2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Jacob]

AP?  Partisan right?  Or is that a different AP?

Oops. Missed that AP. I guess that's not particularly partisan. So:

Oooo! A fishing expedition!

On one hand, it strikes me very much like that - a fishing expedition. On the other hand, Clinton should be able to handle it one way or the other. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

[Admiral Yi]

On one hand, it strikes me very much like that - a fishing expedition. On the other hand, Clinton should be able to handle it one way or the other. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

By definition a request to see emails which you don't know the content of is going to be a fishing expedition.  Any FOIA request is going to be a fishing expedition.

[Jacob]

By definition a request to see emails which you don't know the content of is going to be a fishing expedition.  Any FOIA request is going to be a fishing expedition.

I have no objection to this characterization.

At first, I thought this FOIA request was somehow related to the "private email address" story, and I thought the wide ranging FOIA AP was very tenuous. However, it appears that this is a separate situation altogether so it makes sense that any connections to the email address story is very tenuous (if indeed there are any).

[derspiess]

Jake, just admit defeat and we can all move on

[CountDeMoney]

Go to Hell
Hillary Clinton had something to say to the media about her email. It wasn't too subtle.
By JOHN F. HARRIS
POLITICO
March 10, 2015

Hillary Clinton was likable enough, answering questions calmly though with a weary smile. She even offered a feint toward humility, allowing that, "looking back," perhaps there was a "smarter" way for her to have handled her correspondence as secretary of state besides bypassing official government email entirely.

Beneath the politesse, however, was an unmistakable message in her 21-minute news conference in New York on Tuesday, easily distilled into three short words: Go to hell.

No, Clinton said, she did not violate the law or rules when, for reasons of "convenience," she used a private email account in her years as the nation's top diplomat.

No, she said, this matter does not need to be turned over to some outsider who can examine the Clinton family's private email server and independently assess her assertion that she has already given to the State Department any correspondence that might conceivably be of public interest.

And no, she clearly believes, even if she did not explicitly say, she's not going to pretend that this latest uproar is on the level, that the reporters and politicians second-guessing her judgments and clamoring for more answers have anything but self-interested motives in fanning the controversy.

How essentially combative was Clinton? The main piece of news to emerge from the session was her confusingly worded disclosure that she has already deleted the emails that she believes are no one's business but her own.

Go to hell is not typically a sentiment expressed by politicians on the brink of a presidential campaign. But in Hillary Clinton's case, it reflects a sincerely held belief that has been nearly a quarter-century in the making. Even Clinton opponents would have to acknowledge that she has some very good reasons for thinking the way she does.

The same sort of drama, with news conferences and investigations and the uncomfortable blurring of public and private, has played out during literally dozens of episodes over the years—on such seemingly disparate matters as the Clinton marriage, a West Wing suicide, their White House travel office, their efforts to reform health care, their campaign fundraising. The common theme is the tension between privacy, which Hillary Clinton prizes, and a conviction among journalists and others in the political class that those in high public office (or aspiring to it), like the Clintons, should be prepared to surrender nearly all of it.

Unspoken publicly in this latest controversy, but clearly understood among veterans of Hillary Clinton's circle, is her belief that the pious clamor for more disclosure and more revelation is fundamentally insincere. The media-political complex is not seeking a window into matters of public interest; it is looking for a weapon, one that will be brandished to produce still more stories or start still more investigations.

What's more, it is an article of faith among Clinton confidants that demands for public disclosure tend to get used more against Democrats, and more against the Clintons specifically, than against Republicans. The subtext: Do you think Dick Cheney worried that the editorial pages were mad that he held secret meetings with energy CEOs or tried to keep wide swaths of White House decision-making about terrorism secret from both the media and Congress?

It was against this context that Hillary Clinton on Tuesday sought both to project nondefensiveness—Sure, I'm happy to answer some questions—and draw some unmistakable lines—I don't give a damn if you don't like my answers.

She was simply unresponsive when it came to the question of how and whether it will affect her plans to run for president in 2016, plans that are well advanced and in fact may now be moved forward as a result of the email controversy. Then again, that, too, may not entirely be a surprise: People with long memories will recall that Clinton presidential campaigns have a way of launching amid awkward questions about the past.

