Government Finds New Emails Clinton Did Not Hand Over

PolygamousRanchKid writes with this Reuters report that The U.S. Defense Department has found an email chain that Hillary Clinton failed to turn over to the State Department despite her saying she had provided all work emails from her time as Secretary of State.The correspondence with General David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. Central Command at the time, started shortly before she entered office and continued during her first days as the top U.S. diplomat in January and February of 2009. News of the previously undisclosed email thread only adds to a steady stream of revelations about the emails in the past six months, which have forced Clinton to revise her account of the setup which she first gave in March. Nearly a third of all Democrats and 58 percent of all voters think Clinton is lying about her handling of her emails, according to a Fox News poll released this week.

Clinton apologized this month for her email setup, saying it was unwise. But as recently as Sunday, she told CBS when asked about her emails that she provided 'all of them.' The emails with Petraeus also appear to contradict the claim by Clinton's campaign that she used a private BlackBerry email account for her first two months at the department before setting up her clintonemail.com account in March 2009. This was the reason her campaign gave for not handing over any emails from those two months to the State Department. The Petraeus exchange shows she started using the clintonemail.com account by January 2009, according to the State Department.

Comments

Re:Nothing to see here, move on

[jandersen]

Dear me, what is actually wrong with Americans and their politics? Maybe you guys need a Jeremy Corbyn to change the tone - somebody who has the temerity to shuffle along in slippers and speak plainly, but politely about things that actually matter to people. I thought it was amazing to watch him during the first PMQ - no jeering, no cheap point scoring. You can respect a guy like that.

How much does it actually matter that she sent some emails from her home server? And before you get into hysterical overdrive, remember that the people of America actually elected a self-confessed ex-drunk like GWB into that office, and got perilously close to letting Sarah Palin into power. And there are people right now who seriously consider voting for a windbag like mr Trump. So, how much of this email hype is actually about the seriousness of having been a bit lax with her emails, and how much is about trying to paint her in a bad light no matter what the objective reality is?

It is no wonder that all your politicians seem to be somewhat out of contact with the real world, because nobody in possession of their full, mental capabilities would voluntarily subject themselves to the sort of treatment they get from the press and the lobbies - with the willing, not to say eager participation of You the People. As a side note, next time anybody from the US suggests that 'Democracy' should be introduced in country X, remember that the way you do those things does not look all that attractive to foreigners.

Re:Not the server

[AthanasiusKircher]

You can rest easy, though. So many illiterate people have taken up "bold-faced" in lieu of "bald-faced"/"bare-faced" that it is rapidly becoming perfectly accepted.

This is a very specific linguistic phenomenon, known to usage experts these days as an eggcorn (itself a reference to people using the term eggcorn rather than acorn). There's an entry for bold-faced lie in the Eggcorn Database.

Eggcorns are interesting from a linguistic perspective, because they often involve three mechanisms which reinforce the change: (1) the new word or phrase sounds very similar to the old one, (2) the new word or phrase incorporates new elements that have a certain logical relationship to some meanings of the old word/phrase, and (3) the new components often substitute for archaic words or usage that often only have stuck around in obscure English idioms. (In this case, "bald" and "bold" sound similar, these types of lies often involve a sort of "boldness," and nobody uses the term "bald-faced" anymore outside of that idiom.)

Thus in tiny pieces a language is corrupted.

Meh. "Corruption" in language is a matter of perspective. Language naturally evolves. These types of "corruptions" have often been around for decades or even centuries. If they happen to date back more than a century or two, they're usually accepted as "legitimate English," even if their origin is as screwed up as your example (and often more so). If Shakespeare said it, by definition it's okay.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to hold to "standards," particularly in formal writing. But at some point these things become a lost cause. (See, for example, the word "decimate," which comes from a Latin practice of reduction by 1/10th, i.e., reducing to 90% of the original strength or size. NOBODY uses the word to mean this anymore -- instead implying a much greater reduction in size, if not complete destruction -- and if you try to imply the original meaning outside of describing Roman army practices, no one would understand your meaning. Outside of specific historical usage, "decimate" simply means something else now.)

And sometimes the people who complain about linguistic "decay" and "corruption" are the worst offenders -- in their zeal to "fix" English and stamp out usages that sound wrong to them, they often end up creating their own stupid errors.

It's one of the reasons English spelling is so screwed up. See here for a few quick examples of common English words where pretentious idiots tried to make English conform to a mistaken "rule" and added silent letters to words for no apparent reason.

TL;DR -- You're right, and careful writers should take heed. But easy on the "corruption" rant, lest you become a greater danger to English than those you criticize.

Re:what difference...

[sycodon]

"Clinton dismissed the notion that she set up the private
account and server to make it more difficult for her government
officials or her political enemies to gather information on her record
as she seeks the White House."

“That’s totally ridiculous, that never crossed my mind,” Clinton said."

OK, now we've crossed over into the Onion Zone. Parody Writers couldn't come up with better stuff if they tried.

Re:Nothing to see here, move on

[Greyfox]

We've had an anti-government undertone basically since the nation was founded. The revolutionary war was clearly a traumatic event for a few people, and they don't like the idea of anyone having any power over them. We all kind of had to pull together for the second World War and the cold war that followed kind of kept those guy in line for a long time. They started getting louder again when Russia fell apart back in the 90's. It's like some of us are stuck in the angsty sixteen-year-old mentality that "Everyone's oppressing me!" They've long since learned that directly talking about shutting the government down doesn't get them anywhere, so they're currently trying to chip away at it. The nation gets more polarized and the government shutdowns and brinkmanship become far more common.

There are some potentially sensible candidates on the left and right, but no one's paying much attention to them right now. It doesn't really matter who becomes president as long as Congress remains broken. Voters are largely indifferent because the two party system is effectively rigged to keep those two parties in power. I could see Trump getting elected on name appeal alone. It's still pretty early, though. I suspect Trump and Hillary will end up getting ejected from the race. Whatever happens, it's going to be a wild ride.