When a old timer makes an obvious rookie mistake it makes me wonder just what exactly is going on

[Fumesucker]

I mean no one could possibly have predicted that using private email with your own private server for official SoS business would raise a few Republican eyebrows if a Democrat were to be found using such a system.

Red meat in front of a pack of starving wolves, why would the human being who should know this above all others save possibly one not understand this, especially when they have the one who best understands it right at hand so to speak? Hillary has been angling towards the Presidency for more than half her life now and she is about as far from a stupid rookie as it's possible to get.

I remain unconvinced this is not some sort of ruse, it would be interesting if we had a heavy downpour of shoes.

[Kalidurga]

1. I don't believe it was a mistake

But, then I don't care. Either it was illegal or it wasn't. If it wasn't illegal then it's not a scandal it's a made up story to generate poutrage. If it was illegal or against policy then well that's big problem.

I don't want Hillary taken out by this either way. I am not a fan I would just rather see her lose on policy or what people think her policies would be. This just seems far too trivial and it's a rather boring scandal.

[Fumesucker]

2. A good politician is like a magician, the audience is not supposed to notice the sleight of hand

So the magician does something dramatic that attracts attention while deftly performing another act with less scrutiny.

[Kalidurga]

3. Yikes well this got noticed

I hope it's not a look at this oopsie while hiding a bigger oopsie. I have done that one with great success um never mind.

[Fumesucker]

4. Clausewitz thought war and politics were the same thing with different means

Deception is practically the essence of war according to Sun Tzu.

[Kalidurga]

5. The Art of War

I learned a lot from that. And it's true there is a lot of sleight of hand in both.

[Ed Suspicious]

31. Realists think everything is about war. They might be right, but I don't think I buy it.

[Mojorabbit]

28. That was my thought

That there were things higher ups would not want to see the light, it gets purged along with personal mail, and she takes one for the team. I can't believe she would make a rookie mistake like this as experienced as she is in how the media works. She had years of dealing with them in the past. She had to know this would raise eyebrows yet did it anyway.

[aspirant]

6. Won't this move to the next level

All our e-mails are being read by the NSA because they say we should have nothing to hide. Why don't we trust the American people and stop NSA spying just like the required trust for HRC?

[GummyBearz]

80. Too much logic in this post

I have to agree... though I don't expect much company

[BainsBane]

7. "old timer"

Not very subtle, yet it took you more than a week to come up with it.

[Fumesucker]

9. It takes one to know one

I've been grandpa for a long time now..

[jberryhill]

29. I don't even think it is pejorative in this context

What's the opposite? Newby?

[XemaSab]

45. She's been a household name for almost a quarter century

In politics, that's a very long time.

[Warren DeMontague]

50. Given the fact that it is her apparently incomprable resume and experience that are being promoted

As some of the strongest arguments for her candidacy, I'm gonna agree with the people who do not think it is a pejorative here.

In fact in another thread someone put forth that she is apparently the "most qualified human in history" to ever run for President, which struck me as sort of an odd assertion; but no matter, you don't get that label if you just fell off the turnip truck.

Also, a small observation- we obviously don't have much (in terms of numbers) of a presidential primary bench, as a party- that is pretty clear- and what we DO have, is undeniably, objectively, on the older end of the spectrum. If Biden were to run, for instance, he would be 4 years older than Reagan was in 1980. That's not insult, that is simple fact.

[BainsBane]

66. Highly experienced

Would have been less pejorative.

[Warren DeMontague]

82. Okay, but objectively the entire bench- including HRC- certainly skews older.

I do realize it's something DU may not like to hear, because internet-wise DU skews older, too.

I think the point is, that one would think someone as well-versed in how things work in DC would know better-- not be surprised when people ask questions about the sort of arbitrary mass deletion of emails, etc.

[JaneyVee]

8. Technology was different back then. 6 years ago...

Is a lifetime in the tech world.

[Fumesucker]

11. Does the term "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" have meaning for you?

By which I mean Republicans have done nothing except get worse since that phrase was coined.

[Rex]

10. WWAAD?

[LuvNewcastle]

12. I don't know why I saw it that way,

but her tenure at the State Department seemed rather casual. I got the impression that she just flew around the world and played with her phone. I'm not saying that stripping away some of the formality and protocol is a bad thing, but it was a different approach to the job. Maybe she wanted to use her personal email because it suited her casual attitude. I think it could be that simple.

