Hillary Clinton's last ditch email defense for a while was to claim that she had no idea that the emails were classified and that it only happened retroactively. Now it appears that excuse is also dead.
Hillary Clinton, from the moment her exclusive use of personal email for government business was exposed, has claimed nothing she sent or received was marked classified at the time.
But a 2012 email released by the State Department appears to challenge that claim because it carries a classified code known as a “portion marking” - and that marking was on the email when it was sent directly to Clinton’s account.
The “C” - which means it was marked classified at the confidential level - is in the left-hand-margin and relates to an April 2012 phone call with Malawi's first female president, Joyce Banda, who took power after the death of President Mutharika in 2012.
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Everything after that was fully redacted before it was publicly released by the State Department -- a sign that the information was classified at the time and dealt with sensitive government deliberations.
A US government source said there are other Clinton emails with classified markings, or marked classified, beyond the April 2012 document.
This leaves Hillary Clinton out of excuses. Her final argument will be that some material was inappropriately classified which is a classic example of pounding the table once you're run out of actual arguments.