You don't get this high up in politics by having syncophants who are afraid of your shadow. HRC has good people working for her who have been with her since the WH. She has trusted advisors and people who are paid to keep her out of hot water. I refuse to believe this is a case of people too afraid of the VIP to keep her out of legal trouble or worse out of the WH. THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE "PEOPLE" IN POLITICS.
Last night H had to leave dinner and take a phone call where a Congressman screamed at him for 1 hour. He is one of his "people," has been for years and is highly trusted. Still gets abused by the guy on a regular basis. People who rise to this level in politics and do not terrorize their staff and "people" seem to be relatively few. I could tell a lot of stories, but thankfully I don't work in politics so they aren't "mine" to tell. I think most of my friends are masochists.
I've had to explain some basic computer stuff to the guy who is now the chairman of the FCC, so I'm going to disagree with your assessment there. Just because someone is high up does not mean that they are paying attention to that sort of thing, and in my experience makes it more likely that they will fly in the face of something like that anyway because they are used to the whole world moving around to accommodate their wishes. "You can't do that" is just not something you say, the attitude is very much "this is what I want, so make it happen".
You're talking about how. I'm talking about why.
There is no way that when someone said uhm, we have to archive that shit and personal email isn't secure, Hillary Rodham Fucking Clinton was all, uhm, I don't get it.
ETA: I do think it's possible and in fact, incredibly likely that her answer to all of that was I know but . . . I know but Angela Merkel doesn't like sending shit via government email. I know but I don't want a record of this conversation. I know but this isn't really government work right here. I know but this is the client I've always used, it's actually pretty secure, and I'm more comfortable with it. I know but who the fuck cares, I do wut I want.
The answer is not, huh, I don't get it.
But I think it's possible that the fact that they couldn't/didn't archive her personal email may not have been brought up directly to her. I certainly agree that if it was brought up to her directly that she would understand the need for it to be archived. It just wouldn't surprise me if a) it was never brought up to her, just one of her people, and thus she didn't think about it, and/or b) it was brought up, she told them that this was what she wanted, so make it happen, and someone just shrugged and said "I'm not fighting this battle". Yes she has people that aren't "yes" men and women on her team, but I would guess most of them are policy advisors and not the IT guy assigned to her office.
I would also have no problem believing there was something shady going on. But my initial tendency is to assume ignorance/stupidity over malice.
But I think it's possible that the fact that they couldn't/didn't archive her personal email may not have been brought up directly to her. I certainly agree that if it was brought up to her directly that she would understand the need for it to be archived. It just wouldn't surprise me if a) it was never brought up to her, just one of her people, and thus she didn't think about it, and/or b) it was brought up, she told them that this was what she wanted, so make it happen, and someone just shrugged and said "I'm not fighting this battle". Yes she has people that aren't "yes" men and women on her team, but I would guess most of them are policy advisors and not the IT guy assigned to her office.
I would also have no problem believing there was something shady going on. But my initial tendency is to assume ignorance/stupidity over malice.
Two words.
Ken
Starr
Please stop saying Hillary didn't about archiving. Fuck all that noise. You make her sound like a fucking moron and for all the things Hillary might be, a fucking idiot is not one of them.
You don't get this high up in politics by having syncophants who are afraid of your shadow. HRC has good people working for her who have been with her since the WH. She has trusted advisors and people who are paid to keep her out of hot water. I refuse to believe this is a case of people too afraid of the VIP to keep her out of legal trouble or worse out of the WH. THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE "PEOPLE" IN POLITICS.
Last night H had to leave dinner and take a phone call where a Congressman screamed at him for 1 hour. He is one of his "people," has been for years and is highly trusted. Still gets abused by the guy on a regular basis. People who rise to this level in politics and do not terrorize their staff and "people" seem to be relatively few. I could tell a lot of stories, but thankfully I don't work in politics so they aren't "mine" to tell. I think most of my friends are masochists.
God Bless your H. I sadly know how this feels. It's certainly not fun. Here's to hoping I don't get yelled at this month.
And this is why I said that I don't know how HRC is with her staff.
If I had to make a guess as to motive it would probably be she wanted to campaign and fundraise and work on her future plans from the same account. Which may be laziness or may be something else slightly more calculated. I'm pulling this all out of my ass. And this is my "the clintons are shady" side shining through.
If I had to make a guess as to motive it would probably be she wanted to campaign and fundraise and work on her future plans from the same account. Which may be laziness or may be something else slightly more calculated. I'm pulling this all out of my ass. And this is my "the clintons are shady" side shining through.
