When Karl Rove deleted 22 million White House emails and the media yawned.

[pnwmom]

Remember the US attorney scandal in 2007, when 22 million emails were deleted?

The indictment fairy never appeared, and the media barely woke out of its usual slumber.

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2015/03/18/flashback-rove-erases-22-million-white-house-emails-on-private-server-at-height-of-u-s-attorney-scandal-media-yawns/

Now that they’ve taken control of Congress, Republicans are wielding power much the same way they did in the Clinton era and for the six years afterward when they controlled the White House and Congress under George W. Bush: ineptly — ex. 1, 2, 3, etc.

Then as now, it’s clear that the only thing Republicans do very well is inflame the media with bogus scandals — which is a handy way to distract attention from their ineptitude. They are doing this with their usual aplomb, and considerable success, in the matter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to send emails.

Clinton has said she deleted about 50,000 emails that dealt with personal matters, citing her daughter’s wedding and her mother’s funeral as examples. All the correspondence pertaining to official business was turned over to and archived by State. The deletion of the emails, though perfectly legal, has excited House Republicans, including Speaker John Boehner, who has announced plans to deploy House committees to investigate what might aptly be called Servergate.

Never mind that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, has said he used a system similar to Clinton’s — and never mind that in 2007 Karl Rove deleted 22 million emails from a private server in the Bush White House — a matter about which the Beltway media said little and Republicans in Congress, like Rep. John Boehner, said nothing.

SNIP

[Orrex]

1. BUT BENGHAZI!!!!1!

[spanone]

2. Bush White House email controversy - a quick history...

The Bush White House email controversy surfaced in 2007 during the controversy involving the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Hatch Act.[1] Over 5 million emails may have been lost.[2][3] Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove emails, leading to damaging allegations.[4] In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been lost.[5]

The administration officials had been using a private Internet domain, called gwb43.com, owned by and hosted on an email server run by the Republican National Committee,[6] for various communications of unknown content or purpose. The domain name is an abbreviation for "George W. Bush, 43rd" President of the United States. The server came public when it was discovered that J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, was using a gwb43.com email address to discuss the firing of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas.[7] Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com (registered to "Bush-Cheney '04, Inc."[8]) and rnchq.org (registered to "Republican National Committee"[9]), but, unlike these two servers, gwb43.com has no Web server connected to it — it is used only for email.[10]

The "gwb43.com" domain name was publicized by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who sent a letter to Oversight and Government Reform Committee committee chairman Henry A. Waxman requesting an investigation.[11] Waxman sent a formal warning to the RNC, advising them to retain copies of all emails sent by White House employees. According to Waxman, "in some instances, White House officials were using nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid creating a record of the communications."[12] The Republican National Committee claims to have erased the emails, supposedly making them unavailable for Congressional investigators.[13]

On April 12, 2007, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel stated that White House staffers were told to use RNC accounts to "err on the side of avoiding violations of the Hatch Act, but they should also retain that information so it can be reviewed for the Presidential Records Act," and that "some employees ... have communicated about official business on those political email accounts."[14] Stanzel also said that even though RNC policy since 2004 has been to retain all emails of White House staff with RNC accounts, the staffers had the ability to delete the email themselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy

[loyalsister]

4. That incident is exactly why I expect better from our candidates and office holders

Particularly when there are many more well known lessons on the perils of secrecy.

[pnwmom]

43. Hillary behaved far better than her predecessors. She was the only one who

produced copies of her emails when the State Department asked her to do so -- and in paper copies, as the law required.

She only omitted her personal emails, as sorted through by her attorneys.

Colin Powell, on the other hand, said he couldn't comply because he had deleted all his government email -- email that he'd been keeping on his private AOL account -- when he left office.

[loyalsister]

107. "not as bad" is a very very low bar

There's no way I would defend or try to justify torture by a Democrat if it was not as bad as it was under Bush. Likewise, if I object to it with republicans, I refuse to defend or justify it coming from candidates or office holders on my side of the fence.
I hope a lesson has been learned and I really hope we return to demanding transparency and following policies designed to ensure compliance with laws that allow us to hold our public officials accountable.

[pnwmom]

108. Why are you blaming Hillary for not being "transparent" enough

when the reason she was able to be transparent -- i.e., produce 30K emails -- was because she was using her private server that automatically backed up emails, instead of the .gov system, that didn't?

[loyalsister]

109. There were rules specifically designed to facilitate transparency

and they were not followed. There was the ignorance plea. Now is the story that she went out of her way to be transparent, implying she knew a lot about computer security.

This was a dumb mistake and it compromised trust for many of us. I hope she learned a lesson, but I will not be using this ridiculous myriad of evolving defensive excuses.

