Former Ambassador John Bolton, author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations,” says “I’d be in jail right now” if he did what Hillary Clinton allegedly did with top secret information on a private server. “There’s no question about it.”
Bolton made the comments to host Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily today in an exclusive interview.
“People are indoctrinated on how to protect this information, ” added Bolton, “Clinton people just ignored it.”
Bolton cited a new Weekly Standard article by him just up today as a “non-legal” analysis of the Clinton email server issue.
Her first error violates basic common sense, familiar to any private business: Business channels should be used for business purposes and personal channels for personal purposes. Obviously, there can be ambiguity between business and personal communications, such as one spouse asking another, “When will you be home for dinner?” But in Clinton’s case, there seems to be no ambiguity: She simply did not use government channels for her electronic communications. Her motive was almost certainly to put information she alone deemed personal beyond government access, which is impermissible even for the most junior clerk, let alone the secretary of state. Clinton’s private email system by definition undercuts her defense that she complied with government record-keeping requirements because all her emails went to unclassified government accounts (such as her aides’). Without full access to her server, why should we believe Clinton didn’t send emails to aides’ private email addresses, thereby shielding them entirely from potential government retrieval?
Clinton’s second error, using unclassified email systems—whether her private accounts or State’s unclassified email system (through her aides)—to transmit material that should have remained in classified channels, is the nub of the email issue. Clinton has asserted that what she did with her private channels was “allowed.” Yet she has produced no evidence whatever of who did this “allowing” that was contrary to applicable statutes and express State Department regulations involving official business and information security.
Clinton clearly did not vigorously pursue normal State procedures to have her private email server legitimized. Had she somehow gotten the necessary signoffs from the bureaucracy, she would have at least had cover from the current firestorm, and we would have heard about it long ago. Far more likely, she realized that, had she asked plainly, she would have been told plainly that her scheme was way out of bounds.
The full interview with Bolton can be heard below.