Not only are Hillary’s favorability ratings tanking, but her email woes don’t appear to be dissipating anytime soon.Here’s the latest:
A Gallup word cloud published Wednesday is probably not what Mrs. Clinton was hoping to see.
Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has offered specific positions on a variety of issues while campaigning. But when Gallup recently asked Americans to say what they recall reading or hearing about her, one word — “email” — drowned out everything else.
Gallup also notes that substance is not what voters, Democrat and Republican alike, associate with Mrs. Clinton.
In the verbatim responses from about 750 U.S. adults familiar enough with Clinton to offer an opinion of her, the word “email” came up 329 times, phrased variously as “email,” “emails,” “email scandal,” “email scandals,” “that email thing,” “email stuff” and “private emails.” Relatedly, there were 83 mentions of “server.” All of these refer to the controversy involving Clinton’s use of private email servers to conduct government business while she was secretary of state.By contrast, there were few mentions of the substantive themes Clinton has talked about on the campaign trail. For example, “economy” appeared on the list only four times, the same number as for “the middle class.” “Gun control” appeared seven times, with even fewer mentions of “college” and “capital gains tax.” Even the catchall descriptions “policy” or “policies” were mentioned just nine times.Republicans’ responses were overwhelmingly negative toward Clinton, and Republicans were especially likely to refer to the email issue in negative terms. Republicans also tended to mention “Benghazi,” referring to questions about how Clinton handled security for the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya after the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in a terrorist attack in 2012.Even when the responses of the 279 Democrats and Democratic leaners surveyed are isolated in a word map, “email” trumps everything else.
Thursday, Judicial Watch released documents obtained by from the Obama administration that reveal a weird State Department request. Evidently, the DOS asked Clinton to delete classified emails.
Judicial Watch today released Obama administration correspondence containing a letter from Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy asking Hillary Clinton’s lawyer to destroy all electronic copies of a classified email found in records Clinton decided to turn over to the State Department six months before. Clinton’s attorney, David Kendall, rejected the request as Congress and other investigators had demanded electronic records be preserved. The correspondence also shows Hillary Clinton has ignored a demand to turn over all electronic copies of the approximately 55,000 pages of emails she previously returned in paper form. The correspondence was disclosed by the State and Justice Departments in a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in which Judicial Watch is asking a court to issue a preservation order to protect any emails Clinton has yet to turn over, including those emails in which she and her lawyers unilaterally determined to be personal. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (1:12-cv-02034))The May 22, 2015, letter from Kennedy to Clinton attorney Kendall reads in part:
I am writing in reference to the following e-mail that is among the approximately 55,000 pages that were identified as potential federal records and produced on behalf of former Secretary Clinton to the Depa1tment of State on December 5, 2014: E-mail forwarded by Jacob Sullivan to Secretary Clinton on November 18, 2012 at 8:44 pm (Subject: Fw: FYI- Report of arrests -possible Benghazi connection).Please be advised that today the above referenced e-mail, which previously was unclassified, has been classified as “Secret” pursuant to Section 1.7(d) of Executive Order 13526 in connection with a review and release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In order to safeguard and protect the classified information, I ask – consistent with my letter to you dated March 23 2015 – that you, Secretary Clinton and others assisting her in responding to congressional and related inquiries coordinate in taking the steps set forth below. A copy of the document as redacted under the FOIA is attached to assist you in your search.****Once you have made the electronic copy of the documents for the Department, please locate any electronic copies of the above-referenced classified document in your possession. If you locate any electronic copies, please delete them. Additionally, once you have done that, please empty your “Deleted Items” folder.
Amazing how this preservation conviction comes and goes. Politico reports:
Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney balked at the State Department’s first effort to erase a newly-classified email from the thumb drive containing about 30,000 messages she turned over to her former agency, according to just-released correspondence.Clinton lawyer David Kendall said deleting the now-secret message could run afoul of promises he previously made to the House Benghazi committee and two inspectors general to preserve electronic copies of all Clinton’s work-related message from her tenure as secretary of state.”I have responded to each preservation request by confirming to the requestor that I would take reasonable steps to preserve the 55,000 pages of former Secretary Clinton’s emails in their present electronic form,” Kendall wrote to Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy on June 15. “I therefore do not believe it would be prudent to delete, as you request, the above-referenced email from the master copies of the [Microsoft Outlook] PST file that we are preserving.”The letters shed more light on the unusual arrangement State eventually set up to allow Kendall to hold classified information in his law office. The set-up — which has been questioned by Senate Republicans and private attorneys who’ve not received similar approval — involved installing a safe in the office of one of Kendall’s colleagues at D.C. law firm Williams and Connolly.Kendall’s rebuff of State’s initial request came in response to a May 22 letter from Kennedy that noted a November 2012 email about arrests in Libya possibly related to the Benghazi attacks “which previously had been unclassified, has been classified as ‘Secret.'”
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