• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PoliGAF 2015 |OT2| Pls print

Status
Not open for further replies.
A chain of 10 emails from over 60k delivered. 10 irrelevant emails without any meaningful info there. Why is the State Deparmnt being so obtuse about it? It was obviously a human mistake without consequences, not a watergate coverup.
 
Hillary's claim that she (and her team) have fully complied with government orders has unequivocally turned out to be a complete lie. This is legitimate information, and whether you think it's important or not is, quite frankly, irrelevant to the legitimacy of this information.

Because of what appears to be a mistake?

What in that Peteaus thread that would warrant not turning them over?

If there are more, why did Justice make an announcement before they were done?

What was the motive for the 2 month discrepancy in saying when she used the server?

Look, if Justice isn't finished and more comes from this, I'll change my mind. But I don't think we'll find a smoking gun here, and the discrepancy is a pretty simple mistake. Not gross incompetence like some are saying, but legitimate small things that might happen complying with ah huge request.
 

teiresias

Member
It's a lie either way, as well as not being fully compliant. It really does not matter how insignificant you believe this to be.

This is certainly not a semantical argument for the State Department.

Haha, anyone who's had to provide large amount of documentation, whether it's for an audit, for a process review, or any other thing knows that inevitably something falls through the cracks. But please, continue on your quest, make sure to gather your party before venturing forth.
 
My point was it was likely an honest mistake. The guys in-charge of going through the e-mails probably looked at the first 5 or 6 e-mails in the thread, saw it was all personal stuff and moved on.

I compared it to a semantic argument, not for the state department, but to House Republicans and other trying to tear her down over this latest issue. My point was that both are nitpick-y. If there was actual wrong doing they'd be harping on that and ignoring this.

Honest mistakes do happen. That does not mean that those mistakes are undeserving of criticism.

When you work for the government, there are a lot of seemingly trivial security protocols that you have to adhere to, and breaking some of them could cost you your job.

Personally speaking, I used to work for an emergency response team at a gas company, and one time I accidentally keyed in the wrong code when taking an emergency call, affecting the response to the emergency. That tiny mistake cost me my job.

Yes, we know how the republicans are trying to frame this and take advantage of it, but there is a legitimate discussion to be had about this mistake that has nothing to do with the republicans, and I'd rather be discussing that than talking about how desperate the republicans are (something we already know).
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Honest mistakes do happen. That does not mean that those mistakes are undeserving of criticism.

When you work for the government, there are a lot of seemingly trivial security protocols that you have to adhere to, and breaking some of them could cost you your job.

Personally speaking, I used to work for an emergency response team at a gas company, and one time I accidentally keyed in the wrong code when taking an emergency call, affected the response to the emergency. That tiny mistake cost me my job.

Yes, we know how the republicans are trying to frame this and take advantage of it, but there is a legitimate discussion to be had about this mistake that has nothing to do with the republicans, and I'd rather be discussing that than talking about how desperate the republicans are (something we already know).

What you're describing at the gas company is vastly different than this. This doesn't change anyone's response to an event or anything like that, this is missing a receipt for $12.95 from Denny's while being audited.

If it was more than 1 e-mail chain, if she left out like 50 or something, I'd be with you. But this isn't that, we don't need to have a serious conversation about a lost Denny's receipt.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
So I take it this new bit to the email scandal is more of the same and OT is yet again either diablos-ing/stanning for Sanders? Seems like the email chain wasn't particularly interesting and still not illegal.
 
3XEa1Pe.png
ogYgEgA.png
 

teiresias

Member
So I take it this new bit to the email scandal is more of the same and OT is yet again either diablos-ing/stanning for Sanders? Seems like the email chain wasn't particularly interesting and still not illegal.

At this point the media would run a headline, "Clinton Sneezes Towards Onlookers. Did She Mean to Maliciously Spread Flu Virus?" and be completely earnest about it.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
More or less. The way people are reacting you'd think there's a smoking gun in there.

I basically never trust OT poli threads because pretty much any news is people freaking out, and stuff about Clinton is about 10 times harder to get an accurate read on due to Sanders stans constantly trying to claim she should drop out because she's doomed.
 
What you're describing at the gas company is vastly different than this. This doesn't change anyone's response to an event or anything like that, this is missing a receipt for $12.95 from Denny's while being audited.