[pnwmom]

111. You're avoiding the point. The reason she could produce those emails

is that her server was set up to automatically preserve emails. This wasn't anything that required special computer talent on her part.

If she had used the .gov server, her emails wouldn't have been preserved and the State Dept. wouldn't have been able to produce the emails in response to the FOIA request.

[loyalsister]

118. So, it was impossible for her to delete anything - ever?

Are we to believe you personally verified that not a single work related was ever deleted?
Are you saying there is no process whatsoever for preserving electronic communications at the state dept.?

It's all just spinning. She screwed up, and did not follow rules specifically designed to facilitate compliance with FOIA. It's about behavior and a tendency to be secretive. No one who objects to having their public and private life on display should pursue any high profile position. If they do they need to take full responsibility for preserving records. As I have said, I hope she has learned and will anxiously await evidence that that is the case.

[pnwmom]

119. At the State Dept in 2011, only .0006% of .gov emails were preserved.

In 2013, only 0004%.

She did a hell of a lot better preserving them than the State Dept. did.

If she had been using the pathetic State department system, they would have had virtually nothing to turn over in response to the FOIA. Because she wasn't, they had 30K emails to turn over.

From the OIG report dated March 2015:

In 2011, for example, according to an OIG report, only about .006% of State dept. .gov emails got properly preserved. About 61,000 of a billion emails.

https://oig.state.gov/system/files/isp-i-15-15.pdf


March 2015
Office of Inspections
What OIG Found

A 2009 upgrade in the Department of State’s system
facilitated the preservation of emails as official records.
However, Department of State employees have not
received adequate training or guidance on their
responsibilities for using those systems to preserve
“record emails.” In 2011, employees created 61,156
record emails out of more than a billion emails sent.
Employees created 41,749 record emails in 2013.
 Record email usage varies widely across bureaus and
missions. The Bureau of Administration needs to exercise
central oversight of the use of the record email function.

[liberalmike27]

96. Democrats

Clearly Democrats are held to a higher standard in this, and everything. Compare Anthony Weiner's Dick pics episode, to Witter's diaper wearing episode. Which one kept on being a congressman, and which one was drummed out of the office, even the fake left, MSNBC, drove Weiner out.

Yet Republicans are still the ones going on television, saying "liberal media?!" WTF??

[loyalsister]

100. Vitter is their problem

It mystifies me that people made that comparison. If the GOP is willing to put up with twisted individuals taking their money and making them look stupid, that's their problem. No way would I defend Weiner after he was dumb enough to send the pics and then lied about it. He screwed us over most of all, because he had been an outspoken, unapologetic lliberal. He took himself out of the game with his own stupidity.

I get that people are defensive, and if they want to support candidates that are compromised in ethical or self inflicted, arrogant stupidity, that is there own problem. I want to have higher standard and willo not work on behalf of a candidate who is secretive and does not follow rules specifically put in place to facilitate compliance with FOIA. In fact, I am baffled at the defences. Not as bad as a war criminal and not indicted are extremely low bars and low expectations.

[Botany]

19. The bush white house's private email account was set up by Michael Connell

..... and ran through a computer host in TN. Connell also helped to rig Ohio's
2004 election too. In 2008 he was starting to talk and then he wound up dead.

http://freepress.org/article/ghost-rigged-elections-past-new-revelations-death-michael-connell-0

[billhicks76]

75. Bingo!!!

I was about to mention this man whose plane they took down right before he was to testify. They hacked the voting machines. I would be curious to ask Hillary and every other major Democrat why they didn't speak up when this happened.

[Botany]

85. This is all well known but the Ohio Dem. Party and the National Dem. Party will not say a word.

n/t

[Scarsdale]

94. Jeff Gannon

I wonder how many of those emails were to or from the male prostitute Jeff Gannon? He spent more time at the WH than Laura Bush!!Too bad the democratic reps. did not set up a committee to investigate THAT.

[underpants]

3. And the fire in Cheney's office

[arthritisR_US]

13. Fire? I've never heard about this. nt

[underpants]

21. Fire and his missing emails

Fire 2007
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/20/nation/na-fire20

His disappeared emails
http://harpers.org/blog/2008/01/the-emails-that-dick-cheney-deleted/

[arthritisR_US]

34. Interesting, thanks! :) nt

[krawhitham]

5. If what Karl Rove does is our guiding light of right and wrong we are truly screwed

"Well they did it too" is the dumbest argument ever


We are suppose to be better

[pnwmom]

8. We did MUCH better. Hillary retained all her emails and produced them, in paper as the law

required, when requested.

Rove deleted 22 million WH emails from the RNC server. Colin Powell also deleted all his emails from AOL.

Why can't you see the difference?

