As Hillary Clinton sinks ever deeper into E-mailgate, her excuses for grossly mishandling state secrets grow ever weaker. In defense of her gross negligence, Clinton and her comrades have dusted off a vintage 1990s cliché: “It’s the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy!”
Clinton has been hobbled by Inspector General of the Intelligence Community I. Charles McCullough III’s discovery that her private, unsecure computer server contained “several dozen” e-mails classified TOP SECRET/SAP. “Special Access Programs” is America’s highest clandestine designation. Such secrets must remain concealed because, under federal law, their “unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” As former Africom strategist Dan Maguire told Fox News, “There are people’s lives at stake.”
The response in Clintonia? Blame the Right and tar IGIC McCullough as a partisan GOP hack.
“I can’t control what Republicans and their allies do,” Clinton said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. Her outburst echoes Brian Fallon, her campaign flack.
As the SAP story broke on January 19, Fallon told Politico, “It is alarming that the intelligence community IG, working with Republicans in Congress, continues to selectively leak materials in order to resurface the same allegations and try to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”
Fallon repeated this charge nearly verbatim when he told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota: “I think that Republicans are continuing to try to trump it up and resurface these allegations for the purposes of hurting her campaign.”