Blogger Candidate Forum: Those Emails; The Aftermath

Secretary Hillary Clinton checking her emails
lattices.com

Hello Everyone:

Today is Wednesday, which means it is time for Blogger Candidate Forum.  First in the Forum are "Those Emails."  Unless you have been living cave, you heard that the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to recommend criminal charges against presumptive Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  That is not the same as her being exonerated of all charges, it simply means that there was insufficient evidence to go forward with an indictment.  For those of still off the grid, allow yours truly to refresh your memory.

The emails in question are the ones that Madame Secretary sent on a private server.  Some of those emails were official documents, marked classified, sent and received on an unsecured server. The State Department Inspector General issued its report at the end of May which condemned her email practices, essentially saying that using a private server for public business was inappropriate.  Further, her email and documents preservation practices failed to comply with department policy.  Specifically, the report said that Madame Secretary should have printed and turned over all emails, sent and received, during her tenure as Secretary of State.  Madame Secretary did eventually comply, turning them over in December 2014.  Were her actions careless?  Absolutely. Was it criminal?  Probably not.  Now the FBI has issued its report.

FBI Director James Comey
patch.com

Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey announced that he was not recommending criminal charges against Madame Secretary.  This just in, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that she will accept the recommendations and close the case.  All of you Hillary fan can breath a momentary sigh of relief.  Further, enraged Republican members of the House of Representatives announced an investigation of the email probe, summoning Director Comey to testify before the House.  Before we take all of this breaking news apart, let us take a look at Director Comey's statement.

In essence, Director Comey called Madame Secretary "extremely careless" over her her use of a private email address and server.  He raised concerns her judgement, contradicted her statements about her practices, raised the specter of her server being hacked, "...and declared the a person still employed by the government."  (http://www.nytimes.com; date accessed July 6, 2016)  Director Comey went on to say, "To warrant a criminal charge...there had to be evidence that Mrs. Clinton intentionally transmitted or willfully mishandled classified information."  (Ibid)  The FBI found no evidence to support neither.  Director Comey specifically said,

...our judgement is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.  (Ibid)

HRC email screen shot
businessinsider.com

  Speaking in a more detailed than usual manner, Director Comey outlined the specifics of the investigation.  He said, "...of the 30,000 emails Mrs. Clinton handed over to the State Department, 110 contained information that was classified at the time she sent or received them."  Out of that, Director Comey said that minuscule number had markings identifying them as classified.  (Ibid)  This directly rebukes Madame Secretary's assertion that none of the email were marked classified at the time.

In the process of the investigation, FBI discovered a cache of several thousand emails that were not part of the original 30,000 correspondence submitted by Madame Secretary.  Three of those emails contained information that was determined as classified.  However, Director Comey does not believe that Madame Secretary willfully deleted or withheld them from the investigator.  Further, Director Comey  raised the possibility that Madame Secretary's private account was compromised by "hostile foreign governments"  (Ibid)  Finally, Madame Secretary used multiple servers, some which were decommissioned, making the task more complicated.  (Ibid)  You can read Director Comey's full statement at http://www.fbi.gov  Case closed, end of story, right?  Please.

United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch
politico.com

If wading through ALL 30,000 emails AND Madame Secretary's use of multiple servers was not complicated enough, United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch made things a little more sticky.  Actually, AG Lynch and former President Bill Clinton made a mess of things.  Pres. Clinton had an unplanned, private meeting with AG Lynch at a Phoenix area airport last week.  The timing of that meeting could not have been terrible if you tried because the FBI's investigation was drawing to close.  For a politician THAT smart, this was a really foolish thing to do.  For AG Lynch, this was huge lapse of judgement.  Even though it was described as a social visit, the appearance of the spouse of a major presumptive nominee strolling over to meet the airplane of the person in charge of investigating his wife's emails smacks of obstruction.  For her part, AG Lynch has tried to make amends, eventually recusing herself from the investigation, and saying she will accept the recommendations of the FBI.  Regardless of the causal nature of the meeting, this really looks bad, to say the least.

Former President Bill Clinton
politico.com

How bad was it?  First of all, in a conservation on Friday July 2, 2016 with Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart, at the Aspen Idea Festival, AG Lynch insisted the conversation was about the grandchildren and golf (http://www.washingtonpost.com; date access July 6, 2016).  Fine, they could have been chatting about whatever, the point is they were seen together.  A somewhat contrite AG Lynch recognized that was not how other perceived the meeting.  Following her interview with the FBI, Madame Secretary described the meeting, to the press, as innocent.  Alright.  Second, the however innocent it was, this does not ease suspicious about the closeness of the Clinton to people within the Obama administration who have the duty to be fair and impartial during the investigation.  Finally, the meeting provided ample ammunition for presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump to cast aspersions on the results.  The Trump campaign sees this now closed matter as win-win situation.  If there was an indictment, major political turmoil for the Democrats.  No charges plays right into his "the system is rigged" argument.  Now that investigation has been more or less concluded, the House of Representatives wants their say in the matter.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc)
en.wikipedia.org

It seems that the "Bernie or bust" people were not the only ones unhappy with FBI Director James Comey's announcement that no charges be filed against Secretary Hillary Clinton.  The Republicans in Congress are unhappy as well.  Like nobody thought otherwise.  So unhappy, that the Republicans in the House of Representatives have called Director Comey to testify on Capitol Hill about his his recommendation not to prosecute.  Speaker of the House Paul Ryan told Megan Kelly of Fox News, "...the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, would call upon Comey to divulge more information on how he could square his scalding of Clinton's decisions with his suggestion that she not legally culpable."  (http://www.cnn.com; date accessed July 6, 2016)  Fantastic, Mr. Speaker, waste more time holding hearings because you and your allies did not get the indictment you were all hoping for.

Yours truly understands that you all might have questions about how Director Comey could issue such a scathing statement and not recommend criminal charges against Madame Secretary.  However, Is it really that important to waste more of the taxpayers's time and money over a result you all are not happy with?  Ask yourselves, given more pressing issues, how important is this?  Yours truly is not implying that the House should let the matter go but what Yours Truly is saying is take up the matter after you have had a chance to fully read and analyze the report.  If there are still issues that need clarity, then hold hearing but not before then.

Where does this leave the Clinton campaign?  Secretary Hillary Clinton was hoping for a clean vindication but did not get it.  Yes, the matter is officially closed but for Donald Trump and the Republican party, it is the gift the will continue to give all the way through the elections.  This will give Mr. Trump the opportunity to raise questions about her judgement and transparency.  For her part, Madame Secretary's credibility took a direct hit.  Questions about her judgement and transparency will continue to cast a pall over her campaign, especially as it moves into the final phases.  Can she recover from it?  Yes, but it will take time and the willingness to answer all the uncomfortable questions the American public has for her.