Consider this one small step in what should be a long series of such exposures of dishonest political posturing with media acquiescence by leftist politicians.
A week ago Sunday, John Dickerson, CBS News's brazenly biased Face the Nation host, who has among other things contended that Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is "a stupid issue," allowed the Democratic presidential frontrunner to go to her shopworn claim that she "was absolutely permitted" to conduct her private affairs and the nation's business simultaneously using one or more personal email accounts on her own private server. FactCheck.org and CNN's Jake Tapper took that claim apart — something the notoriously partisan Dickerson should have done in real time.
FactCheck's bottom line, published on May 11:
Clinton can say her private email network was permitted because there wasn’t anything in federal law that expressly prohibited it. But such extensive use of private emails was unusual and clearly discouraged, and she failed to comply with the regulations for maintaining government records.
Tapper went back to a question he asked Mrs. Clinton a year ago, and then tore apart her attempt at dissembling (HT Hot Air):
Transcript (bolds are mine):
JAKE TAPPER: Hey everybody, it's Jake Tapper, from CNN's State of the Union and FactCheck.org. And today we're going to look at a comment made by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her private email server that she used for official state business. Take a listen:
HILLARY CLINTON, May 8: As I have said many times, you know, there was, that was absolutely permitted, and, I did it, and it turned out to be, a mistake. It wasn't the best choice.
TAPPER (returning to current broadcast): Is that true? Was Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for official business while she was Secretary of State "absolutely permitted"?
No. That’s not true. She says that because she permitted herself and there was no one absolutely prohibiting her.
In fact, I asked her about who signed off on this private server last October. Take a listen:
CLINTON, October 2015: It was allowed under the rules of the State Department, and, again —
TAPPER, October 2015: So nobody signed off on it?
CLINTON, October 2015: No, no, it was allowed.
TAPPER (returning to current broadcast): Okay, so what exactly was allowed?
Federal regulations allowed Clinton to send and receive emails outside the government system, but those emails had to be preserved before she left the office. Now Clinton did not provide the State Department with emails from her private server until 21 months after she left the office. A federal judge in a lawsuit involving Clinton's emails said she failed to follow "government policy" on preserving federal records, and her decision to conduct government business exclusively, exclusively, on this private server was, in the words of one expert, "inconsistent with long-established policies and practices governing all federal agencies."
Now the Clinton campaign maintains that the Secretary's email practices were permitted because of a 2009 regulation that said that federal agencies may allow their employees to send and receive work related emails "using a system not operated by the agency." But it also said an agency "must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved" in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system. And Clinton did not follow those Federal regulations on preserving email records.
In the end, former Secretary of State Clinton's exclusive use of her private email server for the people's business was definitely unusual. It was definitely discouraged, and she did not comply with government regulations when I came to preserving government records.
A reminder to all the politicians out there: You're perfectly and entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Tapper did not directly address how the State Department could have "ensure(d) that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved."
The answer is that it couldn't have, because those involved in doing so didn't even know about the existence of Mrs. Clinton's private server until "the summer of 2014," when "lawyers from the State Department noticed a number of emails from Clinton's personal account, while reviewing documents requested by the House Select Committee on Benghazi." The 2009 regulation which Team Clinton is citing as a defense is really a de facto indictment. By failing to inform anyone tasked with records preservation of her server's existence, Mrs. Clinton deliberately prevented them from doing their job.
FactCheck and Tapper should have gone further; perhaps they will if Mrs. Clinton gives them another opening.
The private email issue is far more important for a Secretary of State than it is for a director of a domestic cabinet office, simply because State is continually dealing with classified information. Mrs. Clinton's use of one or more private email accounts (from her own apparently poorly controlled private server, no less) gave hackers the opportunity to gain access to classified information. In other words, FactCheck's core contention, with italicized words added by me, should really be that:
... such extensive use of private emails was unusual and clearly discouraged; her sending and receiving of private-account emails containing classied information was both unwise and illegal, jeopardizing national security; and she failed to comply with the regulations for maintaining routine and classified government records.
As a reminder to Mrs. Clinton and her acolytes desperately defending the indefensible, a regulation is "a rule of order having the force of law." If you violate a regulation or proactively or negligently cause others to violate a regulation, you're breaking the law.
Even if one buys Mrs. Clinton's specious argument that she was "permitted" to do what she did — which FactCheck and Tapper have effectively demolished in any event — the personal possession and insecure storage of classified information was illegal. Military members, government officials and others who don't have what should be called "Clintonian privilege," i.e., the ability Bill and Hillary Clinton have to engage in illegal and unethical activity any time they darn well please without facing the consequences ordinary people would face, have been prosecuted and jailed for far less serious offenses.
In any event, FactCheck and Tapper did a good job on what they did address, and in the process implicitly called out CBS lapdog John Dickerson for failing to do his job.
More, please.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
