Re: Hillary: using private email accounts was legal, according to Archivist's sworn 2013 testimony

[pnwmom]

Last edited Tue Mar 3, 2015, 09:57 PM - Edit history (3)

And according to a Clinton aide, she only used hers for non-classified information.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-03/hillary-clinton-camp-pushes-back-on-email-story

In an extended statement provided to Bloomberg Politics, a Clinton aide detailed ways in which Clinton did not run afoul of archival laws or the practices of her predecessors. Clinton only used her email account for non-classified information, the aide said, backing up an assertion that the State Department made earlier Tuesday.

The aide also said that assertions from the New York Times and others that different records rules applied to Clinton than to her predecessors is wrong, since the National Archives and Records Administration did not issue guidance updating its rules until fall 2013, months after she left office. The same rules applied to Clinton as had applied to Powell.

While NARA’s preference is that officials not use an email alias, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero said in sworn testimony in 2013 that “nothing in the law that prohibits them.”

“We don’t care how many accounts you have as long as those on which you’re doing federal business are captured for the record,” he also said.

Responding to a department request for documents from recent secretaries of state, Clinton’s team provided over 55,000 pages of emails, which the Clinton aide said included anything that pertained to her work there. Personal conversations such as emails with her daughter Chelsea about flower arrangements for her 2010 wedding were not included. But any correspondence with the 100 State Department officials with whom she regularly corresponded would have already been stored on the department’s servers and Clinton’s office made sure to replicate all of those e-mails. In all, 9 out of 10 emails that Clinton sent during her time at the State Department went to colleagues there.

SNIP

[Cha]

1. Kick

[pnwmom]

2. Thanks, Cha!

[leveymg]

57. "The same rules applied to Clinton as had applied to Powell." Yes, they did. The Bush Admin.

also violated the law when it "misplaced," en mass, the email records of dozens of officials. That's really not a defense. Hillary's evasion of the Federal Records Act is just if not more systematic, inasmuch as she never used the Department's system, and then failed to turn over a copy of most of her emails for almost two years until confronted about it a couple months ago.

While her anonymous staffer claims she has retained only her Chelsea wedding cake recipe emails, an AP article today states that Clinton changed backup servers and hosts twice during her term as SOS, according to The Hill. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/234549-report-clinton-was-running-her-own-email-server

The email account was configured to start backing up to a Google server in 2012, the AP reported, after Clinton had said that China had tried to hack the Google email accounts of government employees. The email server was later connected to a commercial email provider run by security firm McAfee.

Hoteham is also associated with an email server at presidentclinton.com and the domain wjcoffice.com, perhaps an allusion to President Clinton's initials, the AP reported.

The New York Times reported this week that Clinton exclusively used a private email address — later revealed to be [e-mail] — while at the State Department. Her aides only recently handed over some of those emails to the department, which collects employees’ emails to comply with public records laws.

That raises the question, where is the original server and how reliable is the chain of custody of the Secretary's email record provided belatedly to the Archives? Because HRC maintained her own system, the veracity of her claims of complete disclosure cannot be fully verified. As an AP report today observed:

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=Fwk8oDHY

It also would complicate the State Department's legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests. The department would be the position of accepting Clinton's assurances she was surrendering everything required that was in her control.

The White House said it was Clinton's responsibility to make sure any emails about official business weren't deleted from her private server.

"There's a responsibility that's associated with that, which is it's important to ensure that when official business is conducted on personal email, that those records are properly maintained and preserved," spokesman Josh Earnest said. He added there was no security review planned for Clinton's email server.

The AP said Wednesday it was considering taking legal action against the State Department for failing to turn over some emails covering Clinton's tenure as the nation's top diplomat after waiting more than one year. The department has failed to meet several self-imposed deadlines but has never suggested that it doesn't possess all Clinton's emails.

[pnwmom]

61. You still haven't shown any evidence that Hillary failed to preserve any emails. n/t

[leveymg]

63. There is no proof she ever preserved all of them.

That's the problem. Clinton's email server wasn't even backed up until half-way through her tenure. Please see the revision I just made to my post above that includes information from The Hill. HRC changed backup and email providers at least twice during the latter part of her term. What happened to the original server as well as those which replaced or supplemented it?

