Oops: Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Obama official who failed to understand that you don’t send sensitive information via unprotected email.
The State Department has confirmed that Clinton’s successor as secretary of state, John Kerry, sent her a message, now deemed secret, from his personal email account.
At the time (May 2011), Kerry chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with access to top-level secrets. But since Kerry sent the message, he presumably knew Hillary also wasn’t using a government email address.
Same for President Obama: He claims he first learned about Clinton’s private email address from news accounts — but it turns out he and Hillary exchanged at least 18 emails, which State refuses to make public.
Uh-oh: What did the president know, and when did he know it?
As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy notes, Gen. David Petraeus was convicted for keeping journal records of, among other things, his discussions with the president.
And though Hillary now argues that none of her emails was marked classified at the time, neither were Petraeus’ journals.
An Obama executive order years ago spelled out categories of info that are automatically classified — such that compromising the security of such information “is presumed to cause damage to national security.”
Petraeus’ journals and dozens (at least) of Clinton’s emails broke those “born classified” rules.
Which raises the question of whether the president, by communicating with Hillary over her unprotected server, also mishandled classified information. Will that play a role in the final call on bringing criminal charges in Clinton’s case?
The scandal, in short, is about more than just Hillary Clinton now.