The big news today was that the State Department inspector general issued a sternly worded report critical of Secretary of State’s email use. Paul Waldman explains this about as well as anybody. In short, yeah, she broke rules; no, it doesn’t appear there were any harmful consequences. The report didn’t include any new bombshell information.
And this is about what I’ve expected from the email thing. I’m not seeing the word “criminal” in any news stories. I expect the report to be the end of it. Well, as far as the government is concerned. Politics are something else.
Some Sanders supporters are still eagerly waiting for the indictments that will never come. And, of course, Republicans will be all over it. The problem is that there really isn’t any new information here, I don’t believe, and unless there are unexpected further developments I doubt they can keep the public interested in the emails all the way until November.
Oh, of course conservatives can keep the public interested until November.
And our cowardly, compliant, and complicit media will be eager and actvive enablers!
Hillary is a Clinton, after all!
And Clintons are the “mother-load” for conspiracy theories!!!
It will simply reinforce the “crooked Hillary” meme that the Republicans will use effectively, yes, all the way to November and beyond.
Polls show Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a virtual tie.
She broke “policy”. That is all.
BTW, as far as security,
Hillary’s server : hacked 0 times
State Department servers : hacked 103 times that I know.
Which was more secure?
Today, some nebbish inside the Borg was trying to get info for a current scheme to add to Drumpf’s insult barrage. An email was sent to an established reporter at Politico, instead of the intended recipient, demanding immediate information for an afternoon meeting. Topic: “HRC Whitewater”.
Drumpf is going to be incomprehensible — not that he’s comprehensible today — with a scabbard of rusty 40 year old arrows to fling at the world.
some nebbish inside the Borg
That’d be Seven of Nine; Trump used to be married to her I think.
Seven of Nine was married to some other Republican jerk. Can’t remember his name.
This election reminds me of some classic 70’s show.
Donald tRUMP is Archie Bunker.
Hillary is Maude.
And Bernie, is George Jefferson.
Seven of Nine was married to some other Republican jerk.
She strikes me as their type. (Mee-yow.)
The aspect of this whole affair that concerns me is this: for decades, and with ample justification, HRC has asserted that she has been a (if not “the”) target of the fabled “vast right-wing conspiracy”, almost all the attacks from which have been shown to be baseless or, at most, ludicrously exaggerated. So, why in the hell did she give them this? Why didn’t she just content herself as SOS with simply ascertaining what the rules were and then abiding by them, when she knew (or surely should have known) that she’d be under an electron microscope? And why, oh why, after the whole private-server imbroglio began coming to light, did she parcel out a series of singularly unsatisfying, and to an extent inconsistent, explanations, instead of telling the whole tale forthrightly and all at once, insofar as possible?
The consensus seems to be that HRC is, if nothing else, quite intelligent. I wouldn’t dispute that, but as intelligent as she may be, sometimes it looks to me as if she’s woefully deficient in common sense and judgment.
Yes – as far as I can tell this is the “nothing” in the nothingburger.
She used a personal e-mail server, for a perfectly reasonable purpose: she didn’t want personal e-mails subject to FOIA requests. She endeavored to maintain records in accordance with the rules, and her efforts were insufficient. We’ve learned that a better method of record retention is needed.
This is *NOT* a big deal. Colin Powell did far worse, and no one cares, because it’s NOT a big deal.
Ah, but we’ve GOT to talk about the horse race and quote pundits and explain how people will USE that to ATTACK her for being UNTRUSTWORTHY and SECRETIVE, which, we’re not saying she IS, we’re just saying some people say that.
(Or as John Stewart puts it, “I’m not saying your mom’s a whore, I’m just saying some people have claimed they paid her for sex!”)
The Washington Post was reported to have 34 reporters investigating Trump. Amazon owns the Washington Post. Trump claims the coverage arises because Amazon doesn’t want Trump to be President because he will bring an anti-trust action against Amazon. Yesterday the Washington Post has a nasty story bashing Hillary on the email report. Connect the dots.
@CH – You’ve gotta understand just how bad government IT is. It’s really, really bad because of procurement policies that are intended to prevent corruption and end up both stifling efficiency and promoting corruption. She needed to set up her own server just to have email she could rely on. It was probably more secure than the State Department setup at the time, too.
@Procopius – Assuming the accuracy of your statements (and I don’t dispute it), then why in the world didn’t HRC say as much when this first came up, in simple, understandable terms? Surely it would not have shocked the conscience of the electorate to hear a pol say, “I decided to set up a private server because, frankly, I was dissatisfied with both the efficiency and the security of the Dept of State system.” Of course, that would have bothered some of the bureaucracy, and it could have been asked, “Well, then, since you were SOS, why didn’t you mount a major effort, publicly if necessary, to improve the Dept’s IT?” Still, such an answer early on would have been better than what has transpired, I think.
CH — Good point.