Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules

[applegrove]

Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html?ref=politics&_r=0

"SNIP...............


WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

Mrs. 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 was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the department. Mrs. Clinton stepped down from the secretary’s post in early 2013.


...............SNIP"

[bigdarryl]

1. Sounds like much to do about nothing to me

The Hillary bashing by the media has begain

[applegrove]

4. Better little hiccups like this come out now.

[merrily]

9. Is that how DUers felt when Bushco got bashed for this kind of thing?

But, you're right. The law requiring them to keep their personal business separate from their work is probably silly and Hillary knew that. That's why she ignored the law.



Also, it doesn't trouble you that out of tens of thousands of emails, only 55,000 turned out to be work related?

Hillary supporters sure are a funny group.

[Agschmid]

50. Your wording is off...

You realize 55,000 is in fact "tens of thousands", so moot point. I get what your getting at but you might want to rephrase that.

[NCTraveler]

90. This is great.

"Also, it doesn't trouble you that out of tens of thousands of emails, only 55,000 turned out to be work related?"

[SidDithers]

102. Numbers are hard...nt

Sid

[DesMoinesDem]

15. So you'd be OK if all Republicans decided to illegally use only their private email,

keeping all their email outside of FOIA? People say some pretty stupid things when it comes to partisan politics.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

40. Don't you know, in Hillary's world, "rules are for fools" and only applies to "little people."

[840high]

51. I was just going to ask same. Thanks.

[hrmjustin]

23. Agreed! They sre going to try anything to bring her down.

[arcane1]

26. Bush White House email controversy

The Bush White House email controversy surfaced in 2007 during the controversy involving the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available, because they were sent via a non-government domain hosted on an email server not controlled by the federal government. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Hatch Act.[1] Over 5 million emails may have been lost or deleted.[2][3] Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove lost emails, leading to damaging allegations.[4] In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been deleted.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy

It was a big deal then.

[Atman]

38. IOKIYAR

Mitt had entire computer systems destroyed. No problem. But HILLARY! OMG!

[arcane1]

39. Indeed. We called it "Emailgate" here at the time, but hopefully this isn't quite as bad.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

42. That was then, that is now. (/sarcasm)

[liberalla]

2. oh good. the next benghazi is here.

can't wait.

[DesMoinesDem]

3. "Possibly Breaking Rules"? It's illegal. There is no way around it.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

45. There is if you're Hillary. Does this mean I can score your tix to the coronation?

[aquart]

72. See, that's where I get confused.

I am confused about the difference between rules and laws and what the mandated penalties are for violation. Who has been prosecuted for this? Jailed? Fined? Lost a pension?

Congress passed this? I sincerely don't know.

[Motown_Johnny]

5. How do you not have a government email when head of a department?

I just can't wrap my head around this. Didn't anyone she emailed with notice that it was not a .gov address?


This is gonna be the new Benghazi for the RWers to go crazy about.

[X_Digger]

33. Imagine if the private email company's servers were breached. SoS Email compromised..

Imagine the shitstorm that would cause.

[TwilightGardener]

46. Apparently it was Google/gmail. Although anything classified should have been on separate

government systems. But still, you don't want the world reading your business until you're ready to reveal your business.

[Keefer]

66. It was through

Clintonemail.com . Not gmail.

[SheilaT]

6. This is not just some small oversight

that doesn't matter. This is a major breech of government policy. It indicates an underlying dishonesty, an arrogance that she can do what she wants to and everyone else be damned. Not the kind of person I'm willing to trust.

[aquart]

36. I'm guessing you didn't trust her yesterday, either.

Just a tiny suspicion.

[SheilaT]

82. For some time now I have not seen her

as the sort of Democrat who deserves the adulation she all too often gets.

[liberalla]

7. I just heard this on Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O'Donnell will

continue the coverage... coming up. Thanks for the link to the NYT.

