Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal: Ego Run Amok

The US State Department conceded for the first time on Friday that intelligence officials were correct to say that at least 22 emails sent through Hillary Clinton’s private server contain some of the government’s most sensitive secrets.

The State Department is now reviewing and publicly releasing those e-mails, some showing that Clinton received messages that were later determined to contain classified information, including some that contained material regarding the production and dissemination of US intelligence.

Those 37 pages, contained within seven email chains dating back to Clinton’s tenure as US Secretary of State, will be withheld from a batch scheduled to be released later Friday.

Although emails previously released by the State Department have been partially redacted due to the nature of the information they contained, this was the first time entire messages were withheld.

Some information has been censored in more than 1,300 emails already made public because the State Department says it is classified, including the privately shared thoughts of foreign leaders and government officials. Clinton’s spokesman Brian Fallon issued a strong statement against the decision: “We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails”. For this reason, even absent 36 CFR 1236.24 (Oct 2, 2009), Clinton should have made sure all of her government emails were secured at the State Department.

A campaign statement said the development is an example of “bureaucratic infighting” over the degree of classification that should be placed on the emails and “over-classification run amok”.

The State Department released another batch of Mrs Clinton’s e-mails on Friday.

Mrs Clinton and the state department also claimed the vast majority of her emails were preserved properly for archiving because she corresponded mainly with government accounts, but they have backtracked from that claim in recent months.

When he retweeted the news, Jeb Bush said the country needed a president who could be trusted: “Obviously that’s not @Hillary Clinton”.

GOP front runner Donald Trump chimed in on Twitter that this latest release was “a disaster” for Clinton.

“The latest allegations that Secretary Clinton’s emails include classified information lack the same key information as previous reports”.

“Didn’t she look us in the eyes and tell us there was not a bit of classified information on her person server?” Both said her account was never hacked or compromised.

“And second, none of the emails sent to Secretary Clinton have the mandatory markings that are required when classified information is transmitted”.

Part of that effort, Clinton said, is answering any questions about her e-mail “in as many different settings as I can”.

Among the agencies looking into Clinton’s e-mail is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating how and why classified information ended up on Clinton’s server. The ones released this week were the first at top secret level.

“I think this is a unique set of circumstances in which a presidential candidate is engaged in a debate with an intelligence agency over her own record as a former official”, he said. He said that those emails were not classified but would take longer to be released, which is standard for presidential communication. The Clinton campaign has criticized the administration’s decision to keep some emails private.

Rival Democrat Bernie Sanders, however, called for the legal process reviewing the emails to “not be politicized”.