http://nypost.com/2016/01/24/hillary-not-worried-email-flap-will-hurt-candidacy-chances/Hillary not worried email flap will hurt candidacy chances
By Marisa Schultz
January 24, 2016 | 4:35pm
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton said Sunday she’s not worried about her email server damaging her presidential campaign despite an independent investigator finding super-secret messages on her homebrew server.
“I’m not concerned,” Clinton told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “because I know what the facts are. I never sent or received any material marked ‘classified.’ I cannot control what the Republicans leak and what they are contending.”
The inspector general for the intelligence community alerted Congress recently that emails Clinton turned over to the State Department included several that were more compartmentalized than top secret.
The “special access program” classification is so off-limits that officials with the highest security clearance have to be granted permission to read such information.
Clinton maintains none of the emails were classified at the time she transmitted them from her unusual home-based private email server as secretary of state.
The more than 1,300 emails that have been upgraded to classified are part of the normal inter-agency disputes before public release and the super-secret emails were likely a New York Times article about the drone program, Clinton insists.
The Democratic front-runner accused the independent findings as a partisan leak and took special aim at Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is leading an aggressive investigation into Clinton and her top aide Huma Abedin.
“Now, Senator Grassley shows up at a Trump rally yesterday in Iowa, he’s the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who has, and his staff have been, you know, behind in pushing a lot of these stories, and announces he’s there for the simple reason to defeat me,” she said.
Clinton turned over her server and back-up drive to the FBI for its ongoing investigation into the security of classified information.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki said Sunday the ongoing federal investigation into Clinton’s email server could spell “grave” trouble for the Dems and suggested an outsider may have to jump into the race.
“Hillary Clinton is cratering, the scandals just keep coming,” Pataki told John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York. “She has grave legal issues that could totally prevent her from continuing her campaign, and the alternative is a self-avowed socialist who has never run anything.”
Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford said Clinton’s possession of such top secret emails “absolutely” is a security threat.
“It is a major risk to have this kind of information outside of a government server,” Lankford said on “Fox News Sunday,” noting a newspaper article wouldn’t trigger such classification.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Republicans are out to get Clinton and Inspector General Charles McCullough III needs to be “careful” his commentary isn’t leaked.
“You’ve got several Republican chairs who are actively campaigning against Hillary Clinton and doing investigations of her at the same time,” Schiff said.
“… By putting that commentary in it, knowing it’s going to be leaked, I think the inspector general does risk his reputation,” Schiff said of the President Obama-nominee. “And once you lose that as inspector general, you’re not much good to anyone. So I think the inspector general has to be very careful here.”
