It's a point of pride at Morning Joe that the show is unscripted. But in a notable deviation that might reflect the gravity of the moment, Joe Scarborough clearly seemed to be reading off a teleprompter today as he promulgated a damning indictment of Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information on her private email system. Scarborough's statement was interspersed with clips of Hillary making statements about her email use that in light of the Inspectors General statements seem clearly to be untrue.
Even more ominous for Hillary and her presidential ambitions was that none of Andrea Mitchell, Mark Halperin nor Ron Fournier--who claimed that as a former Arkansas resident he had probably voted more often for Clintons than any other journalist in DC -- deigned to offer a defense of Hillary's actions.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hillary Clinton was in Iowa this weekend where she faced questions amid new reports we discussed here last week. Classified information may have been compromised due to Mrs. Clinton's personal e-mail use. Exposed and potentially hundreds of e-mails according to two Obama administration inspectors general. That's not Republican House members, but the internal monitors of Barack Obama's State Department and intel agencies. They referred this issue to the Justice Department and the FBI which confirms they're considering an investigation. Now that investigation could involve the key question, was the Clinton server compromised by foreign governments?
The Clinton campaign, of course, forcefully pushed back early Friday morning noting this is a security investigation, not a criminal one. The inspectors general specifically stated in their letter this wasn't a criminal referral even though, as the New York Times clearly states, "mishandling classified information is a crime." And if you don't believe that, just ask David Petraeus. Back in March, Clinton was adamant that no classified information was trafficked on her private account.
HILLARY CLINTON: I did not e-mail any classified material to anyone on my e-mail. There is no classified material. So I certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.
JOE: But now the Clinton campaign is admitting the situation is much more complicated. On Friday, they said any released e-mails deemed classified by the administration had been done so after the fact and not at the time they were transmitted. But even after the corrections, the New York Times stated flatly that the Clinton claim was not true. And yet the next day on Saturday Hillary Clinton herself seemed to be again in denial.
HILLARY: The facts are pretty clear. I did not send nor receive anything that was classifed at the time.
JOE: That's just counter to the reporting. That is counter to the State Department inspector general and counter to the intelligence agencies inspectors general. It's stunning that she is still saying that this weekend. Hillary Clinton now claims the documents weren't classified, quote, at the time. But again, the inspectors general say they were even if they weren't marked classified. The Obama administration inspectors general looked at the information and the e-mails that Clinton provided and made a preliminary finding that she was and is wrong. They say the information, some from the CIA and some from the NSA, was clearly classified when sent and it's classified now and it's always been classified. According to the IGs, the four e-mails in question did not contain classified markings and/or dissemination controls even though in her press conference she said she was well aware of classification requirements. Unfortunately for the Clinton camp, that's just not the only place that Hillary Clinton skirted the truth in her March UN press conference.
HILLARY: After I left office, the State Department asked former Secretaries of State for our assistance in providing copies of work-related e-mails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my e-mails that could possibly be work-related which totaled roughly 55,000 printed pages even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them.
JOE: That claim, of course, has also been proven false by journalists. Disclosures by Sidney Blumenthal to the congressional committee investigating Benghazi shows that nine emails and parts of six others related to Libya weren't included in those e-mails that Hillary Clinton handed over. Here's more of Hillary Clinton back in March.
HILLARY: I wanted to just use one device for both personal and work e-mails instead of two. It was allowed. And as I said, it was for convenience and it was my practice to communicate with State Department and other government officials on their dot-gov accounts. So those e-mails would be automatically saved in the State Department system to meet record-keeping requirements and that indeed is what happened.
JOE: Two things, Clinton has been found using at least two personal devices, not one. She used her cell phone and iPad as e-mail as Secretary of State and the State Department did not automatically save all departmental e-mail until February of this year. Only a tiny fraction of its e-mails were saved. And that's under the assumption she exclusively used State Department e-mails.
