I just don’t get Candidate Hillary Clinton. One would expect a woman as intelligent and accomplished as she is would learn from her past mistakes. Yet Candidate Clinton, much like Secretary Clinton, Senator Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to operate under the misguided belief that the rules of propriety and law do not apply to her. This sense of entitlement has once again placed her in the crosshairs of her political enemies. More importantly, this time it is the Justice Department that has her in its sights.
You have no doubt heard all the hubbub about Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email account and server while acting as Secretary of State. The legal question is whether or not Secretary Clinton improperly sent, received and preserved classified material via that personal account and server. The question of her use of good judgement is another matter.
There has been a lot of stuff reported in the media about this situation. Most of it is wrong. So I thought that I would provide an unvarnished outline of the facts that have been corroborated by numerous sources. No politics here...just facts. Then you can judge Hillary Clinton’s veracity for yourself.
While serving as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her personal email account to send and receive government emails. She says that she did this for convenience because she believed that using her personal email account for personal business and the email account provided to her by the State Department for her government work would be too cumbersome. Mrs. Clinton also chose to archive all of her emails on a personal server which she kept in her New York home. She says she believed this to be appropriate because the server was the same secure server her husband, Bill Clinton, used while serving as president.
Mrs. Clinton says that all emails sent to or received from State Department officials and or employees were archived on the State Department’s server and that any other emails were of a personal nature with no connection to the government. She says that many of her predecessors used personal email accounts to conduct the governments business. She said that she never received or transmitted any classified material via her email account.
Mrs. Clinton did not break any laws by using her personal email account to conduct government business. She did not violate any laws by archiving those emails on a personal server. However upon taking office President Obama issued a directive that all employees of his administration would use the government provided email account to conduct all government business. Mrs. Clinton’s actions violated that directive.
A few months after Secretary Clinton left office the State Department began a systematic cleanup of their archived communications. They contacted all former secretaries of state and asked them to turn over all their old emails for proper archiving purposes. In compliance with that request Mrs. Clinton ordered her staff to review all the emails on her personal server in order to determine which emails would be turned over to the government. She and her staff determined that 55,000 pages of emails would be released to the government in compliance with the request. 30,000 emails were not released. Mrs. Clinton subsequently had the 30,000 emails deleted and the server scrubbed.
In reviewing the 55,000 pages of emails the State Department found 6 that they believed were of a sensitive nature and required more investigation. The FBI began a review of the 55,000 emails and found sufficient cause to believe that a review of the other 30,000 emails was warranted and requested that Mrs. Clinton turn over her personal server. A subsequent review of the previously scrubbed correspondence has thus far brought 305 emails into question due to their sensitive content.
Mrs. Clinton has adamantly denied any impropriety. She has stated that this whole topic would have never come up had she not voluntarily released her emails to the State Department for the sake of transparency. She has brushed aside the entire firestorm as “politics as usual.”
Of course we now know that Mrs. Clinton did not voluntarily release her emails for the sake of transparency. She responded to a State Department request by selectively releasing 55.000 pages of emails while attempting to permanently destroy 30,000 others. It is only natural to question the content of those 30,000 deleted emails.
Assuming that Mrs. Clinton did not transmit any classified documents; we know that Mrs. Clinton did not break any laws by using her personal email account to conduct government business. But we also know that she violated a directive from her boss…the President of the United States.
There has been a great deal of speculation as to why then Secretary Clinton elected to use a personal server to archive her government emails. I’m not going to get into speculation. I will simply say that while her decision to operate in this manner may not have been illegal it certainly calls her judgement and sense of propriety into question.
As for Mrs. Clinton’s assertions that this is all just “politics as usual”; let me say this. The formal inquiry into this matter is being conducted by Justice Department officials appointed by the leader of Mrs. Clinton’s Democrat Party…President Barak Obama. It is anything but “politics as usual” when the FBI is involved.
Candidate Hillary Clinton finds herself embroiled in yet another firestorm. It is a firestorm fueled by a long history of questionable behavior, obfuscation and entitlement. It is a firestorm that could seriously threaten her run for the White House.
It is firestorm for which she has no one to blame but herself.
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