State Department says classified material on Hillary's home-brew server was so sensitive that...

That throws another kink into the fray.. any media that contains classified information is classified at the highest level of the information contained on it.

There’s supposed to be an audit trail by signature on where it came from and who handed it to who along with serialized requirements number of copies etc not to mention if the lawyer has the required clearance or authority to hold and maintain it and there’s also the safe, safe location etc.

Of course that’s how responsible people are required to handle classified info but then again we all can’t be Clinton’s.. which is a good thing.

18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally

(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

It must be noted that § 2071 doesn't address the removal of *classified* info nor does it cover its transfer to those without proper clearance and "need to know".That,presumably,would be covered in separate charges.

In July, State Department officials installed a safe at the office of attorney David Kendall after the government determined some of Clinton's emails may have contained classified information. But it said last week the safe wasn't suitable for so-called top secret, sensitive compartmented information, known as TS/SCI, which the government has said was found in some messages.

And now we learn that Hillary's lawyers were the ones who went through the thousands of emails and deleted the "personal" ones - providing palusible denialbility for Hillary and potential jail time for at least one scapegoat. BUT, did the lawyers have clearance view classified documents???

I've kept my peace on this out of a sense of discretion, which is the very first thing that people who access this sort of information should have but seems signally lacking in She Who Must Not Be Named and her hyper-political fellow travelers. Clearly there are quite a few FReepers who know quite as much about the process as I do and from the same source; I hope they'll forgive me a little redundancy.

Here's how it works: possession of a TS clearance is not enough for access to compartmented information. That has its own "need-to-know" list per compartment, and a member is briefed in (and debriefed out) of that list upon need. That briefing details what is classified, why, and what the potential danger is of unauthorized release, and the penalties associated with that. The member signs a form stating that he or she has received such a briefing. There is no room for ignorance or misunderstanding there.

Note please how very carefully the individual in question parses her public statements: "I never passed anything that was marked classified." There are three issues here: (1) it isn't the marking, but the information, that makes such a communication classified, and taking the marking off doesn't declassify it; (2) passing such information unmarked is still unauthorized disclosure no matter how you do it - speaking loudly about it in a restaurant conversation is as bad as writing it into an unclassified email, and more to the point, (3) anyone who knows to parse her words that carefully is well aware of the rules or she wouldn't bother.

If I understand the public reporting and it is correct (two major suppositions), there are irregularities in recovering what forms she was supposed to have signed in being briefed in and debriefed out of access. But "you can't prove I was ever told that" is a defense that would be laughed out of any court in the country. If you have access to data on satellite intelligence capabilities, for example, and you write that data into a public document, it doesn't matter whether you've stamped the paper, you've released the data.

If such data are found on a server, everything on that server becomes classified at the level that the subject data is until the thing is sorted out by proper authority. Deleting half of it because it's "only personal email" is destruction of classified information even if it turns out to be cookie recipes. This is a part of the briefings, everyone in the programs knows this.

This is not carelessness, poor procedure, or misunderstanding, this is deliberate criminal activity undertaken by someone who occupied the third highest executive office in the country. And who now aspires to the highest.

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