John Bolton: Hillary Clinton Email Defense ‘Deceitful, Or Utterly Uneducated’

Former Ambassador John Bolton, author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations,” joined Breitbart News daily host Stephen K. Bannon today to discuss the ongoing investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco.

Said Bolton of the broader issues of national Security involved: “Once your adversaries know what methods you’re using to collect intelligence, if you reveal sources inadvertently, though not deliberately, as these emails do, it’s not just that this one particular email is compromised, your ability to collect other information is compromised, as well,” said Bolton of Hillary Clinton’s email transgressions.

“I’ve talked to member of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee who have seen the emails, seen the text of emails that we haven’t seen because they’ve been deleted before they’ve been released publicly…. They just shake their heads and say, you can’t believe what we’re reading in there and it goes beyond that, as well,” added Bolton.

Bolton pointed out that the sophisticated methods employed by intelligence services today would mean that Hillary’s computers, including mics and cameras, could have been compromised allowing foreign agents to gather all sorts of intel beyond just the emails.

Bolton also cited a new Weekly Standard item he has out today discussing the email issue. That is available here. Bolton calls Hillary’s “dodge” of the issue “deceitful or utterly uneducated….”

Most emails released to date were exchanged among Clinton’s close political circle at State, but some originated from career personnel. This is a particularly pernicious, if little-noticed, consequence of her disdain for proper security: dumbing-down security protections department-wide. State’s bureaucracy knows no higher career goal than getting face time with the secretary or otherwise getting their names before her. No Washington bureaucracy is cleverer in figuring out how to reach that objective. Very likely, some number of senior State careerists knew of Clinton’s private email and accordingly communicated much of what they wanted her to see in unclassified form, thereby breaching security. More fodder for the FBI.

But, Clinton pleads, she did not originate any emails with classified information. Even if true, Clinton, the queen bee of this scheme, unarguably understood the game. In one known instance, proving the point clearly, she instructed an aide to delete classification markings and send classified material on an unclassified fax. If this isn’t evidence of “specific intent” for prosecutors, nothing is. It is delusional to say that an experienced, well-briefed official wouldn’t have had a good and growing sense of what should be classified, whether the material originated with her or not. Clinton served for six years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she saw significant amounts of classified information. She was no babe in the woods when she came to State. Once there, moreover, she signed a standard non-disclosure agreement that by its express terms defines classified information as “marked or unmarked .  .  . including oral communications.”

Clinton tries to minimize the seriousness of her error by arguing, as she did during the January 31 interview, that having hundreds of her emails wholly or partly redacted before release is nothing but “classification in retrospect.” This dodge is either deceitful or utterly uneducated. To argue, as Clinton does, that information properly unclassified at the time she received it can grow more sensitive as time passes is so breathtaking it almost defies physical reality.

The full audio of Bolton’s Breitbart News Daily interview is available below.