The Biggest Lie: Clinton, Comey & Intent as it Pertains to the Espionage Act

NinaIllingworth July 13, 2016December 30, 2020 1924, 793, 793d, 793f, Apollo Robbins, corruption, Cynthia Lummis, Deep Dives, Democratic Party, Democrats, Department of Justice, DoJ, Email Scandal, email server scandal, Espionage Act, Essays, Fantastic Lies, FBI, GOP, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan, James Comey, Jason Chaffetz, Justice, Justice Department, Ken Buck, law, lawyers, legal terms, Media, neoliberalism, News, Nina Illingworth, ORCON, Politics, Republican, SAP, Secretary of State, Sid Blumenthal, Special Access Programs, State Department, Title 18, Trey Gowdy, USC, Will Hurd

Editor’s note: Just over a month ago, I wrote about the Clinton Email Server Scandal, the extremely difficult choices facing various members of the government involved in the case and how I thought the whole thing might play out over time. At that time, I ruefully noted that I half expected the Democratic Party to completely ignore the potential legal dangers of nominating Hillary Clinton and quite literally drive the party off the edge of a cliff towards doom and destruction. As it turns out, I was being too kind – on Tuesday, July 5th, FBI Director James Comey functionally rewrote one of the most fundamental aspects of our legal system (determining mens rea) to justify his recommendation not to indict Hillary Clinton for her use of an unauthorized, insecure, private email server for all of her work at the State Department. This is of course, despite the fact that Clinton is absolutely, 100% guilty of both willfully violating the Espionage Act and committing perjury during her Oct 22nd, 2015 testimony before Congress.

Simply put, we are now looking at the single biggest cover-up scandal in the history of the United States government and that absolutely does include Dick Nixon’s Watergate cover-up; this story has more twists, turns and traps than a crowded Thai bathhouse. Today, I’d like to start unwinding that story by examining the most basic aspect of the scandal – Hillary Clinton’s willful intent to violate the Espionage Act as part of her longstanding war on the Freedom of Information Act and/or public records.

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The Hustle

In the world of pick-pocketing, Apollo Robbins is the greatest known master of his craft and is considered one of the foremost experts on “the applications of deception to real-world environments.” As a result, to say that Robbins is also master of misdirection would be something of an understatement – during a 2013 TEDGlobal presentation on this artform, I once saw him use a poker chip, a cocktail shrimp and the power of his voice to relieve an audience member (who was fully expecting to be robbed) of virtually every valuable item he owned. As Robbins so eloquently points out in his lecture and ensuing demonstration, attention is the gateway of the human mind; by effectively controlling attention, it is entirely possible to literally control the thoughts and ideas of an entire audience – even an audience fully expecting you to attempt to deceive them.

I don’t know if Apollo had the occasion to view James Comey’s historically unprecedented July 5th press conference and subsequent recommendation not to indict Hillary Clinton for her use of an unauthorized and insecure, private email server. I am quite certain that if he had however, he probably would have enjoyed the FBI Director’s performance thoroughly.

Summoning forth every ounce of professionalism, charisma and sheer chutzpah at his command; Comey stepped out in front of the cameras and proceeded to actively lie to millions of watching Americans about several aspects of the email server scandal, the Espionage Act and in fact, the entire American legal system as a whole. You may think that statement is hyperbole if you like, but the FBI director’s carefully crafted, fifteen minute speech (with no question period) omitted key evidence against Clinton while fundamentally misrepresented key aspects of the Espionage Act – in a way that should be entirely impossible for a man with James Comey’s legal and intelligence experience to do unintentionally.

It was a riveting, courageous and quite possibly career destroying performance but I think the part Robbins would have enjoyed most is how Comey used a purely subjective argument about the legal meaning of the phrase gross negligence, to distract from the biggest lie he told all night – that the FBI “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.”

The problem with this statement of course, is that there is a staggering goddamn amount of exceptionally clear evidence that Clinton knowingly, intentionally violated the law and it can be found by literally any old moron with reasonably strong Google skills – in this case, me.