Clinton's private email also had the additional impact of preempting FOIA requests. The real world effect of this, seemingly intentional, can be seen in this account by Luke Brinker:
link: http://www.salon.com/2015/03/04/hillarys_email_mess_deepens_new_evidence_raises_big_questions_about_adherence_to_federal_rules/

Despite the explicit language of the rule, however, Clinton and her aides evidently failed to preserve all business-related correspondence. Gawker reported in 2013 that even though the Obama administration had vetoed Clinton’s effort to give the sycophantic and viscerally anti-Obama Sidney Blumenthal a State Department job, Clinton nevertheless received emails from Blumenthal concerning official government business, including the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As Gawker noted at the time, screenshots of the hacked emails did not make clear whether Clinton responded to Blumenthal’s missives. But we may never know; when Gawker filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the release of the Clinton-Blumenthal correspondence, the State Department replied that “it could find no records responsive to our request,” Gawker’s J. K. Trotter related yesterday.

This arrangement of hers left far too much room for error or evasion. It presents the prima facie impression of evasion of the law and a disregard for communications security. Now, there will have to be a full-scale investigation. A finding that she intentionally evaded a federal statute and records were erased or altered would open her up to Obstruction of Justice charges, even if the Records Statute has no teeth of its own. If she had merely complied with existing statutory requirements, and used the government system provided, none of these legal and political issues would have arisen. She brought this upon herself.

[pnwmom]

78. And there is no proof that she didn't. Just a lot of suspicious people who never liked her in the

first place.

And how the Rethugs must be laughing. Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush blatantly ordered the deletion of their emails after they left office..

We are being played.

[leveymg]

81. You seem to ignore the obvious -- she didn't produce any records until long after she left DOS, and

didn't do so until directly confronted about that. She set up her own private system to evade the statutory requirement to preserve and produce the great bulk of federal records she produced while in office. We probably never will know if all emails were preserved unless every server and hard-drive that was used was preserved and is examined by professionals. If she had used the .gov email, that would have been assured. We don't know if the servers are even in existence.

That is sufficient proof that had it been her tax records she would have been indicted, tried, and by now. The problem is that the Federal records law is toothless - it imposes no specific penalty for noncompliance. So both the Bushies and HRC simply evaded the law.

[pnwmom]

84. It was the job of the National Archives to request those records -- they knew she had them.

They didn't request them till they asked for all the S of S's records going back to Madeleleine Albright, and then she responded within weeks.

You don't know what the purpose of her setting up her system was because none of us can read her mind and she hasn't said.

[leveymg]

85. No, the burden is on the agency to preserve and transmit. Not wait two years after the SOS leaves

office. See below. Try again.

Also, there is a concrete instance of FOIA records not being timely provided because of this. That's another violation of law.

§ 3106. Unlawful removal, destruction of records

(a) FEDERAL AGENCY NOTIFICATION.—The head of each Federal agency shall notify the Archivist of any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal, defacing, alteration, corruption, deletion, erasure, or other destruction of records in the custody of the agency, and with the assistance of the Archivist shall initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of records the head of the Federal agency knows or has reason to believe have been unlawfully removed from that agency, or from another Federal agency whose records have been transferred to the legal custody of that Federal agency.

[pnwmom]

86. The records had never been in the government system so they couldn't be unlawfully removed from them.

But they could be sent as soon as the government asked for them.

The law doesn't direct anyone not to use a personal email account. But it says that all records that "are in the custody of the agency" must remain so, and must not be "removed from that agency."

It does not say that records in a personal email account are in the custody of the agency. Clearly they're not.

All of this was eventually acknowledged by the National Archives and Congress, which is part of why the law was overhauled in 2013.

[leveymg]

87. That "defense" admits to what is termed evasion. Certainly conforms with neither letter nor spirit

of the applicable law.

Official emails are in the custody of the agency the moment they are created, regardless of location. When HRC set up her own email system and started using in lieu of the official system, those emails effectively became the official record along with the servers and hard drives. Later, when she left office, and didn't report their existence or turn them over, she effectively removed these documents and altered the record when servers and hard drives weren't preserved.

The moment there was a FOIA received, and the Department could not locate these records, they were effectively removed and destroyed for that purpose.

