Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have endangered national security by receiving classified documents on the private email account she used to conduct government business instead of an official State Department account.
“Reports in the Associated Press and the Washington Examiner reflect that Mrs. Clinton had control over her own server hosting official agency emails, which contained relevant documents responsive to congressional investigations into the terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya,” Daniel Epstein, executive director of the Cause of Action non-profit watchdog that often litigates on behalf of government transparency, told the Washington Examiner.
“As such, Mrs. Clinton was in the possession of at least some documents or materials containing classified information,” Epstein said, noting that federal law when Clinton was appointed by President Obama in 2009 made clear that serious legal consequences could result from failing to protect classified documents.
He was referring to U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 1924, which provides that”[w]hoever, being an officer … of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.”
Epstein also noted thateven if Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email and server during her tenure as secretary of state does not constitute removal, the possession of the only copies of official agency records as a departing employee on Feb. 1, 2013, would constitute unlawful removal under the Federal Records Act.
In a separate statement issued late Wednesday, Epstein said “this is an egregious violation of the law, yet it appears that because of her political stature, she is escaping the fines and significant jail time that would otherwise apply to a federal employee who did what she did here.”
Epstein also said “Secretary Clinton should have known that what she was doing violated the letter and spirit of the law. This isn’t a matter of poor judgment, this is a deliberate and orchestrated violation of the public trust that raises serious legal and ethical concerns.”
Prior to founding Cause of Action, Epstein was counsel for oversight and investigations for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The Examiner has asked for responses from Nick Merrill, Mrs. Clinton’s personal spokesman, and the State Department press office.
Neither Clinton nor the State Department have issued statements describing official security measures taken by the government to protect classified documents on Clinton’s private email server since the New York Times first broke the story last week on her use of a private email account to do official government business.
It is clear, however, that Clinton frequently received intelligence reports and other classified information on her private email account. The Smoking Gun reported Tuesday that emails from longtime Clinton adviser Sydney Blumenthal to Secretary Clinton repeatedly referred to deep intelligence sources.
“The memos to Clinton carried titles like ‘Comprehensive Intel Report on Libya,’ and included all-cap warnings that, ‘THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION COMES FROM EXTREMELY SENSITIVE SOURCES AND SHOULD BE HANDLED WITH CARE.’ Blumenthal has not held a public post since leaving his White House job in January 2001,” Smoking Gun reported.
“Each memo included a note on the sources of intelligence included in the document. One typical memo referred to ‘Sources with access to the highest levels of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the leadership of the Armed Forces, and Western Intelligence, diplomatic, and security services,” Smoking Gun continued.
In a related development Wednesday, the head of another nonprofit transparency watchdog expressed concern about the potential damage done to its extensive Freedom of Information Act litigation against the State Department, as well as to similar litigation filed by other groups and individual citizens.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said he is concerned that Clinton’s private email account “may impact nearly a dozen of our Freedom of Information Act lawsuits now active in federal courts, as well as dozens of pending FOIA requests. …We are concerned that the Obama administration may have withheld material information and may have purposely misled and lied to Judicial Watch, as well as at least one federal court about these emails.”
Fitton also said “these emails must be immediately secured so that they can be searched in response to our lawful FOIA requests. In addition to violations of the Freedom of Information Act, laws governing the preservation of federal records and the handling of classified information also may be implicated in this latest Clinton scandal.”
Judicial Watch also announced late Wednesday that it has filed a new FOIA suit seeking “any and all communications – including emails – from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her chief of staff Huma Abedin with Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013.”
Mahmoud was reported by an Egyptian media outlet to have threatened”to expose the special relationship between her husband and Hillary Clinton, after the latter attacked the ousted [president], calling him a simpleton who was unfit for the presidency. Sources close to Nagla confirmed that she has threatened to publish the letters exchanged between Morsi and Hillary.”
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