[onecaliberal]

8. Really? Who gives a shit

[still_one]

10. those that hate Hillary

[Marr]

68. And anyone with a shred of consistency.

I remember the same thing happening during the Bush Administration-- I expect most here do. It was outrageous then and it's outrageous now.

[merrily]

13. Dipped if I know. Maybe the silly people who think govennment officials should obey laws, whether

even if they are Democratic government officials?

Please see Reply 9.

[840high]

53. I do.

[Abq_Sarah]

59. Those who give a shit about transparency in government

Those who care about a Secretary of State shielding 4 years worth of communications from the FOIA.

[onecaliberal]

60. She turned over personal email so she isn't ducking FOIA

[Abq_Sarah]

63. There's a reason why it's supposed to be a .gov email

And that's to keep the person and/or their aides from handpicking which emails to archive. That does not in any way meet the definition of transparency.

[DesMoinesDem]

65. LOL. Her people decided what emails of hers to turn over.

If they didn't want an email to be seen they could just withhold it and no one would know. There is no knowing how many thousands of emails were withheld.

[onecaliberal]

108. Just like the millions bush and Cheney withheld on purpose

[DesMoinesDem]

112. She's just like Bush and Cheney. You must be so proud.

[onecaliberal]

114. Yes proud as hell

That's why I call and register democratic voters, that's why I canvas neighborhoods, that why I drive dem voters to the polls. That's why I served 2 terms on my dem central committee. What the fuck do you do besides sit here and judge how democratic someone really is. Enjoy complete ignore. Sick of this kind of crap.

[DesMoinesDem]

115. She also supported the Iraq War just like Bush and Cheney.

I can see why you are working so hard to get her elected.

[DrDan]

95. I do . . . and I don't hate her

she possibly did not follow the email rules - that is not right.

We are facing the same issue here in Florida with rick scott. It would be hypocritical to hold his feet to-the-fire and not hers.

[LittleBlue]

11. So she broke the law

but that's just Hillary bashing

The laws are just for the little people. Laws don't apply to Hillary and her Wall Street friends

[aquart]

31. Did Hillary take your lollipop?

[LittleBlue]

43. I get it. You love Hillary

That doesn't mean she should be able to break the rules without consequences

[onecaliberal]

57. When bush coughs up the MILLIONS of "lost" emails

I might give a shit.

[Oktober]

83. Justifying bad behavior by pointing other bad behavior...

How ethical...

[onecaliberal]

109. Just pointing out the previous people did much worse for completely sinister reasons.

Ethics are a joke. Why aren't these people in prison for war crimes.

[Oktober]

111. That's what I said...

What I don't understand is how it an excuse...

Great... Serial Killer Bob took out a dozen people... That doesn't excuse someone who only kills one or two...

It isn't a justification in any way..

[onecaliberal]

113. Again I simply stated that's how it is.

For many administrations going back. Not justification. It's just the way it is. Have a good day.

[aquart]

69. True. (I also love Elizabeth Warren.)

[HereSince1628]

34. That's depends on the meaning of " 's " I am confident she has life experience

that will help her through this terrible episode...

But you know, they've got photographic evidence:



Team H is gonna have to launder a lot of social media pages...

[treestar]

56. Laws don't apply to Comrade Eddie Snowden or Julian the Ass

And those are laws regarding national security.

Laws about emails and federal records are suddenly to be followed to the letter? LOL. I bet if the feds caught Eddie on that it would be sneering 24/7.

[Marr]

70. Snowden fled to Russia, and Assange has had to flee in other ways. Obviously, the laws

apply to them.

But you'd like Hillary to be president. Do you see the subtle inconsistency there?

[treestar]

94. No, since everything should be transparent and Eddie is a hero for what he did

There can be no complaints from the same people about this. It should all be transparent anyway. Breaches of security are nothing to these people at all. It should all be transparent. So this should be a "meh" to them.

[Marr]

96. What a silly argument.

You know very well that people who are against mass NSA domestic spying are not simply for 'no government secrets'.