I think she is smarter than this.Â
Well I hope you are right because I am really really excited about HRC this time.
I'm all over the place with this, and I can't decide if this is ACTUALLY a big deal, or will just be perceived as one. bowies made some great points. There are some legitimate reasons that she would want to use private email, and there's apparently precedent with Colin Powell. Add in the secret super secure servers used for classified info, and the facts that she released emails and that whatever she sent to other .gov employees will be archived anyway and it's almost legit. But there are also some shady reasons, and the fact that this was discovered during the Benghazi investigation makes it seem even more shady. But I'm confused about the timeline - when did these regs go into effect? And if it's legally a big deal, why isn't there any teeth in the regs? Back to Bengahzi - that happened near the end of her term, so its possible she didn't anticipate this would bite her in the ass. But then again, Obama was all about transparency, so she should have known better.
I just don't know what to think, except that it looks bad and it will be a huge distraction regardless of whether it's actually a big deal.
I don't like this at all, and how are we supposed to trust that her aides submitted all of the emails that should be recorded. There are a lot of great points in this thread on all sides.
I'll just note that yea Jeb Bush released emails... that included lots of sensitive personal information about the correspondents including social security numbers, addresses, names, phone numbers, etc. So he didn't exactly do it right either.
1. My first thought was she probably conducts 90% of her official business on a system such as JWICS so I'm glad that point was brought up. I have coworkers who work in SCIFs that don't bother to get a NIPR email.
2. My second thought was - the personal email likely helped her in foreign diplomacy. As someone who has worked with foreign nationals, there's a wide and vast distrust of being "on record" with Americans, especially via fast/casual communication. Correspondence was usually done through ultra formal written letters/memos or in person or, yes, through personal means. Doesn't make it right, I know.
3. My third thought was Oh fuck Hillary, you've done it now. Even if she hands over everything that is unclassified, she still looks shady as hell. Setting it all up on day one...SMH.
My old boss had an official work email and almost never checked or used it so one of my duties as her assistant was to log into her email a few times a day and forward all her business correspondence to her personal address. Part of her resistance to using that email was laziness but a lot of it was also because she had some very long and deep professional friendships with plenty of high up people in our industry and most of them were far more candid with her when the sent something to crazybitch1@aol.com than to crazy@bitchcompany.com. I would often end up getting CCed on that correspondence somewhere in the chain and the difference was remarkable.
I still think this is all shady as hell and no matter what the explanations is Fox News will run with this forever. I'm almost 100% sure this will still be a talking point in 20 years.
I still think this is all shady as hell and no matter what the explanations is Fox News will run with this forever. I'm almost 100% sure this will still be a talking point in 20 years.
I need someone to alert me as soon as that shady little Irish prick comes up with his Hillary catch phrase. You could play a drinking game with his Obama catch phrases even now. I dare you to listen to Sean Hannity's radio show one day and take a shot every time he mentions the "unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers" or Chickens coming home to roost.
I don't like this at all, and how are we supposed to trust that her aides submitted all of the emails that should be recorded. There are a lot of great points in this thread on all sides.
I'll just note that yea Jeb Bush released emails... that included lots of sensitive personal information about the correspondents including social security numbers, addresses, names, phone numbers, etc. So he didn't exactly do it right either.
Really? Man, I know they are boomers and didn't grow up with email, but they have aides right?
Take the assumptions away and pretend she used her personal gmail (without a special network/firewall) to do normal Secy of State HRC business. Think about the subject matter that would have been included in her emails and who she would have been sending/receiving emails to/from. Now, think about the keywords that send up the NSA bat signal.
I'm sure there's a copy of her entire email account on an NSA server underground somewhere that can be forwarded on as necessary.
I saw someone else mention Snowden in here... I had to tie them together.
This reinforces people's perceptions of her, but it isn't going to make any other serious candidate look better. How long until we see Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Scott Walker squirm when news reporters force them to answer questions about where the transparency lines should be drawn? "Well of course state business should be archived and transparent, but members of my White House and Cabinet should be free to conduct secret conversations with donors and allies about non-state business." They are not so stupid as to want to have those kinds of conversations. Because some reporter will dare one of them to walk the talk, and the next thing you know, we are all talking about why Chris Christie doesn't give up his emails with Exxon and what shady shit has he done?
