Federal Judge Orders ‘Rolling’ Disclosure Of Hillary Clinton’s State Department Emails
Drip, Drip, Drip.
A Federal District court Judge has ordered the State Department to release the emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton while Secretary of State on a far quicker timetable than the department was suggesting:
A federal judge is ordering the State Department to release thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails from her private server on a “rolling” basis, rejecting State’s bid for a single large release in early 2016.
Judge Rudolph Contreras on Tuesday gave State until May 26 to craft a rolling schedule for release of emails from the 55,000 pages that Clinton turned over to State last year.tes from counsel every 60 days.”
The move comes a day after State proposed a plan that would not make the “releasable” portions of the messages available until January 16, 2016, owing to the detailed and labor-intensive review of the printed material.
If accepted, State’s proposal would have enabled a major release just ahead of nominating caucuses and primaries, which begin with the Iowa caucuses in early February and contests in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada later that month.
But the judge’s new order isn’t necessarily good news for Clinton, either. Although it remains unclear when State will begin releasing the documents, the rolling time line raises the prospect of a drip-drip-drip of emails that will repeatedly reintroduce a negative storyline as Clinton is campaigning.
Contreras is also requiring State to provide a separate proposed deadline for State to produce emails related specifically to the Benghazi attack.
State plans to release a much smaller set of 300 emails related to Libya and the 2012 Benghazi attacks soon, perhaps within days, according to several news reports. Those messages were already provided to the House panel that Republicans created to probe the Benghazi attack.
The State Department did not provide immediate comment Tuesday.
These proceedings, it’s important to note, are not directly related to the ongoing investigation by the House Select Committee charged with investigating the Benghazi attack. Instead, this is the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Vice News and apparently joined by other news organizations to some degree or another. Like the committee before it, the Benghazi Committee already has access to the emails sent and received by Clinton regarding that matter during the time that she was Secretary of State, although there is now a dispute between Clinton and the Committee related to her use of a private email server during the time she was in office. Additionally, the FOIA request appears by all accounts to request emails far beyond those that are just relating to the Benghazi attack and its aftermath.
The State Department has contended that, because of the volume of the emails, which reportedly amount to some 55,000 pages. While the logistics are certainly a relevant factor for the judge to consider, it also shouldn’t be a controlling factor in determining the timetable for production. Obviously, the department’s review of these emails is an ongoing process and some portion of the whole will be available long before January 2016. Recognizing that fact, and taking into account the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act, it seems fairly obvious that Judge Contreras was correct here in ruling that production should occur on a rolling basis according to a schedule that takes into account both the ability of the department to process the email and the requirements of the FOIA law. Just as it would have been unreasonable for him to order that the State Department make all the email, plus a log of any correspondence being withheld under a claim of privilege or secrecy, available in one month, it would have been unreasonable for him to say that they could wait eight months, or more, before making an of the correspondence available.
As the article quoted above notes, though, this could potentially create a worst of all possible worlds situation for the Clinton campaign. Ideally, the best outcome for her would be for the emails to come out sooner rather than later. As I’ve noted before, all of these revelations coming out about email servers and the Clinton Foundation are coming out at a time when the largest segment of American voters aren’t really paying much attention to the 2016 election. By the time they do start paying attention, these revelations will be old news unless something new and more damaging comes out. The same would be true of the emails if they were released at this time. The State Department’s proposal, on the other hand, would have meant that everything would have been released just weeks before the start of the 2016 race, when a lot more people would be paying attention. Clinton won’t be dealing with either of those scenarios, though. Instead, she’ll be dealing with the “drip, drip, drip” of ongoing revelations over the next eight to ten months, if not longer. Inevitably, there’s bound to be something in pretty much every one of those email releases that will become a story on the campaign trail that will require her campaign to divert from its preferred messaging. That certainly isn’t likely to be a big deal in the race for the Democratic nomination, but it will divert the campaign from its plan to focus on the General Election.
It’s only drip, drip, drip if there’s something there. If there’s nothing there it’s bore, bore, bore.
@michael reynolds:
But you know people like Doug are going to keep writing posts about nothing…because, Clintons.
