The former first lady’s situation seems to worsen by the day.
First it was revealed that Hillary had a private email account for the duration of her tenure as Secretary of State. Then it was discovered that her private email account was run through servers reportedly in her home. And no one in Obama’s administration seemed to have been aware that Mrs. Clinton was operating an extra-governmental account. Or at least that’s the current story.
When asked if they could prove with certitude that no classified information was exchanged via Hillary’s private email, the State Department replied, “that’s not a pertinent question.” Late last week, the State Department changed their story saying it was up to each Secretary to determine what was relevant and then submit that information back to the DOS for record keeping.
Email problems aren’t the only obstacle the Clinton’s must overcome ahead of a 2016 Presidential run. Former President Bill Clinton came out in defense of the Clinton Foundation yesterday, an organization that accepted donations from foreign governments like Saudi Arabia while Hillary served as Secretary of State. “I believe we’ve done more good than harm,” President Clinton said.
Rewind to 2011.
February 15, 2011, then Secretary Clinton spoke about Internet Freedom at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. 2011 Hillary made a great case for why 2015 Hillary should disclose her emails to the public.
Take a look:
…Confidentiality is essential, especially in the Internet Age when dangerous information can be sent around the world with a click of a key stroke. But of course, governments also have a duty to be transparent. We govern with the consent of the people and that consent must be informed to be meaningful. So we must be judicious about when we close off our work to the public and we must review our standards frequently to make sure they are rigorous. In the United States we have laws to designed to ensure that the government makes its work open to the people and the Obama administration has also launched an unprecedented initiative to put government data online, to encourage citizen participation, and to generally increase the openness of government. The U.S. government’s ability to protect America, to secure the liberties of our people, and to support the rights and freedoms of others around the world, depends on maintaining a balance between what’s public and what should and must remain out of the public domain. The scale should and will always be tipped in favor of openness, but tipping the scale over completely serves no one’s interests.
The world is indeed a dangerous place. In the interest of open government and to reassure the governed, we agree with Mrs. Clinton that in adherence to the Obama administration’s unprecedented strides towards transparency, emails that would shed light on the danger we may be facing should, in good faith, be made part of the public domain.
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