State works hard, and illegally, for Clinton

The FBI has released still more notes on the investigation of Hillary Clinton, this time impugning the way State Department went through tens of thousands of emails she hid from the public for years. State is supposed to operate transparently but clearly had only two priorities — to cover its own backside, and to cover hers.

The FBI notes reveal suspicions about unnamed personnel at State assigned to vet the emails for release. The work history of some of them "appeared to create a conflict of interest," say the notes. One had been "possibly involved" in the IRS scandal, in which conservative nonprofit applicants were targeted for harassment.

Given that, their work product was what you'd expect. The names of officials were improperly whited out to protect them. At the same time, career government staff were put under pressure to avoid national security redactions, especially in the Benghazi-related communications that had to be handed over to Congress.

State's top brass lobbied against classified redactions, and wanted, illegally, to pretend that redactions made to conceal classified information were actually due to something other than national secrecy. Why? Because every redaction based on national secrecy was an admission that Clinton lied when she claimed never to have received classified information on her private, unsecured email system. In fact, there was far too much classified information on her server to allow that subterfuge to work.

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