I see this issue getting a lot of traction on Fox News, but I don't think it's going to be used by her opponents in speeches and debates.
ringstrue also made a good point about agile technology. The government is usually way behind on that shit and servers/networks are constantly down. Again, not ideal but it's reality. HRC is one of thousands of government workers using workarounds. Her previous experience probably drove her to put the workaround in place quickly - nothing kills a peace talk faster than waiting on a huge file to get rejected as "too big" by Outlook.
She could have at least signed up to get her State Department potluck emails on her .gov account though. I mean, damn. Not hard.
I don't like this at all, and how are we supposed to trust that her aides submitted all of the emails that should be recorded. There are a lot of great points in this thread on all sides.
I'll just note that yea Jeb Bush released emails... that included lots of sensitive personal information about the correspondents including social security numbers, addresses, names, phone numbers, etc. So he didn't exactly do it right either.
I can also say with 100% certainty that Jeb hasn't released all of his emails. That's a shady ass motherfucker and his rush to get things out should give people pause (not people here, just in general).
This was really dumb of her. This could be what ruins her hopes at the presidency. I can see a lot of moderates being turned away, and perhaps super liberals saying "eff it" and going third candidate because she is now sketchy as fuck.
I don't think it will ruin her UNLESS some journalist files a FOIA and requests emails from HRC's personal e-mail that aren't classified and it's some how tied to some nefarious plot or has a really big tie in to Benghazi. If nothing comes from the e-mails, it'll be a bump that HRC can recover from with little issue.
The big picture is What's In HRC's Email and Is It Damning or NAH.
This was really dumb of her. This could be what ruins her hopes at the presidency. I can see a lot of moderates being turned away, and perhaps super liberals saying "eff it" and going third candidate because she is now sketchy as fuck.
I bet you it will come up thousands of times in the primary and general. I'm actually concerned we won't have strong primary contenders and the Republicans can win the general using this. Perhaps that is alarmist of me, but this seems like a big problem with no easy explanation.
Who do you think is a strong R contender though? I haven't seen anyone murmuring on the right who will be taken seriously by anyone even slightly moderate.
And giggle point - too bad SusanRandomNumber isn't here for this thread, because this is far more valid than HRC's husband got some intern's blue dress dirty.
I feel like there's got to be some sort of reasonable explanation for this. Not because I don't think HRC has the capacity to be shady, but because she knew it was a possibility that she was going to run for President, and (ii)she's politically savvy and not a freaking idiot, so she had to know this was going to come out. I mean, any of the plethora of govt officials and/or world leaders who she emailed as SoS knew this. For example, would she not at some point have emailed some Republican who she had to know could use it against her if (s)he felt like it? I am just super confused.
Also, I think "personal email" may be a bit of a misnomer. I doubt this was the same account she's using to order stuff from Amazon or send pictures of her grandkid. It was set up the day she was confirmed -- I'm guessing it was "personal" in that it wasn't a .gov account, but that she basically used it only for business. I could absolutely be wrong about that, but that's my guess.
It still looks incredibly bad, though.
ETA: I have no idea why the lightbulb is here -- it's supposed to be a ( i )
If I had to make a guess as to motive it would probably be she wanted to campaign and fundraise and work on her future plans from the same account. Which may be laziness or may be something else slightly more calculated. I'm pulling this all out of my ass. And this is my "the clintons are shady" side shining through.
Do you mean the she wouldn't want to switch accounts depending on what she was working on, or that she was working the running-for-president angle while communicating with world leaders and other diplomats as early as 2009 when she became SOS?
Because I can switch between my work and personal email all damn day long and keep it all straight, and if I can do that, I'm sure HRC can, because she's many times smarter than I am.
Or do you mean she would email Angela Merkle and be all, "let's just say that in January 2017, I'll make this happen for you," and wouldn't want that on record?
I actually am way more likely to believe that clintonemail.com is a freaking gmail POP server, vs Hilary and Bill actually building out a private network that is more secure than the federal government.
ETA: And since the regulations seem to have gone into effect when Condi was in office, I'd like to compare Powell's emails to Rice's emails to HRC's emails to Kerry's emails, in frequency and gross number. Granted, it's possible email has become much more common as a means on communication over that time period, but it was pretty easy to use and popular back in 2001. Every school had .edu addresses and every company was already giving their employees company email addresses back then.
Read the gawker piece above. If what Gawker is reporting is accurate, the issue isn't whether she was following the law or not. The issue is their FOIA request was rejected "because no records existed." When in fact they did. On her private email.