[Fumesucker]

16. Hillary is anything but simple

Remember, she is the single human most qualified to be the President at this point in history, I read it right here on DU.

The future's so bright I gotta wear shades.

[BeanMusical]

32. Lol! +1

[MannyGoldstein]

13. What blows my mind is how many people think this is nothing

I think it's one of the craziest things I've ever heard of. I had dinner with two friends tonight, both of whom supervise good-sized organizations, and both agreed that if anyone in their companies tried that stunt it would end within moments of them seeing an email. And at least one of them is a huge Clinton fan.

Yet so many, at least on DU, say "So? What's unusual and potentially problematic about it?"

[morningfog]

18. This issue is far from over. There were those on DU saying this was a non-story

when it broke and that it would be forgotten in a new cycle. How many weeks ago was that?

It forced Hillary to hold her first presser in years and it is not going away. It won't ever go away completely and there remains a risk that it could get very very worse. All it will take is one business email to be uncovered in the 31,000 she deleted. Then, her credibility will be toast. Her turn will be missed again.

I just hope that whatever may turn up, turns up before she ascends to the nomination.

[Warren DeMontague]

52. It definitely seemed like less of a big deal to me

Before I found out she had her staff arbitrarily go through and delete a whole bunch of stuff.

[Fumesucker]

21. I'm starting to think this sort of thing or something like it is rampant within upper echelons..

Could it be that Hillary did this in order to emphasize that our private electronic communications should stay private? Certainly we have a lot of Democrats now calling for privacy in electronic communications who heretofore shrugged off government looking into that sort of thing.

[HereSince1628]

61. Yes, lot's of things are viewed against personal experience

and so goes public opinion.

To me it's strange and perhaps unprecedented. The head of a government dept in DC runs their official email off a computer system set up by and for their spouse, supposedly from their home in New York.

The answers I missed were to the questions

Did the State Dept pay for service on that computer system?

Was it the Geek Squad from the White Plains Best Buy that provided IT support?

[blkmusclmachine]

14. I'd rather talk about that threatening letter the GOP wrote to Iran this week...

[Fumesucker]

19. There are threads for that last time I looked

I've read quite a few of them in fact.

[Thor_MN]

15. Rookie mistake of following precedent, except for using a server designed for a former POTUS?

The only way it looks bad is seeing with disregard for changing technology and regulation. If one were to examine the Bush admin in the same manner, one could fill a for profit prison in short order.

[Fumesucker]

17. I wanted the Bush administration looked at that way...

Didn't you?

[Thor_MN]

20. I do, it was my point

I think the Issas and Gowdys of the GOP should have to sit down and shut up until the more serious issues of this century have been investigated. The GOP should be required to post a bond to reimburse the taxpayers for any more investigations that generate nothing but news reports for Fox.

[Fumesucker]

22. Well there's no way in hell the Democrats are going to investigate the Republicans

It wouldn't be prudent to violate bipartisan comity in such a blatantly divisive way.

[Thor_MN]

24. Yeah, higher standards and shit.

[stillwaiting]

63. Elected Democrats do more to maintain the viability of the Republican Party than Republicans.

Much More.

Their constant bipartisan refrain, and their refusal to ever make Republicans pay for their horrific actions being two of the most egregious acts that prop up such an unbelievably heinous political Party.

[Oilwellian]

73. I think that's the bigger issue, Fumesucker

Dems were pissed when the Bush crime family did it. Now that a Dem has been caught doing it, suddenly it's OK, and the lack of transparency becomes more normalized.

Hillary has to know that emails never really go away. I hope we're not surprised down the road, after Hillary's possibly been nominated, that a trove of her "personal" emails suddenly appear.

[pnwmom]

23. Hindsight is 20/20. And no one had ever given Colin Powell grief about it.

And how come Obama never told her to stop? He's acknowledged that he knew she was using a personal account.

[Fumesucker]

26. That's not terribly comforting when we are thinking about the next POTUS

My working hypothesis is that such behavior or something like it is common in the top echelons of government and that Hillary did this in order to emphasize the critical human right of privacy in personal communications.

