Toobin: "She is now suffering from that because people are saying there's all this classified information she's dealing with, but there is not a bright line between classified and unclassified, and you can see, at least to a certain extent, why she was not clear on what was what."There's actually a pretty bright line between classified and unclassified in almost all cases. I recall a particular conversation years ago that involved a guy telling his wife he had to work, after he'd had a conversation with his mistress telling her he'd be there for the holiday. The conversation itself was crap, but its classification level was way above routine top secret because of the way it had been obtained.
After Toobin explained that, even if classified information was not marked as classified, she could still be prosecuted if she should have known it was classified, co-host Kate Bolduan followed up:
And that question almost depends on who you're talking to.Federal lawmakers, for startsies, then the heirarchies within the organizations, in coordination with other branches of the intelligence community, probably under the guidance of the DCI. We're not talking about obscure, dusty tomes dating to Oliver Cromwell's time. We're talking about well-established federal law (Hillary's a lawyer, right?) as maintained, modified, and regularly updated, even under the Obama regime.
I suppose it might, if you're talking to some dimwit like her who'd never produced nor handled classified information.
Because when you talk to theHillary Clinton
... sometimes described asFor a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillaryand at other times as Mrs. Bill, never asAnother Tallyrand...
campaign, they point out that this kind of gets to the heart of where this has been dispute between the State Department and the intelligence community over what was classified and what should have been classified at what point. I mean, this really gets into the weeds.
Only if you're smoking them. In the Army we had Army Regulations that laid it all out pretty clearly, in tedious detail, in fact. Within the government there are pretty straightforward regulations, even in the State Department.
At the end of the day, I'm left wondering who's going to decide. Who gets to decide?
The CNN legal analyst called the overclassification of information a "minor but real scandal" as he began his response:
Well, the FBI is going to decide if she's prosecuted. I mean, ultimately, that's the decision I think everybody cares about. I mean, one of the, you know, minor but real scandals in the U.S. government has been for decades is that people overclassify things, is that a lot of information that is not all that sensitive is treated as classified.State Department cables are seldom unclassified. Intelligence analysis (end product) seldom is, and then almost always after redaction. Raw intelligence information never is. Pretty simple rules to live by, eh?
He then suggested an excuse for Clinton as he added:
She is now suffering from that because people are saying there's all this classified information she's dealing with, but there is not a bright line between classified and unclassified, and you can see, at least to a certain extent, why she was not clear on what was what.'Splain that to a federal prosecutor who's not been dropped on his or her head.
Bolduan recalled the Clinton spin as she concluded the segment:
Even if it's not legally clear, we'll see what the political ramifications are with all of this coming out. And definitely the campaign has been pointing out, they believe this is an inspector general with an axe to grind, is kind of the way they're pointing to it.