I am sure you have been following the whole scandal involving Hillary Clinton setting up a private email server the very day her confirmation hearings to be as Secretary of State began. She used that server in place of an official State Department, Government-managed email account for all her work as Secretary. Now that all that news has come out, investigating committees in Congress are stymied in looking into certain activities at State during that time because records are not, as the law prescribes, archived, but on her own little server -- which we are told may have been destroyed.
Keep all that in mind.
Late Friday, the State Department provided a batch of emails from its own records sent to and from that private server. As it turns out, many of them contained classified information, putting the lie to Mrs.Clinton's repeated statements that the server was never used to send or receive classified material. But we are not surprised, are we? After all, that was her email server as secretary; she never had a "state.gov" address that she used.
Why is this important? Because look where the argument is going. Hillary sycophants, her entourage, and the drones in the press are trying to cast this as a fine standard -- "it wasn't technically illegal" ... "the emails she refused to turn over were about Chelsea's wedding" ... the information was not classified at the time it was sent" ... that sort of thing.
In taking the stance that this woman does not remotely merit the trust of the USA to hold any public office whatsoever, we need to face the scandal correctly.
- The issue is not whether she held back emails from her server deemed "personal" by her lawyers.
- The issue is not whether it is important or not if the State emails from her server were classified at the time they were sent, or were classified later on.
- The issue is not whether the pace of release of emails from her server by State is fast enough or whether they've got the slows.
It is silly nitpicking to keep dealing in those issues alone. Fox News will surely keep those issues out in the news, as they should, and try to refute them as they erupt and actual news appears.
For us -- for us making the argument that Hillary Clinton cannot be trusted with 25 cents of your money, let alone the Presidency -- for every Republican candidate -- don't nitpick! That's what the Clintons want you to do so that she can appear to be victimized and do her "poor me, poor picked-on grandmother" act.
Look at the big picture and stay there.
Stay on the single, compelling aspect of Emailgate that she cannot escape and cannot defend: Hillary Clinton, while being confirmed by Congress as Secretary of State, set up a private server controlled by her, knowing that she would conduct all her Government business on a server only she could manage, and that was in spite of regulations and guidance to the contrary. She went into the job knowing she would conduct all her Government business in secret, and thought she could get away with it. In doing so, she showed her contempt for law and positioned herself above it.
That is the single element of this scandal to be mentioned by Republicans. She is contemptuous of our laws. She planned to hide her actions as a Government employee and carried through on it. She refuses to turn over the server containing now classified material.
That is the key. The rest is just a bunch of details. Forget nitpicking the details.
The core offense is bad enough; let us stay on that.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There's a new post from Bob
at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving
new meaning to "prolific essayist." Sponsorship inquiries cheerfully welcomed at
bsutton@alum.mit.edu.
No comments:
Post a Comment