New Email Appears to Show Clinton Ordering Staff to Improperly Handle Sensitive Material

Scott Olson/Getty Images
Scott Olson/Getty Images

The latest Hillary Clinton document dump occurred in the wee hours of Friday morning, and contains what appears to be a smoking-gun revelation: Clinton ordering her aides to strip the classification markings from confidential material and retransmit it using unsecure methods.

CBS News reports on what looks like a blatant violation of the law, not to mention the final demolition of Clinton’s false claims to be unaware that classified material was passing through her unauthorized, unsecure private email server:

On the campaign trail, the presidential candidate has insisted that no classified information was sent or received through her private email server.

But in one email exchange between Clinton and staffer Jake Sullivan from June 17, 2011, the then-secretary advised her aide on sending a set of talking points by email when he had trouble sending them through secure means.

Part of the exchange is redacted, so the context of the emails is unknown, but at one point, Sullivan tells Clinton that aides “say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it.”

Clinton responds, “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

CBS tries to give Clinton an out by saying there’s no way to tell for certain from this exchange if the talking points in question contained classified material… but Clinton and Sullivan are clearly aware they are discussing material that was supposed to be transmitted using secure means, and she knows perfectly well how important those “identifying headings” are.

At the very least, this is yet another example of Hillary Clinton using her own highly suspect judgment to unilaterally decide how sensitive material should be handled. In 2011, intelligence agencies weren’t using faxes instead of email because faxing paper copies is more fun.

The next step for investigators would be isolating the document Clinton instructed Sullivan to strip of its markings and convert into an unsecure email. The amount of redacted information in this particular email chain does not bode well for Clinton.

Fox News notes that the latest document dump includes 65 more messages classified as “confidential,” plus one classified as “secret,” bringing the total number of classified emails discovered on Clinton’s mail server to 1,340. Needless to say, this is considerably higher than the “zero” she claimed.

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