If it was more than 1 e-mail chain, if she left out like 50 or something, I'd be with you. But this isn't that, we don't need to have a serious conversation about a lost Denny's receipt.

Even 50 would be a non-story if they were a bunch of completely irrelevant emails like this.

The ONLY way this story could be the slightest bit relevant is if it turns out that Clinton withheld a bunch of emails along the lines of "Please increase the security detail at the Benghazi compound ASAP... the natives are looking restless."
 
No one ever could have predicted that Republicans would waste taxpayer money investigating Benghazi a dozen times.

Are you seriously suggesting that no one ever could predict that the same people that voted to nuke obamacare 30+ times would also come after their future opponent in any way they could? The same people that caused a government shutdown over nothing? The same people that have been engaging in completely antagonistic and borderline irrational behaviour ever since the black guy got the job?

That's...ahm.. quite candid,mate.

These are the new rules. They have been in play for years now. They will remain in play for the foreseeable future.
 
That has absolutely nothing to do with what was both SOP and legal at the time she did it.

For one, Powell used a personal email address for some communication. If Clinton did just that, it is fine. She used a personal email server.

When you are running for President it's not just about what is legal or not. The difference here is GOP shouting about Benghazi vs. narrative that Clintons are trying to hide something. Clinton right now can't do a press talk without it all being about the emails.
 

dramatis

Member
So I take it this new bit to the email scandal is more of the same and OT is yet again either diablos-ing/stanning for Sanders? Seems like the email chain wasn't particularly interesting and still not illegal.
Surprisingly, there's not that much stanning for Sanders. It's mostly just people partying in that thread for some reason.
 

pigeon

Banned
I mean I assume the it team was smart enough to know that pushing the delete button didn't really do anything to the emails they deleted. They turned over the entire server, so she's not really hiding anything anymore, they have all personal and work related emails

I agree that even a slightly competent IT person would know that they didn't wipe the server.

However, one of the important takeaways from this whole thing is, whatever else you may think of the Clintons, they don't have anything like a state of the art IT team.

Basically every single element of this story wouldn't have happened if they had one good technical person on staff.

So I don't really know what they expected.
 

Metaphoreus

This is semantics, and nothing more
I like the analogy of a smoking gun, but I think it misses the point. The better analogy is this: we just found a kid carrying a gun at school, and you all are trying to downplay it by saying, "Well, she didn't use it!"

There should not have been classified information on her server. She said there wasn't. She said there was a completely separate system for sending classified material, specifically designed so that that material could not end up "anywhere other than within that system, including . . . outside email accounts." She explained that she was "well-aware of the classification requirements." Despite all this, classified material--including top secret material--found its way onto her server.

(Side note: the four classified emails found by the intelligence inspector general were out of a sample of 40. We're not talking about 4 emails out of 30,000.)
 

dramatis

Member
I like the analogy of a smoking gun, but I think it misses the point. The better analogy is this: we just found a kid carrying a gun at school, and you all are trying to downplay it by saying, "Well, she didn't use it!"

There should not have been classified information on her server. She said there wasn't. She said there was a completely separate system for sending classified material, specifically designed so that that material could not end up "anywhere other than within that system, including . . . outside email accounts." She explained that she was "well-aware of the classification requirements." Despite all this, classified material--including top secret material--found its way onto her server.

(Side note: the four classified emails found by the intelligence inspector general were out of a sample of 40. We're not talking about 4 emails out of 30,000.)
Unfortunately for your narrative, it's material classified after she handed the emails over. So was it classified at the time? Depends on who you ask. With an answer like that, you might have to ask, who determines what is classified, and what if there are disagreements on the status of non-classified material?
 
However, one of the important takeaways from this whole thing is, whatever else you may think of the Clintons, they don't have anything like a state of the art IT team.

Basically every single element of this story wouldn't have happened if they had one good technical person on staff.

So I don't really know what they expected.

Come on, man. Try to understand. It's not like they run an international multimillion dollar foundation or anything that would demand technological competence.

I like the analogy of a smoking gun, but I think it misses the point. The better analogy is this: we just found a kid carrying a gun at school, and you all are trying to downplay it by saying, "Well, she didn't use it!"

Slander, says I.
 
I like the analogy of a smoking gun, but I think it misses the point. The better analogy is this: we just found a kid carrying a gun at school, and you all are trying to downplay it by saying, "Well, she didn't use it!"

