By Kyle Pratt
Contributing Writer
She did not have email relations with that account. That’s right, former Secretary of State and possible 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is facing backlash after it became public that she used her personal email account for official government business during her time as Secretary of State. Clinton, who served from 2009 to 2013, faced controversy later in her term after a terrorist attack on the United States embassy in Benghazi, Libya.
She was accused of not providing military security to the embassy even after multiple requests from the Ambassador, Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. However, Clinton and President Obama were both cleared last year of any wrong doing by the Republican-led House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
Clinton, who has been considered a front-runner for the 2016 presidential election since she the lost the nomination to President Obama in 2008, is obviously an enormous target for her opposition. Many believe that if she runs for president next year she will have little difficulty winning. For this reason, her political opponents will do all they can to tear her down.
Here is where “Email-gate,” the newest scandal, comes into play. Did she email classified information to our enemies? Were scandalous emails to a secret lover revealed? Or worse, does she still use AOL? Well… no.
Mrs. Clinton is in hot water because as Secretary of State she used her personal email account, rather than her .gov account, for official government business. As negligible as it sounds, and very well may be, this could be a serious problem. Official government email accounts are obviously very secure against hackers and the like. They also automatically save any incoming or outgoing email.
This is a “scandal” because not all of Hillary Clinton’s emails were automatically saved and recorded by the government. A public official’s emails understandably should be documented, not only for security reasons, but for transparency reasons as well. Much of the emails Clinton sent and received, of which many are not government related, have not been documented by the United States government.
This must be illegal, right? Why else would it be such a huge scandal? Well, it is entirely legal. Hillary Clinton did not break any laws or even any State Department policies by doing this.
She did, however, break protocol. This practice is not common, but it isn’t unheard of. Clinton claimed in a press conference last week that she used her private email for government business for convenience reasons.
She said that instead of carrying around two mobile devices, one for each email, she was able to carry around one device by using just her private email. As stated earlier, this is not against government policy. What is, however, is using a private email on an official government device. This is why Clinton would have had to use two devices, a practice very common among government workers.
This definitely looks bad for Hillary Clinton. However, she has one thing going for her. Her response to this scandal was unprecedented. In her press conference last week, she made it clear that she ordered her entire team to sift through her emails, pick out any that are even remotely related to her work in the government, and hand them over to the State Department.
She went one step further and made those emails entirely accessible to the public, something that has not been done before. She also admitted she was wrong, which as we know is not at all common in Washington. Clinton told reporters that, in hind-sight, she wishes she had used two devices.
As expected, this was not enough for her opponents. They want her to make every email on her server public. They say all of her private emails, which she says consists of conversations about her daughter’s wedding, the birth of her granddaughter, and even her mother’s funeral, should be made entirely public. This is a political move. It isn’t about national security or personal accountability.
The real reason they want these emails public are so they can use them against her. They want to find anything they can to eliminate her from the race for President. Why? Because they’re scared. They know she’s the front-runner, and they know she has a strong support base. Most importantly, however, they know she was an impressive track record.
They know she as experience. They are afraid of her qualifications, of her credibility, and of her influence. She’s well-suited for the job of President of the United States.
The people like her, and in Washington, that is the most lethal weapon any politician can have.
