The ongoing e-mail saga involving Hillary Clinton has been a core issue in this election cycle. Republicans have utilized a political opportunity to go after the leading Democrat who eventually would secure the nomination, while Democrats have pointed out just that: it’s all politics. The problem is, no matter how much the issue is politicized, the issue is certainly relevant and absolutely critical. National security has never been more critical than it is now and with the rising threat of ISIS and other global menaces, we need to be prepared to combat it. If classified intelligence is being sent on unsecured, private servers, this risks exposure to those we seek to defeat.
The e-mail controversy has taken a new turn thanks to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who recently used a press conference to call on Russia to release Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
The involvement of Russia in this election cycle has been gaining greater speculation in recent weeks due to Wikileaks, who recently released almost twenty thousand e-mails between top Democratic National Committee officials. It ignited a firestorm of controversy that has led to the fall of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman who has long been accused of bias against Senator Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary.
While the Democratic Party is over, the damage done by Wikileaks could have an impact on the general election. The involvement of the Russians presents a cause for concern among alarmists.
And now Donald Trump is asking Russia to intervene by releasing Hillary Clinton’s e-mails?
The Clinton campaign predictably responded by alleging Trump called for espionage against his political opponent. The problem here is that if you’re using the textbook definition of espionage, the claim is false. Google defines espionage as “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information.”
If Hillary Clinton, as she has constantly claimed, never had classified data on her server and those e-mails she deleted were only personal in nature, what makes Russian hacking espionage? Russia finding out about yoga practices or that Chelsea Clinton has a love life aren’t matters of national security.
If Clinton truly did not jeopardize any sensitive information and only deleted personal e-mails, there is no political or military advantage to be gained.
The statements by the Hillary Clinton campaign and her allies admit that this isn’t the case though. The idea that Trump has either committed treason or encouraged espionage only endorses the notion that Clinton broke the law in handling classified information. If Clinton is truly innocent and never was sending or receiving classified data over an unsecured private server, no espionage was committed because nothing of political or military value would be found.
The story lost to the mainstream media is the shocking admission by the Clinton camp. Instead of talking about the dangers of electing a President that has openly disregarded security protocols, the media is talking about phantom relationships between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Instead of asking what exists on that server to make a possible hack and release an act of espionage, the conversation is just more crying about how Trump is hurting our safe spaces.
