Let a Thousand Treasons Bloom: Our Nation's Attorney General Refuses to Say If The Law Means What It Says When It Says That Giving Secret Information to a Non-Cleared Person is Illegal

To save Hillary Clinton, they had to put flamethrowers to the whole village.

Sometimes it takes a village to free a felon.

John Sexton digests the incredible exchange from the House panel's quizzing of Lynch earlier today:

Chaffetz: Does an individual need a security clearance to review or have access to classified material?

Lynch: Well, congressman, that issue would be dependent upon the agency for whom they worked and the nature of the work that they did with respect to…

Chaffetz: Can you give me an example where you don’t need a security clearance to view classified material?

Lynch: No, I believe as I was going to say, they would, but the type of clearance varies with every agency and the agency would make that decision and determination.

Chaffetz: Is it legal or illegal to share classified information with somebody who doesn’t have a security clearance?

Lynch: Congressman, it depends on the facts of every situation. You’d have to determine how that sharing occurred. You’d have to determine the means. You’d have to determine the reason, the intent, um, certainly depending on how you view the statute it could go any number of ways.

Chaffetz: So you think there is a scenario in which you could share classified information with somebody who doesn’t have the requisite security clearance?

Lynch: No, I would not draw that conclusion. I would say that I’m not able to answer it as a hypothetical but there are a number of factors that would go into the decision and one could have any number of results.

"This exchange continued for several more minutes," Sexton adds dryly.

At every turn, Lynch reverted to her scripted, mob-lawyer-vetted non-answer and refused to say if it is still a crime to disclose secret information to a person unauthorized to receive it.

I can understand her confusion -- the law is very vague. Secret documents are routinely stamped, "It is a felony imprisonable by up to ten years to disclose this information to any unauthorized person."

I can understand this unqualified hack's confusion on the issue.

posted by Ace at 04:24 PM

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