The ultimate WTF lawsuit

I was going to write a long-ish piece on the various anti-Hillary smears a-bubbling up these days, but another project captured my attention. We must, however, take a brief look at this...

The parents of two of the four Americans who died in the Benghazi attack in 2012 filed a lawsuit Monday against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, alleging her "reckless handling" of classified information contributed to their deaths.

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch USA on behalf of Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, and Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, for allegedly wrongfully causing the death of their sons as well as for defamation and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

The lawsuit suggests that Clinton's use of a private email server contributed to the deaths of Smith and Woods, adding that terrorists were able to "obtain the whereabouts of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and thus the U.S. State Department and covert and other government operations in Benghazi, Libya and subsequently orchestrate, plan, and execute the now infamous September 11, 2012 attack."

"Having used a secret private email server that we now know was used to communicate with Ambassador Christopher Stevens with confidential and classified government information, and which we also now know was likely hacked by hostile adversaries such as Iran, Russia, China and North Korea aligning with terrorist groups, it is clear that Hillary Clinton allegedly negligently and recklessly gave up the classified location of the plaintiffs' sons, resulting in a deadly terrorist attack that took their lives,” Klayman said in a statement announcing the suit.

What the HELL?

Is there evidence for any of this? The FBI looked at those emails and found only one (arguably) classified message, an unimportant matter pertaining to the President of Malawi. This Kos diary offers as good a precis of the situation as you are likely to see...

The trouble is, the story isn't all that complicated. I'm retired, so I was able to watch large portions of the hearing in which Trey Gowdy and his House of Representatives subcommittee interviewed FBI Director Comey. The testimony overall was about as helpful to the GOP cause as the testimony in the previous Trey Gowdy Benghazi hearing. That is—not at all. What came out were these three points:

(1) Of the 30,000 emails on the Clinton server there were 110 that, according to Comey, contained classified material. However, the material was not determined to be classified until the FBI began investigating. Somehow, the more than 300 talented and security-conscious State Department employees who were sharing these emails did not recognize the “obvious” material as classified. And when the State Department was dealing with emails that were actually marked secret, they did not route them through Clinton's server; she went to a secure State Department office to deal with those.

(2) Of the 30,000 emails there were three that contained a vague symbol, © in one of the paragraphs in each email, that conservatives have claimed marked the content as classified. But the State Department indicated, immediately after the hearing, that that symbol does not have that meaning and that at least two of the three emails had no classified content (the third is still disputed). In any case, it is still true that NONE of the 30,000 emails were marked classified in the usual manner, which is to put a bold header at the top indicating that the content is classified and what level of security is involved (Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret). If you want to read a real documented fact-check about that topic, go to www.factcheck.org/… (thanks for the tip, from cminus in comments below).

(3) The worst that the FBI Director could say about Clinton was that she had been “extremely careless” with the emails that apparently contained classified information that nobody recognized as classified and that weren't marked as classified (note: The State Department still disputes the appropriateness of applying classified status to much of this email content). In the hearing Comey also stated that Clinton cooperated fully with the investigation and that she did not break the law.

I believe that it is time for all of us to send our thanks to the Washington Post and the liberal media for their efforts in stretching out the Clinton email controversy well beyond the bounds of reality and the ridiculously broad definition of “breaking news”, and for helping repeat the inane conservative portrayal of Hillary as a liar.

What the hell does any of this have to do with freakin' Benghazi? None of the disputed emails had any relationship to Benghazi.

The lawsuit also contains the usual right-wing inanity about Clinton supposedly identifying that notorious video as the cause of the riot. Good Christ. Will the Fox News crowd ever give up on that nonsense?

Looks to me as though Klayman is using this lawsuit as the grounds for yet another fishing expedition.

By the way, someone should ask Klayman: If Russia is now considered an "ally" of terrorist groups, then why isn't he going after Donald Trump? Russian media is certainly doing everything it can to make Trump president.