In September 1991, just weeks before Bill Clinton formally announced his first presidential campaign, political advisers like Mickey Kantor, Frank Greer and Stan Greenberg worked up the nerve to tell the Clintons they would simply have to address a matter slightly more delicate than today's somewhat wonkish dispute over custody of State Department emails: Rumors that Bill Clinton's extramarital wanderings could sink his campaign the same way fellow Democrat Gary Hart's had four years before.

The result was an appearance by the couple at a Washington institution known as the Sperling Breakfast, attended by political reporters from the major newspapers. "We have been together for almost 20 years and we are committed to each other," Bill Clinton said, while gazing affectionately at his wife. "It has not been perfect or free from problems, but we are committed to each other and that ought to be enough."

Alas, it was not enough, as uproars over adultery months later rocked the campaign, and years later rocked the presidency.

Watching her performance on Tuesday, all these years later, it was hard not to remember that moment and to wonder if beneath her crisply rehearsed answers—don't sound defensive; don't give any ground—Hillary Clinton was asking herself, "Does the questioning of my motives ever end? Am I really ready to do this again?"

By all evidence, of course, the answers are no, the questions won't end, and yes, she is ready to wage a presidential campaign all over again, with an announcement now reportedly coming within weeks.

Bill Clinton himself likes to say that "all presidential campaigns are about the future." He survived his own controversies in part because of his personal ebullience and native optimism. But it is hard to believe that the desultory, backward-looking, here-we-go-again mood created by this email controversy is what the doctor would order at this moment in Hillary Clinton's career, when someone who has spent the past generation as the most famous woman in the world must project fresh energy and a forward-facing vision.

Which will voters see: the aggrieved candidate reminding us of the aggrieved 2008 loser and the aggrieved first lady before that? Or the obsessive media and those conspiring Republicans, trapped and stale in their Clinton obsessions of the past?

***

Shortly before Clinton's news conference aired on Tuesday, the political commentator David Gergen was on the air saying she would be well served by turning over the private email server to independent authorities at the State Department—that this would show transparency and allow her to shift the focus to the more worthy substance of her coming campaign.

Most viewers probably did not know that this was an echo of a now ancient argument. In passionate terms, in late 1993 and early 1994, Hillary Clinton had argued with Gergen, then a Bill Clinton White House adviser, and other political aides like George Stephanopoulos that it would be folly to agree to voluntary records disclosure and appointment of an independent prosecutor to look into questions about their private investments in Arkansas.

She lost the argument. The next several years saw Whitewater metastasize into Lewinsky, as investigators who found nothing illegal in the Clintons' land dealings trained their investigative sights on fellatio (or at least false testimony related thereto). While opponents failed in driving Bill Clinton from office, they succeeded in sapping vast time and energy from his presidency. And, despite the jeers her comment has recently provoked now that they are jet-setting multimillionaires, the Clintons did indeed leave the White House "dead broke" (if only temporarily) from millions of dollars in legal bills.

In 1994, amid questions about Whitewater, Hillary Clinton held what became famous as the "pink press conference" (so-named because of the color of her St. John sweater). The idea was to strike a nondefensive stance, acknowledge some mistakes not of propriety but of process and say that she had learned her lesson about the need to be more transparent. While she always believed in a zone of privacy, Clinton told the reporters back then, she recognized that in the modern political culture, "I've been rezoned."

If there was one thing we were reminded of in Tuesday's news conference, it is that, 21 years later, the zoning wars are still going strong.

John F. Harris is editor-in-chief of Politico and author of The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House.

[Berkut]

I don't accept that she has the right to

A) User her own email server and email accounts for public business which she also uses for private business, and
B) Has the right to decide what email is or is not of public and/or government interest given A.

If she wants to keep her private email private, then don't fucking user your private email for public work.

Her public documents, and that includes email, are not "owned" by her, they are owned by the US government. She circumvented that knowingly and with intent to bypass the normal and expected process for archiving *government* email.

So tough shit - she loses, IMO, her right to decide what is and is not "private". The point at which she gets to make that distinction is when she decides whether or not to use her public, government archived email account, or her private email account. She can't decide to only use her private account for public work, THEN decide what SHE gets to turn over or not.

