Ed clintonemails.com: Who is Eric Hoteham?

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Whether or not she broke laws or procedures is not the problem, at least not for me. I would like to know why she did it.

I would ask this of any elected official, and I think anybody involved in this discussion who is defending her would ask the same questions if it had been someone they didn't like, say a Republican. Would you be defending a Republican to the same degree? It's a question one should always ask themselves: would it be okay if the other team did it?

It is reasonable to question why any politician would set up their own email server at home for government business. It is reasonable to question a politicians motives about anything they do. My automatic response when a politician does something that appears a bit fishy is to assume they had bad intentions and work from there. I don't give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to politicians, I do the opposite.

The fact that her actions come close enough to breaking rules or laws as to create this controversy tells me that she was calculated in just how far she could take this. You guys can pull laws and regulations out all week, but the fact that people need to scrutinize the laws to such a degree in order to prove her innocence only strengthens my suspicions as to her motives.

The public should absolutely question her actions and motives in this matter. Simply put, she's a politician, she works for us, and what she did appears sneaky.
 
I've read the thread and my confusion has increased as I've made my way through it!

Can some please tell me in simple language: What exactly is she meant to have done that is illegal?
 
Darat said:
I've read the thread and my confusion has increased as I've made my way through it!

Can some please tell me in simple language: What exactly is she meant to have done that is illegal?
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Theft of governmental documents.

Of course, many of us are not as obsessed with whether hillary actively committed a felony as with what it reveals about her character and lack thereof.
 
mgidm86 said:
Whether or not she broke laws or procedures is not the problem, at least not for me. I would like to know why she did it.

I would ask this of any elected official, and I think anybody involved in this discussion who is defending her would ask the same questions if it had been someone they didn't like, say a Republican. Would you be defending a Republican to the same degree? It's a question one should always ask themselves: would it be okay if the other team did it?
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As this was done by every Secretary of State before Hillary with the exception of one, where was the outrage when they all did the same?

mgidm86 said:
It is reasonable to question why any politician would set up their own email server at home for government business. It is reasonable to question a politicians motives about anything they do. My automatic response when a politician does something that appears a bit fishy is to assume they had bad intentions and work from there. I don't give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to politicians, I do the opposite.
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Is it really reasonable to question why a Hillary did it, when every previous Secretary of State with the exception of one used personal email without anyone batting an eye? It seems to be grasping at straws, to me.

mgidm86 said:
The fact that her actions come close enough to breaking rules or laws as to create this controversy tells me that she was calculated in just how far she could take this. You guys can pull laws and regulations out all week, but the fact that people need to scrutinize the laws to such a degree in order to prove her innocence only strengthens my suspicions as to her motives.

The public should absolutely question her actions and motives in this matter. Simply put, she's a politician, she works for us, and what she did appears sneaky.
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Indeed, a politician following the same standards as their predecessors with regard to personal email is obviously going to appear sneaky and cause controversy.
 
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Darat said:
I've read the thread and my confusion has increased as I've made my way through it!

Can some please tell me in simple language: What exactly is she meant to have done that is illegal?
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The documents (including electronic records) produced by employees of the federal government, while doing government business, are considered property of the federal government. Government employees, as well as the agencies for which they work, must take measures to archive all of these documents in official recordkeeping systems, where they can be safely stored and searched and accessed when needed. The need for these documents can arise from litigation, investigations, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Hillary Clinton created tens of thousands of emails which were related to her work as Secretary of State, and yet were not stored in an agency (in this case, the Department of State) recordkeeping system. Not only did Department of State archivists and lawyers not have access to these emails while she was Secretary of State, they didn't even know about them (let alone have access to them) until a couple of weeks ago. We know that the Department of State did not know about these emails because they responded to a very specific FOIA request about Hillary's private emails by saying that it had nothing responsive to the request.

The regulations which were in force since 2009 (and actually since 1995, but the wording was clarified in 2009) required that the Department of State (which Hillary ran of course) store all of these emails in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.

Some people here are quibbling about the meaning of the word "appropriate," which I think is an embarrassingly absurd dodge. I don't even think Hillary's flacks are brazen enough to try that. Instead they seem to be trying to cause confusion by misdirection. They're trying to defend Hillary's use of a private email account, which was perfectly legal actually (and remains legal, even to this day), and distract from the fact that her emails were kept outside the recordkeeping system and have lacked any type of objective, 3rd party controls for many years. She evidently had plenary power to delete emails and erase all trace that they existed, as long as her email counterparty was not using a government email address.

As I mentioned before, it is technically possible for Hillary, if she wanted, to argue that it wasn't she who broke the recordkeeping law, but rather the agency of which she was in charge. I think, however, if she were to make that argument, she would open herself up to liability under laws concerning the corruption of her public office. She might want to talk to Sen. Bob Menendez before she goes that route, though.
 
Darat said:
I've read the thread and my confusion has increased as I've made my way through it!

Can some please tell me in simple language: What exactly is she meant to have done that is illegal?
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Why, she is a woman, a Democrat, married Bill Clinton, and worked for Obama! If that isn't illegal, I don't know what is? Ignore the silly facts that she followed every procedure and law that was in effect at the time of her actions, we will just have to make something up that fits! ;)
 
sunmaster14 said:
Some people here are quibbling about the meaning of the word "appropriate," which I think is an embarrassingly absurd dodge. I don't even think Hillary's flacks are brazen enough to try that. Instead they seem to be trying to cause confusion by misdirection. They're trying to defend Hillary's use of a private email account, which was perfectly legal actually (and remains legal, even to this day), and distract from the fact that her emails were kept outside the recordkeeping system and have lacked any type of objective, 3rd party controls for many years. She evidently had plenary power to delete emails and erase all trace that they existed, as long as her email counterparty was not using a government email address.

