As the Clinton and Obama spin machines roar up to speed, and the legendary Clinton smear machine no doubt begins clanking and farting its way toward Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), let us remember the salient detail of Hillary’s illegal email story: No, dear media, the story is not Republicans complaining about something Hillary did – the story is what Hillary did, and why.
No, it wasn’t a mistake, or an oversight. Clinton’s efforts to drag her correspondence into the unaccountable shadows were carefully planned and deliberate. They required a great deal of cooperation from the rest of the Obama administration, which had to pretend not to notice that none of Hillary’s mail was coming from the State Department’s domain. And we’re not talking about a couple of messages sent improperly here and there, or even the sort of secretive backstage communications network Obama administration officials are so fond of (and which, let us stipulate, politicians of both parties, at every level of government, have employed.)
No, Hillary Clinton routed all of her correspondence through her off-the-books account, and only a portion of it was captured when her email slipped into the in-boxes of other officials who did use properly archived accounts. A great deal of what Hillary wrote in her official capacity as Secretary of State is still lost in the void, until and unless she decides to produce copies of the missing emails.
That is not in any way, shape, or form consistent with either the letter or spirit of “accountability” or “transparency.” Transparency to Hillary Clinton means you can look at whatever she decides to let you see for as long as you like, after her crew of political fixers has worked it over. We don’t even know how much material Clinton has decided to keep hidden, as Democrat media outlets are forced to admit with a grimace.
The Washington Post took a look at the background details of Hillary’s email domain, “clintonemail.com,” and discovered it was “first created on January 13, 2009 — one week before President Obama was sworn into office, and the same day that Clinton’s confirmation hearings began before the Senate.”
She set up her obfuscation.com account the same day as her confirmation hearings began? That’s almost too rich. That’s the sort of detail that would probably get clipped from a House of Cards script during a rewrite pass.
Who does this? Who applies for a major executive position – not just the awful responsibility of Secretary of State, but even an executive position at a modest private-sector company – and says, “to heck with the official email system, I’m going to set up my own account?”
Who gets a job as a McDonald’s executive and blows off the company policy about using a mcdonadls.com email address because they’d rather set up a Yahoo account? Now add in not only the government oversight requirements, but the national security implications of using a personal email account for State Department business, and the whole situation becomes absolutely mind-blowing… which is why so many liberal papers and TV commentators who would normally defend Clinton have thousand-yard stares this morning, as the enormity of what she did sinks in.
Let me put these developments in the context of the entirely non-partisan case for electing Republicans. Even if you don’t like their policies, or dislike individual GOP politicians personally, you have to admit they have a much tougher time getting away with the tricks Democrats like Obama and Clinton pull on a regular basis.
The heavy institutional bias of Beltway culture against Republicans – even the unfortunately large number of them who want to become part of Beltway culture – helps to keep them, if not flawlessly honest, then at least a bit nervous. The very last thing America needs in 2016 is someone who feels as serenely, confidently above the law as Hillary Clinton.
And if her defenders are going to stick with the spin that her private email account was a mistake, created in honest ignorance of transparency laws that everyone in Washington knows about, then how could she possibly be qualified to hold any high office, let alone the Presidency?
After all, she didn’t set up that clintonemail.com dodge by herself. She had help. She had a huge staff of retainers, both personally and as the top State Department officials, to help her comply with the law… or evade it. As those shell-shocked liberal pundits are conceding this morning, there’s really no way to spin this as a mistake or blunder. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she had help from a large staff of people who knew what they were doing, plus the complicity of an entire Administration that knew what she was doing.