Intent, Gross Negligence & the Espionage Act

Editor’s note: this section and the sections hereafter contain numerous, important links that provide direct evidence of, or reference to criminal activities committed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her aids in the State department and employees or associates of Mrs Clinton. This is serious business folks and while some of this information will be repeated during our conclusion, it will be much easier to follow along if you click on the links and at least glance at the relevant media as you read this article – the videos links are all cued up to the exact relevant moment and most of the longer article links should require only brief skimming at this point.

Now, as any armchair/Reddit lawyer knows – if you’re going to accuse someone of committing a crime, you have to first understand the law you’re accusing them of breaking. This is Title 18 US Code subsection 793, which is the part of the Espionage Act that specifically deals with “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.” You may also have heard a great deal about Title 18 US Code subsection 1924 which is the section of the Espionage Act that covers “unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material” – this is the part of the act that has Republicans and legal experts flipping out because Comey has incorrectly if not disingenuously, inserted a completely non-existent criminal intent clause into a law clearly designed to punish the simple violation of removing and storing classified information in a non-secure location. This is of course complete fucking nonsense and the lack of specific intent as well as the more broad category of simply classified materials (as opposed to defense materials) is why 18 USC 1924 is a misdemeanor while 18 USC 793 is a felony.

Of particular importance to us in the felony statute are the subsections marked D and F; let’s take a closer look at them now:

As you can see, despite attempts by the Democratic Party and the majority of Clinton supporters to portray the Espionage Act as an arcane, byzantine law that remains completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t passed the bar – both of these subsections (and indeed the entire act) are written in language simple enough for your average armed forces officer to understand; likely by necessity when you consider how often non-lawyers are required to handle sensitive material in various branches of the US military. There are however, a few important legal distinctions to note here.

The first, and arguably most important thing to observe here is that virtually everything in this subsection references defense information and or materials important to the national defense. What this means in practical terms is that we’re not merely talking about standard classified information, but rather the most important secrets the United States has in terms of national security – things like Special Access Program information, data from spy satellites or NSA Intelligence reports containing signals intelligence (intercepted transmissions) about foreign leaders. This is important not only because the sheer, obvious sensitivity of this material speaks to the seriousness of this crime, but also because anyone with the proper security clearance to actually view such information would undoubtedly know it was classified or at least be aware that they were legally required to confirm it’s classification level before storing/sharing it on an insecure, private server. I am well aware that Mrs Clinton disputes this point and that for reasons utterly unfathomable to anyone familiar with legal practices in general, Comey has decided to take her word for it; as you’ll see throughout the course of this article however, this idea strains credulity to the point of snapping.

In reference to subsection D, the statute requires that the offender willfully communicate, deliver or transmit defense information “the possessor has reason to believe could be harmful to the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation” with literally any person not authorized to receive it. Please note that while the term willfully in this subsection clearly speaks to the concept of intent, that intent is not necessarily the intent to harm the government or aid foreign nations – merely the intent to share the information with someone not authorized to receive the defense information in question. This too has been a major point of contention among famous Democrats with law degrees who almost certainly should know better; if Clinton had actually intended to harm the United States we’d be talking about Treason charges as well! Finally, it should be remembered that this particular subsection requires that Clinton actually shared the information in question with someone unauthorized to see it (although it does not require them to have actually seen it) – as opposed to merely moving/copying the sensitive information and storing it in an insecure location.

Subsection F is a little more complicated as it contains two separate clauses; including the “through gross negligence” article that Comey focused on almost exclusively in order to misdirect viewers away from the clearly intentional crimes Clinton committed. While it is in fact true that any reasonable person watching this case could easily conclude that Clinton’s behavior represented a “careless disregard for and blatant indifference to her legal duties” in regards to securing and storing classified information; the simple truth is that there is no strict definition of gross negligence available in our legal system and the typical standard used appears to be “more careless than even a normal careless person.” The highly subjective nature of this determination remains a vital part of Comey’s notably irregular excuse for failing to recommend Mrs Clinton be indicted under the Espionage Act – one might of course wonder if that wasn’t in fact a determination better left in the hands of a Judge, but in Comey’s fantastic new legal system prosecutors are apparently required to perform the duties of council, judge and jury before ever bringing a case to trial.