[rhett o rick]

39. "Hindsight is 20/20", "no one gave Colin Powell grief" and "Why didn't Obama stop her?"

are not acceptable excuses for what she did. Neither is, "I broke the rules but no one got hurt". Where I worked, Federal employees got fired to a hell of a lot less. But they weren't members of the 0.01%.

[pnwmom]

41. She broke no law and no State Department "rule" that I've ever seen.

What is the rule you're referring to? If you cite a "policy" from 2005, that was a policy under a different State Department -- not Hillary Clinton's. And any policy of Condi Rice's didn't bind Hillary.

[rhett o rick]

42. Federal Employees are not allowed to use personal emails for government related

business. Do you have information otherwise? I know Federal Employees that have gotten fired for less.

[pnwmom]

46. They are not allowed to now, in 2015, but they were allowed to between 2009 and 2013

when Hillary was in office. At least some of them, despite the experience of the Federal Employee you knew. Colin Powell not only used a personal account for his government emails, but he deleted all of them them after he left office. When Obama asked for them Powell said they had been deleted, but he was happy to discuss any of them with the State Department.

The head of the Archives said Hillary's use of a personal email account broke no law at the time. He said this in sworn testimony before Congress in 2013, as Congress considered whether to overhaul the existing law. They did overhaul the law in a bill that went into effect in 2014.

Obama's spokesman has said that he was aware that Hillary was using a personal account because she sent him emails on it. (He was aware of it and he didn't stop her.)

And even Darryl Issa has conceded that she broke no law; he said that he was going to subpoena her records so that if she didn't supply them, then she would be breaking the law.

[LeftyMom]

25. The thing I can't understand is this: the excuse is that State had bad systems.

State STILL has horrible technology implementations. If she knew this was an issue to the point where their email was inaccessible while traveling (and I repeat for emphasis: this was at STATE) then why didn't she use fix the problem? Even if we take her at face value here, she's arguing that her department didn't work when she took over and didn't work when she left. And that she needs a promotion based on that experience.

I also don't buy that half of her emails were entirely personal. You can't tell me that Chelsea's caterer and her mom's funeral director were blowing up her inbox like that. Come on, that just doesn't pass the sniff test.

[Fumesucker]

27. Everyone knows government is incompetent

Right?

[treestar]

87. They usually are behind on technology

for their ordinary stuff. No market motive.

[ND-Dem]

36. I don't buy that she conducts personal business and work business at the same email address.

And I agree with you about the supposedly terrible email systems at State.

[LeftyMom]

38. The excuse was that she didn't want to carry two phones.

Aside from the simple fact that a blackberry-and thanks to that stupid meme from a few years back we all know she used a blackberry- can retrieve more than one email account (and so can every other smartphone I've laid hands on...) it's not at all uncommon for professionals to carry two phones precisely to keep their work separate from their personal calls/emails/texts/pictures of puppies.

[rhett o rick]

40. Millions of Federal employees have to live with poor email systems. They are not

permitted to use outside email systems. Hello!

[ND-Dem]

43. Federal employees use their work email to conduct personal business? Even in their non-work

hours?

So they're wasting our town chatting to friends, planning family weddings, and the like during work hours and clogging government servers with their personal email?

[rhett o rick]

76. Are you making statements or what? Are you insinuating that I said those things? nm

[ND-Dem]

77. i'm not sure what you're saying. that's all i could figure out based on the exchange. if

you're not saying that, maybe you could explain your last few posts, since otherwise they don't seem relevant to my posts at all.

[rhett o rick]

79. Since the beginning of email, the systems that Federal employees use are on the trailing

edge of technology. The government moves very slow in implementing technology because they have to approve it and fund it and install it, all taking time. I understand that someone like HRC might get frustrated using the government email systems. However, I hope you understand that we can't have each high level government official setting up their own email systems with which they are free to save or destroy at their choice. I say high level because low level government employees would get fired immediately and possibly prosecuted.

Boiled down, having to put up with poor government email systems is not an excuse to set up your own system.

[pnwmom]

47. State couldn't fix the government's computer system independently.

It has to be fixed in a coordinated manner with the rest of the government.

[LeftyMom]

51. And she couldn't push that through in FOUR years?

It's not like she doesn't know the ropes of the federal government or lacks pull.

It's amazing to me that the "defense" on this issue is that she was either incompetent or not terribly engaged with her job.

