All the Secretary’s Women
http://www.wsj.com/articles/all-the-secretarys-women-1439509055
The Clinton email cover up keeps unraveling, thanks to the courts.
Hillary Clinton has made a career of stiff-arming Congress, inspectors general and the press. So it looks like it’s up to the courts and law enforcement to get to the bottom of her email scandal.
That’s the real meaning of this week’s news in the email case, as the Clinton stonewall becomes harder to sustain. Mrs. Clinton is turning over to the FBI the private server she used to conduct government business while Secretary of State, as well as three thumb drives containing her government-related email. The Clinton campaign won’t say she did this voluntarily, or in response to an FBI demand. And the FBI won’t say why it sought the server. But the handover follows news that top-secret information traveled across her private system, despite her previous denials.
Meanwhile, federal Judge Emmet Sullivan has now verified that Mrs. Clinton will not certify that she has handed over to the State Department all of her work-related records. Two of her closest aides are also dodging Judge Sullivan’s request to hand over their work-related documents to State, and we now know that one of Mrs. Clinton’s aides was using the unsecured Clinton system for government work.
Judge Sullivan is overseeing a Freedom of Information Act case brought in 2013 by Judicial Watch. The watchdog group sought documents relating to the employment of Huma Abedin, who was allowed to work outside the government even as she served as a top Clinton State Department aide. State told Judicial Watch in 2014 it had turned over everything relevant, and the group then dropped its lawsuit.
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But the news of previously undisclosed Clinton emails convinced Judge Sullivan in June to take the rare step of reopening the Abedin case. To ascertain whether State was finally searching through every record, he ordered State on July 31 to request that Mrs. Clinton and two of her aides—Ms. Abedin and Cheryl Mills—confirm under penalty of perjury that they had produced all government records in their possession, and that they describe their use of Mrs. Clinton’s server for government business. That response deadline was last Friday.
Mrs. Clinton’s reaction to the deadline was a classic. “While I do not know what information may be ‘responsive’ for purposes of this law suit, I have directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody, that were or potentially were federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done,” she wrote in a declaration submitted to the court. Translation: If everything wasn’t turned over, it’s not her fault.
But her declaration to the court did disclose that Mrs. Abedin had an “account” on Mrs. Clinton’s server “which was used at times for government business.” The admission that her aides were also using her server demolishes Mrs. Clinton’s previous claim that she used this server for personal “convenience.” She was really running a parallel mini-State email operation.
Both aides were also supposed to submit declarations that they had turned over all government records to the State Department. Instead, they blew off Judge Sullivan and directed their attorneys to explain that they are still searching their private records and in time will get around to supplying them. This is remarkable given that State first requested they turn over any work-related records in March.
Mrs. Clinton and her lawyers have been careful to never use the word “delete” regarding her emails. Mrs. Clinton said that she “chose not to keep” her yoga diary and the rest. Her lawyer, David Kendall, has said emails no longer exist on the server. But do those emails still exist in another location—on a hard drive or thumb drive—or in someone else’s possession? The FBI has the forensic ability to retrieve the emails if they still exist, assuming that the agency isn’t merely going through the pro-forma motions.
Keep in mind that none of this would have happened without Judge Sullivan enforcing the freedom-of-information law. Credit as well goes to federal Judge Rudolph Contreras for ordering the State Department to start producing the Clinton records, and to federal Judge Richard Leon for rapping State over its delays producing the emails. Congressman Trey Gowdy’s House committee on Benghazi has also been indispensable in pressing the server issue.
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The Clinton campaign released two memos to its supporters this week, telling them to calm down, the email storm is merely the Republican attack machine at work, and Mrs. Clinton is still beating GOP candidates head to head in the polls. If they can tough it out until Election Day, they think they’ll win.
But the federal judiciary isn’t partisan, and the real lesson from the email fiasco is that this is how the Clintons act when they’re in power. They play by their own rules, and when they’re caught they stonewall and obfuscate and blame it all on partisanship. Maybe her sinking poll numbers mean that voters are finally catching on.
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