[krawhitham]

53. Well, No not all emails were turned over

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-fbi-director-systematically-dismantled-hillary-clintons-email-defense/2016/07/05/55c444ba-42da-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html

Comey said:
The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-fbi-director-systematically-dismantled-hillary-clintons-email-defense/2016/07/05/55c444ba-42da-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html

[pnwmom]

60. She has said before that when she sent emails to staffers, she expected

that they would be saved on the staffers' accounts. And so they were.

And Comey didn't draw any nefarious conclusions, or he would have recommended prosecuting her.

[MADem]

24. Your premise is false--not a single one of us "did it too."

That is why Director Comey said no REASONABLE person -- NO REASONABLE PERSON -- would bring such a case.

So clearly, it's not the same--not the same at all. We ARE better!

[ProfessorGAC]

28. How Did You Get That From The OP?

The OP is about republicans and the press ignored actual wrongdoing and that this email thing is a ginned up scandal.

How did you jump to "well they did it too"?

[treestar]

44. but the media should treat people equally

rather than making a big deal vs. ignoring. That was the point.

[davekriss]

72. Pointing out Republican hypocrisy...

...is not the same as asserting 'they did it, too!'

I've watched 2+ decades of Republican witch-hunts against the Clintons, even a historically hypocritical impeachment. This has got to end.

[Cheap_Trick]

6. And yet we here at DU were losing our shit when he did it.

If it was wrong then, it's just as wrong now. Just because he and now she get away with it doesn't make it right.

[pnwmom]

11. No, what they did was much, much worse. Hillary produced her emails

when requested, in paper copies, as required by law, after her attorneys sorted out her personal emails.

Karl Rove simply deleted 22 million emails and wouldn't produce them when requested. Neither would Colin Powell.

Is this difference so hard to understand?

[TeddyR]

54. Except she didn't

Produce them all. Comey made that clear today too. And at least some of the one's she deleted were official emails, not personal. AND nobody knows if the rest of the one's she deleted were in fact official or personal because nobody has seen those emails except the people who decided to delete them.

I've never, ever been a fan of "this other guy broke the law so why is everyone pointing the finger at me for breaking the law argument" (and yes, I know the FBI determined Hillary didn't break the law). Our standards shouldn't be measured against the lowest denominator but against what is the right thing to do.

[pnwmom]

55. Comey made it clear he didn't think that was intentional. And it involved

only a small number of emails, not 22 million deliberately deleted.

I'm not a fan of the "hold Hillary to a higher standard than any Republican ever" school of thought.

[TeddyR]

58. No, that's not correct either

Comey made it clear that Hillary didn't intentionally expose national secrets, but at the same time she acted recklessly. And why does the number of emails matter? You are claiming that since someone else did something wrong on a larger scale it is ok if our candidates do it on a smaller scale. Is that really the standard Democrats are promoting for our presidential candidates?

[pnwmom]

59. Because the small number of hers was probably unintentional, due to

switching devices. As opposed to the completely intentional deletion of 22 million emails in the middle of an investigation.

[TeddyR]

61. Ok, I agree that Hillary's transmittal of secret/top secret emails might have been unintentional

But she stated a number of times that no confidential or higher emails were transmitted over her private server, and it turns out that at least 110 were. This lie makes her look bad. My problem with this entire email/server issue is that Hillary didn't admit 2 years ago to what she did and say it was a mistake. If she had done that it wouldn't even be an issue today.

[pnwmom]

62. She didn't lie about it. She couldn't control every email that came in, only the ones

she sent out.

And she DID say, over and over again, that her use of the private server was a mistake and she apologized for it. How many more times did she have to apologize to satisfy you? How many mea culpas?

[TeddyR]

64. But she

did lie! Let's support our candidate, but not excuse or obfuscate her missteps/misrepresentations. Here you go:

What Clinton said:

March 10, 2015: “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email.”

July 2, 2016: “Let me repeat what I have repeated for many months now. I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified.”


What Comey said:

“These [classified] chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-fbi-director-systematically-dismantled-hillary-clintons-email-defense/2016/07/05/55c444ba-42da-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_clintonstatements705p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

I'm going to vote for Hillary in November, and I'm going to support her candidacy against Trump, but this email issue isn't good for her, and could have been handled better.

[pnwmom]

67. He doesn't say that she sent any officially classified email.

He only offered his opinion that the "unclassified system was no place for that conversation."

And numerous articles have mentioned that different departments of the government had different standards and opinions about what information needs to be classified. The head of the national archives, which is in charge of storing all this information, says that the majority of information actually marked classified doesn't need to be classified. But there is no downside for over-classification, so it often occurs.

