Originally Posted by Rochard

I do not believe that there will be any charges.

The charges that would be brought would be under the Espionage Act, and was meant to prosecute spies. Meaning the laws were created to charge a spy with taking classified information and giving it an agent of another country (Ally or otherwise). In these cases, they look at intent and damages. The intention was for her to do her job, and there was no damages.

One of the charges they are looking at is "mishandling classified information". That's a big vague. You can clearly argue she never mishandled anything - she sent an email and it got sent to the correct person, it was not intercepted, and the information was not received by anyone other than the person it was intended for. There will also be discussions about if the receiving person was allowed to received classified information, but you can argue that until you are blue in the face too - Was the email classified, when was it classified, was the other person allowed to received such classified information, and did the person sending know it was classified, etc.... At a certain point in time it will become impossible for our government to do business because before anyone in the State Department / White House / Congress / CIA / Pentagon sends out any information via email, it will have to be vetted by a dozen different agencies, the CIA, the Justice Department, and then the Justice League. (Yes, I said Justice League!)

One of the "classified" emails was about a birthday wish. It was from a staff member to Clinton which was forwarded to another staff member to handle. It was a reminder to send to send a birthday wish to a President of another country. The information wasn't classified, no one need to "read in" on the information, but for some reason it was classified after the fact for reasons no one understands.

On top of all of this, if the Secretary of State decides that one of her staff members needs to be involved in something that involves classified information, shouldn't the Secretary of State be allowed to do this? Or should the entire State Department drag to a halt every time they have to have a discussion about classified information?

I don't like Hillary. (I obviously like Trump a lot less.) But frankly, this is a waste of time, money, and resources. Even if she is completely guilty and they go all out to press full charges - which are highly unlikely - Clinton will put into a place a legal dream team that make the OJ case look like child's play, delay any potential charges until well after the election, will fight them tooth and nail, and in the end she'll be charged with a handful of misdemeanor and a small fine.

This is like someone loosing their brakes on a hill and having a small accident - and then being handed a traffic ticket for speeding.