This is one of the most troubling aspects of this mess to me. Clinton might play a little fast and loose with the truth. But the part that worries me the most about this scandal is the incompetence at each step.
Not incompetence. Arrogance. And the confidence that either the scandal wouldn't explode, or that she could contain it if it did.
The risks associated with the private email server completely dwarfed the gains possible for Clinton. Why couldn't she see this? How is it that she didn't have any advisers that would confront her about this? Does she surround herself with sycophants?
I think on her part, it was a calculated risk. Her advisers either agreed with her cost-benefit analysis, or were cowed by her. Either way, that doesn't inspire confidence in her advisers.
The mixing of private and business emails was just amazingly inept. I doubt she would have found a lawyer in the entire US that would not have advised her not to do that.
She's a lawyer. Many of her advisers are lawyers. Her husband used to be one, although technically he's been disbarred.
The handling of this scandal has set a new record for the most inept way to handle a scandal. Turning over the hard disks to her lawyer with potentially classified data on them. Really? What planet is her lawyer from? He seems to have led her in to the path of disaster in more than one way. Deleting the emails in a way that they could be recovered? Really. So it looks like you're hiding something but then you're not really. How is that smart? And the ridiculous spectacle of her being forced to separate private and business emails two years after she was supposed to have archived the emails?
She obviously didn't do enough contingency planning for the event that her use of a private server was uncovered. That is an example of incompetence, although hardly an exceptional case.
The sorting process was legal. But my god it looked terrible. Talk about self dealing run amok. And the result of the ridiculous sorting scheme she put in place was that she was going to be responsible for every email incorrectly identified as personal. And the childish failure to turn over electronic copies of the emails? What did she hope to prove with that nonsense except that she could waste the time of State Department workers doing a task that was only required because of her childish act.
The sorting process was probably not legal given that the people doing it almost certainly did not have security clearances, and she almost certainly knew that classified material existed on her server.
As for her "childish" decision to turn over only paper copies? Well, there was a method behind the madness. She didn't want the State Department to have the electronic header files, which might have contained information which she didn't want to share.
Here's a thought: When she was caught she didn't need to wait to be forced into the embarrassing process. When it was obvious that her scheme had failed to hide her emails she needed to get in front of this and get all the bad stuff out at once. Instead the steady drip drip of facts has kept this story alive for months.
Her strategy has worked for her. She is a hair's breadth away from being the presumptive nominee of her party, despite the fact that this was mostly uncovered before the practical deadline for her potential (and actual) primary opponents to announce their candidacies. It hasn't been so good for her party, though, but since when has that ever taken priority over her own interests?