There is no such thing as "born classified" information, despite some of the false claims you will read by RWers. There is a specific process for classifying and declassifying info, and Hillary never sent any email that had been classified as such.

http://prospect.org/article/why-hillary-wont-be-indicted-and-shouldnt-be-objective-legal-analysis

Why Hillary Won't Be Indicted and Shouldn't Be: An Objective Legal Analysis

There is no reason to think that Clinton committed any crimes with respect to the use of her email server.

Richard O. Lempert, University of Michigan Professor of Law

The statute also provides a definition of what constitutes classified information within the meaning of the subsection described above: “[C]lassified information, means information which, at the time of a violation of this section, is specifically designated by a United States Government Agency for … restricted dissemination.”

Again, the most important words are the ones I have italicized. First, they indicate that the material must have been classified at the time of disclosure. Post hoc classification, which seems to characterize most of the classified material found on Clinton’s server, cannot support an indictment under this section. Second, information no matter how obviously sensitive does not classify itself; it must be officially and specifically designated as such.

[Rilgin]

76. Your arguments are shocking.

You think if I am a government worker and I attend a meeting with CIA agents and afterwards I type an email someone the name, country, cover name of every CIA agent I know, that it is a defense that my email does not say Classified?

Please note that the words or markings classified or confidential are only warnings and directions for further disclosure or dissemination. The information is what is classified, not the paper.

Another way to hopefully get you to understand is to actually think of what emails are. Emails can contain but are not themselves existing documents, until the author types them. Of course it is easy with respect to attached documents which someone else wrote which could contain markings. However, for written emails, unless that author types the words "classified" of "confidential" emails never contain those works or markings. However, the information can be classified and its no defense to say but "I never wrote the word Classified" when I generated the email. That is in essence what you are saying.

[pnwmom]

78. You don't understand that Hillary was the Head of the State Department -- not an

ordinary government worker.

As the head of the Department, she had the ultimate authority. The Federal statute authorized her to make the decision for every state department document that was created: classified or not classified.

If she said her email was unclassified, then it was unclassified. The only person who could overturn her decision -- according to Federal statutes -- was President Obama. And he never did so.

I think you skipped reading this article. It explains this all further.


http://prospect.org/article/why-hillary-wont-be-indicted-and-shouldnt-be-objective-legal-analysis

Is there one rule for agency heads like Clinton and another rule for the rest of us?

Yes, more or less. This is true both literally and as a practical matter. When it comes to classified information, agency heads have special responsibilities and special privileges. They have plenary authority to classify or declassify information. If rules regarding classified information are broken, they have the authority to determine administrative punishments. Unless they go so far as to break the law, no one is authorized to administratively punish them.

[Rilgin]

113. That is a new argument. One used famously by Nixon

Nixon said when the president does something it can't be illegal. It was not true then and is not true now.

In my case I don't really care that much about the classification issues. I care about transparency and the foia. Your arguments throughout this thread spin a lot of facts. As stated unambiguously in the state department report she was supposed to archive her work emails with government when she left office not years later and without the state department having to ask for them.

When setting up her own system arciving and transparency are what the law required because Democrats fought for these laws and rules and objected to Republicans who avoided transparency and set up outside systems just like Hillary. These laws do not carry criminal penalties from what I have seen which is fine with me but it is distasteful to justify as not being wrong and I have some problems with rewarding her with a promotion.

[pnwmom]

114. No. Nixon was making that as a general claim. This relates to a specific procedure,

classification, and the laws that assign that authority to the Agency Head, and above that person, the President and the Vice President. (i.e., the Intelligence head doesn't get to veto decisions of the State head. They are equals, and often their classification decisions differ.)

If you care so much about FOIA, then you should be very grateful that Hillary used a private server and was able to produce almost all her work-related emails.

If she had followed the "rule" to use the .gov account, then virtually none of her emails would have been properly preserved, because the .gov system wasn't set up to preserve them.

In 2011, for example, only .006% of State Department emails on the .gov system were preserved. Only about .0004% in 2013.

https://oig.state.gov/system/files/isp-i-15-15.pdf

March 2015

What OIG Found

A 2009 upgrade in the Department of State’s system
facilitated the preservation of emails as official records.
However, Department of State employees have not
received adequate training or guidance on their
responsibilities for using those systems to preserve
“record emails.” In 2011, employees created 61,156
record emails out of more than a billion emails sent.
Employees created 41,749 record emails in 2013.

 Record email usage varies widely across bureaus and
missions. The Bureau of Administration needs to exercise
central oversight of the use of the record email function.

[Loki]

91. The right thing to do would be to produce all your tax returns, correct?

[thesquanderer]

12. Yup, there was screaming about it here. And he wasn't even running for president. (n/t)

[pnwmom]

16. Here and virtually nowhere else. And he was working for the WH and this was in

the middle of the US attorneys scandal.

