On Sunday's This Week on ABC, California Senator Dianne Feinstein seemed to be channeling the Whoopi Goldberg school of flimsy excuse-making as she tried to defend Hillary Clinton's decision to use a private email server to conduct government business as Secretary of State. Several days after The View co-host Goldberg preposterously claimed that Clinton was just trying to hide email fights with her husband by using the private server -- as if she could not have simply kept personal correspondence in a separate account -- the Democratic Senator whined that Clinton "wants a little bit of a private life" and wants to be able to correspond with family and "not have somebody looking over her shoulder into her emails."
Feinstein's rationalization came after substitute host Jonathan Karl recalled that Clinton had ignored warnings about the arrangement, as he suggested that it sounded like she was "trying to hide something." Karl:
But Mrs. Clinton has said that it was widely known that she was using her personal email. But, if you look at this report, it says that when State Department staffers expressed concerns about the arrangement, their supervisor, quote, "instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary's personal email system again." That sure sounds like somebody trying to hide something.
Feinstein indignantly responded:
Wait a second. I don't believe she was trying to hide anything. I've known Hillary for a quarter of a century. Let me tell you what I do think. I think this is a woman who wants a little bit of a private life. She wants to be able to communicate with husband, with daughter, with friends, and not have somebody looking over her shoulder into her emails. Having said that, it is what it is, and, you know, I don't think we should make a federal case over it.
Karl, who spent much of the segment hitting her with questions on the email scandal, did not follow up on the obvious hole in that explanation, but did move to ask her about Bernie Sanders's contention that superdelegates should be nervous about the FBI email investigation and throw their support to him at the Democratic convention.