This then leaves us with the second and surprisingly even more damning clause that roughly states that if a person entrusted with classified defense information becomes aware that said information has been moved or “delivered to anyone in violation of it’s trust” they are required to immediately report the breach to their superior officer; which in Hillary Clinton’s case would be the President of the United States.

You still with me so far? Have you been clicking on the links? Good, now let’s take a closer look at the misdemeanor statute: Title 18 US Code subsection 1924 – we’re really only concerned with clause A as the remaining two clauses simply allow for giving records to Congress when required and define what “classified information” means:

As you can see, this statute is in fact pretty cut and dried; the only legal requirements are that an offender (knowingly) remove classified materials from a secure location with the intent to store those documents at an unauthorized location. Please note that once again, the “intent’ referenced in this statute is clearly not the intent to harm the government or aid foreign nations but rather, simply the intent to move the classified information and store it in an unauthorized location – a point made quite forcefully (and correctly) by Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis when Comey repeatedly insisted otherwise.

Building the Case for Indictment

At this point, if you’ve been clicking along with the links I’ve already provided, you probably realize that Hillary Clinton is without question, guilty of willfully violating multiple subsections of the Espionage Act on both a felony and a misdemeanor level.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where the media has already picked the next President of the United States and where the director of the FBI can re-write law to protect that soon-to-be President – despite being neither a judge nor the actual, final prosecutor of a potential indictment. No, seriously folks, Comey’s original roll in this investigation was (and remained) simply to advise Attorney General Loretta Lynch re: a possible indictment; even after Lynch’s bizarre and ethically questionable decision to accept the FBI’s recommendation before she even knew what it was to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Regardless, let’s take the whole thing once more from the top in the form of a question and answer period because I’m honestly starting to wonder if the people who don’t get it are fucking brain-dead:

Did Hillary Clinton have an unauthorized, private email server that she never reported to her direct superior; President Obama?

Yes, actually she had multiple private servers and devices during her time as Secretary of State. Furthermore this arrangement was absolutely not allowed by the State Department and at no point in time did she inform President Obama that she had set up the Server for literally all of her State Department business – she absolutely never even opened a secure, state.gov account. Keep this last point in mind because it’s going to come up again when we talk about intent, I assure you.

Was there classified data stored on/transmitted through that unauthorized server and if so, was it really serious classified or just over-classification/up-classification after the fact?

Yes, there was a literal metric fuckton of classified data on Clinton’s email server regardless of who you ask. Furthermore, a significant portion of the data was extremely fucking classified and among the most important secrets the United States maintains – including signals and human intelligence our operatives no doubt risked their lives to obtain. One such email from inexplicably (and possibly illegally) highly-paid longtime Clinton ghoul Sid Blumethal contained extremely sensitive information from four separate NSA reports including the full transcript of a conversation between foreign leaders in the region and recorded only twenty-four hours before!

By the way, that email from Sid Blumenthal alone gives us enough evidence to indict Clinton on Title 18 US Code subsection 793F assuming she knew the information was classified – simply by not reporting that Blumenthal had the information without clearance to her superior, the President. We could absolutely end this article right here if you’d like because that’s a felony that carries up to ten years in prison. Have you noticed I haven’t said the words “gross negligence” even once yet?

Of course there’s also the part where she almost certainly violated Title 18 US Code subsection 793D just by keeping the email, if not the moment she stored it on her server and the uncleared systems administrator had access to it than surely the moment she gave it to her lawyer (who’s clearance this data definitely exceeds) on a thumb drive to examine and delete anything deemed “personal.”

Reminder: even Comey admits that there are still tens of thousands of emails the FBI was unable to recover (but there is every reason to believe both Wikileaks and foreign actors have access to) that were deleted as “personal” by a private citizen with absolutely no legal authority to determine what is and what isn’t a public record subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Why this destroying of public records does not represent a crime or clear evidence of intent to cover up a crime after the fact is a mystery to me, legal experts and former prosecutor Trey Gowdy (you have to watch this video, trust me.) Do you think there’s any chance she even so much as quote-replied to Sid Blumenthal? That would of course be direct transmission of “beyond classified data” by Clinton to a “person not entitled” to receive it and furthermore with an individual she knows trades in state secrets – not that we really need that evidence to indict Clinton but it speaks to the haphazardness of Comey’s investigation.