Whether or not they are restored after the fact doesn't change the fact that the law says the head of agency must report the records will be removed or destroyed. Secretary Clinton didn't observe the letter or the spirit of the law.

[pnwmom]

88. They couldn't be "removed" because they were never in the possession of the State Dept; and they were never destroyed.

And the head of the National Archives testified to Congress that Hillary wasn't required to use a government account.

Hillary followed the law as it existed when she was in office. Congress decided the law was inadequate so they changed it.

[leveymg]

89. The moment the email were created, they were in the possession of the State Dept. They never

belonged to HRC. In the "possession of" refers to proprietary right, not physical location.

The statute as it existed at the time was clear as to the Secretary's duties. She was flagrant and systematic in her noncompliance.

[pnwmom]

90. No, they obviously weren't in the possession of the State Dept, nor did the law require them to be.

Your definition of "possession" isn't in any relevant statute.

[leveymg]

91. The falsity of your argument is obvious if you think of email as a note written on a

piece of paper by an official in their home. The letter that addresses government business is obviously a record under the statute. If it is a recipe for chocolate cake, it isn't a record that needs to be preserved and turned over to the Archives. The law has always treated.documents no matter what format according to that basic principle. Email is no exception.

[pnwmom]

92. The falsity of your argument is proved by the fact that the head of the National Archives

testified before Congress that there was no law against Hillary using her personal email account.

[leveymg]

93. He did not testify that she could set up her own system and neither reliably preserve nor refuse to

turn over her email until years after she left office; nor would he, as that was against the law and understood legal norms.

If her email server had backed up to a gov't system, that would have been perfectly acceptable. But, that apparently was not the case. She broke the law.

[nvme]

77. Really?!!!

That is the one of many piles of shit the rethuglican media is hurling at Hillary! They just hopin' one will stick. What Benghazi? NOt working lets try emails. you wait these jackals are going to keep at it, but we dems will hang strong.

[mcar]

3. Kick

[msanthrope]

4. Kick...nt

[riderinthestorm]

5. Yup. Big K & R! Nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. This news is going to make the hanging party angry./NT

[wyldwolf]

7. Quit kicking the anti-Hillary brigade when they're down!1!1

[GusBob]

8. Who fed the NYT this bs scandal?

Lemme guess Benghazi truthers

[pnwmom]

10. Or somebody who wanted to discredit Hillary and the State Department the day before Bibi came. n/t

[Iliyah]

32. Better yet, why did Lawrence M report on it with a negative?

Read it on the DU, but did not see the program.

And for the Benghazi T's, who defunded the US embassies?

[SunSeeker]

44. Exactly. And who refused to fully fund the State Department?

The State Department was so underfunded that they still had an ancient, cumbersome email system when Hillary became SOS, no doubt one of the motivating forces behind her (and all SOS's before her) use of private email. The State Department upgraded under Hillary, so that by the time Kerry became SOS, he was able to readily use their system.

[spanone]

9. k&r...

[TwilightGardener]

11. It's not so much a question of legal. It's a question of: Why?

Can anyone answer why she and her staff avoided government email accounts?

[pnwmom]

12. Her aide said she was a Luddite who just kept using what she was used to using before

she got there.

Is that hard for you to believe?

And plenty of people here have been insisting this was illegal, and they were all wrong.

[TwilightGardener]

13. Yeah...no. The Clintons always know to control the information. Hillary was allowed by

Obama to fill the State Dept. with her own people (unlike John Kerry, who wasn't even allowed to choose his own deputy)--her own campaign loyalists (foreign policy experience? who knows?) who were running their own email system. A little separate fiefdom of control, that no one from the rest of government could immediately access. Kinda smelly.

[pnwmom]

14. Here's the point of view of another DUer.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026304514

[TwilightGardener]

15. I read that and commented on it. It doesn't fly. There's occasional use

of private email because the system is down or slow or whatever, and then there's COMPLETE AVOIDANCE of government accounts, for years, with no backup on government servers, no oversight, no accountability until years and FOIA's later.

[stevenleser]

50. There is no 'it doesn't fly'. That's a person there on the scene. Your objection doesnt fly.

Because that person is there and you are not.