The Rethugs going after Hillary for using a private server is typical. The standard has always been set higher for her.

[thesquanderer]

20. re: "The standard has always been set higher for her." Or any Dem.

It's not like they went easy on Obama or Bill Clinton, either. Hypocrisy has never stopped them.

[LanternWaste]

15. It can be difficult to understand difference in specific instances when your bias relies on that...

It can be difficult to understand relevant and particular differences in specific instances when your bias relies on that lack of understanding. As long as it's got the word 'e-mail' in must be precisely the same, believes both the biased and the irrational.

[MADem]

26. Excuse me, but she printed out her emails and provided them to State.

Further, the vast majority of them were already on the State server because they were addressed to someone with an @state.gov email.

Did you not hear what Comey said about this investigation?

"No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

-- FBI Director Comey

I'll believe Comey's assessment before I believe a lot of half-truths and misinformation spread by people who wish Democrats ill on the internet. I'd recommend you do the same.

[GummyBearz]

102. Comey certainly will get his payday

Next board member of the foundation and a cabinet position at least. Nicely played... bluffed all the way to the river then cashed in, he must be happier than a pig in shit right now

[onecaliberal]

50. People are in prison for negligence of handling classified information.

[MaggieD]

56. Who?

Not Powell, not Rice, not Cheney, not Rove. Are you upset that they didn't retroactively create a law so they could indict her?

Enough of this bullshit here.

[GummyBearz]

103. James Hitselberger

And many more, who took a couple of pages of classified documents out of a secure area.

Or this guy who took a couple pictures on a submarine, didn't even send it to anyone, and is now facing 20 years in prison
http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/crime/2015/08/01/kristian-saucier-alexandria-submarine-pictures-john-walker/30907091/

But hey, some people are above the law, and I guess you are cool with that.

[MADem]

104. Who are the "some people" of which you speak?

Last edited Wed Jul 6, 2016, 03:00 PM - Edit history (1)

And did you not read the FBI director's statement about "no reasonable prosecutor?"


Taking pictures of submarine secure spaces and putting them out on the internet for all and sundry to see is VERY different than saying something in an email that was RETROACTIVELY classified.




smh.

FWIW, Hitselberger STOLE secret documents, shoved them in his backpack, and attempted to leave a SCIF in Bahrain. He got caught.

His case has been resolved, he plead guilty to a misdemeanor and was fined $250 and sentenced to time served. He was apparently sending the shit to the Hoover Institute.

[GummyBearz]

106. Did you read the article?

The pictures of the submarine were not put on the internet. Someone got ahold of his phone, looked at them, showed them to someone else, who then alerted to the FBI. The pictures never should have been taken in the first place, which is why the guy is in trouble. Kinda like how someone else who did something wrong in the first place should be

[MADem]

110. "Showed them to someone else..." "Got ahold of his PHONE..."

That is not how it went down. He threw the phone OUT and the pics were found at the waste transfer station where he dumped the phone. You do not know if he spread those pics via Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat... it doesn't matter--those pictures were OUT THERE. They were on a phone that was sufficiently "unsecured" that "someone" could a) Get "ahold" of it, and b) Open it and look at the pictures without putting in a passcode. Further, once he was called out on his picture taking, he went on a swipe and wipe-fest and engaged in behavior that you'd have to be a moron to not call SUSPICIOUS:

FBI and NCIS agents questioned him in July 2012 after the photos were discovered on his phone at a waste transfer station in Hampton, the feds said. When he returned home from the interview, he destroyed a laptop computer, his personal camera and the camera’s memory card, according to investigators.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/navy-sailor-pleads-guilty-pictures-nuclear-submarine-article-1.2652586


There was no rule OR law about Clinton having a server. Clinton has never tried to deny her email arrangements. Comey, in his own statement and after trying mightily to prove otherwise, basically said she wasn't hacked (unlike other dot gov agencies). As others have pointed out, her stuff was more secure than a lot of people's.

You're attempting to compare an apple with a ... ball peen hammer. Clinton violating "policy" or "in-house rule" is not the same as this guy, who violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. For STARTERS. There's no nexus there at all. This guy took a phone with a camera into a space where he should not have had one, and he took photos he should not have taken, and then he tossed the camera with which he took the pictures without a care for what was on it. When caught, he behaved like a guilty party and destroyed other electronic records--like someone who would be handing off material to, say, the Russians.

He was the architect of his own fate.

Further, said Sailor (who took a very specific oath to obey the orders of the officers over him--something cabinet officials do NOT do) entered a guilty plea to the charges and he will likely be sentenced to six years.