As I mentioned before, it is technically possible for Hillary, if she wanted, to argue that it wasn't she who broke the recordkeeping law, but rather the agency of which she was in charge. I think, however, if she were to make that argument, she would open herself up to liability under laws concerning the corruption of her public office. She might want to talk to Sen. Bob Menendez before she goes that route, though.
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LSSBB posted the relevant definition of "appropriate". Care to point out which passage Hillary was in violation of?
 
wareyin said:
As this was done by every Secretary of State before Hillary, where was the outrage when they all did the same?



Is it really reasonable to question why a Hillary did it, when every previous Secretary of State used personal email without anyone batting an eye? It seems to be grasping at straws, to me.



Indeed, a politician following the same standards as their predecessors with regard to personal email is obviously going to appear sneaky and cause controversy.
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Damn, they all had their own cowboy servers?
 
wareyin said:
As this was done by every Secretary of State before Hillary, where was the outrage when they all did the same?
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Condi Rice was the Secretary of State immediately preceding Hillary Clinton. Condi Rice used a government email address, and it has never been credibly alleged that she ever used a private one for conducting official business.

Perhaps you'd like to rewrite your post with that information in mind. Or probably just delete the whole thing and replace it with an Emily Litella quote.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Condi Rice was the Secretary of State immediately preceding Hillary Clinton. Condi Rice used a government email address, and it has never been credibly alleged that she ever used a private one for conducting official business.

Perhaps you'd like to rewrite your post with that information in mind. Or probably just delete the whole thing and replace it with an Emily Litella quote.
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Very well, I will amend my post to read every predecessor "with the exception of one". Clearly, that defeats the entire point that it was common, routine, practice by virtually every Secretary of State until Kerry. :rolleyes:
 
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wareyin said:
LSSBB posted the relevant definition of "appropriate". Care to point out which passage Hillary was in violation of?
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Well, for starters, her recordkeeping system wasn't an agency recordkeeping system once she was no longer Secretary of State, right? Even if it could be argued (frivolously in my opinion) that her private system was an agency system because she was the head of the agency, that wouldn't apply to the last two years.

In any case, at a minimum she was in violation of subparagraphs (5),(6), and (7), since nobody at the agency (i.e. Department of State) who was in charge of recordkeeping, nor at the National Archives and Record Administration, had access to, let alone knowledge of, her records.
 
wareyin said:
Ignore the silly facts that she followed every procedure and law that was in effect at the time of her actions, we will just have to make something up that fits! ;)
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Except for the fact that the government is unable to comply with FOIA requests which it is legally obligated to do by law because the emails by default are on a server other than the servers from which public servant's emails are supposed to be archived... Whether or not she strictly broke laws seems to fall under a loop hole, but the issue dealing with the gov's obligations to comply with FOIA's on this matter and the complications that arise from her actions is the crux of the problem
 
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wareyin said:
Very well, I will amend my post to read every predecessor "with the exception of one". Clearly, that defeats the entire point that it was common, routine, practice by virtually every Secretary of State until Kerry. :rolleyes:
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You mean all one of them (i.e. Colin Powell), or did those old fossils - Madeline Albright and Warren Christopher - know how to use email back in the 1990s?
 
sunmaster14 said:
Well, for starters, her recordkeeping system wasn't an agency recordkeeping system once she was no longer Secretary of State, right? Even if it could be argued (frivolously in my opinion) that her private system was an agency system because she was the head of the agency, that wouldn't apply to the last two years.

In any case, at a minimum she was in violation of subparagraphs (5),(6), and (7), since nobody at the agency (i.e. Department of State) who was in charge of recordkeeping, nor at the National Archives and Record Administration, had access to, let alone knowledge of, her records.
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I find extremely odd the claim that no one knew the email address that they used to email Hillary, or that she replied to them with.
 
wareyin said:
I find extremely odd the claim that no one knew the email address that they used to email Hillary, or that she replied to them with.
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If you read my post more carefully, you will find that I did not claim that nobody knew. Obviously, many people knew, although it's not clear that even those people knew the extent of her private email usage. The important point is that those who respond to FOIA requests did not know.
 
 
sunmaster14 said:
And this adds to the discussion, how?



Oh, I see.
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Well... I have been on this forum for over six years, and I have yet to report a single post for any perceived rule violation.

Whether or not you think my comment adds to the discussion, my argument should be clear enough. I see this email controversy as yet more alarmist hand-wringing with little substance.

You can agree or disagree. But your response, instead, is to impugn me personally by suggesting a malicious agenda. Perhaps I could complain, which tends to support the point I made in FMF, which you chose to quote here. I won't, because it's not my agenda.
 
wareyin said:
Perhaps you missed or forgot this, which was posted earlier?

“Like secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any department officials,” spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement. “For government business, she emailed them on their department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.”
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Let's try that cite with a little more context and a slightly different emphasis:

A Clinton spokesman defended the practice as routine and said that the former first lady obeyed “both the letter and spirit of the rules.”

“Like secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any department officials,” spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement. “For government business, she emailed them on their department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.”
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One of Hillary's own flacks assures you that her behavior is totally okay, and you take that at face value?
 
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sunmaster14 said:
If you read my post more carefully, you will find that I did not claim that nobody knew. Obviously, many people knew, although it's not clear that even those people knew the extent of her private email usage. The important point is that those who respond to FOIA requests did not know.
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What they did not know is that she never turned ANY emails that she keeps on her cowboy/homebrew server over to the government, and still has not done so.

The funny thing is that so many people are running cover for her, and her entire comment on the issue is one spectacularly cynical tweet.
 
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