Your comment that the whistleblowers like Snowden enjoy freedom from the law that Hillary Clinton doesn't have is laughably absurd.

[BainsBane]

81. You've discussed breaking the law

and saw nothing wrong with it. I guess laws are just for the little people.

[TwilightGardener]

12. Obviously, meant to protect her and her Presidential run.

No one knows how many emails there are. No one knows what procedures her staffers used to weed them out or include them in State Dept. business. How is this not purposefully evasive and against both the letter and spirit of the laws? Can't trust you to be open and honest with government records, then I can't trust you to run the government. The Clintons, of all people, know how this shit works--they have no excuse. Why did the Obama admin let her get away with this?

[merrily]

16. Aside from Obama and MAYBE Biden, she was the highest ranking official in the Obama administration.

[TwilightGardener]

18. It's ludicrous. Also, Hilda Solis, former labor secretary, didn't she get in

trouble for using her personal account for DOL business? I seem to remember something of that, right before she stepped down. Oops, upon further looking, maybe that was head of EPA.

[aquart]

32. Doesn't look like "protection" to me.

Hillary Clinton, WHOSE UNDERWEAR DRAWER WAS SEARCHED BY FEDERAL INVESTIGATORS, knows you don't get to hide anything.

[TwilightGardener]

44. There's no other purpose for it--screen, weed out anything damaging by

using loyal staffers who...OOOPS...accidentally deleted some of it! Their bad! As noted above, it's been done before.

[Kalidurga]

14. The headline actually was a so what to me...

I was like so she used a government email address for personal email an honest mistake she just forgot that she was sending it from her government address. But, the actual story is shocking. She never set up her government account? No one told her she had to or she didn't know or she didn't care, none of those options sound good to me.

[TwilightGardener]

17. Cabinet officials don't "set up" their own accounts. Their agencies do this, and

it has to be kept secure, and the emails archived properly. She knew exactly what she was doing, and so did the Obama admin. What, they conducted official business on "HillyC@comcast"? And were OK with it??

[Kalidurga]

20. thank you I didn't know all of that

I am flummoxed here, it makes no sense. It's seems like it would be like trying to get through college without a university address.

[karynnj]

35. I wonder if administration people used just her name

Think of your own email where you type the name and the email program translates to the actual address. I know our email package does that.

It does seem like someone in her office should have questioned it. The state department said that Kerry has always used a government account since he became the Secretary. I would guess that was the norm.

[TwilightGardener]

41. All of these agencies have IT dept's for a reason. Their whole JOB is

to know the email system, servers, addresses, etc. The classified stuff would have gone on a separate system, but the day-to-day business...who made this arrangement, is what I want to know--did she EVER get a .gov (or .state or whatever) and just didn't use it, or did she never get one provided to begin with? That would have to be a conscious choice.

[karynnj]

47. makes sense and that should be determined

Even years ago it was routine to be assigned one in many companies or colleges. It will be interesting to get the answers. It sounds like the SD worked to get other secretaries' emails for historical reasons.

[merrily]

19. This kind of thing was a big news story during the Bush administration. I'd be surprised if she

missed it. It's also shocking that, out of tens of thousands of emails, only 55,000 were supposedly government related?

This is a woman who did not comply with a subpoena for a solid year while First Lady, then claimed she stumbled over the papers required requested by the subpoena in the dining room of the first family's private quarters . Clearly, laws have not had the same consequences for her as they would for you and me.

[Kalidurga]

22. Yeah I don't like this

I think it's going to all blow over though. If it is kept alive it will be because of the Republican yelling machine.

[aquart]

25. Yes, this is a woman who was mercilessly hounded, hunted, and investigated by determined enemies.

And what did they get? Not one damn thing.

Please proceed.

[langstonhues]

21. This is very serious. What was she thinking by doing that?

Or what was she hiding by doing this? We already have less and less accountability from banks, from government in general and from our rich employers, now official on the job emails that are being vetted by her staff is 'hillary hating'? Things are getting pretty weird.

