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Chuck Todd Schools Clinton Spokesman on 'How Classified Information Works'

January 20, 2016

Chuck Todd went after Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon Wednesday over the latest charges against his boss about her potential mishandling of classified information on her homebrew server as secretary of state.

According to Fox News, "Hillary Clinton's emails on her unsecured, homebrew server contained intelligence from the U.S. government's most secretive and highly classified programs, according to an unclassified letter from a top inspector general to senior lawmakers."

The Clinton campaign has gone so far as to accuse the Inspector General of engaging in a partisan attack against her.

"You didn't really talk about whether what they're saying is true or not," Todd said to Fallon. "Even if something wasn't classified at the time and it gets classified later, that's still a violation, is it not?"

Fallon replied that he'd seen reporting that the IG in this situation was acting improperly, adding the IG was performing an "unfair" meddling in an "ongoing Justice Department investigation."

"One of the reasons why it's so egregious what the Inspector General is doing, sending these missives to Capitol Hill and letting Republicans leak them out, is because it airs the charge without giving anyone an opportunity to judge it on its merits, because we obviously can't see what emails they're talking about," Fallon said. "What's at the heart of this is a published news report that the CIA has to, because of the strictures in place, even though it's being openly reported on, they have to still treat it as classified, but if a government employee forwards the news report and then there's some chatter about that news report, all those emails in that threat get treated as classified."

"But that is the fact, that is the law," Todd said.

"Uh, that's, well," Fallon said.

"I mean, how classified information works," Todd said.