With the Federal Bureau of Investigation frantically telling us “pay no attention to those emails,” and “nothing to see here, move along,” WikiLeaks has indirectly exposed just how “extremely careless” Hillary Clinton has been with national security.
In a report by The New York Post‘s Paul Sperry, we learned over the weekend—just shortly before we learned of Director James Comey’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card to Congress on Clinton’s behalf—that the former secretary of state forwarded classified emails to her maid to have them printed out. He wrote:
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.
In fact, Marina Santos was called on so frequently to receive e-mails that she may hold the secrets to E-mailgate — if only the FBI and Congress would subpoena her and the equipment she used.
Clinton entrusted far more than the care of her DC residence, known as Whitehaven, to Santos. She expected the Filipino immigrant to handle state secrets, further opening the Democratic presidential nominee to criticism that she played fast and loose with national security.
Clinton would first receive highly sensitive e-mails from top aides at the State Department and then request that they, in turn, forward the messages and any attached documents to Santos to print out for her at the home.
But, that wasn’t the only person without a security clearance who was instructed to print out Clinton’s classified emails.
On Saturday, as part of a brand-new doc drop into its “Clinton Emails” dossier, WikiLeaks exposed another family staff member, Oscar Flores. Flores, a former Navy chief petty officer who was once the White House chef for the Clintons and who now serves as the head of operations at their Chappaqua, N.Y., home, also printed out classified emails.
A search of the latest grouping of Clinton emails finds more than 360 instances in which Flores was asked to print an email for the then-secretary of state. It is unclear if he, like Santos, had access to Clinton’s top-secret communications room at the Chappaqua residence, but given the high degree of esteem the Clintons held him in, it would seem highly likely.
It is also unclear how many other staffers without the proper security clearance had access to Hillary’s emails. A search of the phrase “pls print” in the WikiLeaks online dossier came back with nearly 900 positive responses.
This is relevant, because each individual instance of mishandling a classified document is a federal felony, regardless of “intent.”
