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Flashback- Column: GOP's Clinton email indictment fantasy- August 21, 2015
We’ve seen this movie before. And it always ends the exact same way.
Hyperventilating Republicans rush to the cameras claiming they’ve found the smoking gun proving their political opponents aren’t just wrong, but that they’re criminals. Traffic hungry reporters take “off the record” spin and run with it, publishing dramatic (and click-driving) stories predicting perp walks any day. Then months later, when the facts actually come out, there is far less to the story than meets the eye.
We saw it in its purest form during the Dan Burton Whitewater years and more recently with a string of supposed Obama Administration scandals from Fast and Furious to the IRS. Lois Lerner may have been guilty of bad management but, despite the calls of Republicans from both ends of Capitol Hill, she is most definitely not in jail.
And it is happening again right now with the overblown, misunderstood controversy regarding Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email server during her service as secretary of State.
There are legitimate questions to be asked about that decision of course. Clinton herself has said she regrets it. And Republicans who want to argue it shows bad judgment certainly are entitled to do so.
But a bad decision is not a crime. Using a personal email server for State Department work during Secretary Clinton’s tenure was not a crime; the statute requiring official email accounts for official business wasn’t even passed until 2014.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/08/21/clinton-email-state-server-column/32042775/
Hyperventilating Republicans rush to the cameras claiming they’ve found the smoking gun proving their political opponents aren’t just wrong, but that they’re criminals. Traffic hungry reporters take “off the record” spin and run with it, publishing dramatic (and click-driving) stories predicting perp walks any day. Then months later, when the facts actually come out, there is far less to the story than meets the eye.
We saw it in its purest form during the Dan Burton Whitewater years and more recently with a string of supposed Obama Administration scandals from Fast and Furious to the IRS. Lois Lerner may have been guilty of bad management but, despite the calls of Republicans from both ends of Capitol Hill, she is most definitely not in jail.
And it is happening again right now with the overblown, misunderstood controversy regarding Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email server during her service as secretary of State.
There are legitimate questions to be asked about that decision of course. Clinton herself has said she regrets it. And Republicans who want to argue it shows bad judgment certainly are entitled to do so.
But a bad decision is not a crime. Using a personal email server for State Department work during Secretary Clinton’s tenure was not a crime; the statute requiring official email accounts for official business wasn’t even passed until 2014.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/08/21/clinton-email-state-server-column/32042775/
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