Can Clinton´s Email Scandal Get Worse? It Already Is

How bad is it really? Bad. It isn't obvious to someone unfamiliar with the rigid security procedures surrounding this level of classification but to the plenty of us who are, it's nearly beyond belief. It appears that Hillary was both ignorant of them and arrogant enough to think that they didn't apply to someone of her exalted station. She's no longer ignorant of them - evidence of that follows.

How much did her negligence increase the country's vulnerability to espionage?

It went from "as closely guarded as we can manage given the current technology" to "wide open". Understand that the data in certain of the messages was highly classified even if it was unmarked as such - more on this in a moment. That data was placed in the hands of personnel without clearances. That much is undeniable, regardless of its encryption status. Backups that are encrypted but whose systems are administered by uncleared personnel have their passwords and encryption algorithms in those hands as well. They're wide open.

Remember, Clinton has said multiple times that there was never classified material in her personal email. Yet there it is, and the FBI wants to know why.

Clinton has always been careful to parse her public statements as "information that was marked classified," as if sending classified information that was somehow unmarked somehow absolved her of her responsibility to safeguard it. It's an argument even a lawyer wouldn't love and is absolutely no exculpation at all. Were she to start babbling about satellite intelligence capabilities aloud in a restaurant, she'd be compromising it despite it not being "marked". Someone briefed into those programs knows it's classified - that's the reason for the briefing. No excuse for it even in the keeping of a low-level clerk, but this was no clerk, this was the sitting Secretary of State. Unbelievable.

What is Clinton trying to hide?

One can only speculate, but it's an informed one: she is hiding evidence of her use of the office for personal financial aggrandizement, and for the suppression of evidence that might be otherwise politically embarrassing. Benghazi falls under the latter case, but it is the former that is far more likely to cause her to set up this Rube Goldberg approach in the beginning. This would not be the first time a cabinet officer has done so: the Teapot Dome scandal sent Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall to prison for his involvement in directing oil reserves to private exploitation. And the sale of 25% of the U.S. uranium reserves to the Russians through Uranium One was approved by the U.S. State Department under Hillary, coincidentally simultaneous with a sizable donation by the Russians to the Clinton Foundation. Coincidentally? It's the sort of thing that ostensibly "private" email might shed considerable light on, unless it were irrecoverably deleted.

How widespread was this behavior? Did it impact such State Department debacles as Benghazi? Did it impact general U.S. Middle East policy? These are perfectly fair questions, and the withholding of pertinent information is a criminal activity. These are not "private" or "personal" emails over and above whatever classified information they might contain. The latter is a separate set of felonies.

So how bad is it? Bad. Is it political? Certainly. Is it criminal? That no longer seems much in question, the only question is how many crimes.

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