Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had the right to delete personal emails from her private server, the Justice Department told a federal court.
Lawyers for the government made the assertion in a filing this week with the U.S. District Court in Washington, part of a public records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that seeks access to Clinton’s emails.
Clinton, the former secretary of state and front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has been dogged by questions about her use of a private email account for government business.
She has said that she sent and received about 60,000 emails during her four years in the Obama administration, about half of which were personal and deleted. The others were turned over to the State Department.
The FBI has been investigating the security of Clinton’s email setup, which she said she used as a matter of convenience. She has since acknowledged that her use of a private email server to conduct government business was a mistake and apologized this week.
But of course the Village has a narrative to push that Clinton is a criminal and as always Democrats must be attacked and it's working.
While Clinton maintains the lead, her support has dropped 21 points among Democrats since July. She has lost ground with most demographic groups, but the sharpest drop has come among women and particularly white women. In July, 64 percent of white women said they supported Clinton; today, it is 31 percent, the same level of backing as Sanders, whose support has doubled among this group.
A majority of Americans (55 percent) say they disapprove of the way Clinton has handled questions about her use of a private e-mail account while serving as secretary of state. An almost identical percentage (54 percent) say that she has tried to cover up facts. Asked whether Clinton stayed within government guidelines or broke the rules by using a private server, 51 percent say she broke the rules, while 32 percent say she did not, with the remainder offering no opinion.
The public is divided on the question of whether the e-mail issue is a legitimate one in the coming election, although today, unlike four months ago, slightly more say it is not legitimate.
On all those questions, there is a big difference in the responses of Democrats vs. Republicans and independents. A majority of Democrats (55 percent) approve of how she has handled the controversy, while a third do not. More than 7 in 10 say the e-mails are not a legitimate issue in the coming campaign.
Well gosh, the Justice Department just said she didn't break any rules, but of course that will never get reported to the American people.
Guess they missed the e-mail. They have a narrative to sell, remember?
Exoneration!, shout her defenders. Much ado about nothing! A media-created story is debunked!
Except, not really. That she had the ability and right to delete e-mails was never, really, in question. At issue is the process by which she did it -- and who got to make the final calls on what got sent to the State Department and what didn't. Yes, the way Clinton went about it was within her rights. But, Clinton is not just any government official or even any Secretary of State. She is someone who is, still, the heavy favorite to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2016. As such, she is held to a different standard than someone who, well, isn't the heavy favorite to be the Democratic nominee for president.
Held to a different standard and has been for more than twenty years now.
As I keep saying, America's current group of Village newspaper editors and cable/network news directors were all looking to be the person who busted the Clintons twenty years ago.
That hasn't changed a bit today.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment