Buck Sexton filled in for Glenn on Monday, and kicked off the show with a deep dive into Hillary Clinton’s ongoing email saga. The former Secretary of State claims she never used her personal email account for classified information - but is she telling the truth? Buck delved into his own background in the CIA and why he thinks she isn’t telling the full story. After all, the Clintons have a long history of protecting their own secrets.
Listen to the segment in the opening moments of today's radio show:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it may contain errors:
BUCK: Buck Sexton here. Buck Sexton in for Glenn Beck today on the Glenn Beck Program. Thank you so much for joining. Good to have you with me. 877-727-BECK is the phone number. You can call in. Love to chat with you. Hope you had a good weekend. We have a lot to get to today. Thank you very much for your time. Those of you who may not be familiar with me. I'm the Blaze's National Security Editor, also the host of the Buck Sexton Show on the Blaze. Formerly a CIA analyst and an NYPD Intelligence Division Specialist for counterterrorism. So counterterrorism is what I did before. I was able to join all of you fine folks and do some media.
So Hillary Clinton's email is still a big issue, although not if you listen to the Clinton camp. It was a pretty amazing situation on Friday, where you had the revelation -- and this was apparently a leak of some kind -- that there was a desire to look more closely at Hillary's private email account.
Now, before we even get into the particulars of this, and this holds a real resonance for me, as someone who held the top secret security clearance in the United States government and had to learn all the various protocols and the, including classification origination, all of that stuff, and had to live with the constant reality, the constant possibility of a complete and utter annihilation were I ever to transgress while a CIA officer, even accidentally, by the way. Accidentally does not mean that you would not get into some sort of trouble. It didn't mean there wouldn't be some sort of issue as well. You might not go to jail for a long time, but your career would be ruined. That much is to be sure. For real issues of national security, you can understand why the sanctions are so severe.
You have an understanding of that. You can't lose the nuclear codes while you're out getting a burger. I get that. We all get that. We can all understand that. To give you a sense of just how extreme it was, to give you a sense of what we're talking about here, I saw fellow officers, fellow CIA officers reduced to tears because perhaps a young lady walked out to her car and had something in her pocket that she should not have in terms of sensitive information. And was essentially told that she had almost made the terrorists win because of this. Now, you could say that, of course, you have these strict procedures and protocols. But I'm pretty sure the Russians, I'm sure Bin Laden didn't sneak a peek into her pocket into the 30-second walk outside of the facility. But that just gives you a sense of how strict it is in these government agencies with the protection of classified information. That's what the rest of us all have to live with.
Meanwhile, we have to go back and forth in this sort of lawyerly discussion, lawyerly debate with Hillary Clinton, in which we talk about whether or not it was classified when she sent it. Now, keep in mind, and this is very, very important indeed. Keep in mind that Hillary could have avoided all of this. We wouldn't even have to have this discussion if the woman who now really believes that the presidency is, in fact, something that she is entitled to, if she had just decided that she would do what everybody else would have done in these circumstances, she could have avoided this whole thing. This is entirely of her making. Which is largely why a lot of Democrats are annoyed about this, upset about this. Who recognize that this is probably going to be a real problem. And it didn't have to be a problem at all.
But the Clintonian obsession with secrecy -- and when people talk about the obsession with secrecy, keep in mind that's because the Clintons need to keep secrets. Right? That's a relatively straightforward proposition. The Clintonian obsession with secrecy is something that we have pay pretty close attention to because there are reasons for it.
They are secretive because they should be secretive because they do things that they should not do. And then they look at all of us and suggest that somehow this is a right-wing conspiracy. This is some sort of issue that's been foisted upon their shoulders. It's only because of all the other people. You see. They're the real problem.
On Friday, we're told there was a referral, a referral as to whether there was criminality inherent using her home brew server that she decided to do. To send communications in her role as Secretary of State. Thousands and thousands of times.
If she used classified information in those emails, that is at a minimum, a violation of her duty to protect classified information. That could be criminally charged. You see, the way this works. And this is where the Clintons love. They love the gray areas. The shades of complexity here. They'll say the information wasn't classified when she sent it. Of course, it's not inherently classified. You can write something down in an email and send it to all your buddies, it hasn't been classified at the top of that email. But there's still a recognition that the sensitivity of that information could be national security data. There could be a classification issue there. And if Hillary is using this email address for most of her communications, it is beyond anyone's wildest imagination that she did not somehow use information that is classified.
