Category Archives: Presidential campaign

The 10th Amendment, Trump Doesn’t Get It

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Perhaps he has not read the paper or listened to the news when it comes to the Bundy matter in Nevada or the standoff in Burns, Oregon. Perhaps he is not familiar with the EPA failures or the Fish, Game and Wild Life Commission. Check out this interview that has received no press.

It is important to note, Ducks Unlimited is the best private organization in the nation that takes extreme care of water, foul and the land.

Q&A: Donald Trump on Guns, Hunting, and Conservation

January 21, 2016, Las Vegas, Nevada

FieldandStream On the third evening of the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show, editorial director of Field & Stream and Outdoor Life, Anthony Licata, interviewed Donald Trump on issues important to sportsmen and women. Trump came to the interview, on the 36th floor of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, with his son Donald Trump Jr., who is an avid hunter and shooter.

Here’s the Republican presidential candidate’s take on President Obama’s recent executive orders on firearms, the privatization of federal lands, Hillary Clinton, and hunting with his sons.

Anthony Licata: Thank you very much for agreeing to meet with Field & Stream and Outdoor Life to talk about…

Donald Trump: Great magazine.

AL: Thank you very much. I guess the first thing I’d like to ask is, are you a gun owner, a hunter? The two of you?

DT: I do have a gun, and I have a concealed-carry permit, actually, which is a very hard thing to get in New York. And, of course, the problem is once you get to the border line of New Jersey or anyplace else, you can’t do it, which is ridiculous, because I’m a very big Second Amendment person. But I do have a gun, and my sons are major hunters, and I’m a member of the NRA.

AL: Do you hunt with your sons? How did they get into the sports?

DT: Well, they got in and just loved it. And their grandfather was a hunter, and he would take them hunting as young boys, and they just loved it. They have a tremendous passion for it. And I don’t devote very much time to it because I’m so busy with everything, but Eric and Don absolutely love it, and they’re expert at it. They’re expert shots, and they’re expert at it.

AL: I’d like to talk about public land. Seventy percent of hunters in the West hunt on public lands managed by the federal government. Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about the federal government transferring those lands to states and the divesting of that land. Is that something you would support as President?

DT: I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do. I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land. And we have to be great stewards of this land. And the hunters do such a great job—I mean, the hunters and the fishermen and all of the different people that use that land. So I’ve been hearing more and more about that. And it’s just like the erosion of the Second Amendment. I mean, every day you hear Hillary Clinton wants to essentially wipe out the Second Amendment. We have to protect the Second Amendment, and we have to protect our lands.

AL: If you were elected President, would you reverse the executive orders that President Obama announced on guns recently?

DT: Yes, I would do it. I think it’s ridiculous. I think, number one, if you are going to do anything—and I don’t think you should do anything, because we have enough rules and balances and checks—you have to go through Congress. You can’t just write an executive order and sign it. You’re supposed to talk to the congressmen who represent a lot of your readers, and, you know, they have to sort of say “Let’s do this” or “Let’s do that.” You don’t do an executive order. But I’m for doing nothing. You know, it’s a mental-health problem, right? And the guns aren’t pulling the triggers, okay. It’s the people that are pulling the triggers. We have a big mental-health problem. And they’re closing up all of the hospitals, all of the institutions, and that’s our problem. And so I would absolutely reverse many of his executive orders beyond this, many of his executive orders.

AL: Let me ask you this—back to conservation and access for hunters’ rights to get on public land. One of the things that we’ve found is so much of this campaign—not your campaign, but this election cycle—has talked about cutting budgets and reducing the federal government. And what the budget is for managing public lands right now is at one percent. In 1970, it was two percent. Would you continue to push that number down for wildlife conservation or would you look to invest more?

DT: I don’t think there’s any reason to. And I will say—and I’ve heard this from many of my friends who are really avid hunters and I’ve heard it from my sons who are avid hunters—that the lands are not maintained the way they were by any stretch of the imagination. And we’re going to get that changed; we’re going to reverse that. And the good thing is, I’m in a family where I have—I mean, I’m a member of the NRA, but I have two longtime members of the NRA. They’ve been hunting from the time they were five years old and probably maybe even less than that. And they really understand it. And I like the fact that, you know, I can sort of use them in terms of—they know so much about every single element about every question that you’re asking. And one of the things they’ve complained about for years is how badly the federal lands are maintained, so we’ll get that changed.

