Email Scandal Could Be End for Hillary
The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation accepted huge contributions from foreign governments — including dictatorships hostile to America — while Hillary was secretary of state, The Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 17.
Ms. Clinton conducted all of her official business on a private email server installed in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., The New York Times reported March 2.
The greatest relevancy of Hillary’s secret communications cache “is what the emails might reveal about any nexus between Clinton’s work at State and donations to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation from U.S. corporations and foreign nations,” said Ron Fournier of the National Journal.
“The emails are a related but secondary scandal,” a longtime Clinton adviser told him. “Follow the foundation money.”
Hillary chose the United Nations as the venue for a news conference Tuesday to address the burgeoning scandals, presumably because cumbersome accreditation procedures there pretty much would restrict attendance to journalists who cover the U.N.
Ms. Clinton seemed irritated to have to answer any questions, and she cut them off after about 20 minutes. But in those 20 minutes, she dug the hole she was in deeper.
The private server was for Bill’s benefit, Hillary said.
It was installed in 2009, when she became secretary of state, not in 2001, when Bill left the White House. A spokesman for Bill said he’s sent just two emails his entire life, both while he was president.
The server was secure, because the Secret Service guards the Chappaqua estate, Ms. Clinton said.
She knows hackers don’t need to be where a computer or server is physically located to break into it but evidently hopes the rubes in Flyover Country don’t.
Foreign intelligence services almost certainly have hacked her server, experts say. In 2013, a hacker named “Guccifer” sent four of her emails to RT News, a Russian news service funded by the Kremlin.
She used the private server because she didn’t want to lug around two phones, Hillary said. She travels with four electronic devices, Ms. Clinton told an interviewer during an event in Silicon Valley Feb. 24.
There were 62,320 emails, of which 31,530 were “private” and have been deleted, Hillary said. But she won’t let State examine her server because there might be private emails on it. Even Politico noticed the contradiction.
The law permits her to use private email, Hillary said.
The Federal Records Act allows “occasional and incidental use” of private email, not exclusive use. Ms. Clinton violated policy all four years she was secretary, a senior State Department official told ABC News.
Emails to government employees (who presumably obeyed the law she flouted) have been preserved, Hillary said. But emails to and from, say, the government of Algeria about what Algeria expected in return for a contribution to the Clinton Foundation wouldn’t have been.
No emails were classified, Ms. Clinton said.
If you believe that not once in four years did the secretary of state send or receive a classified email, you’re a prime customer for beachfront property in Arizona.
Hillary is a candidate of the past, said 51 percent of registered voters in a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll conducted March 1-5. Her defenders are mostly 1990s retreads such as James Carville. When Mr. Carville accuses MSNBC and The New York Times of getting their stories from “right-wing talking points,” you know they’re flailing.
If the email scandal turns out to be the “last straw” for Hillary, this will be the reason why. Democrats and journalists who shill for them who aren’t themselves put off by her lies, arrogance, hypocrisy, greed and corruption fret that swing voters could be.
Their concern may be well founded. In a Rasmussen poll March 4, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker led Ms. Clinton, 51 percent to 43 percent, among voters who are following the presidential race most closely.
