The Clinton Email Scandal, Day Infinity + 1

[n2doc]

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE

I've admired the work of Jack Shafer for a long time. Once, he was pretty much the only person at Slate who was worth reading with any regularity. And, by and large, his stuff from his new gig at Tiger Beat On The Potomac has been just as worthwhile. Which is why his sudden full engagement in The Clinton Rules today is such a disappointment.

Hillary Clinton did that to her most ardent supporters yesterday. After six months of indignant responses, classic stonewalling, legalistic prevarication, dismissive jokes and a sustained and coordinated counter-attack by her allies, she finally capitulated to critics yesterday, telling David Muir of ABC News that running a personal email account and server during her tenure as Secretary of State was a "mistake" and that she was "sorry about that." Compare this, if you will, to Bill Clinton's denial of an affair with Monica Lewinsky that caused scores of his supporters to prop up his lies until he ultimately folded.

This is just perfect. HRC gets badgered for an apology for a big honking nothing and then, when she gives one, God knoweth why and to whom, it not only is insufficient but a betrayal of her "most ardent supporters," none of whom, I would note, are quoted as having felt they were betrayed in any way. (And let me say for the record and for the sake of balance that Shafer nevertheless always should feel free to say anything he wants about Lanny Davis because, well, ick.) And there is a manifest difference between what HRC said and what her husband said as regards his affair. The affair actually happened. I am still at a loss at what the whole e-mail "scandal" is supposed to be about. However, a subparagraph of The Clinton Rules states that any opportunity to use the name "Monica Lewinsky" in anything written about the Clintons must be availed of. Minus-2 Mena Airport Frequent Flyer Points for failure to follow this rule.

Clinton has now conceded on national TV that the email story is not quite a nothing burger. It's actually a Royale With Cheese—maybe a Double Royale With Cheese and Pineapple. Nothing was "manufactured" and indeed, yes, some of the emails were deleted. In recognition of these facts, will these Hillary loyalists volunteer to return to the TV chat shows to acknowledge their errors? Better yet, will the shows revisit the issue to illustrate how Clinton's proxies attempted to roll them? Nah, but it would make great TV, wouldn't it?

Again, actually, the "e-mail scandal" remains a nothingburger until someone can tell me clearly what the real scandal is. The fact that it has been used as a hobby-horse for bored journalists and professional Clinton-haters is no surprise. (Indeed, some people predicted it, or something like it, more than a year ago.) If the apology is prima facie evidence of whatever the scandal is, then we've crossed onto the Great McCarthy Sink on our way to the borders of Kafkaland. The only "error" I see the "Hillary loyalists" as having committed is in underestimating the appetite for nothingburgers at various news outlets, especially The New York Times, which perfected the recipe back in the early 1990's under master chef Jeff Gerth. Again, I ask, what precisely is the scandal here?

As the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf noted in a splendid follow-up to the Post account, two levels of political sleaze were revealed: First, the Clinton defenders sought talking points—rather than the truth—about the emails for use in their rebuttals; and second, when given none, some winged it on pure faith in their patrona.

Ah, and yet another Clinton Rule comes into play. In this situation, there is not a major politician alive who would not coordinate the response of his surrogates before sending them out into the world to mount a defense. There hasn't been a campaign in a century that would not have acted in the same way as the Clinton campaign has. However, because it is the Clintons, and because the Clintons invented every political tactic, fair or foul, in the history of man, what is commonplace political practice is in their hands "two levels of politicial sleaze."

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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37817/everything-clintons-do-suspect/

[planetc]

1. Happy to be the first to recommend Mr. Pierce to your attention.

Mr. P. has an uncommonly stubborn ability to continue asking "But what is this about?" until someone tells him. If no one can tell him, he mentions that. I myself am a veteran of the long press campaign to convince the populace that the Clintons had done something wrong in their Whitewater investment. At the beginning of that artificial scandal, the Clintons told the country that they had done nothing wrong, they had invested money in the scheme, and they had lost money. These statements turned out to be the truth.

$100M later, Mr. Starr presented a case for impeaching the President for having committed perjury in his testimony about, ah, a former intern at the White House. The Senate did not convict. If I recall correctly, the Special Prosecutor law was not renewed.

What law, guideline, or ethical standard is Mrs. Clinton suspected of having broken? Please name it, number it, and quote a bit of it if it's statutory law. I know someone on this board has found her guilty under the espionage act, but could not say exactly what she did. If several people now come forward and mutter in gloomy tones of voice that "we will never know" what was in the emails she deleted, with the proof assumed to have been in the deleted emails, this is perilously close to saying that the lack of proof is the proof. It is a common quip in legal circles that a good prosecutor can indict a potato, but before that can happen, a judge has to be convinced that there is a reason to call a grand jury. To do that, someone will have to enunciate what happened. And I do not believe judges are allowed to follow Clinton Rules. They'd be overturned on appeal.

[karynnj]

5. It is ironic that long rants about how this is just a nothingburger just continue the discussion

Not to mention, you set a standard that is higher than it should be. Very few people have seriously argued that Clinton broke a law. Many have argued that she violated the standard that Obama set for transparency in his administration. In addition, she created a mess for the current State Department because her email was not archived in near real time as it should have been.

The mess is real. Clinton gets to a one part of what made this a mess when she apologized for not having separate business and personal email accounts. When that first came out, every person I know who had worked in government or for a large corporation was rather stunned. This really is far out of the norm and it is very hard to defend. So, what problem does it lead to -- it leads to all the questions of who - after the fact - sorted what was private (to be destroyed) and what was work related. Here, it is true that everyone using two accounts might have a few emails - either way - that are for the other -- and the guidelines actually account for that in that they call for insuring the government gets the work ones. Now, separating them 2 to 6 years after the fact could make it tempting to eliminate an email that looks bad in hindsight. ( I think Clinton's solution was to have her lawyer manage this sort which is likely the best way to do that. A "third party" was mentioned, but exactly who is a third party one could trust to read all the personal emails of the likely nominee? )

Another part, that I don't think she has addressed is that her action did shelter some of her email from valid FOIA requests. If people here REALLY meant things said on transparency this is an issue. As to the Congressional requests, they are Constitutionally mandated oversight. (Over reach - which defines most of what Issa does has a punishment only if people vote out people who do it.)

[planetc]

6. I set a standard that is "higher than it should be"?

I wasn't aware that I set a standard at all, although I did opine that a judge would have nothing to convene a grand jury about. Perhaps we could agree on that? The only standard I set was to ask what illegality or lack of ethics or violation of regulations she is suspected of. Because that's the question most of the press slides over like slime on a greased pig.

I do not not see that she "created a mess for the State Department" by supplying her emails when she was asked to, a feat no other retired SoS was able to accomplish. State asked for them. She supplied them. If anyone created the mess, it was the Bengazhi committee in collusion with the State Dept. Oh, and the NYTimes, of course. And the Benghazi committee has no constitutionally mandated oversight of the day-to-day workings of the Secretary of State. That particular committee is supposed to be looking into the events surrounding the attack in Benghazi. How are they progressing on that, I wonder?

As for not having separate email accounts for business and personal communications, everyone I worked with, and I, freely commingled business and personal emails while at work, and I suspect they still do. Clinton also said she wanted the public to see her emails, and it is now possible to do so. One person who read them pronounced them boring.

I do not think that we need to worry about who, in the absence of any indication of wrongdoing, separated the personal from the business emails. Absent any serious suspicion of malfeasance, venality, or collusion, any competent assistant could do that, and should do that, so that Mrs. Clinton did not have to slog through 55,000 pages of email with a Federal Marshall standing guard. Email is transient, and it's a mark of Clinton's conscientiousness that she still had them to turn over. Or a mark of her caution. Or both.

[karynnj]

8. Your comments argue that No laws were broken -- something that few here disagree with

Where there is disagreement is NOT on the legal level, but on the good government level. Note that she supplied her emails after the State Department had several meetings with her to negotiate that.

[planetc]

12. I'm glad we agree that there's no disagreement about illegality.

Now if we could just get the NYTimes to agree with us. The original Times article strongly suggested violation of State Department rules. When the Times backed away from that the next day at 70 mph, one of the articles informed us that the National Archives is drowning in unprocessed paper from the era when all interoffice correspondence was on paper. So, the Archives cannot afford to pay the people to sift the papers it has on hand, and I doubt that in these budget-conscious times, they will suddenly be adequately funded.

And if Clinton negotiated the submission of her email, she doubtless wanted to know why it was being asked for, and whether any other retired SoSs were being either asked or required to submit the same records. As we know, other Secretaries were asked, and it's fairly clear that Colin Powell had no idea anyone would ever ask for it. Military man that he is, I don't doubt he would have saved it, or submitted it with his resignation, if there had been any requirement to submit it or save it for possible further review. One thing that was probably negotiated was the 55,000 pages printed out on paper. I wonder whether State paid for ink cartridges and paper, or whether Hillary was asked to print at her own expense. That, at least, would make a story ... suitable for p. 42 of the Times, but not, alas, the front page above the fold.

No, I remain convinced that there is, as yet, no story here.

As for good government, I would rather spend investigative dollars on what happened to the $2-3 Trillion the Pentagon has "misplaced" than print more boring emails or continue to "investigate" Benghazi.

[joeybee12]

2. KNR...the only journalist out there who gets it...nt

[Cracklin Charlie]

3. Great title!

Kic til after tennis.

[Mnemosyne]

4. K&R nt

[Romulox]

7. Her advisers are ignorant of the rules of PR/scandal. 1) Admit; 2) Neutralize; 3) MOVE ON.

Her failure to admit her errors up until now has made moving on impossible.

[B Calm]

9. She should have never apologized! Now they are saying she waited too long

before apologizing. She should have known better than that. They are out to get her anyway they can.

[Romulox]

10. It puts here into a "was she lying THEN, or is she lying NOW?" box. Basic rules of PR. nt

[B Calm]

11. It's a damn if you do or damn if you don't. She should have never played

their game.