Yeah, other people do crap like this all the time in the public sphere - they intentionally do not communicate via email in order to make sure that email is not recorded, for example. We all know that.

You don't get a free pass though by just calling all your public correspondence private, and then assure us that, don't worry, *you* will decide what is and is not "government" correspondence.

[CountDeMoney]

You give 'em what-fer, B.

[Jacob]

Jake, just admit defeat and we can all move on

I just did, didn't I?

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't accept that she has the right to

A) User her own email server and email accounts for public business which she also uses for private business, and
B) Has the right to decide what email is or is not of public and/or government interest given A..

Sure.
But that is by no means an issue for HC; it is an issue for any US government official since the invention of email.

I.e. any government official that has a personal email account may use that email account for public business, and if no recipient to a communication has a usgov email account, there is no way to know.  We always are in a position of trusting that the official will properly separate out the two and preserve the official emails.

HC presents a special case because she had no official account so presumably *all* her emails fall into this category.  So it is not surprising this issue is being raised now in her specific case.  But it is not unique to her, it is general and ubiquitous.

[KRonn]

Hillary's press conference created more questions than answered anything. She's getting eviscerated by the media, AP and other media which so easily debunked and called her on so much of what she said.

It's too bad for her if she has her private and government email system all mixed up together. That's her problem and the mess she's made of things. She did that by design and is trying to obfuscate her way out of things and it's backfiring badly.

Then she tries to say something like she only used one phone to make it more convenient? Couldn't figure out using multiple emails or some such nonsense. But just recently she was telling a room full of worshipers how she uses her blackberry and iphone and whatever else. That and more she's been called on by the media and anyone with half a brain.

I heard also that she turned over 50k of emails in PAPER FORM! Who does that? Makes it tough to cross check and search, and whatever else, but of course she did it that way. She says that she destroyed 30k pages of emails? Yeah right, all private stuff - yoga, wedding plans, emails to Bill (though Bill has never sent an email except for in office where he sent two of them.) She is just trying to be too cute and is making her lot worse, IMO. Does she even have the legal right to destroy anything given that her private server is also her government server and all govt employees must be in compliance with laws in turning over their communications?

I loved how she said her servers are secure, the secret service guards her house! Yep, that'll work for internet hackers, except if one jumps the cyber fence I guess.

She should have just shut up rather than speak, but either way is a mess of her own making.

Then there' s Benghazi. The investigation by the State Dept that so many hang themselves their hats on didn't interview Hillary, and it couldn't have had any of her emails since she just turned them over.

[derspiess]

Could this whole thing be just another...  wait for it... Vast Right Wing Conspiracy??

[Valmy]

Could this whole thing be just another...  wait for it... Vast Right Wing Conspiracy??

[Sheilbh]

It appears Hillary might have already deleted 30,000 personal emails on that account.

Over half the emails were deleted because they were personal. But we just need to take her word for it.

What's really striking is even if you think this issue is a big nothing (and I don't), her media performance with a few difficult questions was dreadful.

I think any other Democrat potential should take considerable heart from that - she's at least as vulnerable as she was in 2008 if they've got a bit of courage.

I.e. any government official that has a personal email account may use that email account for public business, and if no recipient to a communication has a usgov email account, there is no way to know.  We always are in a position of trusting that the official will properly separate out the two and preserve the official emails.

HC presents a special case because she had no official account so presumably *all* her emails fall into this category.  So it is not surprising this issue is being raised now in her specific case.  But it is not unique to her, it is general and ubiquitous.

Surely two other unique aspects are that her email server was in her own property and her email account was set up to allow her to delete (and from my understanding, properly delete) those emails.

So she not only didn't have an official account, but her own account was perhaps uniquely within her control. I think all of that requires a higher level of trust.

[The Minsky Moment]

Surely two other unique aspects are that her email server was in her own property and her email account was set up to allow her to delete (and from my understanding, properly delete) those emails.

So she not only didn't have an official account, but her own account was perhaps uniquely within her control. I think all of that requires a higher level of trust.

In theory yes but is it a distinction with a difference?  It depends on how long a web-based email company would keep deleted emails in an accessible way.

[The Brain]

Seems to me that she was in breach of all kinds of procedures. Not to mention good practice.