Finally of course, both the Office of the Inspector General’s Investigation and James Comey’s FBI investigation are confirmed, under oath, to have focused entirely on emails containing data that was classified at the time they were sent and received – the Democratic Party is openly lying and this has nothing to do with over-classification or up-classification after the fact at all.

Sure, but didn’t Secretary Clinton say that none of the information in those emails was marked classified at the time and even Comey admitted there were only two emails marked that way?

Yes, but that’s actually just a very complicated word game that Clinton, Comey and the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are playing to hide Hillary’s guilt. As Peter Van Buren, a 24 year veteran of the State Department who found himself pushed out when he wrote a book critical of the Department’s role in the Iraq war reminds us; Clinton’s server was never connected to the secure information system maintained by State.

This means that “on 110 separate occasions (that we know of, since thousands of deleted emails are still unavailable to us – NI) Clinton and/or one of her correspondents had to have retyped – or copied and pasted – information from a classified format; there is no other method to transfer data. Classified markings (i.e., “Top Secret”) were removed in the process.”

In other words, there were no classified markings on the documents Clinton sent, received and stored on her unauthorized private server because her staff never bothered to copy the unnecessary and completely fucking incriminated markings. This in particular makes a sick mockery of the argument that Clinton didn’t know they were classified because the emails lacked a header where the classification is typically listed; she or her staff simply didn’t copy the headers! Furthermore, it is entirely likely that the three tiny (C) markings were actually left inside those emails by mistake – again, because smart people don’t copy evidence that incriminates them in a federal felony.

I probably don’t have to remind you that hand copying and/or scanning classified information from the Secure State Department data system, stripping out the classified markings and placing it on Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized, insecure private email server obviously proves an active intent to violate the espionage act – but I’m going to anyways.

Is there any chance, whatsoever, that Clinton really didn’t know and simply violated the Espionage Act accidentally?

In a word? No. As former prosecutor Trey Gowdy explained to former prosecutor James Comey in an exchange that would be obviously farcical to any first year law student or legal aid in the country – it is extremely rare for a defendant to openly confess intent to commit a crime and in fact, guilty people are known to lie about that sort of thing and lying is in and of itself, an expression of intent. Furthermore, as Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis (correctly) reminded James Comey; the intent we’re talking about here is not the intent to provide government secrets to hostile foreign actors but merely the intent to share, transmit and store classified documents with unauthorized persons or in unauthorized, insecure places. She was talking about Title 18 US Code subsection 1924 but a careful reading of Title 18 US Code subsection 793 reveals the same type of wording – we have far more serious charges on the books for people who purposely give American secrets to enemies of the country.

In light of the fact that Clinton is unlikely to confess and also demonstrably likely to lie about her guilt, it is necessary to examine the staggering amounts of circumstantial evidence available that Clinton was fully aware she was in fact breaking the law and determine if there is a reasonable chance twelve jurors would agree that she knew. Again, we already have piles of evidence above that she willfully transmitted and stored classified information in a way that gave access to people without proper clearance – we just have to prove that (within reason) she knew the information was classified and therefore she intended to violate the federal felony statute.

Let’s start way back in 2008 when Hillary Clinton hadn’t become Secretary of State yet and was discussing the Republican secret email server scandal that oh so many Democrats like to bring up as an excuse for Clinton’s behavior – as if somehow, the standard of what is and isn’t legal conduct should be the Bush administration.

Here is a video of Hillary Clinton telling the rolling cameras at a news conference that “our Constitution is being shredded” and then directly referencing “secret White House email accounts.” Again, as many Democrats have gleefully pointed out, the similarities between the two cases are somewhat staggering – do you think they’d mention Bush’s secret emails quite so often if they knew Clinton had stated on video she knew keeping such emails “shredded the Constitution?” Hey, I’m just asking questions here folks; since ABC News had access to that clip, I think it’s fairly safe to assume the FBI did as well.

Actually, let’s just start with the the very first question James Comey should have asked when he started his investigation and the same question the mainstream media is ignoring completely because it unravels Clinton’s defense at high speed:

How is it possible for someone, anyone to be US Secretary of State for four years without ever, once intending to or reasonably expecting to, send or receive a single email containing classified data?

