GOWDY prosecuted that line of questioning quoted by Politico and which was used to introduce their column.
Comey is skating on one premise.. criminal intent. When cornered, he always comes back to that.
I’m sorry, but criminal intent is just not used in the case laws that apply to this fiasco, or used as a measure for endangering the security of people, places and things that secure Americans.
Case law now hinges on the fine line difference between prosecutable Gross Negligence and “extreme carelessness”.
When that line blurs, Comey circles back around to “criminal intent”.
For the sake of argument, why is it that a mens rea (joint union of act and intent) is not required? Why is the standard an almost civil element of gross negligence (or recklessness) rather than an ‘evil mind’?
What is the subject? Natinal security.
What is the concern? Keeping information from falling into the hands of those who do not have our best interests in mind.
Such information is valuable. As we have seen time and again, from commodities deals to assigning speaking gigs to her husband, from Haiti to their Clinton Foundation dealings—if you want to get Hillary’s attention, wave some green under nose.
If she did these things intentionally, and if we were at war (something she argues for constantly), she could be charged with treason.
I was unable to listen to the entire session, so maybe this was asked in some form. I’d love to know Comey’s answer to this:
Hillary created and maintained an expensive, troublesome series of private servers, ignored briefings and warnings about handling classified information properly — and she signed a formal acknowledgement that she understood those requirements, used an unsecured Blackberry after being told not to, made no effort to turn over copies of vast numbers of official documents until forced to by court action against the DoS, caused layers of lawyers without security clearances to access, assess, and delete her messages, destroyed numerous government documents she has never produced, caused her server(s) to be “wiped” so as to make investigation much more difficult, etc. If all this was NOT to evade requirements for proper handling of government information, then what exactly was her intent?
What did she tell the FBI her “intent” was? Was it “convenience” as Clinton has repeatedly claimed? Do you find that credible? Would simply using as .gov email account, seems more “convenient” by compared to all these machinations?
What are the conceivable alternatives to intentional mishandling? Do any of them pass a “reasonable doubt” test?