The Clinton emails: another case of “if only Obama knew”
I’m sure there’s some germ of truth in this story, but I can’t figure out exactly where. I’m assuming that the lede is true:
The White House, State Department and Hillary Clinton’s personal office knew in August that House Republicans had received information showing that the former secretary of state conducted official government business through her private email account…
Were Republicans waiting for a more propitious time—say, after Hillary’s nomination—to spill the beans, and Clinton or the White House decided to finesse the GOP by releasing it now, and that’s why the Times decided to publish it? (That’s my speculation, not the article’s.)
The piece goes on to say that the White House had deferred to Hillary’s aides back in August, and that the latter made the decision to keep quiet about it. That seems implausible to me; the White House had no opinion on the matter? And the “aides believed the former secretary’s email practices broke no rules and were no cause for concern?” Yeah, right.
But this is my favorite part [emphases and sarcastic additions in brackets mine]:
As the scandal has grown, White House aides have worked to put distance between the president and the mess [including this article, which has that goal as its primary purpose]. Although Clinton aides have been in touch with the White House about the response in recent days [ya think?], the situation has put the White House in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the expected presidential candidate because her own staff [not us—her!!] has left a public vacuum””setting up a potentially precarious dynamic between staffers for Clinton, who have traditionally been reluctant to engage with reporters and aides, and aides to President Barack Obama [who are always open and transparent with the press and the public]. Between the two camps, animosity buried [in a very shallow grave] after their 2008 primary campaign occasionally flares up [only once in a blue moon, I’m sure].
White House press secretary Josh Earnest took care to point out that Obama himself was unaware of any issues with Clinton’s email. “The expectation of the president is that everybody throughout his administration is acting in compliance with the Federal Records Act,” Earnest said on Wednesday [even though they’d (probably) been getting emails from her private account for the entire time she was Secretary of State].
The White House does not have Clinton’s full email record, and was only made aware of the situation with her account after receiving the standard notification that a congressional committee had asked for, and received, documents from any agency, he said [if only Obama knew! I guess he read about it in the Times, where he appears to get most of his information].
So the article is alleging that until August, the White House was unaware of Clinton’s email habits, and that at any rate no one thought there was that much of a problem even after they were alerted to it, and that even then no one informed the president.
As usual.
[ADDENDUM: Valerie Jarrett adds that she never received any email from Hillary, and that she has no idea whether the White House ever did.]
[ADDENDUM II: Allahpundit offers a plausible theory as to why the report has come out now (somewhat similar to my initial theory that it’s a way for them to get ahead of a story that was probably going to come out anyway):
Not until three weeks ago did State finally hand over the files to Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi committee.
That last bit and not the Iran deal explains why this broke when it did, I think: State knew that if they didn’t get in front of this and leak it to the Times, Gowdy would notice Hillary’s private e-mail account(s) and break the news himself. That would have been a huge coup for his committee (it is a huge coup even though he didn’t get to announce it) and it would have made State look institutionally corrupt in having failed to release the news about Hillary’s e-mail account itself. So that’s what they did. They came clean ”” after six years, and only because the dreaded GOP was about to show just how shady they and their former boss are. To the extent that Iran figures into all this, I’d guess that it matters only insofar as Bibi Netanyahu’s speech affected the precise timing of the leak. The White House and State wanted to beat Gowdy to the punch as he closed in, but they also wanted to try to bury this news as much as possible by releasing it when it might be overwhelmed by bigger news. The obvious moment was the night before Netanyahu delivered his big speech to Congress.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?]
So anyone with a .com or .net email address can just email the President and he’ll see it? Someone must have set up some filters so that outside emails can’t just show up in Obama’s in box. And they must have made an exception for Hillary. They knew all along, as if there was any doubt.
“The expectation of the president is that everybody throughout his administration is acting in compliance with the Federal Records Act,”
…and as Valerie Jarrett said today in an interview:
“I’ve never received email from Hillary…The president has a very firm policy that emails should be kept on government systems.”
Expectations and policies, not review and enforcement!
Can you imagine if a CEO whose company had been caught breaking laws, such as Enron’s Ken Lay, gave these types of excuses?
And does anyone really believe there were absolutely no emails sent between Hillary/her top staff and Obama/his top staff?
I am so freakin’ tired of such ridiculous lies from the administration. So very tired.
Lizzy:
Jarrett also said she doesn’t know whether Clinton ever sent emails to the White House.