I mean…if something is revealed that is newsworthy…fine. I want to know about it.
So far all we have is an extramarital blow job that occurred last century.
I suppose it could be like Lance Armstrong…the Clinton’s have hoodwinked everyone about decades and decades of dirty deeds and endless investigations and countless millions have just failed to find them. But probably not.
Yesterday Rush was talking about how all these evil dictators could potentially have emails from her which would prove that she’s lying about losing them for some reason that failed logic. It is possible she doesn’t have them any longer but they exist on the recipients end, I failed to understand how that equates to her lying. And that these dictators will blackmail her when she becomes president or something to keep this scandal hidden. But he was only doing it to warn the dems to stay away from her so that they (dems) can actually win the election.
Considering that Hillary has been prodding the State Dept. to move more quickly on this and reports are that the bulk of these messages are something like “print, please”, the likelihood is high that this will turn out to be a huge nothingburger.
But keep interfering with that chicken, Doug. You know that you want to.
I think we can safely file Doug away as an early victim of HDS – Hillary Derangement Syndrome. He’s dropped his pretense of being non-partisan and is now essentially functioning as a GOP hack, desperate to stop that woman.
There’s probably something in these emails–if by ‘something’ you mean evidence of the way a celebrity-politician has been living. But the rabid haters have blown it. They became long ago boring versions of Flann O’Brien’s MacCruiskeen, a policeman (or a dreamt policeman) for whom every crime must involve a bicycle. Evidence being that the only time Reagan’s S&L fiasco or the Contra-cocaine trafficking connection emerges in the conservative mind is with the Clintons (Whitewater, Mena). Now with the influence of money, it’s just questions about Hillary Clinton. Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. Years ago, psychiatric help may have been available. Too late though now.
Think I’ll source my reaction to Clinton news to Josh Marshall over at TPM:
If there were anything in there aside from stuff that makes the Clintons look sleazy, as opposed to actual documented sleaziness, the Benghazi committee would’ve already had a field day with it. That they haven’t suggests there’s nothing in there worth getting worked up over.
“Oh no, rolling disclosures of so much pap, this will endanger the campaign!” š Yes, that’s how things work in the real world.
This is all part of how HRC wants to play things. American politics is all gotcha’s and disclosures of scandals like using mustard on a hamburger. By getting all the stuff out now, there will be little stuff to shock the people with in the autumn of 2016. I don’t think that the fortyseventh hearing about Benghazi will get much airplay next summer. To keep our pulses pounding and eyeballs locked in will require some fresh meat. Next summer there will be some undertalented actress pictured without clothes, some athlete will have been caught cheating, a shocking airplane crash in the Andes, and our instruments of public information will not try to build viewership with stale news about Hillary’s shortcomings.
I don’t care for Hillary but have to admire her nerve and calculation.
So, Doug, which one do you work for-America Rising or American Crossroads?
I’m not inspired by Hillary. But a few quick observations:
1) she’s remarkably non corrupt. We know this because $100 million+ has been spent investigating her entire life and basically nothing has been found.
2) The GOP has told incessant lies and claims of scandal about her nonstop for 25 years and at this point most thinking americans know they’re totally full of shit. She could stab a baby on live tv at this point and me and 60 million other people would assume Hannity et al made it up and vote her into office.
3) Ginsberg is 82. Kennedy is 78. Scalia is 79. This is the most important aspect of the next 6-10 years. This is why the Insane Clown Posse cannot be allowed to win next year.
What have we learned so far?
1) She set up a private e-mail server for her official business that would not be known to the general public, and not covered by federal disclosure and record-keeping laws.
2) She was asked by Congress if she or anyone else at State was using a private e-mail account for official business, and stonewalled answering.
3) She insisted that she had one e-mail account, hdr22, but now it has been revealed that she used at least one other address, hrod17. Her people insisted that that e-mail only came into existence after she left office, but at least one of Sidney Blumenthal’s hacked e-mails was addressed to the hrod17 account.
