Yeah, yeah. This post is about Hillary Clinton. The left and the press (but I repeat myself) insist that nobody cares about her scandalous behavior, or her evasiveness, or her demonstrated serial dishonesty. And even though a large and growing percentage of Americans don't trust her, that doesn't matter either, because she'll still get most of their votes. That's because no one wants to ever-ever-ever-ever see a non-Democrat take the White House again. So yeah, I know, we should just shut up already.
Well, if you're on the left and reading this, do us a favor and spare us any condescension you might include in the comments. People who remain in touch with reality will recognize that what follows is pretty darned important. Perhaps by some miracle someone in the establishment press with a conscience will too.
Six weeks ago, I marveled at how nobody in the press thought that it was the least bit unusual that Hillary Clinton's team submitted supposedly complete paper copies of the "non-personal" emails present on the secret private server she kept at her New York home while serving as the nation's Secretary of State. A Washington Examiner report today (HT Ace) has provided the likely best (i.e., really the worst) reason why Mrs. Clinton handled the situation as she did.
In my May 21 post, I noted, based on a discussion with a person knowledgeable in these matters that submitting paper documents instead of digital originals meant the following:
Investigators will not get the background "electronic fingerprint," which is not displayed to either the writer or the recipient. This can include (the) originating IP address (as opposed to the email address itself), the server it was sent from, timing information that cannot be easily manipulated (as opposed to the header, which is easy to type or alter in paper format), and whether or not there was an attachment at some point in a multi-level conversation. By handing them over in print, she destroys the data integrity.
In later discussions with this person, I also learned that Mrs. Clinton, who, incredibly, made fun of the government's vulnerability to security breaches at a fundraiser, quipping that hacking at the White House would not have happened “had they been using my server,” may also have wished to avoid getting caught sending high-security messages which either weren't encrypted or contained either insufficiently sophisticated encryption or overly sophisticated but illegal (for private servers) encryption. Specifically:
...while personal servers can use more sophisticated encryption than government servers, such high-level encryption is border-line illegal and often exploited by terrorist organizations to keep governments out. The encryption tech available is far more sophisticated than most hackers, but the government regulates what is publicly available because they don't want people employing tech they can't crack. So, if Hillary went to the trouble to acquire this questionable encryption, what was she worried about hiding?
Or was she so nonchalant that she didn't bother with any encryption at all? We don't know, because the emails, after what we will soon see is apparent tampering, were submitted on paper. Digital files containing the emails would likely have answered most if not all of the concerns my source raised.
Now there is a clear third reason why Mrs. Clinton turned over paper instead of digital files. This time there's no speculation about what was done, as Sarah Westwood at the Examiner reports (bolds are mine):
Records show Clinton withheld emails about oil, terrorism
(Better headline from Ace: "Hillary Clinton, Get This, Edited the Emails She Turned Over to State to Delete Embarrassing References to Oil, Terrorism")
Hillary Clinton withheld Benghazi-related emails from the State Department that detailed her knowledge of the scramble for oil contracts in Libya and the shortcomings of the NATO-led military intervention for which she advocated.
Clinton removed specific portions of other emails she sent to State, suggesting the messages were screened closely enough to determine which paragraphs were unfit to be seen by the public.
For example, one email Clinton kept from the State Department indicates Libyan leaders were "well aware" of which "major oil companies and international banks" supported them during the rebellion, information they would "factor into decisions" about about who would be given access to the country's rich oil reserves.
The email, which Clinton subsequently scrubbed from her server, indicated Clinton was aware that involvement in the controversial conflict could have a significant financial benefit to firms that were friendly to the Libyan rebels.
She thanked Sidney Blumenthal, her former aide and author of dozens of informal intelligence memos, for the tip, which she called "useful," and informed him she was preparing to hold a meeting with Libyan leaders in Paris in an exchange that suggests the flow of information went both ways.
To be clear, this is not about redacting text so that others can't read it while preserving it in the originals.
Ace notes that this is now about "altering official federal records" which those in a position to know are claiming is a likely violation of federal statutes at the felony level.
But Mrs. Clinton would appear to have no need to be concerned. The establishment press despises the Washington Examiner, and the Free Beacon, and the Times, and the Daily Caller, and Fox News, and anyone else inclined to report information which makes Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton or any other leftist look bad. They would rather die than cite, give credit to, or even communicate directly with anyone at these outlets. The fact that they have unearthed truthful and troubling information doesn't matter.
Prove me wrong, establishment media.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
