Email Scandal: Ron Fournier Has 19 Questions for Hillary

September 9th, 2015 1:13 PM

Ron Fournier of the National Journal doesn't seem particularly impressed by Hillary Clinton's transparency tour in a desperate bid for authenticity in the wake of her email scandal. In fact, he has 19 questions for Hillary. Mark them down, journalists. Let them serve as your master checklist when questioning her about the email scandal. Hopefully all the questions will be asked by the time Hillary appears before Congress in October and if any of the 19 questions are still unasked, perhaps one or more congressman can ask them. 

So take it away, Ron!

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

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

And here are Fournier's 19 questions for Hillary:

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

Force of habit?

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

Did Clemenza tape the gun for Michael Corleone behind Hillary's server when it was located in a bathroom?

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

I am comforted by the fact that the State Department just appointed a "transparency czar."

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

Sure. She's fine with the memory hole. No problem.

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

Tooth fairy? If he leaves a nickle for every missing email, that's a nice wad of cash.

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

She can guarantee that none of the deleted emails involve gefilte fish.

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

$5000 was paid to set up a private email server just in case Bill Clinton decided to send an email for the second time in his life.

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

A recipe for gefilte fish pie.

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

That question will be answered as soon as her Authenticity Czar is appointed.

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

She was expecting to hear if he had a recipe for gefilte fish hors d'oeuvres.

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

Eh! The North Korean nuclear program couldn't be any more abhorrent for civilization than the recipe for gefilte fish pie.

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

At least she didn't pay Anthony Weiner to run her twitter account.

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

Sid Vicious is such a kind soul...at least compared to his son, Max.

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

Don't worry. You can get all of Sid's emails from the Romanian hacker Guccifer. For all her other emails, perhaps Kremlin Vlad, the Chinese, or the Iranian mad mullahs can fill in the gaps of her easily hacked emails.

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

No more than one server per bathroom.

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

She never received any training past the concept of "wiped."

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

Her Transparency Czar will explain if you can get an appointment with her from the Authenticity Czar.

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

This is a question for which Ron should already know the answer.

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

A Security Czar will get back to you on this.

So did Ron Fournier miss any questions? Well, he invites you to provide them to him:

What did I miss? Tweet #AskHil­lary @Ron_­Fourni­er