Commerce, Justice, Science, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. In March of 2015, I began our long investigation into Secretary Clinton's use of nongovernment email for official business. Since then, I have written hundreds of letters, held hearings, and discussed my findings and concerns right here on the Senate floor. After all, the public's business ought to be public.

Today, we can add more findings to that ongoing list of Secretary Clinton's and her associates' wrongful conduct.

The other week I released a report from the State Department that finalized their administrative review of how Secretary Clinton's private server setup caused hundreds of security violations. That review found five things I am going to mention.

First, 91 valid security violations were identified and attributable to 38 individuals. That means 38 individuals mishandled classified information and were punished for it. The sanctions for a violation included suspension or revocation of their security clearance, suspension without pay, or termination, among other forms of punishment.

Second, an additional 497 valid violations were identified. However, the State Department was unable to determine who was culpable. The State Department was unable to identify culpability because some former Department employees didn't sit for interviews or because Secretary Clinton kept her server secret from government officials, so it was impossible for the Department to monitor security protocol in realtime.

The review also noted that there was a 5- to 9-year gap between the beginning of Secretary Clinton's State Department tenure when the security incidents began and when she finally turned over the emails, which she initially refused to do.

This many yearslong gap made it very challenging to determine who was culpable for every violation of regulation and law covering national security issues and the need for classification.

In total, Secretary Clinton's use of a nongovernment server for government business caused 588 security violations for mishandling classified information. Some of that classified information was classified at the very highest levels, including Top Secret/Special Access Program information.

According to the FBI, Secretary Clinton sent and received emails that contained highly classified information. It is hard to fathom how this wouldn't undermine our national security. If the average American did that, they would lose their clearance, their job, and might even go to jail.

That is what happened to Navy sailor Kristian Saucier. He took six photographs inside his submarine that exposed information classified at the confidential level. He mishandled classified information. He pled guilty and was sentenced to 1 year in Federal prison.

So people ask me: How come some people go to prison for violating classification and other people don't?

Let's go to the third point. The review found Secretary Clinton's nongovernmental server increased the risk of unauthorized disclosures.

Fourth, the review found that the nongovernment server increased the risk of security compromises.

Clinton's private server setup had been described as being so badly secured that it was almost impossible to detect who had attempted to attack it and gain access to it. Anyone could have done it.

Fifth and last, the review found that some classified information was deliberately transmitted via unclassified emails and resulted in adjudicated security violations.

Many in the press, as well as partisan Clinton defenders, have hung their hats on the State Department's finding that there was ``no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.''

Take, for example, the Washington Post. Their headline was ``State Department probe of Clinton email finds no deliberate mishandling of classified information.''

Well, that headline was entirely wrong. The State Department report said: ``Instances of classified information being deliberately transmitted via unclassified emails were the rare exception and resulted in adjudicated security violations.''

That statement clearly says some individuals deliberately transmitted classified information on unclassified systems. Those individuals were subject to security sanctions, but the State Department failed to describe who the violators were and what the sanctions were.

Those answers ought to be forthcoming. Consequently--you know my reputation--I intend to follow up. Ensuring the proper handling of highly classified information is an issue that should garner bipartisan support. This may sound like history, but there is a lesson to be learned from this history that classified information should be classified for protecting national security.

Furthermore, if government officials deliberately expose classified information on an unclassified system, why didn't the FBI find the same during their investigations?

We all know then-Director Comey refused to recommend any charges related to the Clinton investigation because the FBI could not identify the requisite criminal intent. It seems to me that deliberately sending classified information on unclassified channels is intentional conduct. Again, if the average American did that, they would be in big trouble, as I pointed out about the Navy sailor spending 1 year in prison.

During the course of my oversight activities, I acquired drafts of Comey's July 5, 2016, public statement exonerating Clinton. Comey's initial draft stated the following. This is the initial draft.

There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the private email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified material.

Comey also said this:

Similarly, the sheer volume of information that was properly classified as Secret at the time it was discussed on email (that is, excluding the up-classified emails) supports an inference that the participants were grossly negligent in their handling of that information.

Gross negligence--the words used by Comey--is a criminal standard under title 18, section 793.

He later dumbed-down his statement to a noncriminal standard:

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

And that was before he finished the investigation and interviewed 17 witnesses, including Secretary Clinton.

Director Comey never once said that some individuals deliberately sent classified information on an unclassified system. According to the State Department's findings, Comey should have come to that conclusion and made that statement.

Clearly, deliberate conduct rises beyond gross negligence. So who deliberately sent classified information on unclassified channels, and has the Department communicated this new finding to the FBI?

Just last week, I spoke on the floor about how the FBI pulled its punches during the Clinton investigation. I talked about how the FBI agreed to limit the scope of review to her time as Secretary of State. That decision eliminated potentially highly relevant emails before and after her tenure that could have shed light on why she operated the nongovernment server. It also eliminated emails around the time of the conference call between Clinton's attorneys and the administrator of her server that led to the deletion of her emails. That limitation of scope defies reason.

Lastly, the FBI agreed to destroy records and laptops of Clinton's associates after reviewing them. That is an astonishing agreement in light of the fact those records could have been relevant to ongoing congressional inquiries that the FBI knew about.

Secretary Clinton's actions caused 588 security violations and highly classified information to be exposed to an unclassified system. Some of those violations were very deliberate, but that is the first we have heard of it.

The public ought to know whether those folks involved were punished according to the letter of the law or were given special treatment. Equal application of the law without regard to power, party, or privilege ought to be the norm. With what we know up to this point, the Clinton investigation failed to hit its mark.

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