[Old and In the Way]

24. If we had had a criminal investigation when Republicans had their public

E-mails run on private gop.com, I might give a shit. But since Republicans created the "off the record" system of e-mails, I'm not inclined to say Democrats shouldn't use the same methods of protecting their conversations from public scrunity. Tell you what, have all Republican correspondence from gop.com given public exposure and I will happily want the same from Democrats.

[napi21]

27. I smell a rat here. Just heard on Lawrence O'Donnell's show that this tidbit was discovered

by the "Benghazi Committee". I also have a really hard time believing the attorneys associated with the Sate Dept. would have ignored this for FOUR YEARS! There's a lot more to this story and I'm gonna wait until I hear their story before making a judgment.

[langstonhues]

28. You are probably right. I will wait too. It was a zinger tho, that OP.

[Dawson Leery]

30. I am waiting too.

I do not trust HUAC.......I mean the partisan Benghazi committee.

[Agschmid]

54. I doubt she actually personally sent that many work related emails.

I imagine the secretary of a department (or the president) for that matter doesn't email people that often...

Who knows.

[aquart]

29. Curious. What email did she use as a senator?

Also, was anything deleted? Was anyone in her office as senator tasked with the job of maintaining her email? Was there also such a person at State?

Was there a separate Foundation email account?

How much of her email was written by her?

[hrmjustin]

37. I want to hear more before making a judgement.

Not going to make a judgement without hearing from Hillary.

[Gman]

48. Ummm.........BFD! The Bush administration "lost" terabytes of emails. Servers wiped clean

and it's gone down the memory hole. So this is just bullshit. Nothing else.

[TwilightGardener]

49. She knew she was going to run for President. Why not just do everything by the book, knowing

that you are going to be publicly scrutinized in your conduct as SoS?

[Gman]

52. This?? This?? will keep her from being president??

spare me, please.

[TwilightGardener]

74. It may, or not, I don't know. But I'm surprised that she thought

no one would notice or care that she never used a proper government account.

[krawhitham]

77. This is some real bad shit

She did not just use and existing email, she created a new personal email just for being SoS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/02/hacked-emails-indicate-that-hillary-clinton-used-a-domain-registered-the-day-of-her-senate-hearings/


So she created an private email for government work while The Clinton Foundation was taking large donations form foreign countries
http://www.businessinsider.com/report-clinton-foundation-broke-foreign-donation-deal-with-white-house-2015-2

The GOP & Media will conclude she was bought off, it does not matter if it is true or not. They will argue she was "lobbied" to change her position on matters bases on who donated and those who were not willing to donate

She will have to prove otherwise and it is mighty hard to negative

[Gman]

99. Oh my God! We're all gonna die!

Bush lost terabytes of email and nobody cared.

[DesMoinesDem]

58. We'll shit, if the Bush administration did it it must be OK.

We can't expect anyone to exceed the high standard they set. Breaking the law should be expected of all politicians now... because Bush.

[X_Digger]

75. I know, right? That's got me gobsmacked.

The level of 'well he did it first' school-yard-level responses is puzzling from otherwise adult-appearing posters.

[mythology]

55. If true, this should disqualify her from successfully running for president

The laws requiring government work being done on government emails aren't trivial. I can't believe she would be this stupid if this is true.

[RiverLover]

67. +1 nt

[msanthrope]

61. Rose Law Firm bullshit, part deux. If she was using the State Department servers...there

was a record kept.

[hrmjustin]

64. And according to the times own article it says all of her emails to other agencies would be saved

anyway.

[jeff47]

100. The point is she wasn't using State Department servers. (nt)

[msanthrope]

101. Um....NO.....every agency she contacted? Fed servers. Plus.....

acco rding to Snowald.....isn't everything discoverable by the NSA anyway?

[jeff47]

103. Her domain hosted more than one email account.

Reportedly, her staffers were not happy with the slow response time of State's servers. So the domain would have hosted her email, as well as those staffers. Otherwise there would have been no point in setting up the domain.

