In 2012, congressional investigators asked the State Department for a wide range of documents related to the attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. The department eventually responded, furnishing House committees with thousands of documents.
But it turns out that that was not everything.
The State Department had not searched the email account of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton because she had maintained a private account, which shielded it from such searches, department officials acknowledged on Tuesday.
It was only last month that the House committee appointed to investigate Benghazi was provided with about 300 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails related to the attacks. That was shortly after Mrs. Clinton turned over, at the State Department’s request, some 50,000 pages of government-related emails that she had kept on her private account.
It was one of several instances in which records requests sent to the State Department, which had no access to Mrs. Clinton’s emails, came up empty.
In 2013, Nitasha Tiku, then a reporter for Gawker, filed a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking all correspondence on Mrs. Clinton’s private email account between her and Sidney Blumenthal, a close adviser and onetime staff member in the Clinton White House. Some of those emails had already spilled into public view and been reported in the news media. But the State Department told Gawker that it could find no records responsive to the request, Gawker reported.
Mrs. Clinton’s aides on Tuesday sought to play down the significance of her exclusive use of a personal email account for State Department business. But an examination of records requests sent to the department reveals how the practice protected a significant amount of her correspondence from the eyes of investigators and the public.
Even if she did nothing illegal, the sheer stupidity of this blows my mind. I mean, she just had to know this would be an issue. And if she didn’t, is she just that insulated from reality by her shield of aides and see-no-evil supporters? I’m a nobody, but I have three separate email accounts- one for work, one for personal/political/this website, and one for finances/online purchases. You segregate stuff, and work stuff stays in work. And it’s for MY protection, most of the time. If someone asks “Did you talk to X about X,” I can do a quick search and have the contents of that conversation at my fingertips. Kind of like the intent of having government emails preserved for posterity.
I know, I know. I’m just a shill for Trey Gowdy and doncha know the NY Times and Whitewater. Like Israel, HRC’s worst enemy are her most ardent supporters. Why do they not understand that this kind of behavior, even if she did nothing illegal, is going to cause problems? Not recognizing there is just something off and insular and hubristic about this behavior, especially given the context, is not my problem. That’s hers and the HRCis44 crowd.
Just by Reading This, You are a Benghazi Truther and a Bad DemocratPost + Comments (339)