I’m a Federal government employee, a lawyer, and a former intel analyst for the military. (It should be noted that I blog here in my personal capacity as a private citizen and speak only for me.)
I have a few points to make about this whole shit show of a fake scandal.
Comey’s press conference was an inherently political act. I’ve never heard such a series of prejudicial statements being made by a Federal investigative official during an announcement not to recommend prosecution of a political appointee. The actions described by Comey implicated many Federal government employees in the State Department. I doubt the Federal government as a whole would look very good if it was scrutinized over record retention issues like the State Department has been. On balance, Hillary Clinton’s use of a personally owned server had a better track record than the State Department’s system in both securing and retaining records. Political appointees don’t show up and scrutinize the record retention policies and procedures of an agency, unless ordered to by the President. These are systems put in place and administered by career Federal employees. If a political appointee came in and started throwing their weight around on record retention, it would trigger a backlash from the career employees who (rightly so) try to protect long term public interests from short term political agendas. There’s zero evidence Clinton did any such thing. My personal take — it sounds like the record retention practices in the State Department were a mess. There is no excuse whatsoever to allow ANYONE to use personal emails on a routine basis to conduct government business. It is the job of those records officers to tell the political appointees what they can and cannot do with their records. The scandal here is about record retention, an issue that Powell, Rice, and Clinton have very little culpability over because they didn’t come in and set policy for it. They adopted what was there. Talk about classification issues is great for clicks and selling copies but there’s very little real problem there. But that doesn’t mean none. I see two issues here: 1. Overclassification: when you “create” classified records merely by discussing the content of a publicly delivered presidential speech and reporting back open source reaction to it, you’re tying the hands of government officials who need to effectively communicate to do their jobs. 2. Lack of secure infrastructure while overseas: I’m not sure how the State Department is supposed to do their jobs when they have no way to conduct their business while overseas except on non-secure servers. Some messages can’t wait for access to a SCIF. When you combine this with #1, it’s a problem that’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Here’s what’s not a classification issue: So-called “Confidential” information. You want to know what qualifies as “confidential”? My personal cell phone number. Anything that identifies a person’s private information, actually. It’s called Personally Identifiable Information. Yes, it meets the definition of classified but when the media reports the presence of confidential emails as if it’s the same as our super secret drone program, that’s a problem of sensationalized media coverage and click-bait, not any real compromise of government secrets. Final word: to say that what Hillary did is “stupid” is to either grasp for false equivalence or to expect a higher standard from her than her predecessors, her records officers, and her staff, all of whom engaged in nearly all of the conduct being described. The only differences between them actually break in her favor, not against her. Let’s recap the record, shall we? 1. She used personal email, like her predecessors, but unlike them she maintained control over her email’s security. 2. She failed to turn over copies of all her emails when she left the State Department, like her predecessors, but unlike them she maintained her records and turned them over upon request. We’ve seen tens of thousands of Clinton's emails and zero of Powell’s.I know blowhards like LOL Goodman and the people at WaPo in a desperate attempt to justify their breathless coverage are claiming vindication today but they’re pursuing a career of self-interest. (Seriously, is there a more embarrassing pundit than LOL Goodman?)
For way, way too long, we sat and twiddled our thumbs when Republicans and their gullible media mouth pieces chased scandals and reinforced false memes against the Clintons, Gore, Kerry, Obama and everyone else who had a backbone to stand up against the conservative agenda.
The stakes are too high to let it happen again. Let’s speak up and push back against this latest fake scandal so we can get back to talking about real problems and real policy goals again.