4) SIdney Blumenthal, a paid employee of the Clinton Foundation, was a key advisor to Hillary on Libya at the same time he was being paid by businesses looking to profit in the post-Kadaffi Libyan government. Blumenthal was also given an e-mail account on Hillary’s private server, which was hacked and his e-mails published. Blumenthal was also an off and on paid consultant to Media Matters and American Bridge. Hillary passed along Blumenthal’s e-mails to State Department officials. Blumenthal, by the way, had been banned from any official role within the State Department by the Obama administration.
5) Once the news of Hillary’s e-mail server came out, she had her staff go through all her e-mails (from one account, probably not others) and pull out all copies of those they deemed “official.” Those were printed out and turned over to the State Department, and then the server was wiped clean, destroying the e-mails of Hillary’s acknowledged account, any unacknowledged accounts, Blumenthal’s account, and any ohters that might have existed.
So, to recap: Hillary set up a private e-mail server to avoid official record-keeping and disclosure laws. She used it to communicate with a man banned from government service, who was on her foundation’s payroll as well as the payroll of companies looking to win contracts with the Libyan government, to plan policy regarding Libya. When asked about that private e-mail server, she stonewalled. That server was hacked, and its contents compromised, at least once. When she finally had to acknowledge its existence, she had her aides go through its contents, print out all that they said were official, and then wiped the server clean, destroying everything that had not been printed out.
I can’t wait to see how that is spun by the Hillary bumkissers…
@Jenos Idanian #13:
So? What’s your point other than disliking Hillary Clinton? The allegations are so weak and pointless that there’s nothing to spin.
@Jenos Idanian #13: How convenient! She’s pre-impeached!
Dear, dear little Jenos, you put this little essay together so laboriously and all you have done is duplicate ‘drip-drip-drip’ = ‘boring-boring-boring’.
Did you imagine as you were putting those what? 40 lines of text together that the contents would sway one single vote?
@David M: Apparently you didn’t read my final paragraph, so I’ll repeat it.
As someone cleverer than me said, there’s not a shred of concrete evidence of Hillary doing anything illegal… because she shredded it all.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
I still can’t see a problem listed there that is worth worrying about. Now if the emails indicated she had done something truly abhorrent like trying to end Obamacare through a nonsensical lawsuit or discouraging states from expanding Medicaid, then you might have something.
@David M: So, as long as Hillary didn’t do something scandalous like act like a Republican, she gets a pass from you?
Thanks for admitting that you’re a mindless parrot of a partisan hack. I can save time trying to talk reasonably with you.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Pretty much. That’s what happens when one of the parties completely rejects reality and is incapable of governing and developing policies to address actual issues. Simply being sane is a low bar to clear, but that’s all that’s required for the Democrats at this point.
You don’t like it, then quit whining about it and fix the GOP.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “As someone cleverer than me said, thereās not a shred of concrete evidence of Hillary doing anything illegalā¦ because she shredded it all.”
So are you saying that HRC is the single smartest criminal in history, the only one able to destroy every single shred of evidence against her? Or are you saying that criminals can always escape detection simply by shredding evidence?
Because it seems to me a lot of people get caught because there’s evidence out there they can’t destroy or don’t know to destroy. And yet for your accusations to make sense, HRC must have been so thorough in destruction that multiple congressional inquiries can’t turn up one single trace of anything.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “As someone cleverer than me said”
Could you narrow that down a little? Because that describes pretty much the entire population of the planet, minus Jack and Pinky.
@wr: She doesn’t have to be smart. She has an army of screaming, feces-flinging idiot monkeys like you covering for her.
@wr: Dr. Charles Krauthammer.
@Jenos Idanian #13: Here’s the video of Dr. Krauthammer spelling it out.
And the 22 year permanent investigation of the Clintons rolls on.
If … if, Hillary is the Democratic Party nominee in 2016, I would vote for her based on one reason alone – the next president will very likely nominate at least one justice to the Supreme Court.
It really comes down to a simple proposition: Do I want an Elena Kagan type of justice, or a Samuel Alito type of justice? Sonia Sotomayor or Antonin Scalia?
@al-Ameda:
This, exactly.
To be frank, I really don’t much care what she may or may not have done. I want the balance of the court, at a minimum, to remain as it is, and ideally I want it to tilt left. She’ll give me that. Anybody on the GOP bench will give me Alitos.