[pnwmom]

55. She was only one Secretary. Why didn't the Secretary of Defense push it through?

It is a large bureaucracy with a lot of inertia. Congress has tried and failed to appropriate the money to upgrade the system the way it should be upgraded.

[LeftyMom]

70. For State?

It's everybody's fault but hers. Sure.

[pnwmom]

71. It was a problem throughout the government, and she would have

needed money that wasn't in the budget.

If you know, please tell me which agencies did a better job and how they accomplished it.

[tblue37]

78. If Congress doesn't budget money for upgrades, they don't get done. nt

[Warren DeMontague]

30. She had to know that pre-emptively deleting half of them was going to cause a shit-nado.

[Fumesucker]

33. I wonder if Condi ever gets tired of hearing that "no one could have predicted" line?

[TwilightGardener]

49. Holding on to them, while State was receiving FOIA's and subpoenas for stuff related

to the SoS for years and wasn't able to access her personal trove, and THEN using her own paid loyalists/lawyers to decide what was in, and not in, our interest to see--using a supposed keyword system that we know little about. It's really quite stunning, but I am told it's no biggie and won't matter.

[BeanMusical]

34. Kick and R.

[alfredo]

35. It seems the more they attack, the better her numbers.

Imagine how freaked out they'd be if they are first beat by an African America, then a woman.

[dreamnightwind]

37. I just see it as part of a calculation

Being head of State was helpful to her to beef up her foreign policy qualifications for the job she really wanted. But she needed to minimize the exposure to controversy that being head of State could easily be involved in. I think they decided they coud ride out any possible controversy about having a private email system (they're pretty skilled at doing so), and that that risk was lower than the risk of having all of them on State's servers and open to scrutiny by Issa and friends. This way they got prior censureship before handing them over, worth a lot of other political risk to have that ability.

[ND-Dem]

44. good guess; sounds logical & machiavellian enough for the clintons

[joshcryer]

53. Yep. "I hate subpoenas."

Those are Clinton's own words. She refused to even keep a personal journal for fear the Republicans would subpoena it.

Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, etc, the Republicans have been at their throats forever. Keep the data close.

[Fumesucker]

67. It's good to hear you arguing for personal privacy

And against government intrusion into private affairs.

[pnwmom]

48. Old timers like Hillary are rookies when it comes to computer-related matters.

Yes, there are exceptions. But most people my age and older know less about computer technology than your average high school student.

[HereSince1628]

64. Of course, that apology is a generality with no known relevance to HRC

Consequently, it may or may not be true to some degree.

While not everyone bothered to chase down and memorize seemingly irrational hierarchies of windows set-up menus across all the iterations since DOS 3.0, any boomer who did 'office' work in their careers is likely to have had plenty of exposure to policies concerning use of computers for their business life.

And even with dementia beginning to take it's toll most of us remember stories of lost thumb drives and laptops stolen from cars and airline baggage with thousands of records of sensitive personal data.

No one seems to remember a circumstance where the head of a federal government agency decided to do all their official email correspondence from a computer server set up and controlled by their husband for his business.

Certainly it would seem weird if not wrong to most of our employers, that their business records would be kept on a computer server belonging to a non-employee and accessible to unknown IT specialists.

And that weirdness resonates, even though it isn't illegal. People try to make sense of such weirdness by linking them to what makes sense in their own imaginations. Those imaginations can invent conspiracy as easily and as quickly as apology.

[pnwmom]

72. What Boomer would have guessed that the antique government system

lacked the ability to automatically preserve its emails? At least her system could.

[HereSince1628]

74. What boomer keeps track of government IT capability?

And not paying any attention is why everyone, boomer or not, defaults to their personal experience in attempting to get their head around the whole thing.

The emails weren't illegal. Nuf said on that account, I think. And although more questions can be invented, I'm perfectly content with the r's trying to prove that utter absence of evidence is actually evidence of a plot to undermine America.

[joshcryer]

54. It wasn't a mistake. It was a response to Ken Starr style witchhunts.

The blowback will be minimal at best.

[TwilightGardener]

56. So do you think her chief concern as SoS was: Doing her duties

properly and running a tight ship, or: concern over her political future? Does that make someone effective at her job, if her overarching goal is protecting herself politically, making sure her SoS gig was all shiny show-pony benefit and no risk or liability? To the point where she hid all her communications at her house, on a system of dubious security, for years until forced to hand them over? Who would want this sort of person as President?

