Late yesterday, Hillary announced she would hold a press conference to address EmailGate — a paltry 8 days after the blossoming scandal graced the pages of the New York Times. Though there were no mentions as to whether her foreign government sugar daddy problem would be given any airtime.
According to Department of State spokeswoman Marie Harf, Clinton released 55,000 pages of her emails to the Department of State in December. Of those 55,000 pages, 850 were passed along to the House Select Committee on Benghazi as being relevant to the investigation.
True to Arkansas Underwood form (to borrow a phrase from Rick Wilson), members of the media were shocked to learn that press credentials had to be requested 24 hours prior to the press conference, essentially the exact minute the press conference announcement was made (though the initial announcement gave no specific information).
“It’s appearing at the UN, which has a notoriously difficult credentialing process. So there’s going to be a restriction on the number of reporters who can come in. You had to apply 24 hours in advance for press passes. So I don’t know if it is intentional or not, but there will definitely be a limited number than if they held it at, say, a hotel or somewhere else in New York where they could be expected to be mobbed by every reporter and their mother in the city.”
According to Politico, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill explained the credential situation to On Media:
News of Clinton’s press conference didn’t leak until Tuesday morning, just hours before the event was scheduled to take place.But Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesperson, told On Media that his team had been working “into the wee hours of the morning… to give members of the press a heads up as we confirmed the details, and this morning are continuing to work with USUN [the United States mission to the United Nations] to help us get journalists access.” “I just sent a mass note to [the] press giving them instructions on how to [get access to the event] with the help of USUN, and we are going to do our best to include anyone that wasn’t already coming,” Merrill said. “It’s important to us that those who want to get in and cover the events can do so.”
Raising eyebrows, the Washington Post’s editorial board released a statement last night calling on Hillary to publicly answer to EmailGate saying, “if she wants to demonstrate the strength of character and judgment required to be president, Ms. Clinton should hold a news conference and answer all the unanswered questions about her e-mails.”
The statement also debunked the notion that EmailGate is purely Benghazi driven:
But this is not primarily about Benghazi. Instead, it is about how Ms. Clinton responds to legitimate questions about her judgment and her record; it is about how she would function as president. Dispatching friendly politicians and former aides to television news shows to dismiss the issue as just politics does not help her cause. If she is elected president, can Americans expect a similar response when she faces difficult questions — one 26-word tweet and a cloud of obfuscation from her friends?
This morning, Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi wrote a letter to Secretary Kerry asking that the 850 pages of Clinton’s emails received by the committee be made public. They reasoned DOS review of the 55,000 pages on record would take a substantial amount of time, so the the smaller batch (850) should be reviewed for release first.
According to Yahoo News, Hillary hasn’t fielded substantial press questions since September at an event in Iowa.
Which brings us here:
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