Why is this question important?

Well, for starters we already know that Clinton conducted all of her day to day State Department business exclusively through her private email account – remember, she didn’t even open a secure state.gov account during her time as Secretary of State. This fact alone, speaks strongly to intent in its own right as lawyer and Congressman Ken Buck reminds James Comey forcefully during the House Oversight Committee hearing. Remember, we already have multiple experts testifying (some under oath) that it would be completely unreasonable for Clinton not to know her job as Secretary of State involved handling classified data (after all, State runs the diplomatic corps) and that it would be completely unreasonable for a senior level official to fail to recognize Special Access Program and ORCON data. Furthermore, Clinton herself signed a classified information Non-Disclosure Agreement when she took office that would not only have made it clear to her that part of the job was handling classified information but would also have directly informed her that if she didn’t actually know whether or not something was classified she was required by law to check with someone who did know!

We also know that Hillary Clinton’s often vaunted career record would have exposed her to standard classification procedures, the proper handling of classified information and even the legal ramifications of her actions – as Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis reminded James Comey; Hillary is an attorney, a graduate of the Yale Law School, and she served as congressional legal council during the Nixon/Watergate investigation. She was a partner at the powerful and prestigious Rose Law firm. She is also a former First Lady (the first to ever be called before a grand jury – in a case about destroyed documents) and universally regarded as an active part of Bill Clinton’s administration (she’s the only First Lady in history to maintain an office in the West Wing and her own team of advisors.) As such, she would have been intimately familiar with the identification and handling of the most sensitive secrets the US government possesses. She also served as a United States Senator for eight goddamn years including time on the Armed Services Committee and as part of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities – both positions that would also have exposed her to classified data and therefore it’s proper handling!

This is of course also completely ignoring the fact that as Secretary of State she continued to store classified information on her unauthorized, insecure private email server for the entire four years. Even after the Chelsea Manning case. Even after repeated hacking attempts on her server; a point we’ll come back to again later on I assure you. Even after her own top aid, Huma Abedin directly told her to either get a state.gov account or to give the state department her email address (thus notifying them of the system’s existence.) Even after staff members tried to raise concerns about the setup’s obvious inability to comply with Federal records laws.

Even a normal person, with absolutely no experience handling classified info could reasonably be expected to learn something on the subject over four years as Secretary of State and my friends; we are not dealing with a normal person here but rather a lawyer, a life-long government official and a woman who practically engineered a war in Libya with her own two hands. A war I should note, that certainly involved the transmission and storage of highly classified military intelligence information.

Recently, some have attempted to defend Clinton by pointing out that neither her, nor her staff received a standard yearly security update briefing as would be normal State Department policy but in reality, that fact doesn’t help her so much as severely damages her case. The simple truth is Clinton’s prior experience with classified information would have made the updates a formality – if Clinton was unaware of classification procedure, there is literally no way she would have been allowed to skip that briefing for at least three years running. Furthermore, if Clinton did purposely skip the briefings while having absolutely no goddamn clue what classified information was, that would be a pretty compelling fucking argument for “gross negligence” and not just on Clinton’s part.

If you don’t believe me, ask Clinton herself; or rather check out that time Clinton noted the importance of protecting “sensitive information” that affects “the security of individuals and relationships” while she was explaining why Chelsea Manning deserved to rot in a box for thirty-five fucking years.

Of course, that’s just what we can infer from her previous work history and her role as Secretary of State; there’s actually still quite a great deal more evidence that Clinton knew the data she was handling was classified and therefore that she was breaking the law. There are also at least two emails to key aid Jake Sullivan that Clinton sent (that we know of) that objectively, without a doubt prove that Clinton was aware that classified information was moving across her unauthorized and insecure email server.

On April 25, 2012 in an email exchange about counter-terrorism information Clinton admitted that she didn’t know if the information Sullivan has just sent her is classified or not and didn’t seem alarmed at fucking all about that fact; and neither were any of her staffers/aids! This of course is in addition to the July 11, 2011 email in which Clinton instructs Sullivan to turn a document with a classification header “into nonpaper w(ith) no identifying header and send nonsecure.” I am well aware that James Comey has offered an extremely weak excuse about the expression “nonpaper” being a “term of art” in the State Department for stripping classified information from an email – however, if the entire basis of Clinton’s defense is that she was completely incompetent re: handling classified information, demonstrating specific knowledge of how to properly handle classified information once again speaks to knowledge and intent; as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Jason Chaffetz noted during Comey’s testimony before that Committee.