In fact, we find out that, later on, they decided that some of it was classified. So what -- this whole thing hinges on a very straightforward concept. And I want those of you who haven't held a clearance and those of you who haven't worked in national security before, I want you to be very clear on this because this is what the whole issue now turns on. They're going to say that when she sent them, it wasn't classified. What I'm going to tell you is that that's not the standard that other people with clearances are held to. It's not, well, it didn't have a stamped "secret" at the top of it when I sent it, therefore, it's not classified. That's not how it works. It's the information and the sensitivity of that information. This is not just a bureaucratic procedural issue. This is an issue of what is she putting out there on the open internet for others to see. And that she's using a personal home brew email address I think tells you a lot of what's going on here. That she deleted thousands and thousands of emails before there could be any review of them whatsoever. I think tells you a lot.
I think it tells you that the Clintons are lying to you. But that's nothing new, is it? That's nothing surprising. In fact, at this point, as depressing as it is to say, that's really our expectation, isn't it? We expect that the Clintons would lie. We expect that Hillary Clinton is going to obfuscate the truth. Attack those who point out the obfuscation. She's trying to muddy the waters. We expect that they'll have some ridiculous justification for their behavior. And it really is just the best defense is a good offense. That's what the Clinton strategy comes down to.
But on these emails, there's another issue that I want to raise here because it's essential. It's very, very important. It's not just a question of what the Clintons are doing. It's also inside the machinery. It's inside the many headed hydro of the federal bureaucracy in D.C. We initially heard there was a referral from two inspectors general, saying they would want a look into whether there was criminality into this. Into whether or not it may have violated US federal criminal law. Then there was a huge walkback. Oh, no. That's not it. The New York Times broke the story Friday. Then we heard over the weekend, this is all nonsense and garbage. See, the media in reactionary way, knee-jerk fashion, knew they had to do whatever was necessary to protect Hillary's chances to be the next president of the United States, and to enforce this narrative, this narrative that no person could really believe with more than a few moments of thoughts. Of course, she was hiding emails from us. That was the purpose of all of this. You would say, why would anyone be so foolish. That's a huge vulnerability. Didn't she know it would come out? That's what the Clintons deal with. That's how they are, who they are. There's no shock here. It's also shocking and surprising for a normal human being to think they can accept speeches for half a million, three-quarters of a million. Hey, why not make it a cool million? While your wife is the most powerful foreign policy official in the world, and you as her husband are going around giving speeches to organizations, not just that would want to curry favor in a sort of general sense, but in that very specific sense of, I have business. Me, we, this foreign entity, we have business in front of the Secretary of State.
Why not pay her husband a half a million to give a speech. Can't hurt. We have the money. That sort of rampant corruption. And that's what it is, by the way. Is the sort of thing that only a power couple at the top of American politics that believes that they are untouchable would ever engage in.
Unless you understand that mentality, then all of a sudden the logic of this email position becomes very clear indeed. They can get away with taking away huge fees for speeches. Just like they can get away with running their own home email servers. Because Bill could get away with any number of transgressions -- and that's putting it far too kindly, by the way -- in the '90s, including though very notably, lying under oath, which would be a federal felony for normal people. But for Bill Clinton, it's nothing. Not even charged with a crime. This is what we're dealing with. These are the individuals standing before us now and pretending to be absolutely pure and outraged that anyone would question their integrity. The real trick with the Clintons is that they have no integrity to protect. There is nothing they will not do as long as it serves their interest because why not? What are you going to do about it? You're going to rely on prosecutors to go after them? You're going to rely on the enforcement of the law? Let me tell you something, there are a lot of Democrat prosecutors out there.
In fact, just as the infiltration of universities by the Democratic Party has essentially made it a one-party situation on college campuses across the country, you have a preponderance, you have Democrat prosecutors all over the place who are very politicized, who view the tools of the prosecutor's office as both of social justice -- we've seen that time and again. And I'm not just talking about the civil rights division of this Department of Justice, which we know is absolutely politicized, but across the country as well.
You have a lot of lawyers who are Democrats, of course, though it's a little more split there. But if you start to look at party affiliation of prosecutors, I think you'll find out really quickly that in blue areas of the country, but also outside of them, you have a very -- a sort of stunning disparity of prosecutors who happen to be Democrats, who happen to give money to Democrats. You have a lot of federal prosecutors out there who give money to the Clintons. I'm sure of it, my friends. So when they now tell us, oh, no, it's not a criminal referral. There's nothing to see here. Just remember that the same federal apparatus that can't enforce immigration law, we're now relying on to tell us all about the latest with the Clintons and their violations of law.
Featured Image:CARROLL, IA - JULY 26: Democratic presidential hopeful and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to guests gathered for a house party on July 26, 2015 in Carroll, Iowa. Although Clinton leads all other Democratic contenders, a recent poll had her trailing several of the Republican candidates in Iowa. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)