There should not have been classified information on her server. She said there wasn't. She said there was a completely separate system for sending classified material, specifically designed so that that material could not end up "anywhere other than within that system, including . . . outside email accounts." She explained that she was "well-aware of the classification requirements." Despite all this, classified material--including top secret material--found its way onto her server.

(Side note: the four classified emails found by the intelligence inspector general were out of a sample of 40. We're not talking about 4 emails out of 30,000.)

We know that this material was retroactively upgraded to classified. I know that you know this... and if you didn't, you should have before opining so strongly.

We also know that the "born classified" material was stuff like "X diplomat said such and such at the dinner." In other words, a complete non-story.
 
My point was it was likely an honest mistake. The guys in-charge of going through the e-mails probably looked at the first 5 or 6 e-mails in the thread, saw it was all personal stuff and moved on.

I compared it to a semantic argument, not for the state department, but to House Republicans and other trying to tear her down over this latest issue. My point was that both are nitpick-y. If there was actual wrong doing they'd be harping on that and ignoring this.

A chain of 10 emails from over 60k delivered. 10 irrelevant emails without any meaningful info there. Why is the State Deparmnt being so obtuse about it? It was obviously a human mistake without consequences, not a watergate coverup.

Because of what appears to be a mistake?

What in that Peteaus thread that would warrant not turning them over?

If there are more, why did Justice make an announcement before they were done?

What was the motive for the 2 month discrepancy in saying when she used the server?

Look, if Justice isn't finished and more comes from this, I'll change my mind. But I don't think we'll find a smoking gun here, and the discrepancy is a pretty simple mistake. Not gross incompetence like some are saying, but legitimate small things that might happen complying with ah huge request.

Haha, anyone who's had to provide large amount of documentation, whether it's for an audit, for a process review, or any other thing knows that inevitably something falls through the cracks. But please, continue on your quest, make sure to gather your party before venturing forth.

What you're describing at the gas company is vastly different than this. This doesn't change anyone's response to an event or anything like that, this is missing a receipt for $12.95 from Denny's while being audited.

If it was more than 1 e-mail chain, if she left out like 50 or something, I'd be with you. But this isn't that, we don't need to have a serious conversation about a lost Denny's receipt.

Let's not forget the context here.

The whole reason that Hillary didn't provide any emails that may have been exchanged during her first two months in office is because she claimed that she did not use any emails on that server during that time, and used her BlackBerry private email address instead. That turns out to be a lie.

Now granted, getting the dates wrong from memory could be an honest mistake, but in this case, it's a mistake that reflects incompetence (not solely due to human error) because a government request for all work-related emails is serious enough to thoroughly investigate when the very first time she started using the server for work took place, which is a request easy enough to accurately satisfy with 100% certainty, even if you miss a few emails.

I'm frankly surprised by the Clinton defense force here, because unlike everything else leading up to this point (to which I've offered exactly zero commentary, that's how pointless it was) this is actually something tangible, and not just a matter of misrepresentation of the facts.
 

BSsBrolly

Banned
Let's not forget the context here.

The whole reason that Hillary didn't provide any emails that may have been exchanged during her first two months in office is because she claimed that she did not use any emails on that server during that time, and used her BlackBerry private email address instead. That turns out to be a lie.

Now granted, getting the dates wrong from memory could be an honest mistake, but in this case, it's a mistake that reflects incompetence (not solely due to human error) because a government request for all work-related emails is serious enough to thoroughly investigate when the very first time she started using the server for work took place, which is a request easy enough to accurately satisfy with 100% certainty, even if you miss a few emails.

I'm frankly surprised by the Clinton defense force here, because unlike everything else leading up to this point (to which I've offered exactly zero commentary, that's how pointless it was) this is actually something tangible, and not just a matter of misrepresentation of the facts.

We're talking about 10 emails from before she was SoS. This from 30,000 emails. To say this is incompetence is a stretch. This is just more meat for republicans, nothing else.
 