Ensuring that the court tilts to the left for the foreseeable future is reason enough, in and of itself, to vote for her.
Given what we’ve gotten from the all-testosterone team of presidents, why don’t we give estrogen a try?
This sentence no verb.
A FOIA expert I know assures me that 55,000 pages ain’t much. 500,000 pages… that would be grounds for relief or delay or what have you.
Just thought of a great campaign slogan:
Pretty sure the campaign will be calling me up to get permission to use that. Yep. I’ll just wait by the phone.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “She doesnāt have to be smart. She has an army of screaming, feces-flinging idiot monkeys like you covering for her.”
So I, by posting a message on a blog suggesting that there is no evidence against her, have somehow managed to hide or destroy all the actual evidence to a point where four or five separate Republican congressional committees haven’t been able to recover it?
Could you explain the mechanism behind that?
@DrDaveT:
If I understand the situation correctly, State has to manually review each and every email to determine if it can be released or if it should be withheld from release under the nine exemptions / three exclusions to FOIA policy. In that context, their request for delay doesn’t seem that onerous to me.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Partisan isn’t exactly the right word to use. I care very little about the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. I care a great deal about issues and policy compared to individual politicians. On most, if not all issues, the only real attempts at a conversation happen in the Democratic Party, which is part of why I mock the GOP and their useful idiots.
Health care policy? This belongs to the Democrats, as the GOP refuses to participate
Climate change? Ignored by the GOP
Income Inequality? GOP policies almost universally make this worse
Deficit / Debt? The GOP still are the party of “tax cuts are free” and “(GOP) deficits don’t matter”
Economy? The GOP listen to inflation cranks and push discredited theories like austerity
Jobs/Wages? The GOP oppose minimum wage increases and unions
Foreign Policy? The GOP are the party of warmongering morons like Rubio
Drug War? The GOP are more likely to oppose legalizing pot
Immigration? The GOP refuse to address the issue
On almost every issue I care about, the Democrats are both better and less ridiculous. The GOP “policy” proposals typically don’t stand up to any scrutiny, and either don’t solve actual problems or are actually harmful. But I don’t support the Democratic Party for the fun of it, I support the party who is more likely to push for policy solutions I think are better. Should the GOP actually propose policies that made sense and weren’t obvious nonsense, then there would be an actual choice between the two parties.
Oh, look, more attempts to change the subject! Quick, let’s talk about ANYTHING besides Hillary! Look over there! Look over there! Look at anything but Hillary!!!!!!!
@Jenos Idanian #13:
What’s there to distract from? As far as I can tell, it appears that Hillary Clinton went above and beyond what was required to make sure her emails were properly archived. I’m impressed with her sense of personal responsibility and attention to detail.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Source??
@Jenos Idanian #13:
There is nothing to discuss. The single, substantive issue for a great many of us is which direction the court will lean going forward for arguably a generation.
Anything else is temporary, at best. GOP Congress and president pass things, we get another shot at undoing them 2 or 4 years later. Nobody cares.
The court, meanwhile, is about to go in one direction or the other for closer to 30-40 years. In that light, it’s the only factor that remotely matters (again, for a great many of us) with respect to this election.
That’s what you aren’t getting. You could present hard evidence that Clinton is as dirty as the ocean is deep, and most of us would still vote for her, because the alternative (a supreme court populated by Alitos) is too terrible to risk.
We get that you dislike and are obsessed with her. We just don’t care – because, as just noted, the stakes are too high for us to vote for anyone else. You’re trying to convince people whose minds are made up about this election – including me – to change them. Best of luck in that regard. You’ll need it.
@Bob @ Youngstown: Here’s CNN quoting Trey Gowdy from March 28, and no one seems to have contradicted him in the last almost two months since.
You got any sources that say that the server wasn’t wiped?
@Jenos Idanian #13:
The emails were already turned over to the State Department, so there was no reason not to wipe it. The archival requirements from when she was at State did not include keeping email servers active indefinitely.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
You do get that she didn’t violate the law, correct, and that Gowdy really is overstepping the committee’s authority in demanding that she produce non-records.
Just what do you actually think is going to come of all this?