All in all, this appears just to be the tip of the iceberg. The State Department inspectors general said they found classified materials sent to and from Clinton's Chappaqua home-baked server even though they only had access to a small sample of 40 e-mails. Of those, they found that four contained government secrets. That is information that if exposed could potentially harm national security. It's information that is meant to be transferred and stored exclusively on secure computer networks with special safeguards. Again, of the self-selected e-mails that the Clinton camp chose to release, one in 10 of those e-mails seems to have held classified information. Put in perspective, Hillary Clinton turned in over 30,000 e-mails she said were work-related. She destroyed tens of thousands of e-mails, wiped clean her home-baked server and possibly destroyed copies of countless classified documents improperly stored and sent from the United States' top diplomat.
The extent of the cover-up, if there ever was one, will not be known because that evidence which could either clear or convict her is destroyed by the politician who is now at the center of this national security debate. Unfortunately, there seems to be much more to come from this story. But what we've seen so far is that it's unlikely that this is going to be the last time Hillary Clinton will be changing her story.
Mika, you go through it. And you go back. We could talk all morning about that UN press conference. It's just baffling to me that they sent her out to say things that they knew were going to be countered in the press in the coming weeks and months. This is a growing problem.
MIKA: So let me ask Andrea Mitchell who is covering campaigns for years. Is there something that we're missing here? What is the missing link that could explain this?
ANDREA MITCHELL: It's hard to figure out what the missing link is, frankly, Mika. Two days after that press conference that I attended at the UN, at the Security Council, the General Accounting Office issued a report that faulted the State Department for not saving e-mails. So one of her contentions there as Joe just explained was that at least the e-mails would all have been saved automatically at the State Department by the recipients. And that those would all have been archived. But they weren't. And in fact there was an appalling lack of archiving by the State Department for years and years until recently if it's even fixed now. So that is not the backup she at least claimed it was. And perhaps she didn't know how bad the system was. But we now know that that is the case. So there is no record of all of the emails on the receivers' end. And as I say, it goes back to the whole question of the judgment that went into having a private server. It just seems inexplicable and that is the question that needs to be answered.
JOE: Mark Halperin, obviously furious push back from the Clinton camp this weekend attacking the New York Times repeatedly. What is your take on this?
MARK HALPERIN: Andrea's right, it's complicated. Why does it matter that she used a private server? In the view of many people including in the White House it was too cavalier. Too cavalier in terms of things being backed up, as Andrea just said, whether there is a full record of the secretary's work subject to congressional oversight and to FOIA.
And it also matters, and this is why this news story is a big deal, it matters in terms of security. If there was classified information in there--the secretary says there wasn't, the inspectors general says there was--and if that stuff was available to be hacked into in her private server, that is a huge breach of her responsibilities. That to me is where the story is going. Will the FBI investigate the question of was there a security breach on the private server or on the outside server, the outside vendor the Clintons switched their information over to? She is responsible for making sure that there was no security breach. And they've not addressed that one bit. That's why if there was classified information, it matters a lot.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Ron Fournier, your thoughts?
RON FOURNIER: This isn't easy for me Mika, like I know it's not for you. I've known the Clintons for a long time. They've been great to me. They've been good to my family when they've had no reason to be, specifically my son; we've talked about that. If you count all times I voted in Arkansas with a Clinton on the ballot, there's nobody at that table that voted more than me. Probably nobody in DC whose voted for a Clinton more than me. If you count the primaries I've voted against them quite a bit too. Look, I really have a lot of respect for them. I think they're very good public servants. They're hugely talented people. I've always thought Hillary Clinton could be as good, maybe a better president than Bill Clinton. But when you look at that monologue, when you listen to what Mark says and you listen to what Andrea says, neither which are Clinton haters, again I get back to what to me is really the fundamental question, not why she did this. To me the fundamental question is any American has a right to be asking now and any journalist has a responsibility to be asking, what were you hiding? What were you hiding? What was on that server that we can't see? Why did you hide it?
A longer version of the video is here.
