It appears we may have our first death due to Hillary Clinton’s reckless and unauthorized use of a non-secure private email server.  The revelation comes courtesy of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) during his appearance on Face the Nation yesterday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92mtGJtLaI

“I’m not going to comment on what he may or may not have done for the United States government, but in the emails that were on Hillary Clinton’s private server, there were conversations among her senior advisers about this gentleman. That goes to show just how reckless and careless her decision was to put that kind of highly classified information on a private server. And I think her judgment is not suited to keep this country safe.”

Cotton is referring to Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri who appeared to have defected back in 2009 and provided information and assistance to the US government until he returned to Iran in 2010. More on that later.

The Associated Press explains exactly how Amiri was referred to in Clinton’s emails:

“We have a diplomatic, ‘psychological’ issue, not a legal one. Our friend has to be given a way out,” the email by Richard Morningstar, a former State Department special envoy for Eurasian energy, read. “Our person won’t be able to do anything anyway. If he has to leave so be it.”

Another email, sent by Sullivan on July 12, 2010, appears to obliquely refer to the scientist just hours before his appearance at the Pakistani Embassy became widely known.

“The gentleman … has apparently gone to his country’s interests section because he is unhappy with how much time it has taken to facilitate his departure,” Sullivan wrote. “This could lead to problematic news stories in the next 24 hours.”

Isn’t it rich that in the course of discussing an intelligence asset and his potential return to Iran Hillary’s inner circle seems most concerned with “problematic news stories in the next 24 hours”?

So, who was Shahram Amiri?  The New York Times lays out the strange odyssey of the past 6 years that paints a picture of a scientist who appears to defect to the west, reveals vital secrets and inexplicably returns to Iran as a hero:

Amiri first vanished in 2009 while on a religious pilgrimage to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia. A year later, he reappeared in a series of contradictory online videos filmed in the U.S.

…

Shahram Amiri defected to the U.S. at the height of Western efforts to thwart Iran’s nuclear program. When he returned in 2010, he was welcomed with flowers by government leaders and even went on the Iranian talk-show circuit. Then he mysteriously disappeared.

Fast forward to this weekend when Tehran announced Amiri had been executed.

“This person who had access to the country’s secret and classified information had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan,” Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni Ejehi said.  “He provided the enemy with vital and secret information of the country.”

So, in summary, Amiri appears to defect to the west in 2009, provides secret information to the US on Iran’s nuclear program. For some reason he asks to return in 2010 and is treated as a hero, celebrity and victim of an American kidnapping. He is treated this way until recently when he is arrested tried and executed.

What happened between his return to Tehran and his execution?  The revelation of Hillary Clinton’s email scheme and the release of her emails with references to Amiri.