It’s not clear she even broke the rules, and, frankly, these days we’re all in breach of some technical federal rule or other. Do you drive at 54 mph on the highway? Have you ever seen anyone under 80 who does?
Via the Washington Post, this is supposedly the requirement:
“Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.”
You cannot comply with the requirement by simply saying, "Everyone at a state.gov who received an email from Hillary, fork it over. And according to what I've heard of it, that is what was done.
Importantly, it reflects poor judgment for her to have done this. Proper security of a private server is complicated work and the federal government has the infrastructure (lousy as they are) to do it. This is a security risk of the most extreme variety for her to have been operating a mail server at her home for this purpose.
And finally, there is the question of "why?" Why would a Secretary of State do this? Move from a more secure email environment where the IT staff knew the proper procedures to a home based server lacking the substantial resources of the federal government to secure the server?
No, there are far too many unanswered questions here. It may be that NYT and WaPo have just decided they want a different candidate, perhaps an extremist like Warren. But there is some reason they chose to report this. If it had just been Obama the news would never have seen the light of day.
>> Even people in public life have some reasonable rights to privacy. If they don’t, no one good will serve in public life.
They may have a right to privacy in their private lives. But the law, and nothing else, determines how much privacy they can have with respect to the work they do. Apparently, the law is specific.
>> Nobody conducts all their communications in public. You don’t. I don’t. Presidents don’t. Secretaries of agriculture don’t. Oh — and I seriously doubt Congressman Trey Gowdy, who has subpoenaed her emails, does either.
That really depends on what the law is. I guarantee you that if the law requires Gowdy to handle communications in a particular way, he's doing it. We know Obama is a criminal when it comes to compliance with such requirements. (The most opaque administration in history).
>> If you don’t have at least a reasonable degree of trust in Hillary Clinton, you shouldn’t vote for her no matter what email she uses. If you do have some reasonable degree of trust, you shouldn’t really care what email she uses either."
I think any person who has trust in this woman either has misplaced it -- likely due to party affiliation -- or is just plain stupid when it comes to judging character. |
