Clinton Email Scandal: 5 New Stories Tell Us It's Getting Serious

09/23/2015

Scandal: Hillary Clinton keeps plowing ahead toward the party and presidential coronations to which she feels entitled. But the going gets tougher with every email story that breaks. On Wednesday, there were at least five.

The trouble started Tuesday night when the Washington Post reported that Clinton's story about the manner in which she turned over her emails was being contradicted by the State Department. She has claimed that she handed them over — all of them — as part of a routine request that included emails from previous secretaries of state.

The State Department said it didn't happen that way.

"State Department officials provided new information Tuesday that undercuts Clinton's characterization," the Post reported. "They said the request was not simply about general record-keeping but was prompted entirely by the discovery that Clinton had exclusively used a private e-mail system.

"They also said they first contacted her in the summer of 2014, at least three months before the agency asked Clinton and three of her predecessors to provide their emails."

About an hour later, Politico reported that "previously undisclosed State Department emails related to Benghazi have surfaced in a federal court filing."

Apparently these were emails that had been held back when Citizens United, a group that Clinton has targeted because it made an unflattering documentary about her, had earlier sought "information about contacts between a top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and officials with the Clinton Foundation."

The emails appear to have also been withheld, said Politico, from the House Select Committee on Benghazi that is investigating the State Department's response to the attack.

Was there a dereliction of duty on Clinton's part that got four Americans killed in the attack? The public deserves to know one way or the other.

We'd like to think the public will learn something when Clinton testifies before the committee Oct. 22. But given the Clintons' historical unfamiliarity with the truth and their evasive nature, we're not confident that a lot will come out of that hearing.

A third story that reflects poorly on Clinton is her dodgy response to the Washington Post's report.

She told the Des Moines Register that "I can't answer that" when a reporter asked her Tuesday about the discrepancy. Is that the sound of just another candidate avoiding a hard question? Or the defensive posture of one who knows she's been caught in a lie?

The fourth story popped up early Wednesday morning. Several news outlets reported that the FBI has been able to recover emails from Clinton's private server that was thought to have been wiped clean.

This can't be good news for Clinton, who clearly tried to do State Department business outside the purifying light of open government. Already it is being disclosed that private emails turned over " by top Clinton aides" might "also contain classified information."

The fifth story is the filing of a lawsuit by Judicial Watch asking for communications between Clinton and the White House "following the capture and slaying of Osama bin Laden."

One dares speculate just what sort of improprieties this could turn up. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton wonders if we'll find out that Clinton agreed "with Obama's efforts to suppress key information about the bin Laden raid."

"One can fairly presume Hillary Clinton and the State Department have something to hide," he said. "Why else would they violate federal law to avoid disclosure?"

A candidate so continuously shadowed by scandal would be a problem president, the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.

The country is already starkly divided. We don't need to elect the candidate whose presidency will create vicious pro-impeachment and no-impeachment factions that make our national divisions even worse.

Nutz & Boltz

Thursday, September 24, 2015

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Clinton Email Scandal: 5 New Stories Tell Us It's Getting Serious

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