OPINION:
Examples of the carelessness — perhaps criminal carelessness — of Hillary Clinton as secretary of State continue to leak from the thousands of emails just now coming to light. Some of the examples of carelessness are more, well, careless than others. James Comey, the director of the FBI, may be willing to forgive her, but the rest of us don’t have to fall to Hillary’s beguiling charm and hypnotic bewitchery. (There’s no accounting for taste.)
In one email exchange, Huma Abedin, Hillary’s aide-de-camp, tells how she left classified information on the front seat of her car and asked another aide, as a “favor,” to try to fetch it and put in a “secure” place. That place, which seemed “secure” enough to Miss Abedin, was the trunk of her car.
“I’m going to have ambassador ride on next drive,” she told Lauren Jiloty of Hillary’s personal staff, in the email. “There’s a bunch of burn stuff in the pocket of my front seat. Can u put it in trunk.”
This apparently consisted of papers, exact sensitivity not clear, that was intended for a “burn bag” for safe destruction. Miss Abedin and Hillary were apparently in India at the time, and perhaps the papers were no more important than confirmation of an appointment with a hairdresser, a lady’s tailor specializing in pants suits, or a yoga master. India is full of yoga masters. But the rules, as set out in the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, suggest documents more serious than that.
“Burn bags,” the State Department manual states, “must contain only the classified material that is to be destroyed. Personal documents, trash, recyclable materials, metal objects (such as binder clips and acco fasteners), string, twine, spiral binders, cleaning cloths, food, or any other object that is not classified material should not be placed in a burn bag.” So if Miss Abedin was following the rules the material she left on the front seat of her car was clearly classified.
On the other hand, Hillary, by her own telling, ran a pretty loose shop at the State Department. One State Department munchkin told the Daily Caller that in some cases burn bags could be used to dispose of information that is sensitive but not classified. But no paper clips or half-eaten hot pastrami sandwiches.
The FBI director concluded that Hillary’s use of her own private email server to conduct official State Department business was “extremely careless.” In the documents teased out of the government through law suits filed by Judicial Watch, we’re learning just how careless Hillary and her aides could be with the nation’s business. No doubt neither Miss Abedin nor Miss Jolity intended to do the nation harm, and Miss Jolity’s errand to run down the stuff left on the street for anyone to see was just a “favor” that she was happy to do. You go, girl.
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