Another Pence-ive Disaster

You could make the argument that as massively incompetent as the Trump regime seemed to be at governing that VP Mike Pence, Indiana's former governor, at least had executive experience and wasn't an obvious chowderhead.  At least, you could have made that argument before the Indianapolis Star dropped this story about Pence using a personal AOL account to conduct state business...an account that was of course hacked.

Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.

Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges.

Cyber-security experts say the emails raise concerns about whether such sensitive information was adequately protected from hackers, given that personal accounts like Pence's are typically less secure than government email accounts. In fact, Pence's personal account was hacked last summer.

Furthermore, advocates for open government expressed concerns about transparency because personal emails aren't immediately captured on state servers that are searched in response to public records requests.

I seem to recall Republicans making a rather large deal about using personal email accounts to conduct government business because it was clearly unsafe and exposed information to hackers.

Cybersecurity experts say Pence’s emails were likely just as insecure as Clinton’s. While there has been speculation about whether Clinton's emails were hacked, Pence’s account was actually compromised last summer by a scammer who sent an email to his contacts claiming Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and in urgent need of money.

Corey Nachreiner, chief technology officer at computer security company WatchGuard Technologies, said the email accounts of Pence and Clinton were probably about equally vulnerable to attacks.

"In this case, you know the email address has been hacked,” he said. “It would be hypocritical to consider this issue any different than a private email server.”

He and other experts say personal accounts such as the one Pence used are typically less secure than government email accounts, which often receive additional layers of monitoring and security, and are linked to servers under government control.

So yeah, turns out Mike Pence was actually guilty of what Republicans spent years accusing Hillary Clinton of doing, and of course it doesn't matter in the least because IOKIYAR.  Pence is just as awful and corrupt as the rest of the Trump regime, and oh yeah, he's trying to hide his emails too.

Oh, and let's not forget that Trump EPA chief Scott Pruitt did the same thing when he lied to Congress during his confirmation hearing about using a personal email account for state business when he was Oklahoma Attorney General.

An environmental group and several Democratic senators are demanding a review of the personal email account of Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, after he said during confirmation hearings that he never used that account for official business as Oklahoma state attorney general.

When asked whether he had ever used a private email account while on the job, Pruitt told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: “I use only my official OAG [office of the attorney general] email address and government-issued phone to conduct official business.”

Yet several of Pruitt’s official emails, released in a lawsuit in Oklahoma, were copied to his personal email — an Apple account that was partially blacked out before being released.

“Lo and behold, the documents Scott Pruitt wanted to keep hidden have confirmed our suspicion that he used his personal email address to conduct official state business and that he was not honest with the Senate about this during his confirmation process,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

But hey, her emails.  So.  Whatever.