[TwilightGardener]

55. An employee is not the Secretary of State. Doesn't have the same duties,

doesn't have the same requirements surrounding his messaging, has far less priority in communications...it's fucking laughable to say, "I'm Joe Blow, and at my desk, my computer system was slow and my email was unreliable, so that's why Hillary did it!!" Unbelievable. My husband was a comm guy in the Air Force for most of his career, I guarantee you there is a big difference in what the brass and the SecDef can and must do in terms of communication compared to Capt. Sherman J. Obvious of the Contracting Squadron at Dingleberry AFB.

[stevenleser]

56. If that's what the post said, you would have a point. It doesn't, so you don't. They specifically

referred to what the Secretary of State experienced.

[TwilightGardener]

58. LOL. Sorry, there is no way Hillary Clinton set up her own server

because some dude says various SoS's had gripes about slow .gov email. Those things get fixed in a hurry when someone in power demands it. The government has no shortage of IT people. It's a sad and funny excuse that people latched onto here.

[stevenleser]

59. You're kidding right? It costs $30/hr to hire someone to set one up in your house. I get it now

After this post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6309618 where you indicate you think there was wrongdoing in Benghazi, I get where you are coming from now.

[TwilightGardener]

60. I stand by that post. More going on there than meets the eye, but we won't

get the whole story. Not talking about the terrorist attack on Stevens, but about the circumstances that led up to him being where he was, and what the CIA was doing. And how do you know what Eric Hoteham made per hour?

[stevenleser]

62. Benghazeeeeee! LMAO!

[TwilightGardener]

65. So you don't think we did something funky in Libya with arming

some not-so-great people there, and then possibly the CIA planned to transfer those arms to Syrian rebels, against stated policy at the time? I didn't blame Hillary or Obama for directly causing Stevens' death, and the fixation on the video story by the Fox crowd was ridiculous--obviously the WH was just throwing shit out there in the initial aftermath, not actively trying to deceive. I don't believe Hillary wanted him dead or personally denied him security or rescue or any of that nonsense. That said, the CIA was up to something and Stevens was involved, I believe. Petraeus went bye-bye's after one day of testimony, and weirdly, his deputy (Morrell, who incidentally went to work for a Clinton affiliated firm after the CIA, IIRC) seemed to know way more about it all--and then he went bye-bye's too, and now gives a permanent hawkish bullshit spiel on CBS as a pundit or something.

[dbackjon]

66. The truth is, the server WAS IN BENGHAZI!!

[stevenleser]

67. And it was administered by Qaddafy's nephew!!!!11!1!!11elevens!!! nt

[frylock]

46. that domain was set up shortly before her appointment as SoS

[Cha]

74. Isn't "luddite" too strong a word? Or has the meaning diluted over the centuries? :)

[hughee99]

80. Did you really just call someone who had a private email system setup in their own home

a luddite? Sorry, you might want to take another crack at that one.

[Annoying_Ashley]

17. Day 2 spin will be "It's not the legality that matters"

The Day 2 spin goes that way as the story crumbles.

First, she may have "violated the law". Now, that doesn't matter.

Slick.

[TwilightGardener]

21. Seriously? "Well, no laws were broken" is the best you got?

How does this not look: calculated, shady, inappropriate, evasive? I mean, what is the defense here, besides "technically legal"? The real question, though, is why the Obama administration allowed it.

[bhikkhu]

28. I don't see why a person using their own email, within the guidelines, is even an issue

from what I have heard, the state department uses an antiquated pain-in-the-ass computer system, and for non-classified person-to-person communication every other email system works better, and is more convenient. I imagine everyone in the state department would agree, and has done the same thing for years. Non-issue, as long as guidelines were followed and records were kept.

I see nothing calculated, shady, inappropriate or evasive about it. If my job depended on constant communication with a large of people I'd use the means that worked best for me, within the confines of the requirements of the law. I'm not a big Hillary supporter by any means, but this just looks to me like a person doing a difficult job, by the book.