Don’t get too tired. They’re counting on the right, and the American people, to get so tired they yawn and just go on to the next one.
[even though they’d been getting emails from her private account for the entire time she was Secretary of State].
Seriously. This is all just nonsense. If her emails weren’t from her .gov account it would be obvious to every single person who got one.
I know people might send stuff from home occasionally, but someone at her level would have access to her gov email everywhere via blackberry or laptop or what have you. So using her personal email was obviously a choice.
Lea:
I added an addendum to the post with a quote from Jarrett saying she has no idea whether the White House ever got any emails from Hillary, but that she never had. I also inserted the word “probably” (in parentheses, to indicate an addition, although I’m not sure that was clear) in that sentence of mine about them having received emails from her.
I actually think it’s preposterous to think they didn’t receive emails from her. But anythings’ possible, including I suppose that they communicate by carrier pigeon, or that the White House has private emails, too. Something like Petraeus and his girlfriend did, only more sophisticated.
One way to “clean up” a lot of confusion and angst surrounding this issue, as well as other ones plaguing this administration would be to pass legislation prohibiting any individual (either side of the political spectrum) from using sarcasm to describe their knowledge of, participation in, or allegations/accusations of others, over a festering controversy.
This would ensure that I would not be heard from as well.
BS can talk, but it can only walk with the assistance of the msm. Of course the oval office knew hrc was not using gov email. It was a scandal to hang around her neck to help thwart her 2016 bid. The messiah loathes the clintons and they deeply hate him. There is no honor between criminals.
Choom boy has other ideas about who should inherent his 3rd term. Hillary ain’t the one.
Ari Fleischer: ‘I Guarantee You’ Hillary’s Emails Were Hacked (read by Iran, Russia, China?)
Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tells Newsmax TV he believes Iran, Russia and China routinely read Hillary Clinton’s emails detailing sensitive government business.
Fleischer, who served under George W. Bush, said the disclosure that Clinton had used a personal email account – not a government one – during her time as secretary of State made her dispatches vulnerable to hacking.
“If it’s done from a personal account, I guarantee you China, Russia and Iran have them,” Fleischer said Wednesday on “The Steve Malzberg Show.”
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/ari-fleischer-hillary-clinton-private-emails/2015/03/04/id/628301/
Don’t get too tired. They’re counting on the right, and the American people, to get so tired they yawn and just go on to the next one.
I’m not accepting it or getting used to it. No, I just see no reason to bother listening to the administration’s excuses and the MSM’s preposterous reasoning for believing them. It been done so many times before it’s not worth our time to formulate a response as to why the latest particular lie is just not feasible, to point out that for anyone else this would be unacceptable.
They do whatever they please, through deceptive methods, and then lie when caught. As for the excuse du jour? What difference, at this point, does it make?
A Artfldgr working on this below should find some interesting results:
a Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham,
a Bank of Hawaii,
‘Asian money’ designated for the Clintons,
an account of the Bishop Trust [non profit, cough, cough]…
Yup, more connections there than we realize ….
Gowdy’s pretty slow.
It’d be pretty rare to set up a domain name and mail server for one email account. I’m guessing it hosted many more email accounts than the one we know of. Probably all of her staff had their own. Probably Hillary herself had more than one.
For all of the rank things she’s done, it would be interesting to see her run aground for a violation such as this: sort of like Capone going to prison over tax evasion.
Prediction!
Within a month NYT or WaPo and MSNBC or CNN will break a major story that will be very detailed and from well placed sources.
The news will be that Russia, China, North Korea, Germany were reading Hillary’s email daily.
Emails will be published. Unflattering and racist (!) things will have be written about the President. Very important national security matters will be discussed. Unkind comments about many people. National security matters that should not see the light of day for 50 years will be out.
Putin knew more about our foreign policy than Barack!
The truth about Bengazhi will finally be known and Hillary will be the mastermind and scapegoat.
This will make Watergate look puny.
Hillary will be finished.
The leaker will either be Israel or the White House via the NSA. That, of course, will not be stated.
Payback is a bitch.
Addendum.
She is convicted of a felony. She spends two years in prison. She cuts her hair very, very short. Open and out lesbian. Divorce. Rich. Moves to Switzerland. And hated by her country. The new Bendict Arnold.
FWIW, maybe it’s just me, but the top thread, “Holder says to proceed with corruption charges against Sen. Menendez”, seems to be missing its form for submitting comments.
Ain’t just your computer, mf.
