The Associated Press works very hard to ensure that its subscribing outlets and low-information voters who rely solely on its work — knowingly or unknowingly — never learn about Hillary Clinton's smart-aleck, sarcastic, condescending, reality-avoiding behavior.
Tuesday night, four AP reporters (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) — Jack Gillum and Stephen Braun in Washington, with the help of Ken Thomas and Eric Tucker in North Las Vegas — failed to report that Mrs. Clinton cut her press conference short after getting a genuine question from Fox News's Ed Henry, and that part of her answer to Henry's query about whether her hard drive was wiped was "With a cloth?"
The AP quartet also chose to bury the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate's disastrous press appearance underneath a headline and three opening paragraphs which really belonged in a separate story (bolds are mine throughout this post):
PROBE OF CLINTON'S SERVER COULD FIND MORE THAN JUST EMAILSA forensic examination of Hillary Rodham Clinton's private computer server could unearth more details than what she put in her emails. It could answer lingering questions about the security of her system, who had access to it and whether outsiders tried to crack its contents.
Clinton last week handed over to the FBI her private server, which she used to send, receive and store emails during her four years as secretary of state. The bureau is holding the machine in protective custody after the intelligence community's inspector general raised concerns recently that classified information had traversed the system.
Clinton leads the race for the Democratic presidential nomination by a wide margin even though questions about her use of the server have shadowed her campaign. Republicans have seized on the issue to raise questions about Clinton's trustworthiness.
The statement that "the intelligence community's inspector general raised concerns recently that classified information had traversed the system" should read: "the intelligence community's inspector general recently reported that classified information had traversed the system." There are no "concerns" about whether or not the items involved were or weren't classifed. They were, period.
The leftist apparatchiks at AP still believe, or at least want the public to believe, that only eeeeevil Republicans are criticizing Mrs. Clinton's conduct, particularly her apparent nonchalance about national security, while she was Secretary of State. A video coming later in this post will shred that meme.
Continuing:
She added: "In retrospect, this didn't turn out to be convenient at all and I regret that this has become such a cause celebre. But that does not change the facts." She reiterated that what she did was "legally permitted" and said she did not send any emails marked "classified." Clinton had initially justified her use of a private server - for both official and personal emails - by saying she felt it would be more convenient to use one system.
As she departed the availability with reporters, she said, "Nobody talks to me about it other than you guys."
Points:
- The AP reporters told readers what Hillary Clinton originally said about "one system." They didn't tell readers that what she said has been proven false — by the AP itself! The wire service won't even recognize their own previous reporting if it hurts their favored candidate and party.
- AP claims "she departed availability with reporters." What a set of weasel words. At least four other outlets (here, here, here, and here) reported that she either walked out of the press briefing or indicated in some fashion that she abruptly ended it.
- As noted earlier, the AP failed to report the obvious pull quote of the day. When asked if her server had been wiped, part of her response was "With a cloth?" There's no way the wire service would fail to relay such a comment if made by a Republican or conservative presidential candidate.
Now to the video mentioned earlier. General Michael Hayden, whose tenures at national security agencies and in the CIA crossed the Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama administrations (i.e., he's clearly not a political partisan), said the following on Wednesday's "Morning Joe" show on MSNBC:
This Aspect of Hillary Clinton Email Scandal That Has Left Even Former NSA Director Stunned: ‘I Don’t Even Think It Was Legal’... Hayden called Clinton’s handling of her emails was “stupid and dangerous” — not only to the U.S. and its national secrets, but dangerous to her as well.
“I don’t even think it was legal,” he said. “That has to be against policy.”
Hayden was clear that Clinton should have used a government server while serving in the government and was seemingly stunned that her staff allowed her to keep the private email and server.
Here's that MNBC video noted earlier:
Pull quotes (two among many):
"The sin here is the original sin, all right? The original sin is actually commingling the two accounts on a government email server. ... I'm stunned that her staff allowed her to do that in 2009, given the unhappy outcome that was guaranteed. ... It's stupid and dangerous. ... dangerous to her and the American republic."
... "The problem the Secretary has is that she created an environment in which people could only communicate with her through this one medium. And therefore what she's done is set up circumstances where almost certainly people would shade in the direction of 'Well, this is the only way I can tell her.'"
A search on "Hillary cloth" at the AP's national site at 5:30 p.n. ET returned no results relevant to yesterday's events. That's also the case at the wire service's "Big Story" site.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
