Except when you are part of the corrupt system, the law doesnt apply to you. Comey even said it.
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions."
I believe myself to have been a reasonable prosecutor, and when the facts and evidence show a criminal violation has been committed, the individuals involved should not dictate whether the case is prosecuted.
One statute that Secretary Clinton could be charged with violating is 18 U.S.C. section 793(f). Under this section, a prosecutor must prove that:
•The person had lawful possession of information relating to national defense.
•Through gross negligence that person permits that information to be removed from its proper place of custody (or given to someone else, or lost, or stolen).
Although it might be intuitive that a secretary of State lawfully possess information that relates to national defense, the facts laid out by Director Comey also establish that this is exactly the type of information in this case.
Of the emails either turned over or recovered by the FBI, 110 contained information that was classified at the time it was sent or received, of which eight email chains contained information that was top secret at the time it was sent.
The facts also show it was gross negligence when she removed the information from State Department security. Secretary Clinton made the decision to use a personal email system, one that had inferior security to the State Department’s or even another commercial vendor’s email service.
A reasonable prosecutor may ask, if on numerous occasions, an unknown State Department employee had taken top secret information from a secured system, emailed that information on a Gmail account, and stored the information on a personal server for years, would that individual be prosecuted? I believe they would.
Matthew Whitaker, U.S. attorney 2004-09, is executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.
A former Department of Justice attorney said Tuesday Hillary Clinton's actions regarding her use of private email can lead to criminal prosecution, regardless of the FBI's decision to not recommend charges.
Jacob Frenkel told CNBC he disagrees with FBI director James Comey regarding a key piece of the puzzle: intent.
"What I found a little bit more troubling is the continued and repeated reference to intent," Frenkel said. "They found no evidence of intent. There was one other point that he made during the press conference that I found a little bit troubling, which was they could not find any other such case historically.
"As to the issue of intent, he did describe what I would call a significant pattern, a significant practice, that there is a substitute in the law for criminal intent."
Frenkel argued that Clinton's pattern of mishandling classified information — Comey said the FBI found 110 emails that contained classified information — shows a level of intent to disobey the law.
"In lay terms, it's the ostrich head in the sand. In legal terms, it's called deliberate ignorance, or willful blindness or conscious avoidance," Frenkel said. "That is a point that he did not address and it certainly sounds like the type of situation that a reasonable prosecutor in other circumstances involving somebody who is not the secretary of state may well have considered finding that there is a legal substitute for criminal intent.
hno:“As a former federal prosecutor with more than 350 criminal cases under my belt, I take serious issue with Director Comey’s conclusions,” said Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor in Texas and Virginia. “The applicable statute does not require specific intent to violate the law. Indeed, the only real issue is whether Secretary Clinton allowed classified information to be transmitted to her personal e-mail account. That alone is a felony count for each e-mail so transmitted — whether marked classified or not
“As a former assistant U.S. attorney, it looks to me like it would’ve been an easy case to win,” Faith Ryan Whittlesey said. The one-time federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania advised President Ronald Reagan and was his envoy to Switzerland. She added, “As a former U.S. ambassador . . . if I had handled classified material in such a careless manner, exposing the material to the prying eyes of possible actors with interests adverse to those of the U.S., I certainly would have been prosecuted.”
Former attorney general Michael Mukasey explained in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal what little it would have taken to indict Hillary Clinton on misdemeanor charges. The misdemeanor involves simply the knowing removal of classified documents to an unauthorized location. That is the statute to which David Petraeus, the former U.S. Army general and Central Intelligence Agency director, pleaded guilty in 2015. (He had disclosed classified documents to his biographer/mistress, who also had top-secret clearance, returned the information to him and never disclosed it in his biography or elsewhere.) Mukasey also described the fate of some who are less connected than Clinton including “felony prosecutions of soldiers for putting copies of classified documents in a gym bag and then not returning them out of fear of discovery; placing classified documents in a friend’s desk drawer and forgetting them; tossing documents meant to be destroyed in a dumpster rather than in the appropriate facility.”
Michael Mukasey is the former attorney general of the United States. Until someone demonstrates otherwise, I think he can be considered a reasonable prosecutor.
Mukasey believes Clinton could be (and if I read his piece correctly, should be) criminally charged. And unlike Comey, he supports this view by matching facts to law.
Mukasey begins with the relevant felony statute. “It is a felony,” he explains, “for anyone entrusted with lawful possession of information relating to national defense to permit it, through ‘gross negligence,’ to be removed from its proper place of custody and disclosed.” Thus, “gross negligence” rather than purposeful conduct is enough.
Yet, “Mr. Comey appears to have based his recommendation not to prosecute on the absence of ‘clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.'” It seems to me that only an unreasonable prosecutor would base a decision whether to prosecute on such a blatant misreading of what the relevant statute requires.
Is there strong evidence of “gross negligence”? Mukasey finds it in the facts Comey laid out:
As an example of the kind of information at stake, he described seven email chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level. These were the emails that the government had said earlier are so sensitive that they will never be disclosed publicly.
Mr. Comey went further, citing “evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position . . . should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.” To be “extremely careless” in the handling of information that sensitive is synonymous with being grossly negligent.
Mukasey moves on the misdemeanor statute. It requires only the knowing removal of classified documents to an unauthorized location.
The facts Comey recited show that a reasonable prosecutor could charge under this statute. Clinton removed classified documents to an unauthorized location — her unsecured email system. She did so knowingly. As Comey said, many of the documents were marked classified at the time. Clinton even had the classified markings removed in at least one instance.
Mukasey also refutes Comey’s claim — and the only argument he advanced for not recommending prosecution — that cases like Clinton’s have never been prosecuted:
[A]lthough the FBI may not have been involved, there are indeed reported felony prosecutions of soldiers for putting copies of classified documents in a gym bag and then not returning them out of fear of discovery; placing classified documents in a friend’s desk drawer and forgetting them; tossing documents meant to be destroyed in a dumpster rather than in the appropriate facility.
It would be one thing, albeit incorrect in my view, if Comey had said this is a close case, but I don’t think, on balance, that DOJ should prosecute. It’s quite another to say that no reasonable prosecutor would bring the case.
Had Comey made the first statement, he have would retained credibility. But in that event, Dana Milbank and his fellow lefty hacks would not have been able to declare that the decision not to prosecute Clinton is a slam dunk.
Ignorantia juris non excusat or ignorantia legis neminem excusat
is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law
may not escape liability for violating that law merely because he
or she was unaware of its content.
To put it in laymen's terms, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Comey knows that. Hell a first year law student knows that.
is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law
may not escape liability for violating that law merely because he
or she was unaware of its content.
To put it in laymen's terms, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Comey knows that. Hell a first year law student knows that.