[joshcryer]

57. That's a rather fantastic portrayal.

I rather liken it to someone doing good record keeping and not letting the enemy have access to those records.

The Clinton Library has released over a quarter of a million memos and filings with regards to Bill's tenure at the White House. You can expect a similar level of record keeping with Hillary.

[TwilightGardener]

58. "The enemy" was the American people, then, because those are our records.

Not hers. She had no right to mix them all up with her private communications, and then declare the whole mess off limits FOR YEARS after her tenure to anyone who wasn't a personal loyalist--off limits to FOIA's, subpoenas, Congressional inquiries--only doling out what she chooses for us to see, and demanding we respect her privacy for the rest. It's crazy. She would be a Nixonian nightmare as President.

[joshcryer]

60. Filegate all over again.

The greatest thing the right wing has done was sown absolute distrust in the Clinton's when after investigation after investigation, to the tune of $70 million blown by Ken Starr, nothing has ever been found nefarious that the Clinton's have done.

Oh wait, Bill got a BJ and lied about it as to not offend his wife.

It's actually quite incredible how well it has worked. Fortunately most people don't fall for this low level tabloid tripe.

[Warren DeMontague]

83. Keeping a separate email address for work is, like, internet 101.

The fact that she didnt do that in the first place is rather shocking.

[pansypoo53219]

59. she was not gonna be wikileaked. DAMMIT!

for pete's sake. the amnesia. plus. she was BUSY. look at the obamacare web site. govt procurement. FINE. i'll do it myself.

plus this has whitewater written all over it. the media is stupid.

[Fumesucker]

62. Everyone knows government is incompetent, yes?

Are you sure you want to go with that explanation?

It certainly feeds into right wing tropes regarding government.

[pansypoo53219]

75. other things could be factors. state dept had been compromised. hacked.

[forthemiddle]

65. This wont end anytime soon

Now we have multiple entities filing lawsuits over FOIA submissions, including the AP.
If the Clinton camp actually wants to end this, this weekend, they should immediately turn over the server.
I know she doesn't "have" to, legally. And if, as she says, they only deleted personal emails it would be an "invasion of her privacy"
the fact remains that now that it is in the courts this will drag out into the primaries, and possibly into the general election.

It may not be news everyday, like it is now, but sooner or later a court will decide that the AP had a right to the records that have been stonewalled to them, and it will bring this all up over, and over again.

Even if it isn't illegal, it does seem like Clinton is covering something up.

[Baitball Blogger]

68. She was probably taken in by a lot of bad advice from the peer groups.

"Everybody is doing it," is the general inducer.

On the other hand, she may have tried to over-think it as a lawyer. She may have thought that private emails were not within the scope of FOIA.

[Fumesucker]

88. Who the hell is in Hillary's "peer group"?

I read on DU that Hillary is the most qualified human being in all of history to be POTUS, somehow I get the impression Hillary herself wouldn't disagree with that.

[Marr]

69. Well, it's not like she was expecting a Benghazi-type "scandal".

Had nothing like that occurred, it's unlikely there would've been any demands for her email records anyway. And if that's the case, having control over what goes in the record and what does not would probably seem like a prudent move to a politician-- especially one that was incubated in the Lewinsky years.

[daredtowork]

81. I became suspicious when Hillarydid her email press conference opposite

the news of the "Iran Letter Mutiny".

Press conferences are very carefully scheduled. Ever sonce I have been suspicious that "something else is going on behind the scenes", but I have no idea what.

The email situation now feels like a gambit. But if Hillary is putting her Presidential candidacy on the line, what fish is she trying to hook? It must be a humongous fish!

Thank you for posting this. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks this email situation is not what it seems.

[luke102938]

84. No Emails ever really get deleted. They could be recovered with Government resources

I am sure the NSA has every Email sent in the last decade stored. Emails from high profile people are probably saved by a half dozen government agency's.

[4_TN_TITANS]

85. I could see an 'old timer' planting

some controversial, but inconsequential, diversions to keep the other side busy. Or, to quickly burn up their scandal cred!

[treestar]

86. Old Timers + Technology

Equals confusion. The older the person, the less they know and the less they like the newfangled gadgets.