This "Saucier argument" you are touting is a right wing meme, you know. Every conservative agency got it in their talking points this morning.

I would suggest that carrying Gilmore (et.al.) water is not the way to go, but that's just me.

[uponit7771]

88. False equivalence, but you know that already

[Loki]

90. "Because he and now she get away with it"?

Just what are you implying?

[mcar]

7. It's only bad when a Clinton does it

The Clinton Rules prevail.

[LanternWaste]

18. Which buffoonish rule maintains the pretense that two wholly separate instances are precisely the sa

Which buffoonish rule maintains the pretense that two wholly separate instances are precisely the same?

Answer: Bias.

[Peacetrain]

9. I completely forgot about that..

I wonder if Andrea Mitchell remembers.. she has been just off her meds today

[Surya Gayatri]

10. Massive K & R. Thanks for posting. So spot on.

[Marr]

14. DU didn't yawn.

But some of it is now.

Odd.

[onecaliberal]

51. ^^^THAT^^^

[FuzzyRabbit]

17. IOKIYAR

As always.

[HeartoftheMidwest]

48. Exactly.

IOKIYAR example : Scott Walker, (R-Govern.) WI.
Investigated...in fits and starts....because of his private email server and secret accounts, created to circumvent open records requirements and "Sunshine Laws."

But the GOP S*W*E*A*R*S there is nothing wrong with that.

[silvershadow]

22. It is a real freedom-fest for those in high places. Meanwhile, police are bringing charges

against ordinary people for deleting their own browser histories.

[MADem]

27. That is unrelated to Comey's conclusion about this case.

"No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

-- FBI Director Comey

[silvershadow]

29. I was commenting on the OP about Karl Rove.

[MADem]

33. The OP is actually about the difference in the way the Bush regime was treated in contrast to

Clinton.

No one batted an eye, and the media barely covered it, when WH staff used RNC servers and YAHOO mail to communicate off the official grid.

But if a former First Lady and sitting SECSTATE slaps their server in one of the most protected homes in the nation, with round-the-clock SS coverage, there's drama!

And it's all "because Hillary." They are so afraid of her all they can do is make stuff up and bash, bash, bash.

Clinton turns over everything salient, and the bulk of it was stored on State servers anyway because it was communication with people with @state.gov emails, and the media goes crazy with faux "scandal." And some people--the Trumpeteers most notably, but others as well -- believe it and pile on, which was terribly unfortunate.

The story reached its political apogee when WIKILEAKS actually FOIA'd emails, the State Department released them in response to the FOIA, and they tried to make something of it-- "Ooooooooh, these 'could be' classified!!" No, they couldn't--they'd been vetted as part of the FOIA process. smh! I have to wonder if Sheldon Adelson isn't funnelling money to WIKILEAKS these days...!

At the end of the day, though, THIS is the conclusion--no Fitzmas, no Magical Indictment Unicorn, no Toxic Trumpeteers dancing in the streets:

"No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

-- FBI Director Comey

The only people who should be disappointed by this entirely expected turn of events are Republicans and Paulbots.

[MADem]

23. White House staff communicated via RNC servers and frigging YAHOO MAIL....

but IOKIYAR, I guess.

[L. Coyote]

38. Then there's the aspect of this story that isn't publically known yet.

The really secret political communications system.

[kairos12]

25. I raised this with a Trump Guy at the gym and began spewing spittle and vile at me. I laughed.

[avaistheone1]

30. Was Rove privy to state secrets at the highest level?

Did he run for president?

[pnwmom]

32. Hah! Is that a serious question? Of course he was.

Last edited Tue Jul 5, 2016, 04:32 PM - Edit history (3)

And Hillary wasn't running for President. She was the secretary of state, and no Secretary of state before Kerry ever used the .gov account for emails.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101036.html

Should White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove be privy to the nation's most sensitive secrets? Did he break trust with President Bush and the nation when he told syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak about Valerie Plame's classified job with the CIA? Did he further erode that trust in 2003 when he told then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan that, as McClellan put it, there was "no truth" to rumors that he played a role in the disclosure of Plame's identity?

Rove, of course, was investigated by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the CIA leak case but was never charged. His security clearance was renewed after a reinvestigation in late 2006, which has puzzled Rep . Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

In a letter sent last week to White House Counsel Fred F. Fielding, Waxman alleged that Rove's actions amounted to a violation of presidential guidelines that say "deliberate or negligent disclosure" of classified information can disqualify a staffer from future access to such material. Also being less than forthcoming, even about unintentional breaches, can be cause for revoking a security clearance.
"Under these standards, it is hard to see how Mr. Rove would qualify for renewal of his security clearance," Waxman wrote.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he could not discuss details but that Rove's "clearance was appropriately renewed as part of the regular process that occurs every five years."