@David M: ou really that ignorant? It’s been spelled out repeatedly. Hillary had her people go through the server, print out all the stuff that they said was relevant, gave the printouts to the State Department, then wiped the server clean. Now the State Department, working with hard copies and not easily-managed digital copies, is going through them to give their own approval to see what is OK to make public.
Accusations of email server shenanigans from the people who brought us the the W white house, which gave RNC blackberries to all the staff? Or the Romney administration in Massachusetts which did not just wipe the state-owned servers clean but put into force a regulation that allowed Romney to buy all the hard drives, remove them from the government office, and physically destroy them so that no evidence could ever be pulled from them?
Am I disappointed that Hillary is acting a bit like a Republican here? Sure, Republican ethics disgust me, so I am disappointed in her.
So what was your point again?
@Jenos Idanian #13:
It has been explained to you, across multiple threads now, that the above was proper procedure with respect to the laws which are applicable to Clinton’s term as SoS. You (desperately) wanting it to be illegal doesn’t make it illegal.
As it is required to do by federal law. Every request for information under FOIA has to have been vetted against the exclusionary provisions before being released. In the case of Clinton’s emails, that will involve lawyers – lots of them – reading them, investigating the subject matter and audience of each of them, and signing off on release.
You think that process is somehow easier when something is in digital format? Ever heard of a scanner? Sheesh …
@Jenos Idanian #13:
I’m glad you agree that she met the regulations at the time and archived the necessary emails. This will give us more of an insight into her tenure than we had for her predecessors.
@HarvardLaw92: Go back over all those threads and find any instance when I said it was illegal. I said she evaded the law, that she acted unethically, and a host of other things, but I’ve tried to be very careful to avoid saying she broke the law.
It was such a stupid assumption, I didn’t notice that you kept making it.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
And you are wrong in that regard. She has complied with the law as it is applicable to her term as SoS. There is nothing for you (or for that matter, Gowdy) to get there beyond attempts at innuendo and character assassination, and as previously noted, you are preaching to the wrong gallery in that regard because of the effect this election will have on the Supreme Court. The well is empty, pal.
@HarvardLaw92: And you are a pedantic twit who is also wrong. “Evading” is not the same as “breaking.” One can “evade” taxes without actually breaking the law.
The intent of the record-keeping laws are to keep official correspondence for future use — historical, investigatory, and a host of other reasons. By exclusively using her private e-mail server, Hillary complied with the letter of the law while evading the intent.
One hopes that that loophole will be closed in the future. And Hillary’s entirely-legal evasion should be noted as reflecting her position towards public accountability for public officials.
@teve tory:
This.
I have to chuckle at Jenos’ vain attempts to twist HRC’s compliance with the law into a “scandal” . Look, Jenos, we know that the right wing is trying to attack Clinton from the left by pretending to be concerned with transparency-an issue previously of concern only to good-government liberals . This is why conservatives are suddenly concerned with email archiving best practices-a question that concerned them not at all until about 10 minutes after HRC declared her candidacy.
We liberals also note that this concern stops with HRC and doesn’t extend to the numerous Republican politicans who have (and still) used private email to conduct government business.This would include Jeb Bush, Rick Perry,and Sam Brownback . Sam Brownback :
At this point, Jenos, your puppet strings are showing. You should just go back to your handlers and say that the attempt to attack Clinton from the left on the email issue is not working, in part because of similar or worse conduct by Republicans.
@HarvardLaw92:
“The single, substantive issue for a great many of us is which direction the court will lean going forward for arguably a generation.
Anything else is temporary, at best. GOP Congress and president pass things, we get another shot at undoing them 2 or 4 years later. Nobody cares.”
I will disagree. GOP total control of government in 2017 would also mean:
1. at least 4 and more likely 8 years of total inaction on climate change, so that when next we have a Democratic President, any attempt to reverse the changes will be much more painful than now.
2. Republicans will step up their efforts to make it harder for groups unlikely to vote for them to be able to cast a ballot, making it less likely that Democrats will be able to win a majority in the near future.
3. Republicans will accelerate their economic program of class warfare on behalf of the upper class by cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, and transferring the savings to the rich through tax “reform”. Given the Bucley v. Valeo/Citizens United world we live in, where money is speech, this again makes it harder for Democrats to win and undo the damage the Republicans cause.
