee on Benghazi," Fallon told The Daily Beast.
The arrangement with Kendall has been previously reported. But the documents reveal new details about what was happening inside the State Department as officials moved ahead with the unorthodox setup.
At one point, a State Department lawyer questioned whether Kendall or one of his associates, Katherine Turner, was qualified to receive and maintain classified information.
Definitely for the list
It makes him a felon.
L
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
Here’s what the e-mail from Hillary Clinton looks like.....
“Destroy anything about Libya! We can’t let everyone know that we attacked Libya and had Qadaffi killed so I could get his wealth!”
More criminals that won’t get prosecuted. Any “spillage” of classified info onto to any unclassified device make that device classified until it is appropriately cleaned or disposed of and stored in a secure facility. Anyone in possession of those devices must also be appropriately cleared.
So, unless this lawyer has top security clearance it’s undeniable that Hillary gave classified documents to someone who’s not allowed to have it. (I hope there is no client-attorney privilege for classified info and the attorney must have clearance for anything a client provides but maybe I’m wrong.)
And, unless she verified that he would store the documents in an approved manner she knowingly put an additional copy of the 1200+ classified documents at risk and gave enemies another path to accessing the information.
The US Department of State has been and continues to be one deep cesspool of Anti-Americanism, a few good apples but mostly an overstuffed barrel of rotten ones.
It’s honor among thieves
If she’s being investigated for mishandling classified emails, then it stands to reason that this classified email is evidence that could be used against her, and therefore it is evidence that must be disclosed to a defense attorney...
If they forced him to delete it, that could endanger any future prosecution, because he could argue that, because he didn’t have access to the evidence, he was handicapped in his defense and could push for a mistrial.
Kind of like the Menendez brothers defense!!!! “We killed our parents and now we are ORPHANS”!!!
So, unless this lawyer has top security clearance .....
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Kendall had some clearance(s) because he was the defense attorney for David Petraeus. I don’t know what level of clearance he had or if that clearance was revoked when the Petraeus matter was settled .... I just do not know how that works. I think I remember reading somewhere that Kendall was using that [Petraeus] clearance as a defense that he had proper clearance to access Hilly’s emails & any classified material they contained (or something like that). Personally, I think he’s in a mess, along with Patrick ‘the weasel’ Kennedy.
Two problems here. Did the lawyer have (1) a need to know, and (2) did he have compartmented authorization for any classified information, assuming he had a Top Secret Clearance. There will be a Department of State Cable or Message in the DoD since announcing his Security Clearance authorization if he was cleared.
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