Additionally, she probably sent emails of an official nature to places that were not in the federal government. She was the Secretary of State after all. Communicating with people outside the government is kinda her job.

acco rding to Snowald.....isn't everything discoverable by the NSA anyway?

Only if they were looking for it before it was deleted.

Though it is extremely likely that China's and Russia's equivalents to the NSA have a copy of her emails.

[msanthrope]

104. If Russia and China have her emails, it's because Comrade Eddie

decided to turn them over.

[jeff47]

106. No, they are quite capable of getting into commercial email services without help. (nt)

[quadrature]

62. as a US Senator, did she use a dot-gov address?

what about John Kerry?

[Broward]

73. Wrong is wrong.

The apologists on this thread so far (and I'm sure there are many more to come) are all too predictable.

[frylock]

76. the "i don't give a shit, because republicans" posts are amusing

[demosincebirth]

78. My reply to the post is: So?

[Historic NY]

79. HR1233 didn't take effect until she left state...it was signed 11-26-14

https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/1233

And obviously if they heve the private emails then, there shouldn't be a problem. There has been no reporting on whether these were high level or un-encrypted.

[applegrove]

80. Maybe she had a policy of letting underlings do all her official

emailing. Maybe she knew she was running for office again and didn't want to have any chance of things going wrong. I know I'm grasping here.

[wyldwolf]

88. That is an important point in an otherwise routine story

[MADem]

84. NYT and GOP MSNBC (thanks, COMCAST) have shown their biased hands early.

http://thedailybanter.com/2015/03/story-hillary-clintons-private-email-account-isnt-awful-seems/

[font color="red" size="8" face="face"]
The article doesn’t say which federal regulation, though. Why? Perhaps because the federal regulations went into effect in late November, 2014 when President Obama signed H.R. 1233, modernizing the Federal Records Act of 1950 to include electronic communications. It was signed two years after Clinton stepped down.[/font]

[SidDithers]

105. Yeah. But haters gonna hate...nt

Sid

[dissentient]

85. Oh well, I guess us peasants aren't entitled to know what those in power are doing

They are our betters, after all. It isn't our place to question them.

[Barack_America]

86. I'm sorry folks, but this is egregious.

This is a big fucking deal, and frankly shocking. I am shocked she had the poor judgement to do it, and appalled that our government actually honored this request? WTF, my workplace emails are more secure than the fucking State Department? Absolutely unreal.

For all those "no big deal people":
1. Yes, it is.
2. You would be salivating if this were a Republican official. You know it.

[HappyMe]

91. I agree.

[Brickbat]

87. I'm surprised by the number of people making excuses on this thread.

[LWolf]

89. I'm not.

It's pathetically predictable.

[onyourleft]

98. Neither...

...am I.

[dembotoz]

92. when dealing with gop on this please remind them of scummy walkers email problems as county exec

if hrc has a problem scummy should be in jail

[Capt. Obvious]

93. Tempest in a teapot!

Judith Miller

Case closed.

[onyourleft]

97. It's okay...

...because everyone does that.

[99Forever]

107. To those trying the "it's no big deal" spin:

You couldn't be more wrong. This is a game changer. This is about integrity and honesty. Those that think they are above the law, have neither. The arrogance to think this wouldn't be discovered and used boggles any rational mind.

[brooklynite]

110. "This is a game changer"

This is a non-story about a non-existent (when she was in office) rule, that will have disappeared by this time next week.

[MADem]

117. Sure took the heat off criticism of Bibi, though, for a minute, didn't it? Heh heh.

I'd say "New York Times, We SEE You." We saw them before, now we're seeing them AGAIN.

More Judy Miller-style shit....and amazing how many supposedly sophisticated, politically-minded people ate it up with a spoon.

[quadrature]

116. [e-mail] << is that somebody we know?

is only a friend of HRC,
or also a StateDept employee?