[TwilightGardener]

30. You have got to be kidding me. You really think the ClintonCo set this up BEFORE

HER CONFIRMATION because they just knew they wouldn't like slow State Dept. IT, and decided their own CLINTON IT GUYS could handle it better? I have never in my life seen such gullible people. Or maybe you all want to believe. Of course setting up your own email system in lieu of government accounts is shady. It's meant as a way to screen, hold, and control messages within a small group of staffers, and avoid scrutiny. We have no idea what's really in that account (or accounts) because we're relying on Hillary Clinton and her team to show us what they have--there is no government oversight of her account. They're saying, "Trust us, we gave you everything you need to know." How does that seem like a good idea?

[bhikkhu]

34. No, I think she just used her email account, like people do

...and I think its absurd to think that a person using their own email account for communications is evidence of some kind of grand scheme. If anything, its an ideal way to communicate, which is somewhat the opposite of controlling information.

[TwilightGardener]

35. No, she set up a whole new email account right before her tenure began at state--

it wasn't something she used before. And some of her staff had their own addresses on Hillary's little clintonemail system, too. No one knows if they also have .gov accounts. And she didn't use her private email here and there--she set it up specifically as a way to NOT USE government email. The question is, why?

[bhikkhu]

36. Pffft. Happy hunting then.

I imagine there will be no end to other scandalous scandals, which wither quickly to nothing in the sunlight.

My personal email account is riddled with spam, shopping, Amazon and ebay reminders and so forth...once I was on the board of a non-profit and set up a separate email account just to keep in contact with other members and for board business. It took 3 minutes, and it worked well to compartmentalize the job and keep up with things.

[frylock]

48. try using your personal email account for work related messaging..

report back to let us know how that went.

[LanternWaste]

41. Not really any more or any less valid than...

"Seriously? "Well, no laws were broken" is the best you got?"

Not really any more or any less valid than "A little separate fiefdom of control, that no one from the rest of government could immediately access. Kinda smelly."

It may be difficult to continue countering responses to "why" with mere allegations and editorials. Then again, it may be rather easy for one to continue doing so...

[TwilightGardener]

42. "No laws were broken"--is that an explanation as to why a gentleman (who may

be real or fictional) named Eric Hoteham was running the SoS's official email communications server out of her house? "No laws were broken" explains nothing beyond Clinton not serving jail time or paying fines.

[nichomachus]

49. You're right. It's not technically a crime. nt

[LiberalFighter]

19. Check this post out

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026304514

[pnwmom]

18. And regular emails have all the privacy of postcards. Sounds transparent to me.

Too transparent, but not against the law while she was SoS.

(Her aides are saying that she only sent non-classified information via her personal account.)

[LiberalFighter]

20. That is a good point too.

[TM99]

69. Your reply is perfect example of the hypocrisy going on right now

with regards to this.

Her aides? Why should we trust them? We have no way of verifying whether this is true or not. Nor do we have any way of verifying whether the 50,000 emails are all, some, or even most of the total number of emails that require, by law, to be archived.

Did she break the law using an outside email address? No. Was it just because of State's 'bad IT'? No, that's bullshit. I have relatives who have worked for State for over 20 years. While some may use other email addresses, please name one SoS that has setup their own private email servers in their fucking homes.

That is what sets off major red flags for me. She did not just use a Gmail or Yahoo account. She hired an IT contractor to set up a private server in her home to run her own private email network. That server admin reported to her, not to State. When you control the server, you control everything.

While this may not be 'technically' illegal, it is damned inappropriate. If GW Bush had done this, DU would be having a hissy fit. Oh, wait, they did do something like this, and DU erupted in righteous rage.

I see very few congruent posters here who, like myself, say this kind of unethical and inappropriate behavior, no matter how legal, was not OK with Republicans, and it should not be OK with Democrats as well.

Where the Clintons go, sadly, a trail of inappropriate, unethical, and lies seem to follow. Is this the best this party can put forth as a Presidential candidate? Can the party not do better than this? And will most users here ask themselves why this kind of unethical and inappropriate behavior is A-OK with Clinton but would not be and has not been with Bush, Cheney, or Palin?

[William769]

22. Kick & recommended.

[Renew Deal]

23. So much for that scandal.

lol

It's still bad practice. But I'm glad it's over.

[pnwmom]

25. I'm glad the new law was passed. But it wasn't in effect while Hillary was S.o.S. n/t

[Rozlee]

24. Another tempest in a teapot.

[greatlaurel]

26. Kicked and Recommended.

Great find and OP. Pretty much takes care of the controversy. Proceed, Gentlemen.

