Alfonse D'Amato

The fine line between negligent and illegal

Posted

Hillary Clinton’s use of email during her time as secretary of state was careless, but not illegal.

Basically, the secretary of state, the figurehead of our diplomacy, lacked judgment and showed gross negligence in transmitting matters of foreign policy in her personal email, but last week, FBI Director James Comey announced his recommendation that Clinton not be charged with any crimes.

This isn’t the final word, but it almost guarantees that Hillary won’t be indicted.

Comey did take the opportunity to offer harsh criticism of Clinton’s conduct, stating, “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Many of my Republican colleagues have been quick to discredit Comey and have called him a political puppet of President Obama. I should remind them that Comey was a Republican until becoming a registered independent for his career. He was twice appointed by President George W. Bush, first as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and then as deputy attorney general.

I firmly believe that Comey is independent and apolitical, and that his decision was not politically motivated.

There were several key points to take away from his statements. First, from the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 were determined to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of 52 email chains contained information that was “top secret” at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained “secret” information; and eight contained “confidential” information. Separate from those, about 2,000 emails were “up-classified,” meaning they should have been kept confidential.

Clearly, and without any doubt, there was classified information that should not have been transmitted over email. This type of gross negligence regarding information is not found elsewhere, among other branches of government. The question is, is it illegal?

Comey assessed that Clinton used her personal email extensively while outside the U.S., including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. This means that countries such as Russia and China could have easily gained access to her personal email account and gone through top-secret information.

Anyone else would have been subjected to security or administrative sanctions. How many times did Clinton stand in front of the American public and say that she didn’t send classified information on her personal server? I don’t know what’s worse here, the crime or the cover-up!

Let’s not forget that Clinton was able to delete many emails before the FBI gained access to them. This tainted the investigation, and made it more difficult for the FBI to piece everything together. In the words of Comey, it was a “jigsaw puzzle with millions of email fragments in it.”

Also last week, Comey testified in front of the House Oversight Committee, and stated that Clinton’s email practices put America’s secrets at risk, and described her actions as the “definition of carelessness.” He went on to make it clear that Hillary lied under oath and to the American people. If nothing else, this makes her unethical and untruthful, and not someone I would trust to be our next president.

This was the second good break Clinton received in two weeks. On June 28, the House committee investigating the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, found that there was no evidence of negligence by Clinton herself on the night of the attack.

Months earlier, she had received information that an attack was imminent, but no action was taken. The U.S. remained unprepared for an attack.

Investigation after investigation seems to come and go with no real consequences for Clinton. This double standard tells the American people that if you’re a member of the powerful elite — and especially if your last name is Clinton — you can lie and cheat with no repercussions.

Clinton has been less than truthful to the American public. She put our national security at risk, and needs to be held accountable.

Al D’Amato, a former U.S. senator from New York, is the founder of Park Strategies LLC, a public policy and business development firm. Comments about this column? ADAmato@liherald.com.