Who didn't see this coming. There's something really ugly about how black conservatives are used by the right wing. Trotting out black people to deny the existence of racism (outside of race card racism from liberals, of course) or reaffirm racially ugly views that white conservatives hold is pathetic but has been standard during the Obama years. There is no room for a JC Watts type black republican today, IE a somewhat moderate person who is simply a conservative. Instead you're required to make ugly comments on "black culture" or explain why LBJ did more damage to blacks than slavery.
I read jc watts saying back when he was in congress, the republicans were always glad to have him along for a photo op or some public relations, but whenever he suggested a proposal, he would be politely stonewalled, and was effectively locked out of any position to dispense power.
It's all a conspiracy.[/tinfoil]
I was a governor, a fighter, a navy seal! It's all tied into the harp system!!
THERMITE PAINT
 
We're talking about 10 emails from before she was SoS. This from 30,000 emails. To say this is incompetence is a stretch. This is just more meat for republicans, nothing else.

No. She did not account (at least in part) for her use of her server DURING her tenure (January and February of 2009, specifically). That is not human error, that is incompetence.
 
The most logical explanation is that they did a query for emails using the start date as a limiter. This obviously missed an email chain that originated from before the start date. It's a technical oversight not a personal one.
 

NeoXChaos

Member
Michael Cohen ‏@speechboy71 16h16 hours ago
Reporters have simply decided Hillary did something wrong with her private email & every story is written in furtherance of that conclusion

Michael Cohen ‏@speechboy71 16h16 hours ago
So now a failure to turn over 10 emails from an email chain begun before HRC took office is worthy of a whole fucking AP article

Michael Cohen ‏@speechboy71 16h16 hours ago
Are you kidding me? This is what the Clinton email scandal has been reduced to: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f80a...als-more-work-emails-clintons-private-account …

:D
 
The most logical explanation is that they did a query for emails using the start date as a limiter. This obviously missed an email chain that originated from before the start date. It's a technical oversight not a personal one.


It's a technical oversight that Hillary will be held personally responsible for. After all, Hillary could have [competently] independently accounted for when she first started using the server, instead of solely relying on her technical team to retrieve this information.
 

gcubed

Member
I agree that even a slightly competent IT person would know that they didn't wipe the server.

However, one of the important takeaways from this whole thing is, whatever else you may think of the Clintons, they don't have anything like a state of the art IT team.

Basically every single element of this story wouldn't have happened if they had one good technical person on staff.

So I don't really know what they expected.

or, ultimately if they just handed over the server in the first place.
 
It's a technical oversight that Hillary will be held personally responsible for. After all, Hillary could have [competently] independently accounted for when she first started using the server, instead of solely relying on her technical team to retrieve this information.

Could have does not mean should have. She *could* have independently gone through every email she ever sent one by one. But that would be ridiculous and there's no reason not to delegate this kind of work. If anything, you would want the technical team to do it precisely because they are the technical team. That they happened to miss an innocuous 10 email chain out of tens of thousands of emails because of a temporal boundary issue is not a serious issue.

This would be like blaming a CEO for not discovering a harmless typo in an accounting report; technically the report is not accurate and the CEO is responsible for their company's statements, but the magnitude of the error is trivial. To proclaim it to be proof of incompetence is asinine.
 
Could have does not mean should have. She *could* have independently gone through every email she ever sent one by one. But that would be ridiculous and there's no reason not to delegate this kind of work. If anything, you would want the technical team to do it precisely because they are the technical team. That they happened to miss an innocuous 10 email chain out of tens of thousands of emails because of a temporal boundary issue is not a serious issue.

In the case of independently recording the date when she first started to use a private server that may contain work-related emails, even if such a recording is simply jotting down that date in a journal, I absolutely think that she SHOULD have done that. Hell, my grandmother probably would have done that, and isn't very tech savvy.

If at any point you personalize the way you handle work-related information, whether that be on a private server, working from home, etc., you should be competent enough to be able to account for your actions, and the very least, simply WHEN you started such actions.

I'm not understanding the pure deflection towards the 10 emails when it's only part of the story here.

EDIT: The independent account should work in tandem with the technical account. I'm not arguing that they should be mutually exclusive.
 
I still fail to see how this isn't bottom of the barrel digging. We were supposed to have criminal investigations, leaked secrets, and top classified material. Now we have some trivial fluff and technicalities?

It really is Benghazi all over again, except Benghazi is still Benghazi if you followed the news that they FOUND SOME E-MAILS about it. Can you believe it?

