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Former Inspector General: Powerful Democrat Women Standing in Way of Hillary Indictment

Alex Wong, Win McNamee, Olivier Douliery, /Getty Images; Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty

by JOHN SEXTON2 Feb 2016

A former Inspector General for the State Department says Hillary Clinton will never be indicted for her use of a private email server because there are four loyal Democrats standing in the way.

Former Inspector General Howard J. Krongard says the current FBI investigation should be focused on how material made it from the classified email system, known as SIPRNet, to Clinton’s unclassified private server. “It can’t just jump from one system to the other. Someone had to move it, copy it. The question is who did that?” Krongard tells the New York Post.

Krongard says Hillary’s top three aides–Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, and Jake Sullivan–are facing “significant scrutiny” because they sent most of the material that wound up on Clinton’s server. Though it has yet to be determined how classified material wound up crossing from one email system to the other, Krongard suggests staffers emailing Hillary likely summarized what they had read elsewhere.

“She’s trying to distance herself from the conversion from SIPRNet to [the nonsecure] NIPRNet and to her server, but she’s throwing her staffers under the bus,” Krongard tells the Post. Indeed, when Clinton was pressed about whether something needed to be marked classified in order to be considered classified on a Sunday news show, she replied that identifying such material was the responsibility of “someone down the chain.”

Even if the FBI decides Clinton holds the ultimate responsibility for creating the private server, “It will never get to an indictment,” Krongard tells the Post. The decision to act on the FBI’s recommendation would have to pass through, “four loyal Democrat women.” Krongard is referring to Loretta Lynch and her deputies Leslie Caldwell and Sally Yates. In addition, Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama’s top advisers, could weigh in.

What Krongard expects would actually happen, if the FBI recommends pursuing the case, is something similar to what Gen. Petraeus faced, i.e. a misdemeanor plea deal would be reached. Petraeus’ deal gave him two year’s probation and a $100,000 fine for sharing “top secret” information with his biographer Paula Broadwell. No leak of the classified information beyond Broadwell was ever uncovered.

Krongard notes that Gen. Petraeus’ lawyer, David Kendall, is also Clinton’s lawyer. Until a few months ago, Kendall kept a thumb drive with a copy of her emails on a thumb drive in his office (the State Department sent him a special safe to keep it in). That arrangement changed when “top secret” information was discovered among Clinton’s emails. The FBI seized the thumb drive from Kendall and the private server from the hosting company that kept it after Clinton left her post at the State Department.