@Moosebreath:
The bottom line really, is that the consequences of a Republican winning the Presidency in 2016 are so bad that fake scandals aren’t going to push Democrats into not supporting HRC. Frankly, it’s not even going to slow them down. I’m sure “independents” like Doug and right wing ideologues like Jenos are going to spin that into talk of Democratic “hyperpartisanship”, but frankly, it’s just a matter of focusing on the critical. HRC, whatever her flaws (and there are some) is the sane candidate of the party of sane policy. Her Republican opponents are a clown posse thrown up by the party of insane policy. That ain’t gonna change, no matter what’s in those emails.
@HarvardLaw92:
Yes, I understand that. The expert I was talking to has personally reviewed, redacted, and/or released tens of thousands of pages of similarly-sensitive material in the last calendar year. That’s just one person.
I’m not saying it isn’t a total crap job to do; I’m just saying it isn’t quite as much of a burden as State seems to be implying. I suspect the judge knew that.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
You forgot to throw in the {{wink wink}}} {{{nod nod}}}.
The dog whistle has been busy for going on three decades.
Lets review the 22 year permanent investigation of the Clintons, the Hillary-related items:
Whitewater? Nothing.
Rose Law Office billings? Nothing.
White House Travel Office? Nothing.
Vic Foster homicide? Nothing.
Benghazi multiple investigations? Nothing.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “Oh, look, more attempts to change the subject! Quick, letās talk about ANYTHING besides Hillary! Look over there! Look over there! Look at anything but Hillary!!!!!!!”
Shorter Jenos: “Pointing out that I’m lying about Hillary is changing the subject away from Hillary and on to me — which is, now that I think of it, the only thing in the world that matters to me.”
@Jenos Idanian #13: “…and not covered by federal disclosure and record-keeping laws.”
Actually, it wasn’t. The applicable laws were passed later.
@al-Ameda: “Whitewater? Nothing.
Rose Law Office billings? Nothing.
White House Travel Office? Nothing.
Vic Foster homicide? Nothing.
Benghazi multiple investigations? Nothing.”
Which proves how slick and sneaky they are!!!!!!!
@HarvardLaw92: “There is nothing to discuss. The single, substantive issue for a great many of us is which direction the court will lean going forward for arguably a generation.
Anything else is temporary, at best. GOP Congress and president pass things, we get another shot at undoing them 2 or 4 years later. Nobody cares.
The court, meanwhile, is about to go in one direction or the other for closer to 30-40 years. In that light, itās the only factor that remotely matters (again, for a great many of us) with respect to this election.”
I second all of this, with the exception of the second paragraph; the past 15 years has taught me that the right can do damage in minutes which takes us decades to fix.
@Jenos Idanian #13: ” One can āevadeā taxes without actually breaking the law.”
Since tax evasion is a crime………..
@DrDaveT: “Iām not saying it isnāt a total crap job to do; Iām just saying it isnāt quite as much of a burden as State seems to be implying. I suspect the judge knew that.”
My guess is that the State Department will have to work with the DoJ and DoD on much of it, at the very least.
Fine. She avoided the record-keeping intent of the laws, including those in place during her tenure. Weaseled out of the intent of the law.
But just to pick apart one stupid example, more people went to jail over Whitewater than did over the Valerie Plame nontroversy. 15 people, including a sitting governor and at least four people closely tied to the Clintons.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Thanks for your acknowledgment that Hillary Clinton obeyed all relevant laws.
Now, what were you going on about?
@Jenos Idanian #13:
How can she simultaneously avoid the record-keeping intent of the laws and still meet their requirements? The law was simply “keep the emails she thought were relevant and make sure they were archived”. She did exactly that, so it seems you’ve added a special rule just for her, that’s impossible to meet.
@Moosebreath:
No argument, but if I’m forced to choose between potentially losing on those issues or suffering through a court populated by Alitos for the next 30 years, it isn’t even something I have to think about. It’s a case of accepting the lesser evil.
