Hillary Clinton's decision to set up a private email server in her home while she was secretary of state has raised many questions, including why the government allowed it, what was in the emails and whether or not they ever will be seen by the public.
But as she appears ready to launch a campaign for the presidency, a key question emerges: How did her actions affect national security?
"I talked to security experts at Kaspersky Lab about how Clinton made herself vulnerable to hackers by exclusively using a homebrew email system, and their answer was basically, how didn't she make herself vulnerable," reported Adam Clark Estes, a senior writer for the tech-oriented website Gizmodo.
"The main problem is that Clinton [failed to secure] her private email server — and endangered national security as a result," Estes wrote.
He quoted researcher Patrick Nielsen.
"From a technical perspective, a cabinet member using a homemade solution means adding an array of technologies and middlemen through whom the United States government can effectively be severely compromised," Nielson said.
Estes explained that means "a hacker could effectively snoop on U.S. government mail without directly hacking U.S. government servers."
And he noted "clintonemail.com" is owned by a Florida company, Perfect Privacy LLC, and registered to another company, Network Solutions, which introduces "just two third parties in a long line of private companies involved in Clinton sending an email to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, or whomever."
Then there are the server companies.
"Each of these companies are potential targets that could give a hacker access to the secretary of state's email system, again without directly attacking the U.S. government."
As WND reported Thursday, video has been unearthed of the then-first lady declaring at a 2000 fundraiser for her senatorial campaign that she didn’t “do email” because of the many investigations targeting her and her husband.
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said there are two potential legal pitfalls for Clinton.
Napolitano's comments:
He said federal law makes it a crime to conceal or destroy government records, and the offense is a felony with the possible penalty of being banned forever from holding public office.
"She's in a lot of trouble legally," he said.
He pointed out that if she has classified information, or discussions about classified information, in her home network rather than a secured government computer, she has violated the law.
It was inconceivable, Napolitano said, that she worked as secretary of state and did not have such material.
"I don't know how she could do her job," he said.
"Clinton's decision to forgo the state department's servers is in explicable and inexcusable," said Nate Cardozo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Estes wrote: "It remains entirely unclear if this will torpedo Clinton's next campaign before it starts or get swallowed by the white noise of the impending election cycle. But Clinton has responded to the uproar by saying she wants the public to read all those emails and will release them."
To which critics say she should just release them, since they are on her server.
The National Journal's Ron Fournier wrote: "A cornered Clinton is a craven Clinton, which is why we should view Hillary Rodham Clinton's latest public relations trick with practiced skepticism."
He noted she tweeted Wednesday night: "I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible."
Fournier asked: "If she wants us to see her email, why did she create a secret account stored on a dark server registered at her home?"
The Washington Post reported a congressional committee on Wednesday subpoenaed information about the private email account.
The Post said the subpoenas, sent by the special House committee probing the 2012 Benghazi attack, reflected "the angry response more broadly from Republican lawmakers and conservative watchdogs who said Clinton's private email system allowed her to evade scrutiny from investigations and legal proceedings."
The controversy left Democrat activists wondering about the heir apparent to the Democrat nomination for president.
"There's always another shoe to drop with Hillary," Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, told the Post. "Do we nominate her not knowing what’s in those e-mails?"
Reuters reported the State Department said it would take months to review Clinton's emails.
Tom Fitton, president of the Washington watchdog Judicial Watch, said Clinton's private handling of emails could affect nearly a dozen of his group's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits now active in federal courts as well as dozens of pending FOIA requests.
"As with what happened when Judicial Watch forced the disclosure of the ‘missing’ IRS emails, I am convinced that these emails would never have been disclosed but for our FOIA lawsuits that broke open the Benghazi scandal and first exposed the scandal of her and Bill Clinton raising money illicitly while she was Secretary of State," he said.
"We are concerned that the Obama administration may have withheld material information and may have purposely misled and lied to Judicial Watch, as well as at least one federal court about these emails," said Fitton.
He said the emails must be "immediately secured so that they can be searched in response to our lawful FOIA requests."
"In addition to violations of the Freedom of Information Act, laws governing the preservation of federal records and the handling of classified information also may be implicated in this latest Clinton scandal," he said.
Clinton's response that she wanted the public to see the emails was ridiculed by media.
MSNBC called it nonsense and insulting to the intelligence of Americans.
See the comments:
The founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch and a longtime foe of the Clintons blasted her for the setup.
"There is no crime beneath the Clintons, as history has shown. But this newest email scandal is not minor," said Larry Klayman, who said Wednesday he's preparing requests for contempt citations in current lawsuits.
"It rises to the level of major criminality, as Hillary Clinton and her then State Department have again lied to courts and obstructed justice – as she did to independent counsels during her husband's administration," Klayman said.
He charged that in responding to the information requests, the Obama State Department at the direction of Hillary Clinton lied to several courts.
"Importantly, by Secretary Clinton's failing to produce the emails, but instead secretly hiding them by using private email accounts, she compromised national security by communicating on non-secured lines," Klayman said in a statement.
"Just yesterday, Gen. David Petraeus agreed to a criminal plea deal over his alleged misuse of national security classified information. It is likely that Hillary Clinton's misuse rises to an even greater level of criminality."
Klayman said the American people "also deserve to know the truthful facts about her felonious work at the State Department concerning Iran, and the courts must now allow Freedom Watch discovery into why the requested documents were hidden and never produced, so that they can be disclosed in the public interest."