Donald Trump Jr.: It’s really all about access. I mean, I feel like the side that’s the anti-hunting crowd, they’re trying to eliminate that access—make it that much more difficult for people to get the next generation in. For me, hunting and fishing kept me out of so much other trouble I would’ve gotten into throughout my life. It’s just so important to be able to maintain that, so that next generation gets into it. And it’s the typical liberal death by a thousand cuts: “We’ll make it a little harder here. Make it a little harder here. We won’t spend the money there.” And it’s not just about hunting—it’s about fishing; it’s about hiking; it’s about access; it’s about being able to get in there and enjoy the outdoors and enjoy those great traditions that are so, you know, so much the foundation of America. And we’d be against anything like that. And frankly, it’d be about refunding those—making sure those lands are maintained properly; making sure they’re not going into private hands to be effectively walled off to the general public. And that’s something really important to us.

AL: Absolutely. How would you balance energy exploration and extraction on public lands? How would you balance that with the need for recreation and multiple use? Right now, gas prices are low, but they might not stay that way.

DT: Well, I’m very much into energy, and I’m very much into fracking and drilling, and we never want to be hostage again to OPEC and go back to where we were. And right now, we’re at a very interesting point because right now there’s so much energy. And I’ve always said it—there’s so much energy. And new technology has found that. And maybe that’s an advantage and maybe—actually, it’s more of an advantage in terms of your question, because we don’t have to do the kind of drilling that we did. But I am for energy exploration, as long as we don’t do anything to damage the land. And right now we don’t need too much; there’s a lot of energy.

AL: Time for one more?

DT: Yeah, go ahead.

AL: If you’re elected, will you go hunting as President with your son?

DT: I would do that. With my both sons, I would do that. And I feel very good with them. And, you know, I’m in New York City, so I have a concealed-carry permit, and I meant to tell you—I just wanted to point that out because it’s so hard to get, and it’s one of the hardest things you can get. And very hard. And as far as going hunting with my boys, that would be something that I’d love to do. I’ve done it before, but I’d love to do it.

AL [to Donald Trump Jr.]: Where would you take him?

DTJ: I would come up with something good. I mean, I think we’d keep it to the upland-type birds. You know, that’s how I’ve introduced anyone that I’ve ever introduced to hunting. And I’ve taken some of these people that are city people, and just take them on a walk-up—go shoot some clays, and then take them on a walk-up. And not one of those people has ever turned to me and [not] said, “You know, that was one the greatest weekends I’ve ever had in my life.” You just need to get people into it. You need to be a mentor. And that’s what we need more of in this industry: mentors. To get rid of, you know, some of the difficulties, the barriers of entry, which are a little bit intimidating at times. So being able to create that, open up those doors, create some new hunters, and bring the next generation of hunters into the game.

AL: Excellent.

DT: You see what I mean.

AL: Yeah, I do see what you mean.

DT: Thank you very much.

AL: Thank you very much.

There Goes Another IRS Hard Drive

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To be honest, this sounds like the work of Hillary’s camp for the benefit of the Clinton Foundation at work, certainly while everyone is concentrating on the fight between the parties and the presidential campaign.

InpartfromTheHill: “The IRS’s missteps in preserving documents — whether they be the subject of a congressional investigation, court order, or FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request — are concerning, and necessitate further oversight into the agency’s document preservation practices,” Hatch and Wyden wrote.

The matter relates to the IRS’s controversial hiring of an outside law firm to help in an audit of Microsoft, Law360 reported.

Chaffetz, Jordan Erupt After IRS Erases Another Hard Drive

 DailyCaller: Leading members of Congress are ripping IRS officials for erasing a computer hard drive after a federal judge ordered it to be preserved.

“The destruction of evidence subject to preservation orders and subpoenas has been an ongoing problem under your leadership at the IRS,” Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen late Thursday.

“It is stunning to see that the IRS does not take reasonable care to preserve documents that it is legally required to protect,” Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said in the letter to Koskinen.

The IRS recently admitted in court to erasing the hard drive even though a federal judge had issued a preservation related to a Microsoft Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the federal tax agency last year, according to court documents. Microsoft accuses the IRS of inappropriately hiring an outside law firm to audit it and of failing to hand over related documents requested under the FOIA.

Chaffetz and other members of the oversight panel began calling for Koskinen’s impeachment in October. Chaffetz and Jordan in their letter point out that the IRS in March 2014 also destroyed 422 backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 emails sent or received by Lois Lerner, former director of IRS’ Exempt Organizations Division.

