An analysis published Sunday in the Washington Post of the emails found on Hillary Clinton’s private server included emails Hillary herself sent that contained classified information. That she should have known the information she herself put in these emails should be classified, and having the power herself to classify them, puts the lie to her claim that she is innocent of wrongdoing because others did not mark them classified. As the Washington Post reported:

Hillary Clinton wrote 104 emails that she sent using her private server while secretary of state that the government has since said contain classified information, according to a new Washington Post analysis of Clinton’s publicly released correspondence.

The finding is the first accounting of the Democratic presidential front-runner’s personal role in placing information now considered sensitive into insecure email during her State Department tenure. Clinton’s authorship of dozens of emails now considered classified could complicate her efforts to argue that she never put government secrets at risk.

roughly three-quarters of those cases, officials have determined that material Clinton herself wrote in the body of email messages is classified. Clinton sometimes initiated the conversations but more often replied to aides or other officials with brief reactions to ongoing discussions.

Hillary forgets that emails are marked because they are classified and not classified because they are marked. It is the content that makes all the difference, not the markings. She put the classified information in these emails and her claim that there were no classified markings is specious because at least one of her emails instructed her staff to remove markings and send classified data via unsecure means. As reported by HotAir.com:

Has the State Department released a smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal? In a thread from June 2011, Hillary exchanges e-mails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel…

“If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” That’s an order to violate the laws handling classified material. There is no other way to read that demand. Regardless of whether or not Sullivan complied, this demolishes Hillary’s claim to be ignorant of marking issues, as well as strongly suggests that the other thousand-plus instances where this did occur likely came under her direction.

Hillary has shown herself not to be an innocent victim but a conniving and manipulative individual who deliberately became the first Secretary of State to have a private server with the premeditated purpose of hiding politically damaging activities and secrets from the American people. 

Gen. David Petraeus was prosecuted and convicted of merely mishandling classified material, having it in his house to aid a biographer writing a book. Hillary exposed classified material to foreign hackers and governments on an unsecured server. As Investor’s Business Daily observed:

Scandal: Which is worse -- keeping classified information in a personal journal at home or doing government business and transmitting classified data on a private email account managed from the Clinton family home?

This adds a new level of premeditated secrecy and deceit to the actions of the presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.

It also adds a new level of hypocrisy to the most transparent administration in history’s pursuit of former CIA Director and commander of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus.

Petraeus, who had an extramarital affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, pleaded guilty, after a lengthy government investigation, to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information.

Petraeus had kept in his home a set of eight “Black Books” containing his notes and observations about his experiences, as well as classified information including conversations he had with the president, diplomats, and national security officers. Petraeus provided Broadwell access to these documents but, as far as we know, the information went no further.

That Hillary is whistling past her political graveyard -- and worse -- is seen in the immunity granted to Bryan Pagliano, the IT guy who set up Hillary’s server in her house. He knows the hows and whys and intended purposes and was likely privy to revealing and criminally damning conversations. As the Daily Caller reported:

Judge Andrew Napolitano says Hillary Clinton “should be terrified” her IT technician, Bryan Pagliano, was granted immunity by a federal judge.

In an interview on Fox Business’ “Varney & Co” on Thursday, Napolitano said that because Pagliano was granted immunity, the Justice Department is “going to seek indictment” of either Clinton or one of her subordinates…

“Hillary should be terrified and I’ll tell you why,” Napolitano said. If Clinton gave Pagliano her “personal Secretary of State password” then “we have an indictment for misconduct in office as well as espionage.”

Clinton “should be terrified of the fact that he’s been granted immunity. Now, what does granted immunity mean? Only a federal judge can grant immunity. A federal judge will only grant immunity if a sitting jury is ready to hear testimony from the immunized person. So we know a couple of things. We know the recommendation we were waiting for from the FBI to the Justice Department has already made its way from the FBI to the Justice Department”…

“We know FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors are working in tandem,” Napolitano added. “We know that they went through this lengthy process of interviewing Mr. Pagliano and finding out what he knows and deciding it’s so valuable they need him to say it to a grand jury and the only way he can say it to a grand jury is if they promise not prosecute him and hence he gets immunity and we also know they’re going to seek indictment because they would not be immunizing him and thereby inducing him to spill his guts, unless they wanted to indict someone.

Judge Michael Mikasey, former Attorney General under President George W. Bush, listed the charges that Hillary Clinton likely will face on Fox Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends:”

We are looking at a range of things, everything from the misdemeanor that was charged against General Petraeus, which is putting classified information in an unprotected, classified setting, that’s a misdemeanor. Then there is destroying government records. Then there is taking information related to the national defense and treating it with gross negligence such as it becomes disclosed. And finally, there is obstruction of justice.”

Mukasey observed on Fox Business recently that the Clinton email snowball is reaching critical mass and is rapidly moving downhill towards a criminal referral and indictment:

During an interview with the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said he’s not surprised that ex-Clinton staffer Bryan Pagliano was granted immunity for his testimony that could aid in expediting the Hillary Clinton email probe and the investigation overall…

Meanwhile, FBI director James Comey told a House panel Tuesday that he’s “very close” to the investigation.

“What he said was that they were going to carry on the investigation thoroughly and he used a number of other adverbs -- but one of the adverbs he used was promptly. He’s not a man who chooses his words lightly and I think we will know what’s going to happen here sooner rather than later,” Mukasey stated.

Hillary wants to be the first female president. It is looking increasingly likely that her only first will be to be the first presidential candidate, or even nominee, to be under a federal indictment.,                                               

Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.