Hillary's Email Scandal for Non-Techy People

[IdaBriggs]

Last edited Mon Apr 4, 2016, 03:19 PM - Edit history (3)

Okay, it looks complicated - you have questions. Let's walk through this gently!

1) Is the Email scandal important?
Yes, it is a very big, very real scandal. Worst case scenarios: people involved might go to jail, pay fines or lose future security clearance/never be able to work in government again.

2) Will it impact Hillary’s Presidential campaign?
That depends on the results of the currently ongoing FBI investigation, with rumors saying it will be completed “soon” (April/May). If the FBI says “nothing to see”, Democrats will be expected to shut up, but realistically the Republicans will mention it frequently during a General Election campaign, and of course convene committees to investigate until the end of time if they are the Majority Party in Congress if Hillary should win.

3) How many FBI agents have been investigating?
At one point the number was publicized as “147” but is now “currently less than 50/maybe a dozen full time.” It is assumed that the “147” number was “everyone who has ever been involved, from the tech geeks to the secretary to the field agents to the intern who did coffee runs”. The investigation has spanned multiple states, and been going on for more than a year, but the FBI folks have been threatened with Dire Consequences for tattling, so all most of us really need to know is “however many they feel it needed”.

4) Is this just a Bernie thing to get Hillary out?
No. Bernie is not a member of the FBI community, nor did he help Hillary set up her email system. Even if Hillary drops out of the race for “personal reasons”, he is not automatically the nominee unless he has enough delegates. If he doesn't, Hillary can “give” her delegates to someone else (even if they haven't been campaigning), and a behind the scenes “brokered” convention could give us a candidate fill-in-the-blank.

5) What exactly did Hillary do?
Lots of stupid stuff: She put government records (her work email) in her basement. She did not hand them over when she left her job. Later, she did not hand * all * of them over when they were subpoenaed. She made the government “break the law” because they could not turn over stuff they did not have when citizens used the “Freedom of Information Act” and requested it. And she did not make "super sure" bad people (“hackers and spies”) could not see the government records that were about national security.

6) Didn't Hillary say there was nothing confidential or top secret in her emails that spies would care about?
She said that, but she lied. Normally, a polite person would say “mistaken” but deliberately telling a falsehood is called “lying” so let's stick with that word.

7) How can you call her a liar?
The first batch of emails contained over a thousand confidential documents, as well as 22 super secret where-are-the-nuclear-weapons (not a joke – we know at least one is about North Korea and their nukes) burn-your-eyes-out-before-reading types. This makes sense because the nature of the job of Secretary of State involves dealing with that stuff, and she herself wrote over a hundred emails we don't want spies to see.

8) Why would she do this?
She says she didn't like to use a “super secure” desktop AT WORK because she liked to use her Blackberry, especially because she traveled a lot.

9) What's wrong with a Blackberry? Or an iPhone? They are awesome!
Ever seen a television show or movie where the hero “clones” a phone and then uses it to spy on people? Turns out that isn't just a plot thing – the spy folk really do that to each other, so emails like, “hey, Barack, let's meet at Starbucks for some Java” would be bad because assassins and stuff. Plus, nukes, etc.

10) How do you know her email wasn't safe? It was on a server, right?
It was on two different servers (more on that in a minute), actually, and neither was being monitored by the IT Anti-Spying Team that the government uses. Keeping hackers away from government secrets is a little more complicated than remembering to upgrade your anti-virus protections – if you are viewing this on the internet, you know what I mean.

11) Two servers? I am so confused!
She used one for several years, then decided to upgrade. She gave the old one to a small company in Colorado to copy files to the new server. They did not know this was a job that dealt with government secrets that they weren't authorized to view, so they treated it like a normal job (like “Best Buy” would, only they were a small company).

12) I have heard about thousands of emails – sometimes 60,000 and sometimes 30,000. Explain?
There were over 60,000 emails on the “basement” servers. When someone FINALLY noticed her email wasn't ".gov" and subpoenaed her during the Benghazi investigation, she printed out 30,000 or so and deleted the rest because she said they were “personal”. A freak out began when it became obvious “classified” and “confidential” stuff was included in that basement stuff. Then, when someone finished sorting through the papers, they realized she had “deleted” work emails/not just personal stuff when she was subpoenaed about it. They got really mad about it.

13) How do they know she deleted work emails/didn't comply with the subpoena?
Other people turned in emails that she didn't. At least one guy (Sidney Blumenthal) did not work for the government, so it looks like she was hoping he would also “forget” to turn things in and no one would ever know.

14) So what is the FBI investigating?
The FBI has been able to retrieve the deleted emails. (The mom-and-pop shop in Colorado kept backups.) We are waiting to see if they think she broke any laws. Plus see answer to #5.

15) What kind of laws?
There are two types: not taking care of government records in the right way (keeping secret stuff safe, for example) and saying/doing stuff that was against the law (based on what is in them). An example of the second would be “not reporting foreign government lobbying by Blumenthal”. The FBI is working with the Justice Department to determine if laws were broken, and what should happen if so.

16) Don't all Secretary of States do this? Albright, Rice, Powell?
No. Albright never used email, Rice didn't do business in email (personal account was just personal), and Powell used a super-secure-no-spyware-allowed desktop at work for business emails. To be fair, these folks didn't have the modern toys we all take for granted now – Powell’s personal account was an AOL account – but no, they never kept stuff in their basement, let alone ALL of their work records.

17) Shouldn't someone have noticed she never used her “.gov” email?
It is reasonable the IT Geek team thought she was just “afraid of email” once they told her she couldn't have a smart phone in the area, but yes, someone should have noticed. There is a guy who took care of things for her that she got a job in the IT department, but his bosses say they didn't know what he did. The FBI has granted him immunity so it is assumed he is going to be testifying in front of a grand jury (if he hasn't already done so).

18) Isn’t this just another Right Wing Attack on Hillary? (Everyone knows they hate her.)
No. The “Republicans Cry Wolf Again" syndrome is strong, but this time they have nothing to do with any of her problems. No member of the Right Wing assisted Hillary in setting up her email systems. No Republican made her sign documents saying she had turned in her work stuff when it was still in her basement. Not even the hate radio folk helped her write her emails. She made all of those decisions on her own. To be fair, her problems mostly began when people found out what she did during the Benghazi hearings/wasn't complying with the subpoenas, but there were already lawsuits in place because of the FOIA stuff, so she will be deposed under oath in those two civil cases per the Judges. She did this on her own.

I hope this helps - please keep in mind this is my translation of everything I have been reading for the last several weeks (and I may have gotten things wrong). I have deliberately NOT included links for ease of reading, but will reference them in Replies/ask that those with other evidence to help with clarification in those sub threads.