Fox's Tucker Carlson Falsely Claims “Information Is Never Retroactively Classified” To Smear Hillary Clinton

Fox host Tucker Carlson falsely claimed that “information is never retroactively classified” in order to smear Hillary Clinton. In fact, retroactive classification is a practice that has occurred for decades, and is often part of a “bureaucratic turf war.” From the February 1 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

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STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Brian and Tucker let's talk a little bit more about Hillary Clinton. You know, this is the big caucus day and she's got a problem because she's answering questions about the email server. Many say that it was an illegal situation, she got hacked, all sorts of stuff like that. In the beginning, back in March she said, you know, first of all, none of the stuff on my server was secret. Now we know that many, many secrets were on it. Now she's trying to spin it this way: when she got it, when she sent it, it wasn't classified at the time. And, in fact, yesterday she was talking to WHO TV in Des Moines and she explained it this way, how after the fact they classified it.

ANNA KOOIMAN (CO-HOST): This is what she said, “the best explanation I heard of this, I heard yesterday in Des Moines from a man I was shaking hands with. He said, this is like you drive through the same intersection for four years, and the speed limit is 35. Then you move out of town, and they change the speed limit to 25, and then they start sending tickets to people who drove while the speed limit was 35 or over.” But the problem, Steve, with this metaphor is not the metaphor itself necessarily, it's the timing. She said it was yesterday. But here she is three weeks ago saying she heard the same thing.

DOOCY: What?

[BEGIN VIDEO]

HILLARY CLINTON: It would be like somebody in the Department of Transportation setting speed limits. Let's say the speed limit was 35. And then retroactively the police say well you know what, that speed limit should have been 25. So, let's go back and look at anybody who drove down that road and exceeded 25.

[END VIDEO]

DOOCY: OK so Tucker, maybe she heard it yesterday. And then again she heard it three weeks ago exactly the same way.

TUCKER CARLSON: Doesn't matter when she heard it. It's untrue factually. Everyone in Washington knows, and it is a fact, that information is never retroactively classified. That's just not true. Ask anybody in the intel community.