The Context
Former Secretary of State --- now presidential candidate --- Hillary Clinton set up a home-brewed email system for handling government business. That's a big no-no, and she should have known better (well, it's likely she did know better, but she's a Clinton so different rules apply, right?) The latest charge is that her team cut and pasted highly classified documents to remove the "top secret" classification.
Hillary Believes in Going Paperless
For over a year, Hillary has denied sending any classified information on her private server. She sent an estimated 30,000 emails (most of them, she says, about yoga and planning her daughter's wedding). Uh huh. Of those 30,000 emails, the Inspector General was only allowed to see 40. So, just 29,960 more to go. Of those 40 emails, four were found to contain classified information.
The Meaning of "Is"
Bill Clinton has taught Hillary well. She's playing the "definition of is" game from her husband's old sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky. Hillary says she never sent emails marked as classified without addressing the actual content of the emails. If she's the smartest woman in the room, she should know the difference between classified and non-classified content.
The Skiff of the Matter
There are three basic levels of classification for government documents --- Confidential, Secret and Top Secret. Compromised Top Secret information would be a devastating blow to our national security. Top Secret documents also have a coding system -- SI, TK and NOFORN. What do they mean? SI means Sensitive Information. TK means Talent Keyhole or information retrieved from spy satellites. NOFORN means No Foreign Government can see this info. Hillary's emails very likely contained intel from an NSA satellite program.
Glenn demonstrated Tuesday exactly what it would look like for Hillary's team to deliberately access secured documents and remove them without the security classification.
"The only way you can get Top Secret information is in a wildly secure and protected room called the SCIF [pronounced skiff]," Glenn said. "The only way you could get this stuff off site is to print out the classified document, scan it, memorize it --- then go copy and paste it."
Common Sense Bottom Line
Hillary Clinton broke federal laws and compromised the security of the United States of America. She should be behind bars.
Featured Image: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event on January 25, 2016 in Knoxville, Iowa. The Democratic and Republican Iowa Caucuses, the first step in nominating a presidential candidate from each party, will take place on February 1. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)