"I want the public to see my emails," said Hillary Clinton in response to the now infamous and ongoing private email server predicament or as the GOP and media describes it as "scandal." A scandal that has the Republicans excited and the Democrats on offense -- from this -- a rally cry for Vice President Biden is surging in the establishment wing of the Democratic Party.
On March 2, The New York Times exclusively reported when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state she conducted government business using a personal email account instead of a government one. Furthermore, The Times reported her aides did not preserve her emails to the department sever for record keeping. Additionally, we learned the Obama Administration had instructed all government employees conduct business using the state email server, and cease using personal email for business purposes. In fact, Clinton instructed her aides to follow this protocol -- yet she herself did not take the lead to this contract of responsibility.
Immediately, and rightly, red flags have risen about Clinton's lack of accountability, considering she had access to classified information. After all, consider the importance of her role as secretary of state. In this role, it was her responsibility to advise an action plan during the embassy attacks in Benghazi. Clinton had direct access to the human rights violations of Bashar Hafez al-Assad against Syrians. Moreover, before the world learned of Boko Haram, Clinton was well aware of the terrorism-taking place in Nigeria by Boko Haram and his vigilantes. Later we learned that she refused to add Boko Haram to the terrorist list, a decision that was against the will of the Obama Administration.
There is no denying Clinton had direct contact to imperative intelligence concerning the state of our security. Many in the media and the political arena were suspicious of her initial claim that no classified information was stored on her private server while she was secretary of state. A week after The Times reported Clinton's email server conundrum, she held a press conference admitting she used her personal email out of "convenience," that in retrospect "it would have been better" to use multiple emails." She declared she would release 55,000 pages of emails that she had preserved; the work related ones at least, and that she had deleted all of her private emails.
The timing of the personal email server could not have been primed perfectly, even if the Republicans had concocted it themselves. On the subject, Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker said, "She cannot be trusted to keep America's secrets or its citizens safe, and therefore cannot be trusted to be commander in chief." Another GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump told CNN that the controversy surrounding Clinton is "devastating," iterating, "I think it's devastating for the election, but I think her bigger problem is not the election. I think her bigger problem is going to be the criminal problem."
Last week the State Department revealed several emails should have been marked as classified. The Blue Nation Review reports a "judge permitted the Justice Department could open a criminal investigation over how the State Department handled Clinton's private email account while she was Secretary of State. The Times has reported that the DOJ has not decided if it will do so. "
Republicans in Congress deny this is a personal attack on Hillary Clinton but instead a concern for national security. Democrats, however, perceive the GOP inquiry differently. Considering the 2016 Republican presidential candidates used personal emails for government-affiliated business too: Jeb Bush aides, while he was governor of Florida, used a private domain for government business. Governor Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida did so too, and each deleted information as well. We can also add Gov. Chris Christie (NJ), former Gov. Rick Perry (TX), and Gov. Bobby Jindal (LA). While secretary of state, Colin Powell conducted government business using his personal email and none of his communication was backed-up by the department server. Heck the Bush Administration conveniently lost millions of emails while in the White House.
Frustratingly, the GOP seems to escape the responsibility of protecting intelligence unlike Hillary.
Thus, the imperative question becomes, will this sink Hillary's chance at the presidency in 2016? With Vice President Joe Biden seeking to join the race, I suspect the DNC is worried about Hillary's chances. The Clinton's might have been able to escape the controversies of Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, but with her trustworthiness with a majority of polled voters on the decline, it seems a generation of controversies, this time, might be too much for the voters to bear this go around.
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