Hillary Clinton Short-Circuited?

By Judge Andrew Napolitano When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked last week if she has misled the American people on the issue of her failure to safeguard state secrets contained in her emails she told my Fox News colleague Chris Wallace that the FBI had exonerated her. When pressed by Wallace she argued that FBI Director James Comey said that her answers to the American people were truthful. After Clinton recognized that even her strongest supporters doubted her statement she attempted to walk it back. In doing so she repeatedly lied again but offered as an excuse a bizarre claim that she had short-circuited her answer. Who knows what that means? She claimed that she and Wallace were talking over each other and her answer had been misunderstood and misconstrued. Yet Clinton said that Comey exonerated her as being truthful to the public when in fact he stated that she had been truthful during her three-hour closed-door unrecorded interview with the FBI. Clinton told a group of largely pro-Clinton journalists that she had short-circuited her remarks. Then she acknowledged that Comey had only referred to whatever she told the FBI as being truthful. Then she lied again by insisting that she told the FBI the same things she has told the press and the public since this scandal erupted in March 2015. But that cannot be so because she has issued a litany of lies to the press and to the public which the FBI would have caught. In her so-called clarifying remarks she again told journalists her oft-stated lie about returning all work-related emails to the State Department. She could not have told that to the FBI because Director Comey revealed in July that the FBI found thousands of unreturned work-related emails on her servers some of which she attempted to destroy. On the state secrets issue she has told the public countless times that she never sent or received anything marked classified. She could not have said that to the FBI because even a novice FBI agent would have recognized such a statement as a trick answer. Nothing is marked classified. The markings used by the federal government are confidential or secret or top secret. When Director Comey announced last month that the FBI was recommending against indictment he revealed nevertheless that his agents found 110 emails in 52 email threads containing materials that were confidential secret or top secret. The agents also found seven email chains on her servers that were select access privilege or SAP. SAP emails cannot be received opened or sent without knowing what they are as a special alphanumeric code one that changes continually must be requested and employed in order to do so. SAP is so secret that the FBI agents investigating Clinton lacked access to the code. Could Clinton have legally received opened stored or sent a secret or top secret email without knowing it as she has claimed? In a word: NO. Thats because on her first day in office Clinton swore under oath that she recognized her legal obligation to recognize state secrets and treat them according to law -- that is to keep them in a secure government venue -- whether they are marked as secrets or not.