Major news broke Tuesday when FBI Director James Comey held a press conference to announce his recommendation to not prosecute Hillary Clinton for her E-Mail practices. The recommendation comes even as Comey read off a laundry list of questionable activity by Clinton and her people, and excused it because he did not see any intent to break the law. Yet the “big three” news networks ran with the recommendation without asking if that is what the law required for there to be a conviction.
“The FBI Director called Clinton's e-mail arrangement "extremely careless" but said she did not obstruct justice and was not motivated by disloyalty to the US, factors in previous prosecutions,” reported Nancy Cordes on CBS Evening News. Cordes also noted that, “Eight [E-Mail] chains contained top-secret information, one of the highest levels of classification.” Something Clinton claimed never happened.
NBC’s Pete Williams on Nightly News stated that Clinton actually had two private servers that were weakly protected. In the press conference Comey stated that they were less protected than Gmail accounts, and that it is possible that foreign actors hacking into her account.
But as ABC Pierre Thomas said on World News Tonight, “the decision whether to charge Hillary Clinton comes down to one question. Did she intentionally violate laws governing classified information?”
The networks covered Comey’s decision as if it was the end-all be-all of Clinton’s E-Mail woes. They never asked the important question of, is intent required to prosecute someone for being “extremely carless” with top secret information? It is arguable that intent is not needed, 18 US Code 793(f) makes the distinction between what is exposed through intent and what is exposed through negligence, and both are punishable.
CBS came the closest to admitting this with an interview with former New York City Mayor and former US Attorney Rudy Giuliani. He argued that Clinton did show negligence with the information given to her.
The Spanish-language networks also failed to question if intent was need, and ran with Comey’s decision as the final word.