This is all still leaving out the significant evidence that Clinton was actively attempting to avoid the Freedom of Information Act and/or official investigations by using her unsecured, unauthorized private email server – a long standing sore point for Hillary and an important series of facts in this case because it speaks directly to motive.

During a November 2010 conversation with aid Huma Abedin, Clinton expressly stated that she wasn’t interested in giving State her email address because she wasn’t willing to risk “the personal (information) being accessible.” Abedin also testified under oath that Clinton put some of her schedules in a burn bag; thereby actively destroying what amounts to one of the most basic public records – an activity former diplomat and US spokesman at the United Nations Richard Grenell says was “unprecedented” because those “daily schedules became public records, as required by law.”

This general avoidance of public scrutiny also comes up time and time again during the FBI investigation into Clinton’s private email server as well as during the numerous Freedom of Information Act lawsuits that have been launched against Clinton and the US State Department. As former prosecutor and current Congressman Trey Gowdy notes, despite being required to submit all of her records on the day she left office, Hillary Clinton waited twenty-one months to do so and even then – only then after the State Department actively requested the records and her lawyers had deleted at least 31,000 emails as personal; several thousand which we now know were work related and thus subject for the Freedom of Information Act and the FBI investigation. Why did her lawyers seemingly do everything in their power to delete the data in such a way as to make it impossible to retrieve if it was just a question of separating personal from work-related emails? Wouldn’t the delete button have been enough? Reminder, this is all without the emails the FBI was unable to recover that Wikileaks has access to; which will almost certainly produce even more work-related emails that Clinton deleted in direct violation of Federal record keeping laws.

In the same vein, it’s important to point out that Clinton has actively resisted attempts to interview her by multiple investigative bodies – most notably State Department Inspector General Steve Linick (a Democrat and Obama appointee) who was instead instructed to check the FAQ section of her campaign website in response to his official inquiries about her unauthorized, insecure private email server!

Even when Clinton finally did agree to meet with the FBI (she never met with the Inspector General) the “interview” was not conducted under oath, was not recorded and no transcript of the interview was ever created – which doesn’t speak to Clinton’s intent so much as Comey’s; a situation that doesn’t look much better when you find out Comey wasn’t even in the room for the testimony nor did he actually speak to all of the agents who were. One really does have to question if Comey made the best, or in fact any effort whatsoever to properly determine if Clinton intended to violate the espionage act in a case that was apparently important enough for an unprecedented level of transparency but not important enough to warrant the FBI Directors personal attention or any effort whatsoever to compel accurate testimony from a woman Comey knew had already lied about this very same case repeatedly – even before Congress!

Wow, that’s pretty fucked up but I’ve heard some Democrats saying it doesn’t matter because the data never fell into the wrong hands – is that true?

Okay, let’s break this down one at a time – first and foremost, it doesn’t matter in the goddamn slightest if unauthorized hostile agents or foreign actors obtained access to the data and anyone who says otherwise has simply not read the relevant subsections of the Espionage Act or other cases involving it.

Cases like that of Naval Reservist Bryan H. Nishimura – a man who plead guilty to “unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials” on July 29, 2015. In Nishimura’s case, the FBI itself concluded that he had no intention “to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel” and no evidence that the data he illegally stored was ever accessed by an unauthorized individual. This case is of particular interest when discussing Comey’s curious recommendation (and de facto decree) not to indict Clinton because it proves false the FBI Director’s statement that “we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts” since Nishimura’s case is objectively identical to Clinton’s; albeit somewhat less serious than the former Secretary of State’s violations because the information he kept was much older.

