The State Department Inspector General’s (IG) investigation report leaked out a day early on May 25 makes a number of significant points. These matter, and need to be considered by anyone voting in November.
What’s in the IG Report
- Neither Clinton nor any of her senior staff would participate in the IG’s investigation.
- Clinton never sought approval, legal or technical, for her unprecedented private email system.
- IT staffers and others at State warned her against it.
- Had she sought approval, the State Department would not have granted it.
- Clinton violated Federal Records laws.
- Clinton did not turn over all of her work-related emails. Several (unclassified) were quoted in the IG report that had never been released.
- Clinton violated State Department policies and guidelines in place at the time, even as the State Department enforced those on the rank-and-file.
- IT staff at the State Department who raised concerns internally were falsely told the server was approved and ordered to not discuss it further.
- Clinton’s use of a non-standard email account caused many of her emails to not reach their recipients inside State, and ended up instead in Spam.
- State Department staffers not in Clinton’s inner circle aware of her private email address could not communicate with the head of their agency.
- His State Department bosses did not know their employee, Bryan Pagliano, was simultaneously working directly for Clinton maintaining her private server.
- The server came under severe enough hacker attacks that its administrator had to physically unplug it to prevent intrusions.
The question of classified material handling is, by agreement, being left by State to the FBI, and is thus not addressed in the IG report.
All of that is in the report. I’ve read the whole thing, and if you do not believe my summary, above, or wonder what specific laws and regulations are being cited, you can also read the whole thing and learn for yourself.
What Matters
- For the first time, a set of actual facts of Clinton’s actions and decisions have been laid out by an independent, government entity. The IG was appointed by Obama and his report is dispassionate. No one can realistically claim this is a hit job. Sources are cited and laws footnoted.
- Clinton did break Federal Records laws and violate State Department regulations that her organization held others to.
- Despite repeated promises of transparency and cooperation, neither Hillary nor any of her senior staff would agree to participate in the IG’s investigation. Former Sectaries of State Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright did participate fully and voluntarily in the investigation. Clinton alone did not.
- Clinton never sought approval, and ignored advice to stop what she was doing. She ran the server with no oversight. With no oversight, the only check on Clinton was Clinton herself.
- That lack of oversights extended to potential destruction of evidence. It was Clinton alone who…