Sorry for What, Hillary?

Apologies aren’t answers to these 19 questions Clinton must answer.

 

By Ron Fournier
NationalJournal.com

 

“I’m sorry about that,” Hil­lary Rod­ham Clin­ton said six years after seiz­ing con­trol of gov­ern­ment email and after six months of deny­ing wrong­do­ing. Just this week, it took three dif­fer­ent in­ter­views in four days for her to beg the puni­est of par­dons: “I do think I could have and should have done a bet­ter job an­swer­ing ques­tions earli­er.”

You think? By any ob­ject­ive meas­ure, the Demo­crat­ic pres­id­en­tial front-run­ner has re­spon­ded to her email scan­dal with de­flec­tion and de­cep­tion, shred­ding her cred­ib­il­ity while giv­ing a skep­tic­al pub­lic an­oth­er reas­on not to trust the in­sti­tu­tions of polit­ics and gov­ern­ment.

An apo­logy doesn’t fix that. An apo­logy also doesn’t an­swer the scan­dal’s most im­port­ant ques­tions.

1. While apo­lo­giz­ing in an ABC in­ter­view on Tues­day, you said, “What I had done was al­lowed; it was above­board.” You must know by now that while the State De­part­ment al­lowed the use of home com­puters in 2009, agency rules re­quired that email be se­cured. Yours was not. Just nine months in­to your term, new reg­u­la­tions re­quired that your emails be cap­tured on de­part­ment serv­ers. You stashed yours on a home-brewed sys­tem un­til Con­gress found out. Why not ad­mit you vi­ol­ated policy? Why do you keep mis­lead­ing people?

2. If what you did was “above­board,” then you wouldn’t ob­ject to all ex­ec­ut­ive-branch of­fi­cials at every level of gov­ern­ment and from both parties stor­ing their email on private serv­ers—out of the pub­lic’s reach. Tell me how that wouldn’t sub­vert the fed­er­al Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act and “sun­shine laws” in every state?

3. If what you did was “al­lowed,” then you wouldn’t ob­ject to all ex­ec­ut­ive-branch of­fi­cials at every level of gov­ern­ment and from both parties us­ing secret serv­ers to shield them­selves from le­gis­lat­ive over­sight. Wouldn’t that un­der­mine the le­gis­lat­ive branch’s con­sti­tu­tion­al au­thor­ity? Wouldn’t it lead to more polit­ic­al cor­rup­tion?

4. If what you did be­came a na­tion­wide pre­ced­ent, his­tor­i­ans would be left with ex­po­nen­tially less archiv­al ma­ter­i­al to ex­plain the ac­tions of polit­ic­al lead­ers. You would have helped to erase the pub­lic memory. OK with that?

5. Who au­thor­ized the de­le­tion of 31,000 emails from your serv­er? Who car­ried it out? Were they ap­proved to re­view and se­cure clas­si­fied doc­u­ments?

6. The pub­lic and Con­gress has no right to see your truly per­son­al email. Do you con­sider email about your fam­ily’s found­a­tion to be per­son­al? Can you guar­an­tee that none of the de­leted email in­volved the Bill, Hil­lary & Chelsea Clin­ton Found­a­tion or its donors?

7. You said you didn’t have time to think about your email sys­tem when you star­ted at State, but it ap­pears you put a lot of thought in­to it. You said you did it for the con­veni­ence of hav­ing one device, but we found out later you car­ried at least two. You also said it was for you and Pres­id­ent Clin­ton to email each oth­er, but we now know he has only emailed once in his life. Why can’t we get a straight an­swer about why you cre­ated an un­au­thor­ized, un­pre­ced­en­ted email in­fra­struc­ture?

8. You’ve giv­en the av­er­age voter the right—and re­port­ers the re­spons­ib­il­ity—to ask an ugly ques­tion: What were you hid­ing?

9. Ever hear of Thomas Drake? He’s the former seni­or Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency of­fi­cial in­dicted un­der the Es­pi­on­age Act for keep­ing an agency email prin­tout at his home that was not marked as clas­si­fied. He pleaded guilty to a mis­de­mean­or. Why do you and your aides keep sug­gest­ing that it mat­ters wheth­er or not your emails were marked clas­si­fied?

10. You emailed your Middle East en­voy, George Mitchell, so­li­cit­ing a “reply” to your “per­son­al email.” He re­spon­ded with what is a now clas­si­fied sum­mary of his dis­cus­sion with Italy’s for­eign min­is­ter. Did you not know that type of head-of-state com­mu­nic­a­tion is in­stantly clas­si­fied? What were you ex­pect­ing to hear from Mr. Mitchell?

11. Re­mem­ber get­ting an email about the map­ping of North Korea’s nuc­le­ar pro­gram, which has since been marked clas­si­fied? Why didn’t you raise any red flags in­tern­ally, or do you think this type of in­form­a­tion should be le­git­im­ately un­clas­si­fied?

12. You paid a State De­part­ment tech­no­logy of­fi­cial privately to main­tain your private sys­tem. Huma Abedin was paid by the State De­part­ment, your found­a­tion, and a con­sult­ing firm. Aren’t these con­flicts of in­terest? Is double-dip­ping ap­pro­pri­ate for all fed­er­al work­ers or just your closest aides?

13. When the White House wouldn’t let you hire Sid­ney Blu­menth­al, you put him on the found­a­tion payroll and so­li­cited his ad­vice. Didn’t that vi­ol­ate the spir­it of the White House veto? Why did you claim pub­licly that his ad­vice was un­so­li­cited?

14. Sev­er­al of Blu­menth­al’s emails were de­leted from your serv­er and re­covered later through oth­er sources. Why shouldn’t we as­sume oth­er work-re­lated emails were de­leted?

15. How many serv­ers were there? Is there de­leted data on any oth­er devices?

16. Did you take any train­ing as first lady, sen­at­or, or sec­ret­ary of State on what is deemed clas­si­fied and how to handle and store clas­si­fied ma­ter­i­al? When was the last time?

17. You’re not the tar­get of an FBI in­vest­ig­a­tion at this time. Is it fair to say the FBI would not be in­vest­ig­at­ing the in­sec­ur­ity of clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion ab­sent the ac­tions you took? If not, please ex­plain.

18. If the FBI finds you im­prop­erly handled clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion but does not charge you with a crime, will you main­tain that you did noth­ing wrong? (Yes, ma’am, that is a hy­po­thet­ic­al, but so is a pres­id­en­tial can­did­acy. Please an­swer.)

19. Is U.S. na­tion­al se­cur­ity more or less se­cure as a res­ult of your serv­er’s ex­ist­ence?

What did I miss? Tweet #AskHil­lary @Ron_­Fourni­er