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The Dog Ate My Homework
Hillary acknowledging that it would have been better to use two e-mail accounts is about as close to an apology from the Clintons you’ll ever get. But the matter of “convenience” is just nonsense, as everyone knows. Even a tech dinosaur like myself has two e-mail accounts, which I now access on my spiffy new iPhone 6 Plus. (By the way, instead of that old Blackberry, Hillary should have had an iPhone.)
So Hillary says she didn’t break any White House or State Department rules. I don’t think that defense will fly. And the homemade server, created for messages between Bill and Hillary, is an absolute non-starter. Apparently Bill has only sent two e-mails in his life — and neither of them to Hillary.
There’s also a dog-ate-my-homework quality to this Clinton episode, with Hillary saying: Sorry, I deleted the remaining 30,000 or so e-mails, so I just can’t show them to you.
But those e-mails are out there in some cloud, or in some hard drive, or somewhere else. And Hillary has plainly stonewalled any proposals to have an independent counsel cull through the remaining e-mails.
Frankly, I don’t believe any part of that story — how many e-mails she sent to the State Department, or how many are left. Just not credible.
And this whole deletion thing is so Nixonian. Remember Rose Mary Woods and those mistakenly erased 18-or-so minutes of Watergate tape? Is it possible that Hillary is Nixon’s political daughter, or at least his niece?
And then there’s the business about the Secret Service monitoring security threats from cyberspace hacking. Just doesn’t fly. How do we know? Is the Secret Service going to issue a press release? Do we really believe they were involved in Hillary’s homemade server in Chappaqua?
Please.
And what about the former ambassador to Kenya, the guy who Hillary fired because he was using personal e-mails. She denied it today, but he’s out there giving interviews.
I’m no lawyer, so I can’t tell if any laws were broken. And it sure seems like she broke some White House and State Department rules. But to me the real issue here boils down to judgment.
Hillary’s homemade server system was clearly a security threat. That classified information essential to American protection could be cyber-hacked by Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran is something she obviously should have considered before she went ahead with this crazy scheme. And the notion that we are to believe there was no classified material in her personal e-mails, which included her government e-mails, defies all credulity.
This is bad judgment. It’s especially bad judgment for a future president. The American public knows this. And really, so does she.
Gowdy had this six months ago. Where were the subpoenas?
Excellent post.
The idea that she chose to have a horde of emails deleted, when they had already been put into issue by a state department request for material to archive, and she had already hired counsel to help her determine what to turn over, is incredibly suggestive of having something to hide.
It might not be so obvious to a non-lawyer, but a lawyer’s instinct will always be to tell a client to preserve written communications once there’s been something in the nature of a legal request for them. It is bordering on impossible that the legal advice she got was to go ahead and delete what she deemed “personal,” and therefore it seems exceptionally likely that she chose to delete e-mails against the advice of legal counsel.
Who, with nothing to hide, does that? To preserve the confidentiality of her yoga routine? Or Chelsea’s party plans? I don’t think so.
According to her interview in Silicon Valley a couple weeks ago, Hillary does have an iPhone and a Blackberry. So, her “I can’t have two phones” excuse is not only inaccurate because one phone can have two email accounts, but because she did, in fact, have two phones. She may be toast as a candidate.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2561329
What if her yoga routine involved liaisons with Huma of an unusual nature? Or more of human nature I suppose. If it’s a Clinton scandal we gotta have some sex.
You might be right. After all, she did go to Wellesley. (Ouch, sorry for that. Couldn’t resist.)
Joe Trippi raised a valid point on The Kelly File last night, which is that, according to him and I see no reason to doubt him, there is a regulation that government employees can’t have a government email and a non-government email on the same device.
However, that is not to say that Hillary’s excuse is in anyway valid.
She set up this private server for one reason only, and it wasn’t for “convenience” so that she could email Chelsea’s wedding planner in between communicating to foreign leaders and soliciting donations to the Clinton Foundation from large corporations like GE in exchange for quid pro quo arrangements with the aforementioned foreign leaders. The reason that she had the private server set up was so that she could be secretive.
Eww.
Is now really the time to get that flame-war started?
;-)
That is “go viral” worthy EJ.
Just looking at the State Dept rules in place at the time (Google “12 FAM 540”) These are the rules governing Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information. I assume most of Clinton’s work emails would fall under this heading.
They say, in part:
“a. It is the Department’s general policy that normal day-to-day operations be conducted on an authorized AIS …”(Automated Information System)
Is Clinton’s server ‘authorized’? Who authorized her to use this server? Herself?
“b. The Department is expected to provide, and employees are expected to use, approved secure methods to transmit SBU information when available and practical.”
Funny … Nothing about ‘convenient’ in there.
There is more and links to tons of additional stuff…but it is quickly over my head. Perhaps someone with better tech chops than myself can make heads or tails out of this?
Ditto. For the tough talk coming out of Gowdy, I haven’t seen much results.
I have him flickering into the Darrell Issa oversight theater category. Too bad.
I realize that things are not easy, and various peoples’ powers are limited. But if he wanted a subpoena and couldn’t get it, he could have mounted an appeal for support.
Haven’t heard anything.
Probably my fault. I’m breaking up the GOP.
Nixon had an 18 minute gap, Clinton has an 18 megabyte gap. Who’s the crook?
Somehow, though, she will fall buttered side up.
Someone will ask him that. Until Gowdy answers I’ll give him the benefit.
That appears to be the direction he is heading, attempting to jaw-jaw Mrs. Clinton into complying.
I expect he will be waiting quite some time before that occurs.
Naturally, the big e-mailgate related question on CNN today is: Will Republicans overreach?
Indeed. Why was it so urgent to delete tens of thousands of pages of emails? Was the server running out of space? If so, the Clintons could certainly have afforded a few terabytes, since they’re no longer “flat broke”.
Furthermore, turning over 50k pages of emails by printing, boxing, and shipping them is analogous to paying one’s taxes with sacks of pennies. It is an act of disdain.
The, I only deleted personal emails, leaves her wide open to someone coming forth with emails that should have been turned over but weren’t…
Way back when, my ex wrote technical manuals for very sensitive and some secret equipment for the government. He of course was cleared and when we married, so was I. I helped by typing his manuscripts. We had a hassle once over the words shall and will. He stated in a sentence, “the operator shall…” and I thought the word “will” sounded better. He explained to me the word shall meant just that, no ifs, buts, or maybes. The words will, can, should, or could, gives the operator choices. In the case we were discussing, if the operator made his own choice, it would have cost him his life.
So the above State Department statements regarding messaging gives the users plenty of leeway in choosing their methods. It does not say they shall use secured methods.
That is standard legal usage for “shall”. A lawyer would never use “will” if s/he meant the directive to be mandatory.
And as a lawyer, HRC certainly would know how to win this shall game.