But What Law Did She Break?
Some yammerwit asked me what law Hillary broke by placing classified State Department material on her private and unsecured server.
18 U.S. Code s. 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information reads at paragraph (f):
“Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Please note that merely by taking State Department emails into her possession and retaining them after her stint as Secretary was done, she is a felon. The security level of those emails is immaterial. Removal from its proper place of custody of even one is sufficient.
There are separate statutes concerning the destruction of subpoenaed documents, obstruction of justice, lying under oath, and so on.
Back in the last century, when one had to go to the law library in the court house to look up a Federal statute, ignorance of the law, while being no excuse legally, was not necessarily willful. Now, you can find the law on several websites at the touch of a button. Hence, such ignorance is not excusable.
If the press columns you read did not say what Hillary was charged with, their deceptive negligence is also inexcusable.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
