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Clinton Email Scandal: What Did Hillary Crony Admit That Everyone Already Knows?


Corruption: A funny thing happens when political figures play around the edges of truth. They acknowledge facts everyone else has long accepted to be true. One of Hillary Clinton’s confidants did just that last week.

While being interviewed on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., Lanny Davis, a longtime Clinton fixer — has any political family ever need more fixing? — told the hosts that he wouldn’t be surprised if Clinton’s private email server had been hacked. It was such a startling admission that host Larry O’Connor had to ask Davis again to make sure that he had not misunderstood him. The second time around, the response was the same.

“I wouldn’t be surprised because the federal government itself has been hacked,” said Davis, “but as of now, no, it hasn’t been hacked.”

No. 1, he can’t know whether it’s been hacked or not. Unless Davis has upgraded his education attending night school, he’s neither a computer forensics expert nor a cybersecurity whiz. He’s merely putting the Clinton spin on it.

No. 2, arguing that it’s OK if Clinton was hacked because “the federal government itself has been hacked” is no argument at all. Yes, the government has been hacked. But the government has layers of security that her homebrew email system didn’t have. It was far more vulnerable to hackers than the secure State Department email that she rejected.

Indeed, a high-ranking former KGB officer told John R. Schindler, a former national security affairs professor at the Naval War College, that “of course” the Russian foreign intelligence “service got it all” from Clinton’s email, and it didn’t even have to work hard for it.

“I don’t know if we’re as good as we were in my time,” Schindler’s source told him, “but even half-drunk the SVR” — today’s version of the KGB — “could get those emails, they probably couldn’t believe how easy Hillary made it for them.”

Breaching Clinton’s system was so easy that a Romanian hacker reportedly was able to access her emails through the account of Sidney Blumenthal, another Clinton crony, who steered Clinton into her private war in Libya. That hacker, known as Guccifer, famously claimed that “I used to read (Clinton’s) memos . . . and then do the gardening.” Take his words seriously because he has been extradited to the U.S., and, according to one intelligence source, is likely in the country to help the FBI make its case against Clinton.

By some accounts, Guccifer was not a particularly skilled hacker. But, again, he likely didn’t have to be. The Associated Press reported last fall that Clinton’s arrangement was vulnerable to “low-skilled intruders” and “appeared to allow users to connect openly over the Internet to control it remotely.” A hacker in Serbia even “scanned Clinton’s basement server in Chappaqua at least twice.” One cybersecurity expert called the setup “total amateur hour.”

Remember that this is the email account of the United States secretary of state, not that of a low-level functionary. That it isn’t a much bigger scandal, a far heavier anchor hanging around Clinton’s neck, reflects poorly on our culture. When did we allow corruption of this depth to become acceptable? Have politics become so much of a popularity contest that character no longer matters in elections?

We’re afraid that the answer to the second question is an unequivocal “yes.” The elections and re-elections of Clinton’s husband and then Barack Obama confirm this, and our concern is that those mistakes will be repeated again this fall, then four years later. It’s an error that could be avoided, though, if voters closely watched Clinton’s email scandal unfold — and also paid attention to what some of those around her are saying.

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/clinton-email-scandal-what-did-hillary-crony-admit-that-everyone-already-knows/