Lerner was the central figure in the scandal sparked by the tax agency’s illegal targeting and harassment of conservative and Tea Party non-profit applicants during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns.

Samuel Maruca, owner of the hard drive in question and a former senior IRS executive, participated in the IRS hiring of the outside law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP allegedly to investigate Microsoft. Maruca left the IRS in August 2014, according to court documents.

Chaffetz and Jordan told Koskinen to hand over all documents on IRS preservation policies and all documents related to the destruction of Lerner and Maruca’s hard drives.

 

DHS is Not Deporting Visa Overstays

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The numbers are staggering but just for the time period of 2015, 482,000 are residing in the United States illegally. This number is clearly worse than those numbers coming in from the southern border.

DHS admits it’s not deporting most visa overstays

WashingtonExaminer: A pair of Department of Homeland Security officials told the Senate Wednesday that the government does not search for most of the people who overstay their temporary visas, a day after DHS said that nearly 500,000 people were still in the U.S. after having overstayed their visas last year.

“I didn’t mean to imply that we’re actually out monitoring them,” Craig Healy, an assistant director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., during Senate Judiciary subcommittee panel. Healy said that they review the universe of people who overstayed their visas and “prioritize” the deportation of people who went on to commit other crimes.

Their exchange came at the outset of a hearing on the federal government’s failure to implement a biometric system to track entries into and exits from the country, as required by a 2004 law. A Customs and Border Patrol official said the program couldn’t be implemented without causing “gridlock” at U.S. airports, a response that failed to allay bipartisan concern that the lack of this system is an ongoing national security threat.

“The biometric exit system is still not off the ground and that is unfortunate, very unfortunate, because it is a matter of national security,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader-in-waiting, said during the hearing.

John Wagner, deputy assistant commissioner of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said the program couldn’t be implemented without causing two-hour delays when boarding airplanes. “It’s the placement of the technology and how you collect it to ensure that the person actually departed the United States,” Wagner said. “There’s no zone to do that.”

These answers frustrated Democratic lawmakers who otherwise disagree with Sessions and other immigration hawks the issue of border security and deportations. “It’s hard for me to envision that we can’t figure out where to get a space to do this at an airport or seaport,” said Senator Al Franken, D-Minn. “If you can’t solve it in 11 or 12 years, how can we know it will ever be solved?”

DHS’s report saying hundreds of thousands of people remained in the United States after having overstayed their visas drew complaints from both parties, but Sessions in particular.

“That is a population of individuals that is larger than any city in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina,” Sessions said. Healy replied that about 3,000 of the people who had overstayed their visas were under investigation, a statistic Sessions cited to argue that President Obama’s team has made no effort to implement the system or to deport people who overstay their visas, as long as those people “keep their nose clean” and do nothing to draw the attention of law enforcement or counterterrorism officials.

He said the lack of a biometric exit system was part of a broader failure by the Obama administration to implement federal immigration law.

“Our executive branch is on strike against the will of the American people,” Sessions said. “Simply put, there is no border at all if we don’t enforce our visa rules.”

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Hold on, there is more…

Administration eases visa rules for travelers visiting terror hotspots

FNC: The Obama administration on Thursday eased visa rules for certain European travelers who have visited terror hotspots in the Middle East and Africa, triggering a backlash from congressional lawmakers who sought the restrictions for security reasons.

Moments after the announcement, two key Republicans declared the administration is “blatantly breaking the law” – a law that President Obama signed – by implementing the changes.

“This is not a difference of opinion over statutory interpretation, it is a clear contradiction of the law and the agreement we reached with the White House,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., author of the bill, said in a statement.

The revised requirements announced Thursday pertain to changes passed by Congress in the Visa Waiver Program.

Lawmakers had sought new restrictions to tighten up the program – which allows visa-free travel for residents of eligible countries — in order to prevent Europeans who have joined ISIS from entering the United States. Under the newly passed Visa Waiver Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, nationals of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Sudan as well as other travelers who have visited those countries since Mar. 1, 2011 now must apply for a visa in order to travel to the U.S.

The administration implemented those changes Thursday — but with some changes of its own.

Under the revised requirements, some Europeans who have traveled to those four countries in the last five years may still be allowed to travel to the United States without obtaining a visa if they meet certain criteria.

