Posted on 03/03/2015 8:17:31 PM PST by kristinn
The first public sign of the email imbroglio now enveloping former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have come more than a month ago in an obscure court filing in a lawsuit demanding details of Clinton’s response to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Last year, government lawyers handling the case brought by the conservative group Judicial Watch told a federal judge that the agency had searched its files and had no more records to produce.
They changed their tune on Feb. 2.
”In the course of preparing additional information to provide to Plaintiff for purposes of settlement discussions, Defendant has discovered that additional searches for documents potentially responsive to the FOIA must be conducted,” the attorneys wrote.
The legal filing was one of the first indications that Clinton’s use of a personal email account to conduct business as Secretary of State might complicate matters for parties wanting to know more about her official actions.
The flap that erupted this week looks to be a difficult one for Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, to shake anytime soon.
Clinton’s allies moved to douse the controversy by pointing to similar practices by her predecessors and to what her supporters say were murky government rules at the time.
But all signs Tuesday pointed towards a protracted legal morass as advocacy groups, the courts and Congress try to determine whether Clinton’s practice denied them access to critical information during her four years in the Obama Cabinet and thereafter.
Clinton aides and State Department officials argued that the impact of her use of personal email on the government’s permanent files was limited because she turned over 55,000 pages of the emails in December at the department’s request. They also contend that most of Clinton’s work-related emails were preserved on work accounts used by other officials.
However, those explanations overlook or minimize a series of problems caused by the personal email arrangement.
One is that searches of Clinton’s office files done for Congress, for Freedom of Information Act requests or for litigation may not have captured relevant emails if the recipient was outside Clinton’s immediate office and that account wasn’t part of the search. Work-related emails that went to parties outside the State Department or to aides’ personal accounts also would have been missed in these searches.
Clinton’s personal aide, Huma Abedin, and her communications adviser, Philippe Reines, regularly used unofficial email accounts for work-related email, former colleagues said.
SNIP
It’s the dreaded vast right wing conspiracy rearing it’s ugly head at poor Hillary, again. Can it ever be stopped? Those Clinton’s, tireless public servants, being blue dressed all over again.
Wish I could click like on your post
What bullshit. Force Clinton and the rest to explain if they are NOT using government email accounts, WHY THE HELL NOT?
I think it is absurd for a secretary of state to use personal email for business. However in an era where a President thinks he can raise taxes via EOs I wonder if there will be any traction on what Hillary did here. seems no one cares about laws and rules anymore when liberals break them
Moreass?
OMG! Funniest comment ever!
She’s just as lecherous as Bill, isn’t she!
Oh, yeah!
I worked and still do for the Veterans Administration for 30 years.
1. You do not, it is against the law, to use non government email for business that may contain any patient information. I am sure the same could be said for conducting all her Secretary of State Business on a private email non governmental server. It is not like the Chinese, Russians, Isis, North Korea, Iran etc. would be interested in hacking Hillary’s private email account is it?
2. If you violate these rules you are subject to fines, firing, prosecution and perhaps jail depending on the security breach. The VA is graveyard serious about this. They will hang your ass out to dry and they should.
It should be noted that the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, ISIS, Iran and others have professional and first class hackers working on breaching our national security. It can be said with absolute certainty that anything and everything Hillary Clinton wrote in private emails is in their hands. Absolutely certain this is.
This is not an act of negligence but an act of treason.
All of the media-type usual suspects are jumping on this one. It has the strong smell of agenda all over it.
FOIA laws are for little people.
But Not Queen Cankles and her entourage.
Certainly doesn’t rise to the level of ________________.
Lanny, Mandy
Hillary Sunset Blvd.
What? It is legal or isn't it, I'll keep my comments to myself I guess. What would happen BTW, if it were you?
Since these email accounts were not secure, and there were 55,000 of them, I wonder how many copies of them landed on Putins desk, or the Ayatolas, or China’s ???
Imbeciles all!
“If Hillary is too damaged, maybe the Democrats can get Romney to come out of retirement.”
Or Jeb Bush.
Work?
Has she ever done any work?
Her time as “Sec”, and the rest up there are for vacations and to vote against Americans for their own benefits.
Aed that’s not even a legal mor ass
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