If you voted for Governor Romney for president and believe Hillary’s emails disqualify her, you are a hypocrite. End of story. Read no further. And if you think Hillary should be locked up for her email abuse then you should also demand that President George W. Bush get life in prison.
When Governor Romney left office in 2007, he took unprecedented measures to delete and destroy all electronic documents. He spent over $100,000 of state funds to replace all computers and each of his staffers purchased hard drives from their machines. These actions were unprecedented. His decision was very timely as the entire cleansing took place a few months before Romney launched his 2008 campaign for president. In addition to the electronic records, Romney also claimed that any paper records are not subject to public disclosure. When the incoming governor, Deval Patrick, was asked to turn over all of Romney’s files to the public his office revealed, “The governor’s office has found no e-mails from 2002-2006 in our possession. Before the current administration took office, the computers used during that time period were replaced and the server used during that time period was taken out of service, all files were removed from it, and it was also replaced.’’
In the past year we have also found that several Republican officials also relied on private emails and servers including Colin Powell, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, and Bobby Jindal. We also know that hundreds of congressmen use private emails given the limitations of our current laws.
In regards to Hillary’s emails, here are some key facts to combat misleading talking points and political propaganda.
1. Hillary originally deleted 33,000 emails but half were recovered by the FBI. What did the FBI find? Exactly what the Hillary camp stated. In fact, when asked about the 15,000 recovered emails by the House Oversight Committee Republican FBI Director James Comey stated, “we did not find evidence to indicate that they did the eraser to conceal things of any sort.”
2. The alleged smoking gun IS Hillary’s emails. There has not been one accusation about wrongdoing connected to the deleted emails. This is a critical fact forgotten with today’s media and Republican Party. In contrast, the private email server that President George W. Bush used was discovered when several US Attorneys were fired. President Bush’s Administration selectively targeted US Attorneys that would not prosecute alleged voter fraud. The attorneys argued (correctly) that no evidence existed and the task was purely political in nature. Due to the opposition, several were fired by the Bush Administration. When one of the attorneys, David Inglesias, went public the Department of Justice looked into the matter but there was a major problem. All of the millions (yes, millions) of emails connected to the firings were conducted over GWB43.com, a private email server paid for and run by the Republican National Committee, and were declared “lost”. Investigators also found that 88 White House officials received RNC email accounts.
3. It’s not about government transparency, it’s about Hillary. I find it ironic that the GOP Congressman charged with investigating Hillary, Representative Jason Chaffetz, still openly uses his own private email. Chaffetz.com is registered and run by Congressman Chaffetz, the appointed Chairman of the Oversight Committee. He even uses a Gmail account on his business cards. What people like Congressman Chaffetz want you to ignore is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does not apply to members of Congress. You read that correctly, the same type of transparency Congress is demanding of Hillary Clinton does not apply to their Legislative Branch. Congressman can take bribes, structure deals with corporations, or exploit their position for power with little accountability. In fact, it is not a stretch to believe that Congressman Chaffetz is being well substantiated by Hillary’s foes to keep this fraudulent investigation going (he should release his emails to prove otherwise).
4. No Top Secret information was ever sent from Hillary’s email server. The claim that Hillary put American secrets at risk is the crux of the opposition’s argument. However, there is no evidence that any information was ever leaked from Hillary’s encrypted server. In fact, most of the emails marked “secret” were reclassified retroactively by the State Department after they were sent. It should also be noted that all replies or forwards each counted separately so the total double-counted emails in the same thread. No classified information marked as “Top Secret” was found on Hillary’s server as such can only be sent through a completely different governmental system.
To be clear I have no issue with pressing accountability. Hillary is paying a political price for her decisions and given the evidence it was a foolish mistake. However, the investigation by Congress and the FBI signal that the mistake was not deviant or destructive but purely political. If the only complaint is Hillary is acting like Governor Romney, President George W. Bush, or Congressman Jason Chaffetz then private emails should not disqualify her from the highest office.