Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Hillary Broke the Law and It’s All My Fault
Big news Monday night as the New York Times reported Hillary Clinton used a personal email account to conduct all official State Department business. This appears to be a violation of federal law since such communications must be kept as an official agency record.
Twitter was abuzz with commentary, with many reporters incredulous.
how’d she get away with it for so long? http://t.co/pvJ78J6t0l
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) March 3, 2015
Shock of shocks, I responded to the BuzzFeed Politics journalist with a mild critique.
Asked the journalist. MT @RosieGray how’d she get away with it for so long? http://t.co/bU2ysqdV8U
— jon gabriel (@exjon) March 3, 2015
It’s obvious why Clinton and so many other Obama officials get away with breaking the law. The D.C. press corps has little interest in holding their favorite president accountable. Sure, this White House might have a flaw here or there but he means well, and did you hear what crazy Todd Akin said about dinosaurs and contraception?
By pointing out this obvious bias, I broke Beltway etiquette. Team Journolist lashed out.
@exjon i wasn’t in the business yet for most of Hillary’s tenure at State. thanks for the baseless insinuation though
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) March 3, 2015
.@exjon it’s that same fourth estate that exposed this
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) March 3, 2015
Actually, the Fourth Estate didn’t expose this. Trey Gowdy did:
The existence of Mrs. Clinton’s personal email account was discovered by a House committee investigating the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi as it sought correspondence between Mrs. Clinton and her aides about the attack.
The Daily Beast’s Jackie Kucinich admitted as much. But now that I had mildly criticized a fellow Beltway reporter, I had to be mocked.
@exjon @RosieGray is right – you didn’t read this from a press release. Remember? It was like 15 minutes ago.
— Jackie Kucinich (@JFKucinich) March 3, 2015
A reporter from the New York Times jumped in as well:
@exjon @RosieGray so true Jon, where have the mainstream media been lately on the Clintons, their finances, foundation, etc.?
— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) March 3, 2015
Rosie Gray’s editor joined in the fun by mocking Breitbart (one day after the anniversary of his death, incidentally):
@nickconfessore @exjon @RosieGray cmon nick give Breitbart some credit here.
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) March 3, 2015
Four highly paid Acela elites ganging up on a lowly Ricochet editor? I thanked them all for holding me accountable for daring to question the Fourth Estate. Confessore said that was “lazy cynical [expletive]” and issued a long rant ridiculing anyone who suggests the media is biased.
It always amazes me how reporters — professionals dedicated to questioning others — have such thin skin when they themselves are questioned. Unlike these pros, I was calm, polite and used no profanity; they still reacted with rage. Despite their claim to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” their actions show otherwise.
There was a single Twitter headshake wondering how one of the most powerful people on the planet got away with violating federal law for years. This was followed by a barrage of ridicule, mockery and outrage attacking a lowly citizen who typed “Asked the journalist.”
The D.C. press corps is so unsettled by offering even the mildest concern about Democrats that they must quickly return to their comfort zone mocking proles. There is little interest in questioning the rich and powerful, it’s all about defending their tribe. The Clintons certainly don’t view Gray, Confessore, et al., as fellow elites, but this only makes these reporters more desperate to flaunt the tribal markers.
Kudos to the New York Times for grudgingly holding a liberal accountable now and then. But if you want to see zeal, wait until Gov. Walker says something about evolution.
Published in General
I hope Hillary doesn’t fall because of this email stumble…because I can’t wait for the Hillary/Scott Walker debate headlines:
Geolocation by IP is always iffy but at first glance it appears to be the British Virgin Islands.
If I may interject what may seem to you cynical thought, but it isn’t.
Jeb Bush has been running quite a good campaign.
The level of insanity suggested by this story is deep. We’ve got a scandal about her e-mail account despite having had a scandal about Benghazi for quite some time–but not much of a scandal about the war in Libya itself.
Forget about the journalists. What about everyone else who got an e-mail from her? No one thought, “I just got a personal e-mail from the Secretary of State of the United States of America, that’s a bit odd?” Surely many people noticed that? This story suggests something profoundly rotten.
If Jeb has accidentally hit on this as a campaign strategy, good enough. If he thought it out, even better. That’s how I want the Commander-in-Chief thinking about Putin. It seems to me at least plausible that the family dynasties are slugging it out behind the scenes. The Bush Dynasty’s been around the block.
Might be the best we can do, for now. Not going to fix this problem in one election cycle. If they can take a Clinton down so strategically–bloodless, too–maybe they can think that way about Putin.
If not, at least he seems transparent about the e-mail.
I’m a Walker man — see above — but I’m not underestimating Jeb. He may be out of practice, but he won twice in a contested state, then governed as a conservative.
Jeb Bush will not be an easy out.
I am sure he has hired the best in the world to lipstick the pig.
“Hillary’s No Walker”
As far as the main topic, of course the NYT does not engage in investigative journalism regarding their darlings. The best they do about such items is reporting old news on the back pages.
Comes up as Florida for name server but Colorado for email host on my scan. Probably moot since Hillary’s people have likely already deep sixed what they can.
Fun legal question: can Obama/Clinton claim executive privilege for private email? How many violations of record-keeping laws does that trigger if they do?
