Evidence may be mounting that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton violated a provision in the federal Espionage Act.
The penalty for such a violation under the Espionage Act of 1913: a fine, a prison term of up to ten years, or “both.”
Fox reports the FBI and Department of Justice investigation into Clinton’s emails now focuses on a single provision in the Espionage Act. Did Clinton allow an unauthorized person access to the national defense information in her email inbox? The investigation is focusing on the provision pertaining to “gross negligence.”
The law (18 U.S. Code & 793 subsection f) is very clear.
The law applies to “Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense,” which obviously includes Clinton. Classified information appeared throughout her emails recovered by investigators.
The law is broken if that person “through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed.”
The law could also be broken if the person “having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—”
With that in mind, here are some trouble spots for Clinton as the investigation plays out:
Hackers Got Into Her Email Inbox
On the morning of August 3, 2011, Clinton received a fake speeding ticket in her email inbox with the subject line “Uniform traffic ticket.” If Clinton clicked on the email to see if she actually got a speeding ticket, then the hackers would have been able to steal all of her information.
This was one of at least five times that Clinton received messages from hackers, who might have been Russian.
The problem was bad enough that security experts were called in to look at the infected messages the next month, in September 2011. The experts concluded that as part of this scheme, victims’ information was forwarded to overseas computers, including at least one in Russia.
Her Server Was Completely Insecure
As Breitbart News reported, Clinton’s email server had a webmail subdomain that gave hackers unrestricted access to her inbox.
clintonemail.com had a subdomain called webmail.clintonemail.com, according to the account’s GoDaddy.com encryption certificate. That subdomain is a web-based email portal that considerably weakened the server’s defenses and invited attack.
A webmail portal allows web traffic to bypass hardware and software firewalls to easily access the server’s mail “interface.”
Platte River Networks Handled Her Private Server
Clinton’s Denver-based email storage firm Platte River Networks never had a security clearance to handle classified information.
Platte River told Breitbart News that it picked Clinton’s server up from her home in Chappaqua, New York, where the server was stored in a basement. But the IP addresses for Clinton’s server show that it shared physical space with Clinton Foundation servers, and it traced to New York City. The Clintons could have moved the device to Chappaqua before Platte River got there.
She Didn’t Tell Her Own Department She Had A Private Email Account
When it comes to “gross negligence,” this one is a doozy. If Clinton’s email account HAD been hacked, the State Department IT Help Desk wouldn’t have been able to help her. They didn’t even know she had a private account.
When Clinton’s server went down in February 2010, her top aide Huma Abedin told her what happened:
“Ur email must be back up!!,” Abedin said. “What happened is judith sent you an email. It bounced back. She called the email help desk at state (I guess assuming u had state email) and told them that. They had no idea it was YOU, just some random address so they emailed. Sorry about that. But regardless, means ur email must be back! R u getting other messages?”
The White House Told Her To Use Government Email
Hillary Clinton ignored White House guidance on official email use.
Top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett recently threw Clinton under the bus, saying that the White House wanted Clinton to use government email.
“Yes, there were. Yeah, absolutely,” Jarrett said when asked if the White House sent guidance to Cabinet secretaries about not using private email. “Obviously we want to make sure that we preserve all government records, and so there was guidance given that government business should be done on government emails and that if you did use a private email that it should be turned over.”