I’ll say one thing about the Obama White House: Makes the Nixon WH look like a nursery school playing Ring-Around-The-Rosy. We of course had clues from Illinois, the hatchet, err, axe, jobs Braq did on his opponents. The man is a vicious dirty dog, a thug who happens to have a Harvard degree. I shouldn’t say such things if I respect the Office of the Presidency. Well, I don’t. And I p*ss upon its occupant.
So then, it is clear that Obama is willing not only to pound the opposition and our national defense into dust to get his way on Iran/America/TogetherForever, but more surprising he will ruin the Democratic party to bring it about, at least as we see the situation on the ground at present. This, to me, is the real surprise.
What does Obama gain by ruining Clinton? Again. Now.
Other than the personal satisfaction, that is.
Who exists to be elevated into the on deck circle? There are yet more shoes to drop. That fact that I don’t know where this is going as a domestic political matter leaves me to fear this just that much more. He has always been ruthless, but this could be seen as undisciplined. Maybe he’s just making this up as he goes along, but he (not the country, just Barack H. Obama) keeps winning. Winning even with the really crappy odds he keeps doubling down on and the constant stink of American strategic failure, barely concealed by the eager set of party operatives represented by the media.
If he continues to exhibit this kind of indiscipline and takes HRC out at the knees, what will the David Brocks of the world say? How much more can the Democrats lose as a party and hold their media shock troops?
mezzrow,
Like Adolf, Barry is just making things up as he moves on.
It’s the Chicago on the Potomac Show.
Brought to America by Harpo Productions, remember?
I rather agree with Cornhead and Mezzrow, among others above – I think this is part of a particularly vicious sub-rosa war between Obama and the Clintons. They are perfectly willing and eager to destroy each other, and this email thing is only the opening salvo. Curious that it is getting coverage in the mainstream media – most usually the mainstream flacks run cover for both combatants.
Interesting, in a grim way, to see how the Clintons will respond.
I am wondering what the point is of having the House and Senate in GOP hands if they are just going to sit on them.
Obama himself was unaware of any issues with Clinton’s email.
Possibly himself also doing it!
Sgt. Mom Says:
I think this is part of a particularly vicious sub-rosa war between Obama and the Clintons.
The Night We Called It a Day
Steve:
I’ve answered that question about 1000 times. And I have plans for a post or series of posts that answer it again. Problem is I could write a book on it. Where to get the time, though?
The short answer is that what Republicans can do is the following: (a) they can stop whatever it is the Democrats would be passing if Democrats were in charge (think, for example, tons of Obamacares, but in other areas of government); and (b) they can defund certain programs while passing others in the same budget, but those bills will also be vetoed and therefore won’t actually occur causing a shutdown.
If they shutdown parts of government or government in general, how do you propose they get around the MSM and Democrats framing any government shutdown as their fault? They only have power to do 2 things: pass bills that will be vetoed, and shutdown government. They already passed Keystone; look what happened. If Obama is willing to veto everything they pass, their only option is a shutdown, and he’ll win that one too. Impeachment dies in the Senate for the same reason: not enough votes to convict. I can well understand why they don’t want to go that far only to lose, just to placate the angry conservatives (of which I am one, by the way, but I’m Sancho Panza rather than Don Quixote).
I also am aware, of course, that not all Republicans buy into the conservative agenda. But I believe the majority do, and yet their constituents demand they work miracles and do things that are not possible unless they have enough votes to override a veto.
A) Pass bills that will be vetoed and not overridden: Obama wins
B) Shut down some or all government: Media wins for Obama
Do I hear (C)?
Don Carlos:
I covered impeachment in that comment, if that’s what you mean.
We are talking about the Republicans in Congress, are we not? If you mean some sort of popular resistance, or resistance by some other group, that’s a whole different topic.
Conservatives in general can certainly campaign for the election of more conservatives, also. Lots of things people can do. But the topic here was Republicans in Congress.
This whole email flap is just another example of “low and in some cases NO information voters that Dems count on to stay in power.”
My wife is a yellow dog dem. Let me also say she is far from stupid. Sitting on the porch I mentioned Hillary sure is in a shit storm now. She said “what’s the difference using “a personal phone or a government phone! This wasn’t a slip of the tongue. She didn’t know this is about email and not phones. No matter what if Hillary gets the nomination she will vote for Hillary Clinton.
I’d say my wife is a typical Dem voter and if the liberal media refuses to do their job Hillary has nothing to worry about from the Dem base no matter what comes out about her wrong doings.