Susan Sarandon: Trump's New BFF
Credit: Screenshot
June 4, 2016

Whether you prefer Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, I hope all of you think either is preferable to Donald Trump.

Evidently, Susan Sarandon doesn't think so. From all indications, she'd be perfectly happy with a Trump Presidency.

Leaving aside her appalling lack of judgment, I wanted to address Sarandon's claim that, of course the FBI is going to indict Clinton because of the emails.

First, many government officials have been using personal email for government business. I've been tracking several FOIA lawsuits for some time, and several have to do with government officials in various departments using personal email.

The government doesn't encourage using personal email, and people can't access private email in secure areas, but for the most part, government officials have been allowed to use private email, as long as they make some effort to ensure the emails are FOIA searchable. In many cases, all the person would have to do is forward the email on to their government email address, or someone else's government email address.

Now, as to the question of sending confidential email via private email address, the implications of doing so would be the same whether a person used a private email address, or a State email address. Email is inherently insecure. The general State email addresses are not secured to any degree beyond what most personal email addresses are secured. You can't use a personal email address to send confidential emails, but you can't use a State email address, either; not through the internet using a mobile device or home computer—not without very special precautions being taken.

So, let's fixate a little less on the private versus State email address. The issue of using a private email address is solely about whether the email is transparent, not secure.

The FBI doesn't care about transparency, only security. It only cares about whether the private email server Clinton used was hacked or not. We already know that the State Department's servers have been hacked.

None of the Clinton emails were marked classified. People can dither all they want on whether a person should have known something was classified or not, but that is such a subjective value that trying to return an indictment on this flimsy basis would be laughable. All reports so far indicate that Clinton has not broken any laws.

Let's also consider the fact that no one person's email has received the level of scrutiny that Clinton's emails have received, and we're not surprised to find that some of the emails were post-release marked as Classified or even Top Secret. I suspect that if we could scratch away the redactions, most of the information would already be public knowledge.

Media Matters did an exceptional job putting together a FAQ on the emails, which blows away most of the myths about the emails. In it, we discover that most of the classified emails were sent to Clinton, not sent from Clinton.

Unless the Justice Department decides to indict several current and former employees of the State and other Departments—at least three Administrations back—and other assorted and sundry people, it's not going to indict Hillary Clinton.

Making a claim that Clinton is going to be indicted, and under a pretense that such is inevitable, is something we would expect from the worst of the GOP connivers and under-handed double-dealers.

And that's what Susan Sarandon is, whether she knows it or not.

Editor's Note: Sarandon may also want to speak with the Libertarian VP candidate about those emails. Here, he explains why she is so wrong.

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