[malaise]

31. +1,000

Fugg 'em!

[SunSeeker]

35. K & R

[pnwmom]

39. Under the applicable law, a private AOL account was treated exactly the same as

a private account on a home server (with better security than AOL had).

Neither one was considered better than the other. The .gov account was the only preferred method, even though the .gov account couldn't be used while traveling.

Hillary bashers are making themselves obvious.

[L. Coyote]

37. Republicans are corrupt, so they don't prosecute themselves.

[mrr303am]

40. Each and every one, Republican or Democrat,

who has done this, and any other act which breaks the laws, rules and regulations, should be indicted, found quilty, and imprisoned. If any non-political or elitist individual had done anything like this they would be in prison with very little chance of ever seeing the light of day again.

[pnwmom]

41. People are only indicted and imprisoned for breaking actual criminal laws.

"Rules and regulations" aren't the same as criminal statutes.

Nice try, though, especially throwing in the reference to Democrats.

[MaggieD]

57. Does that include Bernie and the theft of Clinton campaign data?

How about when he funneled campaign money to his family members? Not illegal, but it should be - right?

[mrr303am]

70. Any politician reguardless of who they are

or whichever party they represent. Politicians should not be given a free pass just because they are politicians. I'm tired of the continuous corruption by politicians and their associate's, as long as they continue to be given a free pass it will just get worse, it's time for it to end period.

[Blue_Tires]

42. epic kick

Remember when Sarah Palin was running Alaska through a Yahoo account?

[Hekate]

45. Kick

[Hekate]

46. Kick

[Hekate]

47. Kick

[lordsummerisle]

49. k&r n/t

[DesertRat]

52. K&R

[BainsBane]

63. AOL

Powell used AOL. Don't tell me that's better.

[ffr]

65. Encore! When will the M$M give us the truth!

Maybe when we start stacking government houses with democrats and they take notice.

[yurbud]

66. thank you

[cstanleytech]

68. I will bet you that they said nothing because there was probably enough in those

e-mails to send a good chunk of them to prison for a good long rest.

[MariaThinks]

69. didn't rove try to hide stuff as well?

[pnwmom]

80. Worse. Rove deliberately leaked Valerie's name to the reporter Robert Novak.

And they renewed his top secret clearance anyway.

[Loki]

92. Once upon a time there was a man named James Hatfield

and he wrote a book Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the making of an American President, somehow managed to get himself suicided in a hotel room, and thus help ruin the career of Dan Rather. There are bodies that Karl Rove is
responsible for littered throughout Texas and elsewhere and yet we can only focus on emails that perhaps weren't included in the release. If anyone here had any knowledge about the way that records are treated by the National Archives and Records Administration (my son actually works for an agency under DHS that stores these records) they would be greatly surprised. I think even Rachel had a program regarding just how inefficient and outdated this system is. Hell, I've had three email servers over the past 6 years, and I doubt very seriously if I could recover half of them. One thing jumped out at me during this "so called" investigation was that emails were sent with information that at some point after it was sent, it was determined to be sensitive after the fact. That's like changing the law, then arresting you ex post facto. Our government is willingly and woefully underfunded in this area, and there is a definite reason for it. How else would you protect yourself from investigation (and I don't mean Hillary) than to make it impossible to track anything pertaining to your position by keeping the government agencies unable to maintain even the easiest records to archive. They are successfully allowing our government to drown in a bathtub, it makes it so much easier for them to carry out their witch hunts.

[DemonGoddess]

97. +1000!

[MariaThinks]

99. Yup - your point should be an OP ed on its own

[BlancheSplanchnik]

71. Kick. Rec. n/t

[Hoppy]

73. Don't forget which administration and which useless atty. gen'l declined to pursue Bush admin. crime

"We must look forward."

OH, and don't forget Nancy Pelosi when she had the chance to do something...
"Impeachment is off the table."

[pnwmom]

74. When Obama came into office we were losing 800,000 jobs a month and he had to use

every ounce of political capital he had getting his stimulus bill through, other bills connected to the great recession, and the ACA.

He wouldn't have had any cooperation in fixing the economy if he was trying to help impeach Bush. The R's would have been happy to see him go down with the ship.

[Hoppy]

87. A crime is a crime and war crimes are war crimes.

They are to be prosecuted despite anyone's political concerns.

[pnwmom]

93. Wrong. Our whole country was sinking fast and Obama's first priority

was to stop us all from drowning. Another Great Depression was a real possibility.

[Hiraeth]

77. So that makes it ok.

[pnwmom]

79. It makes it extremely hypocritical and self-serving. They know Hillary

was not only following the practice of her predecessors in not using the .gov account, but that there were two major advantages in her using her private server.

