Hillary Clinton has claimed she used a private email server in her home for both state and personal mail because it was "more convenient". From this defiance of State Department rules has come a load of trouble on Clinton that may end her viability as a Democratic candidate for the presidency. In Clinton, Americans Don't Trust.
As a lifelong Democrat I originally dismissed the so-called email scandal as so much GOP partisan froth. But as of this past week the Inspector General of the State Department has shown that Hillary has repeatedly lied about what she did. Clinton's End? Her "Inexcusable and Willful Disreg... None of her media defenders nor an old activist like me can ignore this any more as mere GOP nonsense. If she lied, and a government investigator has indeed established she did, that's serious. But why in the world would she lie about this "damned email" shenanigans, as Bernie Sanders once dismissed them?
Could mere "convenience" have prompted her to to have so badly damaged herself?
Of course not. She's not the brightest button on the political card but even she wouldn't have made such a mess for just the sake of mere convenience.
It never was about convenience at all, was it? That's why she keeps dissembling about it and thus giving it extended life.
The email scheme was seemingly for the purpose of secretly conducting an outrageous and highly successful pay-to-play scheme that she and Bill Clinton ran when she was Secretary of State. This scheme was run in direct defiance of President Obama's insistence, in an agreement signed by Clinton, that the Clintons make no financial deals while she was Secretary of State without clearing the deals with him. Hillary managed to sneak around this agreement. The scheme put hundreds of millions of dollars in the Clinton Foundation and also allowed Bill to arm-twist enormous speaking fees from the same players, the proceeds of which have gone into the Clintons' own pockets.
From leaving the White House with virtually no money, the couple have taken in $150 million in 15 years for their own use, as well as having acquired a huge amount for the Clinton Foundation. In addition, some of the foundation money has gone to finance projects of their private friends. Clinton Charity Aided Clinton Friends - WSJ. Who knows where the rest of the foundation money is actually going.
Perhaps worst of all, as reported a year ago in the New York Times, one of the pay-to-play deals enabled the Russians to acquire land in Wyoming that holds 20% of America's uranium. The deal had Hillary Clinton's signed approval as Secretary of State. To my mind, this borders on treason. The Clinton's milked this deal for millions. Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal ...
What a sorry and scummy picture. I need not detail it further here. Much of it has appeared scatter-shot in the media, including the New York Times article in April 2015. As a side note, strangely enough Hillary still goes on and on ranting against Russia perceiving us as weak, as though the Cold War were still on. I don't get it. She still fears the Russians yet helps put a fifth of our uranium in their hands?
The New York Time's 2015 story reputedly prompted the book "Clinton Cash", now a movie, which details a number of other pay-for-play Hillary Clinton deals. Because author Peter Schweizer works for the conservative Hoover Institute on the Stanford campus, the Democrats and progressives have discounted the book as a hatchet job. But apparently it is well-researched and supported by citation to sources. Moreover, CNN notes the author's balance and even-handed treatment in another recent book, "Extortion", this one being about politicians in both parties and their bent fundraising. 5 things we learned about 'Clinton Cash' - CNNPolitics.com.
Now that it's seemingly apparent what Clinton was doing as Secretary of State, it's obvious a real "convenience" for Mrs. Clinton in having her private server for her official work was that she could more easily meld the pay-to-play scheme and her Secretary of State duties and hide their relationship because all were going through one email account totally in her control and not accessible to the State Department professionals. Without the bundling of the private and governmental emails it is hard to conceive of her deals succeeding. What clout would a private email have with a Russian big shot or the head of one of the third-rate nations she and Bill cut deals with? Far better for the courted customer to get an email officially from the Secretary of State, innocuously worded to indicate that the matter of concern was in hand. Emails worded more explicitly could simply be later "wiped". Clinton actually acknowledges wiping emails in this account on a very grand scale. Indeed, she "wiped" no less than 32,000 emails she now claims were "private". No one saw them except her so we don't know whether they were truly just about personal matters. Private or not, in erasing these 32,000 she seriously violated federal rules that require all emails by officials be handed over to the government.
She says she needed so much personal emailing because of her daughter's wedding and her mother's funeral. That's sure some wedding and some funeral that require 32,000 emails!
Contrary to her later public claim of "convenience", she originally claimed in an email to an aide that she wanted all the email to go through her own server so as to protect her "privacy". Well, some things about wedding arrangements and funeral arrangements may have to be strictly private though I can't think what they would be, but I daresay none require privacy the way a pay-to-play scheme does.
Just who does Hillary Clinton think is going to fall for this story of protecting flower arrangements and hymn choices with such zeal as to cause infraction of the federal rules she was in charge of, rules designed to protect the security of this nation at a time when terrorists are active and hackers are everywhere. For heavens sake, the woman was in charge of rule enforcement! She not only broke the rules but abrogated her duty to keep our government information secure. Her private server came under attack by hackers on several occasions that we now know of. Were there times when hackers were successful in accessing secret information flowing though that server?
Will we ever know?
Next time: Hillary's Private Server and a Vicuna Coat
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