I agree, but I don’t care as long as we can have televised committee hearings, and if it’s only going to be on C-SPAN and Fox so be it. At least, it will be out there.
Mike,
I second the motion.
Regards,
Jim
1) My interpretation of “Asked the journalist” would not have been “Where were you when this was going on?” but rather, “Why are you asking the question? Aren’t journalists supposed to go and find the answers?” Therefore, what Ms. Gray was doing when Ms. Clinton was Secretary of State is irrelevant.
2) Be that as it may, to be fair to Ms. Gray, what she may have been driving at is: How did Ms. Clinton get away with using a personal email account without being called on it internally? Certainly, that should have happened well before any reporter catching wind of it.
I work for a corporation (a European bank). If I engaged in this practice, I would be fired – no question. I am actually prevented by our systems from accessing my Verizon and Gmail accounts. If I were conducting bank business on personal email accounts, very soon one of my colleagues would say to me, “Hey, what the heck are you doing?” So in the State Dept. case, what we have is an IT failure, but also a human failure: Who, after all, would ever stand up to Hillary and say, “WTH”?
Claire, the whole ideas of family dynasties slugging it out behind the scenes is precisely what repulses me. Again: Are we a banana republic?
I will keep asking the question as long as we have Bush and Clinton in the race.
Ah, quite correct. I had actually grabbed the web server IP. Hmm… the smtp server looks like it may be an open relay, not good.
When you get appointed to a high level job like Secretary of State, isn’t there an introductory class you have to take on some of the rules, or at least a handbook to peruse on your first day?
I picture an SNL skit in there somewhere. Maybe someone telling Hillary she can throw away all those floppy discs with 10 free hours of AOL now, because State has a fancy new Dell laptop they just plugged in for her.
Johnny,
What you say is so true that it suggests what I was saying a few comments back. Could this have actually happened? What if her email account at State has been deleted and this is all a cover story.
Regards,
Jim
Johnny,
100% on this. Besides, I think Hillary has her best chance against Jeb. He’s the democratic party’s choice for the candidate they’d most like to run against.
Regards,
Jim
Many years ago I worked for a local city government, acting as the token Ron Swanson. During the orientation I learned that all official emails and phone calls were public record and could be FOIA-ed by the press at any time. Even at this low level, everyone knew what “official emails” meant. If the mayor or city manager refused to use a city account, several people would immediately tell him to stop it or else.
Makes no sense that no one raised an eyebrow at her activity.
Every time I see a story like this, I hear faint mutterings from 100 newsrooms, “Run, Liz, Run.”
No federal government official at the cabinet level operates without constant consultation with legal counsel within their department or agency. It is difficult to imagine that lawyers within the State Department interacting with Secretary Clinton and her staff would have been able to do this without using email. Would they not have known she was using a personal account and that was in itself illegal? Is there no limit to what we must bear from our criminals or our incompetents in Washington?
Lefty journalists suffer from a reflexive denial of their own participation in the liberal mindset. Then, when it starts to become evident, they issue denials and whine about being misconstrued. Perfect innocence is a terrible burden for them to have to carry.
As Bob states above each department has legal counsel – permanent civil service lawyers who advise on the legalities regardless of the politics. The relevant statue here is the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
The problem is that email and phone texts are more recent developments in communications. Was she advised not to use a private account? Did the Yale Law School graduate ask for an opinion?
The other thing that I would bring up is that early in the Administration this came up in a press conference and then-Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “We are definitely instructed that we need to conduct all of our work on our government accounts as part of the Presidential Records Act. I’m not aware of any law or rule that suggests that government workers cannot have separate private email accounts.”
Remember the big deal about the President keeping his Blackberry?
She is an arrogant stupid tyrannical witch.
Perhaps all these journalists where just blindsided by the idea that the Clintons would be anything less than honest and public-spirited in their service to America. Why should they go looking for this?
I’d bet real money that she can’t even understand why people are so upset. This will demonstrate (yet again, because there have been so many other times) how very real their belief is that the law, from the Constitution on down to the “Don’t Spit on the Sidewalk” sign, does not apply to them. I cannot look at Obama or the Clintons without the the French Revolution scene (not CoC compliant!) from History of the World Part I going through my mind.
Smart. Be great if Walker could follow suit.
While my posts rarely make it to the main feed, as someone who feels that Hillary Clinton is totally unfit to be POTUS, I hope that you’ll read my most recent post here on Ricochet and leave your comments.
http://ricochet.com/stopping-hillary-clinton-now/
Maybe if it gets some additional traction, my post will get promoted to the main feed.
My current Facebook thread, and how I deal with unapologetic Clinton followers, might make for interesting reading as well.
One of the Liberal-Progressive-Democrat followers on my Facebook thread seems to believe that “visiting a lot of countries” is an accomplishment of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. I think he gets his talking points from Claire McCaskill.
Jon, you made “Best of the Web” again today.
She’s cute, but, like Jen Psaki, she looks like she should be hosting music videos on MTV.
Still having trouble getting over that mumu that Hillary is rockin’. It is a freak show, baby. A Night of Mares.
There. Fixed it for you.