What aspect of "due process" is Bitchy Press Conference a part of?

Clear battle lines have already been drawn over FBI Director James Comey‘s announcement that no charges will be brought against Hillary Clinton in the “Emailgate” investigation, with one side convinced that Comey is a bought-and-paid-for Hillary puppet (a side that includes both Republicans and Bernie Sanders fans), and the other correctly wondering just where “Bitchy Press Conference” falls in the chain of due process.

These, however, are matters of opinion (one right and one wrong), whereas Comey’s presser has also resulted in a blizzard of factual error that has gleeful anti-Clinton media figures declaring her a liar and a danger to national security. Although Comey’s 15-minute presser begs complete dissection, I’d like to stick to just these two sexiest claims.

First, there was Comey’s revelation that some of the emails investigated were marked classified at the time they were sent or received, which is the basis for the claim that Hillary Clinton has been lying all along when she said she “did not send classified material and I did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified”:


Some, Comey included, will argue that this distinction makes no difference, but it certainly does, especially when judging whether or not Hillary Clinton lied. In this case, it’s important to listen carefully to what Comey said, which is that a “very small number” (whatever that means) “bore markings indicating the presence of classified information.”

There are several problems with this, most fundamental among them being that Comey’s press conference should have lasted 30 seconds, and not included what amounted to 15 minutes of unanswered, unexamined testimony against Hillary Clinton. No one can cross-examine Comey and ask him what “a very small number” means, nor can we know which “markings” he’s referring to. For example, one of the emails that Hillary-haters declared a smoking gun was one which bore the word “confidential” in the subject line, but which referred to attorney-client privilege, not government classification. Was there a “very small number” of these?

Another email released more recently contained the designation “(c)” for “confidential,” which is what’s called a “portion marking.” They call it that because the notation appears just before the portion of the document that is classified, in this case at the very bottom of the first page. However, according to the “Marking Classified National Security Information” training manual, this email was not marked as classified, at least not properly:

Identify the overall classification of the document. This will be equal to the highest classification level of any one portion found in the document. In this example, the highest classification is “Secret,” found in paragraph 2.
• Conspicuously place the overall classification at the top and bottom of the page.
• If the document contains more than one page, place the overall marking at the top and
bottom of the outside of the front cover, on the title page, on the first page, and on the
outside of the back cover (if any).
• Mark other internal pages either with the overall classification or with a marking
indicating the highest classification level of information contained on that page.

You can argue whether the designation in this email even fits the definition of “marked classified,” but this certainly casts doubt on the claim that Hillary lied. If a “very small number” of emails were supposed to be marked with a giant stamp at the top of each page, but they weren’t, that’s at worst an honest mistake. I would argue that such emails would definitely not qualify as “marked classified,” and I suspect Comey would have to concede that, since he very studiously avoided saying that.

Then, there was Comey’s entirely speculative and self-contradictory assertion that Hillary Clinton probably got hacked, because she wasn’t using a system that was even as secure as a Gmail-type account, and even though he found no evidence of this, he expected to find no evidence of this, because hackers are so sophisticated, except he did find evidence of intrusion on other people’s Gmail-type accounts, which he just said were more secure than Hillary’s:




Finally, there’s the subject of that distinction between information that’s “classified” and information that’s “marked classified,” which isn’t the basis of the claim that Hillary lied, but is another great reason for James Comey to shut the hell up. In fact, he pretty much said so himself when he told reporters that the handling of classified information at the State Department was “not the focus of our investigation.”

The FBI, and other security agencies within the government, are not partners with the State Department, they’re antagonists. Anyone who has done even a little bit of national security reporting will tell you that these agencies are absolute in their belief in secrecy, and would classify the menu board on their favorite lunch truck if they could, but this tendency is especially onerous to diplomats, who require a much greater level of flexibility in what they can discuss than other government officials. When Comey slams State as having a “lax culture” around secrecy, he’s delivering his opinion as a rival, not the unbiased assessment of an objective observer.

If James Comey had wanted to present a case against Hillary Clinton, he should have indicted her. Instead, he failed to charge her because he had no case, yet was still permitted to present a case against her. It is the media’s duty to correct that injustice, to rebut Comey’s misleading speculation with facts. Let’s see how that goes.

Update: So, it turns out the "very small number" was two, and one of them was the exact example I gave, and the other was the same as that one. From NYT:



Each was marked with a small notation, “(C),” indicating it contained information classified as “confidential.”

Furthermore, according to the State Department, even those two were marked in error

I hate to say I told you so, but I really don't.

Sorry, it was three emails, says Comey. He thinks.