The administration announced it will use its waiver authority — granted to it in the legislation — to give waivers to travelers who traveled to the terror hotspots as journalists, for work with humanitarian agencies or on behalf of international organizations, regional organizations and sub-national governments on official duty.

Further, an additional waiver was announced for people who have traveled to Iran “for legitimate business-related purposes” since the conclusion of the Iran nuclear deal in July. The administration offers waivers for individuals who have traveled to Iraq for business as well.

Republicans reacted angrily to the waivers, saying the Obama administration had exploited the limited authority and has compromised national security.

“President Obama and his administration’s decision to abuse their limited waiver authority and allow scores of people who have traveled to or are dual nationals of countries like Iraq and Syria flies in the face of reason and congressional intent,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said in a statement.

“The Obama Administration is essentially rewriting the law by blowing wide open a small window of discretion that Congress gave it for law enforcement and national security reasons,” Goodlatte said.

Under the visa program itself, citizens of 38 countries, mostly in Europe, are generally allowed to travel to the United States without applying for a visa. But they still have to submit biographical information to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA.

The Homeland Security Department said waivers for some ESTA applicants will be granted on a “case-by-case” basis. Those travelers who are denied visa-free travel can still apply for visa through a U.S. embassy in their home country.

The new restrictions had previously been criticized by the Iranian government which suggested the U.S. might be violating the nuclear deal by penalizing legitimate business travel to the country.

Airlifting Italian Goats into Afghanistan?

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Lawmakers to Pentagon: Goats, Carpets and Jewelry Helped Afghanistan How?

At a Senate hearing this week, lawmakers questioned whether a Pentagon business task force had accomplished anything worthwhile.

ProPublica: Is it true that rare Italian goats were airlifted to Afghanistan?

Did Defense Department employees go to carpet tradeshows in Europe? How about on jewelry-related trips to India?

These might seem like unusual questions for the Pentagon, but lawmakers at a hearing Wednesday were trying to figure out how, exactly, a task force spent about $638 million on economic development in Afghanistan.

And more importantly, as Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., put it: “Was it worth it?”

The readiness subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee didn’t get many answers.

“That’s the big question, and it’s the right one,” was all Brian McKeon, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, could offer.

During two hours of questioning, he provided few specifics, allowing, “It’s a little early to say” whether the now-defunct Task Force for Business and Stability Operations had been successful.

The task force — a “very unusual animal” McKeon called it — was led by civilian business experts and aimed to develop the Afghan economy by jumpstarting the private sector.

The committee called the hearing after the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, published several damning reports about wasteful spending by the task force. It operated mostly outside the traditional bounds of government bureaucracy — and, SIGAR said, without much oversight.

John Sopko, the inspector general, testified that, so far, his agency has found that the Pentagon’s task force had a “scattershot approach to economic development” and there was no “credible evidence showing” that its efforts worked.

The task force was initially launched in Iraq before moving to Afghanistan in 2010. But even in Iraq, it was beset with problems, Sopko told the subcommittee. These issues were detailed in at least three official reports. The Pentagon and task force members should have learned from their experience in Iraq, he said, but they repeated the same mistakes.

His conclusions echo a yearlong ProPublica investigation into Afghanistan reconstruction that found a widespread failure to apply lessons from Iraq was in part to blame for upwards of $17 billion in waste.

McKeon put up little defense of the task force beyond disputing SIGAR’s estimated $43 million cost of a controversial natural gas station and claims that his office had been uncooperative.

He said he was “skeptical that the Department of Defense is the natural home” for economic development efforts.

Lawmakers agreed. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the ranking minority member on the subcommittee, said it was a job better suited for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

McKeon said his office was struggling to come up with answers about the task force’s activities, because it shut down in March and most of its employees left the Defense Department — an argument the lawmakers found unpersuasive.

McKeon was unable to answer even the most basic questions about how all the money was spent.

The Pentagon, for the most part, had records for how money was spent by industry sector, but not necessarily for how support costs broke down for all the individual projects, he said. (Although, those goats? The task force spent $6 million bringing in nine blond ones from Italy and building a farm in an attempt to launch a thriving cashmere industry, according to SIGAR. This project hasn’t been evaluated yet for effectiveness.)

Questioning at the hearing didn’t get any easier from there, and, McKeon had, at times, an almost painful lack of information. Clearly uncomfortable and stuck with a limited script, he reiterated several times that he hadn’t been in charge of the task force, since he only took over the job in 2014.

