RUTHFULLY YOURS

Commingling funds has a lengthy history as criminal behavior resulting in its being completely banned in any of the fiduciary professions such as law and real estate. Lawyers and brokers dumping funds earmarked for their clients into their own or the company account claimed convenience and security as an excuse, but in almost all cases it was intended as a method of muddying the waters as regards fraud. By the 60s it was banned, no ifs, ands, or buts. (When I was involved in real estate decades ago, commingling was repeatedly and vehemently proscribed in the state handbook.)

So here comes the smartest woman in the world with her homebrew server. Though not put in quite these terms, Hillary’s major excuse since the start of the email imbroglio has been that the commingling of official and private communications on her server somehow inoculated all the governmental data, rendering it innocuous and fully justifying her initial refusal to turn over the information and her later wiping of the server. Yoga schedules and Chelsea’s marriage, according to Hillary’s argument, outweighed national security. A bold excuse, but no more so than the claims of ancient shysters that their client’s settlement funds somehow got lost in the wrong account.

I’m not aware of any regulation covering this situation in particular, but there’s no reason why it should have. Such regulations are made for normal people who know what the meaning of “is” is, not the Clintons, who patiently run through every last dog-ate-my-homework excuse until people get tired of listening. Who would have ever guessed that a public official would go to the trouble and expense of setting up a private server in order to hide… well we still don’t know what she was hiding. Clearly – though this truth has not been repeated often enough – Hillary created her private system for the same reason that crooked lawyers and brokers did – as a smokescreen for illegitimate activity.

So we need a clear regulation against this kind of thing being repeated in the public sphere: no commingling of private and public information using any type of information technology. This is straightforward and inarguable, and in the age of the iPhone, should create no hardship or difficulty. As for penalties, the punishment for financial comingling was immediate disbarment or delicensing. Something on that order might be sufficient.

Though come to think of it, that didn’t stop Bill, did it?