@David M: Let’s see. She set up her private e-mail server so she would not have to use a government account and server. She didn’t disclose the existence of the server, even when directly asked about it by Congress. She insisted that she only used one address on that server, but now it’s been revealed that she had at least one other address on that server. She gave an account to Sidney Blumenthal, whom the Obama administration had banned from the State Department, and who used that account to lobby her on behalf of businesses looking to make money in post-revolutionary Libya. The server was unprotected by law and government-mandated security measures, and was hacked at least once.
Which is how we know most of this — a hacker in Eastern Europe hacked Blumenthal’s clintonemail.com account and published excerpts.
And when it came time to settle up, who was in charge of going through the e-mails and separating out the (deliberately mixed) personal and official correspondence? Hillary and her staff, who handed over copies of the stuff they said constituted all the official stuff, then deleted everything. So we better hope that they were perfectly honest and perfectly accurate in that screening, because they made damned sure no one could ever double-check their work.
Nope, nothing suspicious there.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “Nope, nothing suspicious there.”
If Clinton sneezes, dopes like you will find something “suspicious there.” Which is why none of this is going to hurt her — we’ve had a quarter century of panty-sniffing bottom feeders hurling accusation after accusation, and not one of them has ever proved true.
And your excuse” Well, of course, people who weren’t Clintons went to jail in Whitewater. Guess what — people who weren’t Bobby Jindal went to jail in Whitewater, and that doesn’t make him guilty, either. It makes the people who committed crimes guilty.
But do please keep this up. The more we hear from losers like you that “Clinton is guilty guilty guilty — oh yeah, she never actually broke any laws, but I still say she’s guilty!” to closer we get to another Democratic president.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
I am curious what you think about this. Is it a scandal?
@Grewgills: Why are you curious about my opinion on that? More importantly, why is your curiosity so much greater than your interest in the topic at hand? It almost looks like you’re trying to pull an anjin and avoid discussing the current matter, and want to distract me with something only tangentially related and intended as a “gotcha” game.
But I promise you, I’ll give it my full and undivided attention should Powell announce he’s considering a run for president.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Maybe this will help:
Sure, it’s suspicious, but we largely DO NOT CARE. The direction of the court – specifically ensuring that it either leans further left or at a minimum doesn’t lean any further right – trumps any concerns we might otherwise have about her. You are (as usual) shouting at the rain.
@HarvardLaw92: For people who DO NOT CARE, you’re doing a whole lot of commenting on the matter.
At least you’re trying to make other people NOT CARE about it, and not actually, you know, discussing the matter at hand.
How’s that old saying goes? “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention?” Might be time to update that one…
@Jenos Idanian #13: We’re telling you that the only people who will be convinced by this are people who are already convinced Hillary Clinton == Devil and your silly arguments are a flat zero, zero, zero.
But go ahead and continue trying it. You and those of your ilk are just convincing more and more Americans that your side isn’t at all interested in Reality and if we vote with your side we’re going to find ourselves in a war with Iran.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Oh no, that’s just poking you with a sharp stick to see how long you’ll keep this latest foot stomping episode up. It’s amusement.
The matter at hand is clear – she violated no laws. Done. Presto. End of story.
Which leaves us with you running around and shouting “but she’s dirty. DIRTY!”.
1) There aren’t many people here most of us are less likely to take seriously, so you’re largely wasting your effort, and;
2) Control of the court trumps everything, so you are definitely wasting your effort if you think we’re going to turn that decision over to the bible beaters that currently make up the Republican bench. Even you should know better.
@HarvardLaw92: So, instead of doing our hosts the respect of discussing the topics they propose, you’re going to use every opportunity to push your own agenda — the Supreme Court? How thoughtful of you.
And I note that the defense isn’t “Hillary isn’t dirty,” but “those Republicans are dirtier” and “so what if she’s dirty? Here’s something MOAR IMPORTANT!!!”
But if you really want to discuss something else, why don’t you — a proud Harvard Law grad and self-proclaimed former prosecutor — explain again how Michael Brown (or was it Trayvon Martin?) was “murdered.” That one still gets me giggling.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
LOL, Doug’s agenda has been pretty clear for a while now. We’re pushing back.
