Tipsheet

Hillary Spokeswoman on Private Server: 'She Didn't Really Think It Through'

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  August 20, 2015 10:25 AM

Just so we're clear, this is Hillary's own spokeswoman, who authored this nonsense memo and treated us to this incoherent jumble of words on why Hillary 2016 will be more successful than Hillary 2008.  Who's up for a novel attempt to downplay Hillary's improper email scheme?  Her words, guys:


"That's the thing, she didn't really think it through."


Where to begin?  Let's take the spin at face value for a moment.  Here we have Team Clinton's top communications guru telling voters that her candidate simply didn't consider the implications of setting up a private email server in violation of "clear cut" government rules, compromising highly sensitive national security data.  That's...a big problem, no?  In order to conceal the truth, Hillary's campaign finds itself with no choice but to plead thoughtlessness and ineptitude.  The real truth, of course, is that Hillary Clinton thought this through very carefully.  The original reason she offered for having set up the unsecure private server, repeated in Palmieri's answer, is that she did it for "convenience."  That explanation is both factually false and totally illogical.  She determined that having full control over her virtual paper trail would only be possible if she also controlled the server, and pro-actively chose to proceed accordingly.  Problematic "personal" emails could be deep-sixed, and potentially harmful evidence could be permanently destroyed.  (Oops). That is why she pursued this convoluted and reckless course of action: For control and, ironically, for political cover.  Meanwhile...


Oh.  Does this mean that the mythical 'single mobile device' for which Hillary supposedly set up her entire email scheme was also under-secure?  If the government didn't provide her with encrypted mobile device(s), was she criss-crossing the globe using store-bought unencrypted phones?  If so, that's mind-blowingly reckless.  Even if she hired someone to beef up her devices' encryption, it seems likely that she was conducting very sensitive government business on a phone and/or tablet that were not up to national security standards.  These questions must be answered.  And what's all this about top aides' mobile devices being destroyed?  Politico:

BlackBerry devices the State Department issued to former Hillary Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin have likely been destroyed or sold off as surplus, a State official said in a court filing Wednesday...The official also said former Secretary of State Clinton appeared never to have had a BlackBerry from her agency or any other official gadget. "S/ES-IRM does not believe that any personal computing device was issued by the Department to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and has not located any such device at the Department," Macmanus wrote...In recent weeks, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has expressed increasing concern that the State Department was not making an adequate effort to recover all records about the matter, including emails Clinton or the other aides may have had on private accounts or took with them when they left the department.

In case you'd forgotten, Judge Sullivan was appointed than none other than Bill Clinton.  Hillary's camp has also shifted from insisting that there was no classified material on her unsecure server to arguing that classification rules are complicated and obsolete -- and that she she wasn't actively engaged in any wrongdoing:


Problems: (1) The Inspectors General said that some of the classified material was classified at the time, and (2) it is the responsibility of government officials with high-level security clearances to recognize classified material when they see it.  Team Hillary is now telling voters that she was totally oblivious to all of this, and didn't recognize the sensitive material -- some of which was top secret -- as such.  Or didn't know what was on her own server. This is on top of their new claim that she didn't really think the whole email thing through in the first place. But we must elect this person to run the entire executive branch of the world's lone superpower. Got it:


I'll leave you with a glimpse at the type of classified material that passed through Mrs. Clinton's unsecure server, and presumably her non-government-issued, under-encrypted mobile devices: