Kevin Drum: I Doubt That Hillary Clinton Used a Private Email Server to Evade FOIA

[portlander23]

Kevin Drum: Here's Why I Doubt That Hillary Clinton Used a Private Email Server to Evade FOIA Requests

As for setting up a private server with just a single account in order to evade FOIA requests, it looks as though she's genuinely not tech savvy enough to have cooked up something like that. She probably really did just think it sounded convenient, and nobody stepped in to disabuse her of this notion.

So what was the deal with FOIA? I don't know, and I suspect we'll never know. But I'll say this: there were obviously people at State who knew that Hillary used a private server for email. The folks who respond to FOIA requests are responsible for figuring out where documents might be, and in this case it was just a matter of asking. Apparently they didn't, which is hardly Hillary's fault. The alternative is that they did ask, and Hillary's staff flat-out lied to them and said that she never used email. You can decide for yourself which sounds more plausible.

Related:

Court Rules Clinton's Private Email Backups Shielded from FOIA

Clinton: Did not use personal e-mail server to evade FOIA

[jeff47]

1. This is facepalmingly-stupid.

As for setting up a private server with just a single account in order to evade FOIA requests

It didn't have a single account. Her aides had accounts too.

So what was the deal with FOIA? I don't know, and I suspect we'll never know.

"The deal with FOIA" is she did work using that email account and then did not turn those emails over to the State department when she stepped down. Thus whether or not she intended to evade FOIA, she evaded FOIA.

When Blumenthal's email was hacked and released, this was revealed to the world. That allowed RW assholes to start a FOIA fishing expedition for those work emails.

If Clinton had followed FOIA, there would be no fishing expedition and there would be no email "scandal".

[karynnj]

5. Exactly -- I read the op and was mystified why Kevin Drum, who is usually pretty sharp, seemed

to intentionally not get it.

What seems clear is that she had no intention of giving the State Department her emails when she left. It seems that about a year after she left, people high enough in the State Department to do something learned that the State Department did not have all of her email. I suspect that having many of them because they were sent to state.gov meant that it took the people doing the FOIA requests some time to see that things were missing .. and then some time for that observation to rise to the level of someone who could make the decision to pursue the emails quietly.

I would guess that HRC thought the State Department would stonewall the committees for her. As it was, they did her a favor in pushing her to give them the email when they did.

[cpompilo]

2. "nobody stepped in to disabuse her of this notion", because Hillary surrounds herself

with that caliber of people... presumably (a characteristic I witnessed firsthand way back in 1970).

[Dems to Win]

3. She never knew there were FOIA requests?

That's hard to believe. If the State Dept staffers really didn't tell her about the FOIA requests until two years after she had left, they weren't taking care of business in any kind of timely way.

In December 2014, when Hillary turned over paper copies of her email to the State Dept, there were FOIA requests from the AP that had been sitting at State for five years. They were filed while Hillary was SOS.

She and her team should have responded to them at the time, making her email archivable and available for the annoying but legally necessary FOIA requests.

Instead, she (or somebody) pushed it off, didn't respond, didn't allow anyone at the State Department to respond. She kicked the can down the road, right smack into the middle of her Presidential campaign.

Brilliant. Just Brilliant.

[Fumesucker]

4. No one, least of all HRC, could have predicted a vast right wing conspiracy...

A a vast right wing conspiracy to use any flaw or misstep she might make against her.