[Daily Caller] A veterans advocacy group that has sued the State Department over its failure to turn over Hillary Clinton's emails is asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch to take action against the former secretary of state for ordering one of her top advisers to strip classification markers off of a set of talking points and send them through unencrypted channels.In the letter, Veterans for a Strong America (VSA) executive director Joel Arends points to federal statute 18 USC 793, which he asserts Clinton violated when, in a June 17, 2011 email, she ordered adviser Jake Sullivan to strip a document containing talking points of its "identifying heading and send nonsecure" instead of sending via secure fax. (RELATED: Bombshell Emails Shows Hillary Instructed Adviser To Strip Markings From Sensitive Talking Points)
As Arends notes, 18 USC 793 states that it is a federal crime punishable by fine and up to 10 years in prison to "cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted...to any person not entitled to receive [classified information], or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it."
Gross negligence is also punishable under the statute. A person having knowledge that classified material was illegally removed from its "proper place of custody" and "fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction" has violated that portion of the law.