A short while ago, it was Gerstein who floated an utterly false and totally ridiculous story that State Department had prevailed in a classification battle over two TOP SECRET documents found on Hillary Clinton’s private server. It was ridiculous because the agency that creates the classified information owns it and decides its level of classification. Those two documents were from a KH-11 reconnaissance satellite. There was never any fight as State did not have a vote in the process. Gerstein’s story was slapped down by no less than the Director of National Intellignce, himself.

Last week Gerstein was at it again. This time claiming, absurdly, that additional TOP SECRET and SECRET documents found on Hillary Clinton’s server were actually open source references to classified programs. That is simply not how classified information is safeguarded. There is no logical reason why an intelligence agency would insist on classifying as SECRET, or above, a, say, New York Times article that revealed classified information. A situation like that is handled by ignoring the article. You would never want to highlight it.

Now he’s back at it. He’s attacking the one of the State Department IG investigators because 12 years ago he played a very minor role — he signed one subpoena — in the prosecution Clinton’s senatorial campaign in jail for fraud (I’m sensing a pattern here).

An official overseeing State Department investigations stemming from Hillary Clinton’s email practices had a greater role than previously acknowledged in a probe of Clinton’s first Senate campaign, according to a subpoena reviewed by POLITICO. State’s Office of Inspector General told POLITICO earlier this month that the No. 3 official there, David Seide, was not involved in a campaign finance prosecution stemming from Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, but only in a stock fraud probe of a firm connected to a Clinton donor. However, a grand jury subpoena issued to Clinton’s Senate campaign committee in January 2003 which bears Seide’s name and title as an assistant U.S. Attorney and appears to have been hand-initialed by him made sweeping demands for the campaign’s financial and fund-raising records. The materials covered by the subpoena are so wide-ranging that they do not appear consistent with a probe focused on the financial dealings of a single donor or company.

Because of this, supposedly he is unable to be fair in his investigation. This is ridiculous. If you buy into this logic then every federal, state, and local prosecutor is potentially ineligible for even their own job because they may, eventually, prosecute the friends, family members, or distant relatives of people they have previously prosecuted.

From this cheap shot it is very obvious that Gerstein is being fed information either by, for from the office of, Clinton’s State Department fixer, Patrick Kennedy. The first two stories are party line from Kennedy’s office. The last is a manifestation of a documented fight between Kennedy and the State Department IG over the email issue.