1) Almost none of the .gov emails were being preserved at the time. For example, in 2011, of over a billion emails, only about 61,000 emails -- .0006% -- were recorded and preserved. Hillary preserved almost all of hers on her private server.

2) There is clear evidence that the .gov system was repeatedly hacked over that time frame. No evidence has been found that Hillary's server was successfully hacked.

https://oig.state.gov/system/files/isp-i-15-15.pdf

[Hiraeth]

83. Rules do not apply. Got it. Thanks.

[pnwmom]

84. No , you haven't figured it out yet. You just think you have.

The rule required State Department employees to preserve their emails.

Hillary did preserve them -- because her private server was set up to preserve them -- and handed them over to the State Department.

HOWEVER, if she had followed the "rule" to use the .gov account, then virtually none of her emails would have been properly preserved, because the .gov system wasn't set up to preserve them.

In 2011, for example, only .006% of State Department emails on the .gov system were preserved.

https://oig.state.gov/system/files/isp-i-15-15.pdf

March 2015

What OIG Found

A 2009 upgrade in the Department of State’s system
facilitated the preservation of emails as official records.
However, Department of State employees have not
received adequate training or guidance on their
responsibilities for using those systems to preserve
“record emails.” In 2011, employees created 61,156
record emails out of more than a billion emails sent.
Employees created 41,749 record emails in 2013.

 Record email usage varies widely across bureaus and
missions. The Bureau of Administration needs to exercise
central oversight of the use of the record email function.

[Hiraeth]

115. Right. Only follow the good rules.

[pnwmom]

116. There was no rule or law barring the use of a private email account.

But there WAS a rule to preserve emails -- which Hillary did. Almost all of hers were preserved because she used the private email, while less .0006% of the State Dept's .gov emails were saved.

So the State department non-rule to use the .gov account conflicted with the State dept. rule to preserve emails -- which she faithfully carried out. She made the better choice, in the interest of transparency.

But politically her decision was unwise. She would have been better off to use the .gov email, and then State wouldn't have had any emails to turn over in response to the FOIA request. End of story.

[Hiraeth]

117. Last paragraph. Jackpot. Thanks.

[ericson00]

81. I've always had a theory of why the media hates the Clintons;

in part its because many of these journalists wanted jobs in the Clinton admin in 1993 and didn't get them. In other part, since Bill was the first Boomer POTUS, not a veteran from the "Greatest Generation", they didn't think they had to respect him like they did to Bush, Reagan, even Carter, etc. When Dubya came along, they also wanted to prove they weren't "liberal." That's why they played nice with Dubya and gave us the Iraq War.

[pnwmom]

82. It was all of that and more. From the very beginning,

they treated him as a usurper of the rightful heirs to the kingdom -- the Bushes.

Bill, the Rhodes Scholar, was mocked as being "white trash." It was disgusting. But it was also one reason African Americans began to take his side. He never acted like he was above them, and they could see that the upper class treated him like dirt. Just like they were treated.

[MADem]

105. Those guys have 401Ks and investments, too.

And war is VERY good for business.

It's also VERY good for one's professional reputation.


You're not "a man" (I am using this term archaically and sardonically, jury, I am not being obtusely sexist in this expression, but instead, sarcastic) unless you go to war with "PRESS" emblazoned across your pretty blue flak jacket and your dorky, very clean and fresh and undented kevlar helmet.

Then you have to be sure you have your picture taken next to something burned out, or a bunch of rubble....or better still, talk to the camera while there's SHOOTING going on in the background!

Everyone wants to be a war hero....smh. Or at least play at being a soldier....

[Scientific]

86. MSM is a degenerate institution.

The MSM was bought and sold long ago, and has become a disgrace to the concept of honest, balanced journalism.

[uponit7771]

89. There it is then

[peace13]

95. Just going to correct you. Powell did NOT do 'the same thing'.

And he has spoken out in a very annoyed tone for being called into this. The * Administration including Karl and a whole lot of crazy people did a lot of illegal things while they held our country hostage. As a wise momma once said, two wrongs don't make a right. If we were to start a list right now of the wrongs Rove and his cohorts in crime did...it would be never ending! The fact that they did this does not make it legal.

[DemonGoddess]

98. K&R!

[asiliveandbreathe]

101. Perhaps a Dem could start asking those questions during Ryans

witch hunt...This whole congressional hearing could take a very interesting turn...

22 million WH emails - it will only take a mention of it at this point....

Maybe Chilcot report could raise enough questions to bring Bushco before a hearing..(haven't read it yet) - on my list of things to do..in the meantime -

[sarcasmo]

112. Kick.

[napkinz]

120. K&R