Elite FBI Unit Conducting ‘Extremely Serious’ Probe Of Hillary Clinton – OpEd

A crack unit of special agents and IT technicians are heading up the team assigned to what’s been touted as by law enforcement officers as an “extremely serious” investigation into Hillary Clinton’s Internet server. According to Fox News Channel’s Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge on Friday, the focus of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe includes the application of federal law regarding the handling, transmission and safeguarding of classified intelligence and sensitive data.

The section of the Espionage Act applicable to the Clinton server episode is known as 18 US Code 793. According to Herridge, in addition to the already known aspects of the law enforcement investigation, FBI agents from the counterintelligence division will attempt to determine whether or not Mrs. Clinton should have known that emails passing through her server contained classified information regardless of the markings. Experts in the area of intelligence gather and analysis claim that Hillary Clinton was not some underling at the State Department but the top diplomat who is responsible for policy and procedures.

According to 18 US Code §793, the Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information: “Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it…” –

Clinton’s campaign minions, her former staff members, Democratic Party politicians and her supporters within the nation’s newsrooms are quick to spout the standard talking points in defense of Clinton. A number of them appear on television news programs and radio talk show claiming that Mrs. Clinton “never sent nor received any email that was marked classified” during the period in question. According to Herridge, “It is not clear how the FBI team’s findings will impact the probe itself. But the details offer a window into what investigators are looking for — as the Clinton campaign itself downplays the controversy.”

While several experts have discussed the seriousness of the allegations on Fox News and other media outlets, the Examiner spoke with a former New York Police Department Intelligence Division detective who said what has been reported appears not only to have been criminal activity, but that the violation of 18 US Code §793 as described in the federal penal code by those involved is a serious felony.

In addition, the Code of Federal Regulations reads: “Any person who has knowledge that classified information has been or may have been lost, possibly compromised or disclosed to an unauthorized person(s) shall immediately report the circumstances to an official designated for this purpose.”

According to Christopher Farrell, director of investigations for Judicial Watch and a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, besides Hillary Clinton, her two aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, disregarded a federal judge’s order this month requiring both to make sworn statements to the court that all government documents in their possession will be returned to federal officials, “What we have is a secretary of state, the only cabinet official in our history, who established her own private email server … in an effort to avoid the normal protocols for unclassified and classified communications. It’s an end run,” he told counterterrorism expert Bill Gertz.

Farrell, in a briefing on the Clinton email affair at the Judicial Watch offices, said supporters of Clinton have sought to portray the use of the private email system to send classified information as a minor administrative matter. To Catherine Herridge’s credit, Fox News was first to report, Aug. 19, that two emails — from aides Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan — with classified information kick-started the FBI probe, a point not disputed by the Clinton campaign.

One former police investigator who trains cops in interview and interrogation techniques claims if he handled the case he would “target” Mrs. Clinton’s aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills. “Although Clinton and her crafty lawyer David Kendall can assert that she didn’t send or receive classified information — it’s believed they removed security classification from the material — her aides are stumped. They can’t make that claim,” said Philip Reardon. “That’s when you start waving a ‘plea deal’ under their noses and offer them a ‘break’ if they inform on Mrs. Clinton. Otherwise, Clinton will never talk,” said Reardon.