[RBInMaine]

29. Thanks. It's another non-story that will be gone in days.

[Sarcastica]

52. More accurately.

It's a non-story that Fox and AM Radio will be talking about for the next ten years, non-stop. And then will come the congressional hearings that will find nothing, so Fox and AM Radio will be right on the Hillary E-mail cover-up story....and on, and on, and on, and on....

[Adrahil]

31. When I was a federal employee...

We often used private emails because the federal system sucked. It was slow, unreliable, and inconvenient to use remotely or from a mobile device. Routine business was often handled out of the official system.

[pnwmom]

33. And as recently as last fall there were discoveries of its being hacked. n/t

[2naSalit]

53. Yup.

It was hacked twice while I was in service last year... at least at Interior. We had several incidents late in the summer. And I used both my personal and my .gov email accounts. When I had to respond to email with official content, I used a cc in the address panes to make sure that the .gov "collector" had a copy.

Has anyone bothered to investigate that possibility? It seems odd that the majority, if not all, of those making allegations and pointing fingers are persons who have never used the .gov system and/or have little working knowledge of what it is like working with a .gov address on the job.

[MADem]

38. Me too--and with the full knowledge of my bosses, too.

And my bosses were not middle management, they were upper leadership.

Hell, I'd go HOME to do stuff when the system went down--and it went down, OFTEN. Lucky me, I lived close.

[MADem]

37. Wowza!!!

It only took 24 business hours to clear that up!!!!



Gotta say, the poutrage I've read is really one for the record books. If not for the jazzy graphics, the easy-to-read interface, and the snappy response of this website, I'd have sworn I was at one of those rightwing cesspools, reading some of the "Ah-HA" comments here. Oh, the huge manatee, indeed!!!

I wonder if anyone will retract, or say "Sorry?" I doubt it.

[BlueMTexpat]

39. Thanks for posting this.

The real tragedy here, IMO, is that USG computer systems have been contracted out piecemeal over the years at inflated cost to US taxpayers. Each contractor has built its own system to ensure its continued business with the USG. Even when they finally get one to do the work it is supposed to, new Congresses may change rules requirements that force piecemeal solutions within an already piecemeal network.

It's no wonder that USG systems themselves are often down and unusable. One example that I know a lot about that Congress continues to use as a political football involves the Social Security System.

IMO, the continuing scandal is that both parties are complicit in allowing, indeed encouraging, the same inefficient situation to continue.

[BeeBee]

40. But, but, but...

Benghazi!!!!

(sarcasm)

[SunSeeker]

43. K & R

[NCTraveler]

45. Unfortunately it doesn't matter much.

The same right wingers doing mental gymnastics to make this an issue are still yelling Benghazi and Vince Foster.

[Beacool]

47. But, but, DU was atwitter over this issue.

[AtomicKitten]

51. Clinton used private email account to duck FOIA requests.

WEDNESDAY, MAR 4, 2015 07:15 AM PST

Hillary’s email mess deepens: New evidence raises big questions about adherence to federal rules. While Clinton allies insist she was on the up and up with use of private email account, evidence suggests otherwise.

LUKE BRINKER
link: http://www.salon.com/2015/03/04/hillarys_email_mess_deepens_new_evidence_raises_big_questions_about_adherence_to_federal_rules/

Allies of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in full defensive mode following the New York Times’ revelation Monday night that Clinton exclusively used a private email account to conduct official business during her four-year tenure at the State Department, maintaining that Clinton’s use of the account was consistent with both precedent and federal rules. But evidence that Clinton flouted federal rules continues to mount, with new reports laying bare the lengths to which Clinton and her team went to skirt disclosure requirements, despite records-keeping regulations in place while she was the nation’s top diplomat.

In the wake of the Times’ report, the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky and Media Matters for America (disclosure: I once worked for the latter, writing about LGBT issues) assailed the paper for failing to note that the current set of regulations pertaining the use of outside email accounts did not take effect until after Clinton left the State Department in early 2013. But as Mother Jones’ David Corn points out, a 2009 regulation from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requires officials “using a system not operated by the agency” to preserve their correspondence within the “appropriate agency record-keeping system.”

