This is blitheringly stupid pretzel-logic reasoning, never mind that “intent” is not in the statutes HRC violated. It is not in the statutes precisely because the law was specifically written to exclude this “I didn’t know” excuse. It is not in the statutes because the seriousness with which the State Department and many other entities within the government rightly take the maintenance of secrecy regarding the top secret information these departments routinely transact in, every day and every hour.
HRC had knowledge and intent because she never had created and thus obviously never signed on to the government secure email account that should have been created and was offered to her as the proper venue upon which to maintain her email communications.
By not allowing nor using such an account, she in absolute effect declared that NONE of her communications would EVER be TS and likewise declared that whatever vetting MIGHT be applied to such communications would be applied ONLY AFTER some time after she had received or retransmitted them, if ever, by parties unknown and unknowable. After all, she never even went to any authority and retroactively pointed to any cluster of messages and stated that they were of a highly sensitive nature and should be placed into some more secure cubbyhole or server or account better than the one she used. Which means that even if she declared herself the ultimate arbiter of TS or not, she never acted in any way as if she was in receipt or possession of any such materials. Her activities ratified her disregard of the security and espionage laws.
The banality of this excuse is just like saying “I did not know the car I was driving had the capability of killing someone should I happen to hit them or run over them, so I should be absolved from the responsibility of having killed or injured them”. It is completely absurd, it is an appeal to second-grade logic and I am being generous. The fact of the matter is that communication to and from the Department of State is or should be Top Secret until declared otherwise. Not the other way around.