The much discussed General Petraeus case is another good example – Petraeus gave the information to his biographer (who he was tapping on the side) and there’s virtually no evidence whatsoever that he ever shared it with hostile actors or allowed the data to fall into “enemy” hands in any given way. Please note that I am in fact only mentioning the Petraeus case here to prove it doesn’t matter if the classified information falls into enemy hands as far as the Espionage Act is concerned – in terms of comparison to the Clinton case, the Petraeus investigation is almost worthless because the general was caught directly lying to the FBI and had been physically hiding the records in an obvious attempt to avoid detection. The distinction may seem to be quibbling, but without a transcript of Clinton’s testimony to the FBI it’s virtually impossible to compare the two cases – for now.

As a random aside, I’d also like to take a moment to talk about Comey’s assertion that only one person has been prosecuted for gross negligence in the ninety-nine year history of the Espionage Act. While I don’t take issue with the truthfulness of his statement, I find it odd that he would consider that fact extremely relevant when only seventy-three people have ever been charged under said act. Fifty of those people have been convicted, twenty-one have been acquitted and two remain fugitives at large – a few of them are even foreign spies and therefore couldn’t possibly be charged with gross negligence.

Considering how rare Espionage Act violations seem to be in the first place; is it really that odd to think that almost nobody with the necessary clearance for Special Access Programs & ORCON data had ever been as clearly negligent and brazenly unconcerned with document security before? Isn’t the fact that people with Hillary Clinton’s level of security clearance are supposed to and in fact almost universally do behave more responsibly with America’s most important secrets the entire fucking reason we’re having this conversation? Am I to believe that the FBI comes across gross negligence in the American intelligence apparatus daily and just doesn’t bother to prosecute or something here? Comey’s answer was either specifically designed to confuse the issue or he literally didn’t bother to count how many cases the DoJ has ever tried under the Espionage Act; neither answer reflects very well on him or the FBI’s investigative process frankly.

Despite the fact that it does not matter if Clinton’s unauthorized, insecure, private email server ever actually allowed classified data to fall into enemy hands for the purposes of the Espionage Act however – the simple truth is that it almost certainly did fall into enemy hands!

Multiple, highly-qualified security experts have already gone on record to state that Clinton’s insecure server was almost certainly hacked by “hostile actors” – in particular hackers affiliated with Russia and China. Naturally, we already know that Russian hackers are targeting vulnerable systems and individuals in the US government because of a massive security sweep performed on the Democratic National Committee computers in June. Have I mentioned that Comey himself admitted that there was virtually no security whatsoever on Clinton’s email server system and that in fact, she would have had more protection against hackers if she’d just used G-Mail?

At this point, I feel it would be prudent to remind you that on at least two separate occasions, Clinton’s own staff thought she was being hacked; which reminds me of an important question I haven’t asked yet – if neither Clinton nor her staff honestly believed she had any classified material on her server, why did Huma Abedin write other high-ranking staff in Clinton’s orbit “don’t email hrc [Clinton] anything sensitive. I can explain more in person” and why were they freaking out about hacking attempts? Isn’t Abedin’s statement alone a bald-faced admission that multiple, high-level members of Clinton’s staff were fully aware that “sensitive” data was moving across Clinton’s unauthorized, insecure email server? Are Hillary Clinton’s yoga lessons that vitally important; or did it maybe have something to do with knowing they not only had classified data on the server, but that it was some of the most classified information in the US Government’s possession? Remember, you and I already know how secret the data on Clinton’s server actually was – from above:

Furthermore, a significant portion of the data was extremely fucking classified and among the most important secrets the United States maintains - including signals and human intelligence our operatives no doubt risked their lives to obtain. One such email from inexplicably (and possibly illegally) highly-paid longtime Clinton ghoul Sid Blumethal contained extremely sensitive information from four separate NSA reports including the full transcript of a conversation between foreign leaders in the region and recorded only twenty-four hours before!

Even setting all of the extremely likely scenarios in which Clinton’s email server could be easily hacked aside – you still have to admit that WikiLeaks got it’s impending avalanche of leaked emails from somewhere, don’t you? Unless of course you think Assange is about to piss away ten years of credibility regarding the accuracy of leaks and a literally perfect track record – they’ve never released a misattributed document!

Sweet mother of god, that’s fucking terrifying! Is she really going to get away with this?