Ayotte, who chairs the subcommittee, asked if there were metrics to judge the projects.

“I haven’t seen metrics,” McKeon said.

Then Ayotte asked why the task force eschewed living on a military base and opted instead for private villas and security that cost $150 million — a decision that ate up nearly 24 percent of all the money spent?

“We’re still digging” for an answer on that, McKeon said, but he added that he thought those arrangements were necessary to show businesses that they could operate safely in Afghanistan.

So, Ayotte asked, did any contracts result “because we spent $150 million on villas?”

“I wouldn’t make that claim,” McKeon said.

Later in the hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said the entire concept behind the villas defied common sense. The need to spend millions on security just to keep employees safe couldn’t possibly entice businesses to set up shop.

“Do you see the fallacy of the logic there?” she asked.

The subcommittee asked SIGAR to do a full financial audit of all the task force activities since the Pentagon could provide so few details.

The senators were also concerned with how the Pentagon stonewalled SIGAR’s inquiries on the task force.

SIGAR and the Pentagon had been in a public tiff over access to records and the Pentagon’s insistence that documents be reviewed in a special “reading room.” Despite claiming the reading room was required to safeguard information in general, the Pentagon only restricted task force documents in that way.

But ahead of the hearing, the Pentagon reversed course and handed over a 100-gigabyte hard drive last week that it said contained all the task force information SIGAR had requested.

However, Sopko said “the data provided is substantially inadequate” and forensic accountants are examining it to see if anything was manipulated. McKeon said he was committed to providing SIGAR with all they needed.

Much of the hearing was spent bickering about the actual cost of the compressed natural gas station, which has few customers and is barely being used. Part of the problem: The average Afghan would have to spend more than a year’s salary to convert a car to run on compressed gas.

McKeon did not defend the gas station as a concept, but rather the reported cost.

Last year, SIGAR said it cost $43 million, including $30 million on overhead. This week the Pentagon disputed that number, saying the real cost was under $10 million.

The question comes down to overhead cost, which the Pentagon has been unable to accurately calculate because of poor recordkeeping, Sopko said. He defended SIGAR, saying it reported the best number it had at the time, which came from the Pentagon itself and hadn’t been disputed by the Defense Department until the day before the hearing.

It was unclear by the end of the hearing how much the gas station actually cost or whether anyone would be able to make that determination.

McCaskill had little patience for the cost debate.

“I don’t care if it was $2.9 million or $200 million,” she said. The project was “dumb on its face.”

She said she wanted to know who had “made the brilliant decision that this was a good idea to put a natural gas station in Afghanistan,” so she could “find out what the person was on that day.”

Perspective: The Real Violation of Hillary with SAP on Her Server

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Humm, was Hillary ever in a SCIF?

(Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility)

The smoking gun?  

By Anthony DeChristopher

TheHill: Special Access Programs (SAP) is a game changer.  It is now undeniably clear that the results of the FBI investigation will be the end of one of two things:  Hillary’s bid for the White House or the legitimacy of the FBI—at least when it comes to prosecuting cases on the mishandling of classified material.

In 2006, a Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) from my company was deployed to Afghanistan.  Theirs was a particular mission that differed from the combat missions the typical ODAs were conducting at that time.  Everyone on that team maintained a Top Secret Sensitive and Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance and was “read-on” to their special program.  A few months into their deployment, their Intelligence Sergeant lost a thumb-drive that possessed classified information.  A week later the thumb drive was found for sale at a local bazaar.

In response to the events, Col. Ken Allard (ret.) stated, “You’ve got a situation in which the U.S. is going to be forced to change an awful lot of its operational techniques.”

Beyond the compromise of classified information, a lot did change.  New protocols for the handling of classified material were established, and the transportation of classified material on thumb drives was strictly forbidden.  The knee jerk reaction even went as far as to disable USB ports on our work computers—in case we forgot.

Since then I’ve deployed to several locations where, at times, we operated in small teams with only non-secure cellphones with which to communicate.  We often found ourselves with a lot of information that needed to be sent up in reports, but due to the nature of our mission we were forced to sit on it for a few days until we were able to type it up and send it through a secure medium.  I’d be lying if I said we didn’t concoct elaborate plans with “foolproof” ways to communicate the information over non-secure channels, but in the end, no one was willing to take the risk of our “fail-safes” failing.

As more information from Hillary Clinton’s server has been made available, it is clear that the contents of the server contained Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Human Intelligence (HUMINT), and Signal Intelligence (SIGINT).  Understanding that much of the information has been retroactively classified, there are a few facts that are tough to grasp—at least from the perspective of an intelligence practitioner.

First, when imagery that is classified SECRET//NOFORN (no foreign national) is viewed, regardless of the absence of classification markings, it is distinctly evident. Second, any documents that contain or reference HUMINT is always classified SECRET, and if specific names of sources or handlers are mentioned, they are at a minimum SECRET//NOFORN.  Third, SIGINT is always classified at the TS level.  It’s not uncommon for some SI to be downgraded and shared over SECRET mediums, however, it is highly unlikely that a Secretary of State would receive downgraded intelligence.  Finally, SAP intelligence has been discovered on Clinton’s private server, and many are now calling this the smoking gun.  SAP is a specialized management system of additional security controls designed to protect SAR or Special Access Required.  SAR has to do with extremely perishable operational methods and capabilities, and only selected individuals who are “read on” or “indoctrinated” are permitted access to these programs.  The mishandling of SAP can cause catastrophic damage to current collection methods, techniques and personnel.

In other words, if you have worked with classified material for more than a day, it seems highly implausible that someone could receive any of the aforementioned over an un-secure medium without alarm bells sounding.  However, reading about a Special Access Program on an unclassified device would make anyone even remotely familiar with intelligence mess their pantsuit.

With more damming information being released almost weekly now, it’s interesting that during last Sunday’s Democratic debate, Clinton resoundingly stated: “No one is too big for jail.”Although the context was referencing bank CEOs and Hedge fund managers, the obvious correlation left many scratching their heads and wondering—did Hillary Clinton just say, “I dare you” to the FBI?”

DeChristopher is a 9-year veteran of the United States Army Special Forces.  He holds an M.A. in Strategic Security Studies from National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs with a concentration in Irregular Warfare.  He currently works as an Independent Intelligence Consultant.

***

The State Department Inspector General who investigated the Hillary server, had security clearance but to complete the assignment to investigate deeper the issues and data on the server, he had to go through and additional process to get the highest security clearance. It must also be mentioned that some top intelligence community professionals are now part of the investigation and they are in fact stationed to do nothing but investigate the actual communications and determine what was, should have been classified even though ‘some’ communications had designations removed.

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FNC: Some of Hillary Clinton’s emails on her private server contained information so secret that senior lawmakers who oversee the State Department cannot read them without fulfilling additional security requirements, Fox News has learned.

The emails in question, as Fox News first reported earlier this week, contained intelligence classified at a level beyond “top secret.” Because of this designation, not all the lawmakers on key committees reviewing the case have high enough clearances.

A source with knowledge of the intelligence review told Fox News that senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, despite having high-level clearances, are among those not authorized to read the intelligence from so-called “special access programs” without taking additional security steps — like signing new non-disclosure agreements.

These programs are highly restricted to protect intelligence community sources and methods.

As Fox News previously reported, a Jan. 14 letter from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III to senior lawmakers said an intelligence review identified “several dozen” additional classified emails — including specific intelligence from “special access programs” (SAP).

That indicates a level of classification beyond even “top secret,” the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the Democratic presidential candidate’s handling of the government’s closely held secrets.

Fox News is told that the reviewers who handled the SAP intelligence identified in Clinton’s emails had to sign additional non-disclosure agreements even though they already have the highest level of clearance — known as TS/SCI or Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented information. This detail was first reported by NBC News.

This alone seems to undercut the former secretary of state’s and other officials’ claims that the material is “innocuous.”

In an interview with NPR, Clinton claimed the latest IG finding doesn’t change anything and suggested it was politically motivated.

“This seems to me to be, you know, another effort to inject this into the campaign, it’s another leak,” she said. “I’m just going to leave it up to the professionals at the Justice Department because nothing that this says changes the fact that I never sent or received material marked classified.”

Despite Clinton’s claims, it is the content that is classified; the markings on the documents do not affect that.

A former Justice Department official said there is another problem — warnings from State Department IT employees and others that she should be using a government account.

“If you have a situation where someone was knowingly violating the law and that they knew that what they were doing was prohibited by federal law because other people were saying, you’re violating the law, knock it off, and they disregarded that advice and they went ahead, that’s a very difficult case to defend,” Thomas Dupree said.