Not a defense. A rationalization of priorities. I’m not really a fan of Clinton, all things considered, but given the stakes which are in play, my best option is to vote for her in order to assure as much as possible what I consider to be the most important outcome.
Judging from the commentary above, a lot of folks here agree with that analysis.
Again, what exactly do you hope to achieve here? Are you under the delusion that you’re going to change our minds in this regard? You??
@HarvardLaw92: Pushing back on Doug? Yeah, that’ll end well.
And me? It’s good to know what the other side is thinking. (Those that can think, that is.) The commentariat here is trying like hell to turn this into another liberal echo chamber, and it’s a fairly interesting process to watch.
I’d have a little more respect for you, though, if you took the slightest effort into policing your own side. I’ve called out a couple of the ones on “my side” (although not really, they’re closer to my side than yours), but I don’t recall you ever taking any of your own to task. I guess you’re tolerant of your “useful idiots” for as long as they have a use…
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Considering that it happens on pretty much a daily basis? Yea, we’re quaking in our John Lobb’s …
I think we’re well past “trying”, but that just underlines the point – you’re unlikely to change anyone’s mind.
Oh really? I recall several times that my views on law & order have quite rankled them, but you are arguing to no purpose here. Clinton didn’t violate the law, and the optics of her being somehow “dirty” have been worn out, well beyond worn out actually, by a GOP that doesn’t know when to fold a losing proposition.
Gowdy will get nowhere, and he doesn’t expect to. His hearing, just like the many that have preceded it, is about gaining political advantage. It’s a campaign tactic, not an exercise of governance, so I treat it with the respect that it’s due.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Even if it looks suspicious to you, why should anyone else care about it? To many it appears like something that all politicians do, but only is a scandal when Clinton does it. So it’s definitely not something that competes with any actual policy goals….although the mistake here may be assuming you understand what policy even is, given your support of all things Republican.
Personally, the way this has played out reinforces the idea that the Clintons know they’ll be investigated, so while they may push right up to the line of what’s allowed, they won’t go over it.
Poor Jenos. He thinks he’s a got a magic bullet and it turns out to be a dud. And yet he can’t stop pulling the trigger.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Because I think your ‘concern’ is nakedly partisan and that you don’t and haven’t cared about similar behavior by Republicans because they are on your side.
@Barry:
They shouldn’t. FOIA is about agency records. If they are State Department records, nobody else has any say in their disclosure. If they aren’t State Department records, you can’t get them from State via FOIA.
That’s not to say that there might not be copies of these emails at DoD or DOJ — but a FOIA requester would have to get those from DoD or DOJ. The 55,000 emails turned over to State by HRC would be State records.
@Grewgills: I’d describe your own lack of concern as “nakedly partisan,” and note that you ignored my comment about how Powell’s use of private e-mail would be more relevant it he was likely to have a political future.
But since you’re so invested in the Powell angle, perhaps you can answer a few questions about other parallels besides the shallow ones you’ve already cited:
–Did Powell use e-mail for official business as much as Hillary, or did he use phone calls, telegrams, and delegate the use of e-mail to aides?
–Did Powell own and control the e-mail server where he had his account, or did he use one of the commercial services like GMail, Yahoo, or Hotmail?
–Did Powell refuse to answer direct questions about his use of e-mail from Congressional inquiries?
–Did Powell arrange for lobbyists to have accounts on the same server he used, which were used to lobby him on behalf of private business interests who were paying that lobbyist?
–Was Powell’s e-mail server hacked by a foreign national?
–Did Powell ever transmit or receive confidential, sensitive information through his private e-mail?
Those are sincere questions, meaning I genuinely don’t know the answers. And since you bring up the Powell parallel, I trust that you either know the answers or know where they can be found. And I’d appreciate it if you could pass along those answers.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
He used email for official business and all of those emails are gone. If you read the article I linked to earlier you would see that is response regarding the storage was that most emails went to state dept accounts so were archived there. I seem to remember Hillary saying similar.
I’m not particularly concerned about Collin Powell’s use of personal email while at state and I’m not particularly concerned about Hillary’s use of private email. Neither am I much concerned about Jeb’s use of private email as governor. One of us is consistent on this. The other not so much.