No, probably not in the long run, but we as a people have now been placed in the unfortunate situation of relying on (hopefully) lawyerly/intelligence-savvy Republicans like Trey Gowdy, Ken Buck and Will Hurd; as well members of the American intelligence community, attorneys/prosecutors all across the country and with any luck at all – a few Democrats who still have a soul and believe in the rule of law.

Although things do indeed look dark now, it’s important to remember that this would not be the first time a Presidential candidate triumphed in the fall only to see it all come unraveled under the weight of constant investigation, leaks and pressure. In 1972, Nixon won what is still (by some measures) the largest majority in the history of US Presidential Elections – by August 9th, 1974 he’d resigned in disgrace, accepted a presidential pardon and fled off into the dustbin of history in his now infamous helicopter ride of shame. Nixon had relentless, brilliant muckrakers like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on his ass for two years; we’ll just have to make do with math nerds, YouTube journalists, investigative financial analysts and independent, insomniac bloggers like me for the time being.

Loose Threads & the Long Road to Justice

The funny thing about a hustle, even a really good hustle, is that once your figure out what the misdirection the hustler is throwing out is designed to hide; the hustle itself is no longer effective against you. For some of you reading this, today is going to be the first day you realized that there are different sets of laws for different classes of people, and that wealthy elites don’t give a flying fuck if you know about it anymore. That can be harsh and bitter medicine but you know the truth now and believe it or not, you’re stronger for it. You know, I know and if we each tell someone else – they’ll know.

At first, it will not be easy to publicly oppose Comey’s decision not to indict Clinton; there will be skepticism, those who have truly drunk the Clinton Kool-Aid will attempt to lump you in with tinfoil-hat loonies and vindictive Republicans. The truth however, as you know if you’ve read this article and clicked on the links, is that Hillary Clinton is absolutely, undoubtedly guilty of violating both the felony and misdemeanor statues of the Espionage Act – and deep down inside, everyone knows it; they’re just too afraid to admit it right now.

She did so willfully, knowingly and with intent; her primary motive was to avoid exposing compromising information through the Freedom of Information Act. She even lied, repeatedly and at least once under oath to cover up the crimes she absolutely knew she’d committed – an act that in and of itself can be used to prove intent. Despite the fact that almost no judge in the country would dare convict her; she’s also guilty of violating the Espionage Act through gross negligence by any reasonable/rational definition of the term. Look folks, I really shouldn’t have to tell you that when a random computer technician who’s incapable of spelling the word “shady” properly can see that Clinton was up to nefarious “shit” but a lifelong prosecutor and current Director of the FBI can’t? Something is heinously wrong.

Friends, I am tired now; my old bones ache from piling all of this moist, good earth on top of an evil, corrupt megalomaniac who I am almost certain will be the next President of the United States. As with all things involving the Clinton family and secrets, there are simply too many loose ends to ever properly wrap up in one article.

Why would Comey risk his reputation to protect Clinton? How corrupt is Loretta Lynch; do her longstanding ties to the Clintons and the recent offer to keep her on as AG after the election have anything to do with this decision? Was Bill Clinton’s effort to arrange a meeting with Lynch just before the FBI was going to make a decision really a mistake, or did it just allow Lynch to pass the buck onto a guy who couldn’t be held responsible because he was “only making a recommendation?” Furthermore, how exactly did Comey just get away with exercising prosecutorial discretion in a case his own department investigated with essentially no oversight whatsoever once Lynch effectively recused herself (without recusing herself?!)

Why wasn’t a special prosecutor called in – if not immediately after the investigation was opened at the very least after Bill’s fateful runway visit with the Attorney General? How does the Clinton Foundation charity fraud fit into all this? How do tens of millions of dollars in exposed donations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates fit into this? Are there more donations we don’t know about? Is the Democratic Party laundering money from foreign nations (or powerful individuals in foreign nations) through the Clinton Foundation? Why are top level Democrats going down like flies (8 in just over the past year, last I checked) for illegal financing schemes? Are we going to go to war in Syria? Are we going to go to war with Russia?

There are answers out there to all of these questions; I might even know a few of them already. Until there’s more time to find those answers, I’d like to leave you with the words of a friend of mine who happens to be an attorney and whom I won’t name because this has got to be a very hard time to be a lawyer in America: