On Friday's Wolf show on CNN, as they updated viewers on the Hillary Clinton email scandal, substitute host Dana Bash and correspondent Evan Perez began by downplaying the classified emails in question as mostly "innocuous" but ended up conceding that the Clinton campaign's "legal argument" in her defense is "not enough of an answer."
As Bash brought aboard Perez, she began by suggesting that Clinton's activities were not so bad:
You know, Evan, when we hear the words "top secret," we think of, you know, it's some kind of spy novel or spy movie, something that really, really matters when it comes to the secrets of this country. But maybe not so much?
Perez voiced agreement as he began:
Right, a lot of people think that perhaps somebody was sending the nuclear codes or something to Secretary Clinton over this private email server, and that really raises the concern. But a lot of emails we're talking about are perhaps a little bit more innocuous.
But the CNN correspondent then began to explain some of the problems with former Secretary Clinton's behavior:
And there's an Associated Press story this morning that talks about someone forwarding an email that includes a newspaper article on drone strikes, and that program is covert. It's completely forbidden to talk about it even on classified government email servers, not to mention private email servers. That is considered certainly by the CIA, certainly by the intelligence community to be a violation. They don't like that. They still consider that to be classified.
Just because something is published doesn't mean it has been unclassified. Now, you know, she can't really just get away with saying those are the innocuous emails on the server because we're told that there are a lot of other emails that did have perhaps more serious information and more sensitive information. And so it doesn't really explain this controversy.
He soon added that "the CIA, the Defense Department, the FBI have raised concerns because they saw certain information that they believe should not be on this server, and that is why it was inappropriate to have it in a private email setting where it's not protected by government security."
After Bash raised the point that the problems could have been avoided if Clinton had used a government computer, Perez asserted that the Clinton campaign's defense of her activities is "not enough":
DANA BASH: And all these things wouldn't have been considered as improper -- maybe not improper at all -- had it been on government email and not her private server?
ERIC PEREZ: Right, exactly. It still would have been improper for you to be discussing it, but at least you could clean it up a little bit better if it's on a government dot gov email address. And the problem here is that, you know, even if they were sending emails that at the time wasn't classified -- or they didn't know that was classified -- it's still a problem. And so the legal argument for the Clinton campaign to try to clean this up is that, well, "We didn't know that it was classified at the time it was sent." That's not enough of an answer.
Below is a complete transcript of the segment from the Friday, August 14, Wolf show on CNN:
DANA BASH: We want to turn back to American politics right now to the issue dogging Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the email controversy. New details are emerging about documents found on Clinton's email server that an auditor deemed top secret. Our justice reporter, Evan Perez, is here with that story. And, you know, Evan, when we hear the words "top secret," we think of, you know, it's some kind of spy novel or spy movie, something that really, really matters when it comes to the secrets of this country. But maybe not so much?
EVAN PEREZ: Right, a lot of people think that perhaps somebody was sending the nuclear codes-
BASH: Right.
PEREZ: -or something to Secretary Clinton over this private email server, and that really raises the concern. But a lot of emails we're talking about are perhaps a little bit more innocuous. And there's an Associated Press story this morning that talks about someone forwarding an email that includes a newspaper article on drone strikes, and that program is covert. It's completely forbidden to talk about it even on classified government email servers, not to mention private email servers. That is considered certainly by the CIA, certainly by the intelligence community to be a violation. They don't like that. They still consider that to be classified.
Just because something is published doesn't mean it has been unclassified. Now, you know, she can't really just get away with saying those are the innocuous emails on the server because we're told that there are a lot of other emails that did have perhaps more serious information and more sensitive information. And so it doesn't really explain this controversy.
BASH: And that's one of the things I was going to ask you. from your sources, what are you hearing about some of the things that they think are on the server?
PEREZ: Well, there's a range. We're told by people who have looked at this stuff, certainly for months, the CIA, the Defense Department, the FBI have raised concerns because they saw certain information that they believe should not be on this server, and that is why it was inappropriate to have it in a private email setting where it's not protected by government security. And so we are told it ranges everything from information that perhaps she was being used [sic] to prepare for a meeting perhaps to again these newspaper articles that, you know, even things like discussing the Snowden documents would have been considered improper.
BASH: And all these things wouldn't have been considered as improper -- maybe not improper at all -- had it been on government email and not her private server?
PEREZ: Right, exactly. It still would have been improper for you to be discussing it, but at least you could clean it up a little bit better if it's on a government dot gov email address. And the problem here is that, you know, even if they were sending emails that at the time wasn't classified -- or they didn't know that was classified -- it's still a problem. And so the legal argument for the Clinton campaign to try to clean this up is that, well, "We didn't know that it was classified at the time it was sent." That's not enough of an answer.
BASH: And then of course there's what you cover, the legal argument, and then there's what we cover, which is the political argument that's a whole different question.
PEREZ: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. This is a problem that because the FBI is going to spend months and months -- we're talking 15 months from now -- we're probably still going to be talking about this because the FBI will take its time to reconstruct exactly what happened here.