And to people who think this isn't 99% political gamesmanship, why is it all about Clinton (who happens to be the threat to the GOP in 2016) and not Obama? Isn't he ultimately responsible for everything in his administration? For 6 years, they were blaming him for what low level employees of the gov were doing wrong. Now I guess it's all about Clinton, strange.
 
I still fail to see how this isn't bottom of the barrel digging. We were supposed to have criminal investigations, leaked secrets, and top classified material. Now we have some trivial fluff and technicalities?

It really is Benghazi all over again, except Benghazi is still Benghazi if you followed the news that they FOUND SOME E-MAILS about it. Can you believe it?

I don't see anyone arguing that this isn't bottom of the barrel digging. I do see someone (me) asserting that this isn't the same thing as claiming that she was using classified emails, and that her inability to accurately account for when she started to use the server is incompetent.

At any rate, I've said my piece. I'm done. You guys can continue to argue with invisible straw men and complain about the desperate republicans.
 
I don't see anyone arguing that this isn't bottom of the barrel digging. I do see someone (me) asserting that this isn't the same thing as claiming that she was using classified emails, and that her inability to accurately account for when she started to use the server is incompetent.

At any rate, I've said my piece. I'm done. You guys can continue to argue with invisible straw men and complain about the desperate republicans.
Invisible strawmen...that's rich.
 
I don't see anyone arguing that this isn't bottom of the barrel digging. I do see someone (me) asserting that this isn't the same thing as claiming that she was using classified emails, and that her inability to accurately account for when she started to use the server is incompetent.

At any rate, I've said my piece. I'm done. You guys can continue to argue with invisible straw men and complain about the desperate republicans.

Problem is, when you're legitimizing and parroting the GOP spin machine, you're basically on the same team. Just calling it like I see it.
 
Problem is, when you're legitimizing and parroting the GOP spin machine, you're basically on the same team. Just calling it like I see it.

Well then apparently you aren't seeing very well, because nothing in any of my posts indicate or imply that I'm legitimatizing the 'GOP spin machine'.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Saying that the clock is right twice a day is not the same as saying that the clock works perfectly fine.

Based on your logic, the republicans are incapable of saying anything truthful. If you honestly believe that, then you need a reassesses your ability to evaluate logical arguments.
 

Tarkus

Member
Well then apparently you aren't seeing very well, because nothing in any of my posts indicate or imply that I'm legitimatizing the 'GOP spin machine'.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Saying that the clock is right twice a day is not the same as saying that the clock works perfectly fine.

Based on your logic, the republicans are incapable of saying anything truthful. If you honestly believe that, then you need a reassesses your ability to evaluate logical arguments.
giphy.gif
 

Metaphoreus

This is semantics, and nothing more
Unfortunately for your narrative, it's material classified after she handed the emails over. So was it classified at the time? Depends on who you ask. With an answer like that, you might have to ask, who determines what is classified, and what if there are disagreements on the status of non-classified material?

We know that this material was retroactively upgraded to classified. I know that you know this... and if you didn't, you should have before opining so strongly.

We also know that the "born classified" material was stuff like "X diplomat said such and such at the dinner." In other words, a complete non-story.

Right, once the existence of classified information on Clinton's server became apparent, Clinton went from, "I don't know how much you know about classification (I'm an expert)" to, "Classification is hard!"

On the Clinton apologists' view, we're left with the following dilemma: either Clinton lied about sending and receiving classified materials through her private email, or she lied about being "well aware" of the rules relating to classification. I guess the better option here is the one that paints her as incompetent rather than a felon, but neither is the sort of characteristic one should tolerate in a president. "No, no, she's not evil! She's just terrible at her job! Vote for her!"

As for the claim that the material was retroactively upgraded to classified, the rules didn't change between the end of Clinton's tenure and the date the emails were released to the public. The best-case scenario is the one where the contents were classified when somebody who actually knew what he or she was doing (as opposed to, e.g., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) had a chance to look over the emails. We're not discussing a situation where the old rules treated the information as unclassified and the new rules treated it as classified.

And note that even this weak defense only applies to the emails redacted by the State Department, not the classified (including top secret) material uncovered by the intelligence community's inspector general, who emphasized:

These emails were not retroactively classified by the State Department; rather these emails contained classified information when they were generated and, according to IC classification officials, that information remains classified today. This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.

The material uncovered by the IG included information about North Korea's nuclear program--hardly the dinner party chit-chat Jack hopes it was.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom