Hillary Clinton email megathread

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

So far, it appears most responders don't view Clinton's mishandling of classified information to be a serious matter.  Whether the average voter cares or not, mishandling classified information is a crime that Federal employees must acknowledge when they accept a security clearance.  I believe the penalty is a $10,000 fine, 5 years in prison, or both.

If the 10% rate of classified material that the IG reportedly found in the first forty e-mails checked continues, the AG would be hard pressed not to prosecute.  Even if they just strike a plea bargain (likely for her to have no further access to classified material ever), how is she supposed to continue forward as a credible candidate?  (And, if you think about it, how would the government be able to prosecute or penalize others who breech classified information if they don't go after her?) 

Sure, the 40% of hard-core Democratic voters won't care, but a solid majority will take note and she will be mercilessly hammered for this during what is turning out to be a 15 month campaign   I'm not a Democrat and won't likely vote for whoever might run in her place, be it Warren, Biden, Cuomo, or even Webb.  But I can't believe it is too late for a strong candidate to emerge to take her place.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/08/12/clinton_campaign_seeks_to_calm_supporters_about_emails_127750.html

My prediction: her defense is going to be that someone else screwed up, and she had no idea there was all that classified information on her server.  And it'll play well enough that the only people who will care will be people who would never vote for her in the first place.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

There's some serious denial going on here about just how big a deal this is. There's a decent chance that the Democratic frontrunner could end up under federal indictment during this election season. Even Ted Cruz could win under those circumstances.

We have people here posting that this story is nothing, or nothing but partisan slander, or whatever. You'd better wake up. This is going to be huge.

I really don't think it is. The government loves to classify stuff, including stuff that's already public knowledge. (Remember when government employees weren't allowed to look at news stories about Snowden?) A huge chunk of this is going to turn out to be: "So-and-so emailed about topic X, which was classified, but there were also news reports on CNN about it." I'm almost starting to wonder if the whole thing isn't a deliberate bait and switch directed at Republicans.

There are plenty of very good criticisms the Republicans could make of Hillary, on many topics. But instead, they're going to spend months (and months, possibly all the way through next summer) raving about Hillary sending Top Secret information (implied to be about anti-terror black ops and nuclear readiness) in her email. And then what's likely to actually come out, for anyone to read, is some people (not Hillary herself) talking about trivial junk, most if not all of which was already being discussed in the media at the time.

And the Republicans will just have wasted a huge chunk of time and resources on a snipe-hunt that made them look like vindictive idiots.