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Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email At State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules
HughPickens.com writes: The NY Times reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, according to State Department officials. She may have violated federal requirements that officials' correspondence be retained as part of the agency's record. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act. "It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business," said attorney Jason R. Baron. A spokesman for Clinton defended her use of the personal email account and said she has been complying with the "letter and spirit of the rules."
I think you have misinterpreted the rules a bit. Campaigning and party activity are prohibited with government resources.
The President and Cabinet sending emails on implementing political goals are permitted activities. Sending emails about ?NC platform discussions are not permitted.
When I went through ethics training with the GC, it was very clear what was and was not permissible. From the GC point of view, the default was use goverment email and save every email.
I can see the desire, particularly at the executive level, not to leave a record because policy formulation can be a messy activity. However, I'm not sure that is the motivation in this case. First, there is no control over the retention of the other end and, second, a lot discussion happens on the classified side.
Palin used a personal account for personal stuff. We know this because a 4chan hacker (whose father was a Democrat state senator) hacked into it, and there was no state business emails in there. According to the NYT, Clinton didn't HAVE an official account. But you keep pretending they're the same thing.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken
Did you respond to the wrong post? Nothing I wrote can be read as "The other lizards did it" - not without cropping the entire post to remove all context.
The point I made (I'm not even "excusing" her) is that the law she's accused of breaking is an executive decree that was made TWO YEARS AFTER SHE LEFT OFFICE.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Richard Nixon proposed and drove the creation of the EPA.
He expanded Medicare coverage to include long-term disabled under 65.
He created the Federal disability insurance (SSDI).
He proposed a national health care plan, with federal subsidies (something more "socialized" than Obamacare).
Advocating any of these things today would make it impossible for any Republican to get the Presidential nomination.
The different is Hillary Clinton is a very bright woman, at the top of her game, recognisable around the world; she knew what she was doing.
I remember an interview from years back where she was asked if she used email and her response was along the lines of " Oh no. Emails are discoverable".
So yes, she knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.