“This rule is clear,” Corn writes. “If Clinton used personal email to conduct official business—which apparently did not violate any federal rules at the time—all of those emails had to be collected and preserved within the State Department’s recordkeeping system.”

Despite the explicit language of the rule, however, Clinton and her aides evidently failed to preserve all business-related correspondence. Gawker reported in 2013 that even though the Obama administration had vetoed Clinton’s effort to give the sycophantic and viscerally anti-Obama Sidney Blumenthal a State Department job, Clinton nevertheless received emails from Blumenthal concerning official government business, including the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As Gawker noted at the time, screenshots of the hacked emails did not make clear whether Clinton responded to Blumenthal’s missives. But we may never know; when Gawker filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the release of the Clinton-Blumenthal correspondence, the State Department replied that “it could find no records responsive to our request,” Gawker’s J. K. Trotter related yesterday.

The Blumenthal case is the clearest sign yet that Clinton used her private account to avoid legitimate FOIA requests. It also exposes the absurdity of Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill’s defense that Clinton’s emails to other State Department officials went to their official state.gov accounts, so the correspondence was preserved anyway. Not only does that fail to account for Clinton’s apparent non-compliance with the 2009 NARA regulations, but it also conveniently glides over the fact that Clinton was corresponding with plenty of people — foreign leaders, civil society figures, and the like — who did not have government email accounts. What’s more, one source informs Gawker that top Clinton aides — including longtime assistant Huma Abedin, who simultaneously worked for the secretary and did corporate consulting — also used private accounts on the same domain Clinton employed. As pathetic as Merrill’s excuse already was, it’s rapidly becoming even more of a joke.

- snip

In response to a State Department records-keeping request two months ago, Clinton aides turned over 55,000 pages of emails. But her aides personally reviewed the correspondence and decided which emails were worth sending to the department. The Clinton camp has yet to elaborate on the process aides used to review the emails.

[riqster]

54. Facts don't matter when dealing with HDS.

Thanks for posting this for the non-deranged among us.

[larkrake]

64. LEAKS is a good reason.

Leaks were rampant at the time. Mainly, the Clintons learned years ago hat control is vital when the NSA and others have access to govt emails. She was embarrassed by Wkileaks before, and at the time, it was legal and common practice to use common email accounts.

You cannot trust what other politicians send you, and the public assumes you are guilty by association. I dont like Hillary because she is a vengeful *itch married to a charming dufass, vicious and a corporatist,but her emil doesnt bother me.

[SunSeeker]

68. What's amazing is the NY Times never apologized nor retracted its suggestion she broke the law.

No mention that the federal regulations it was referencing did not go into effect until well over a year after Hillary left the State Department. Instead, its headline today is that the Dems were "Caught Off Guard on Clinton Emails." Yeah, we didn't expect the NY Times to lie.

Fuck you, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman.

[Abq_Sarah]

71. The thing is....

She may have adhered to the law and she may have broken the law. Since she maintained iron fisted control of her email account, there's no way to show she did in fact archive every single piece of official email as the law demands.


When it comes to transparency in the federal government, "trust me" just doesn't cut it.

[SunSeeker]

72. The thing is, our newspapers aren't supposed to lie. nt

[hopemountain]

76. and we expect the professionalism of

corrections posted asap. - especially from the nyt. but for "some" reason, the half stated, manipulation of truth now appears to intentionally mislead the public. the repubs are frothing at the gate and jumped the gun on this one. as the rev. al says "nice try, but we gotcha!"

and omg - lawrence o'donnell last night nearly blew a gasket when governor jennifer granholm put forth that this was going to blow over because nothing illegal took place. he wants blood from the clintons. i have never seen him so out of control. it made me sad.

[uponit7771]

79. Yeap, the NYT and the AP used as many tech weasel words they could fit on one page

[Hekate]

70. Kick

[WillyT]

73. Depends On What The Definition Of Is... Is...

[Major Hogwash]

75. It's like a bad rerun.

It's out there, yet you've already seen it, and you don't want to see it again.

[Rex]

82. I have no problems with a government official keeping private communications private.

Government business needs to be documented. Private business is none of their concern. If she has her own ISP which was dedicated to her private life...then there is nothing wrong with that.