Political Wire

No Clinton Emails Left on Server

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“An examination of the server that housed the personal email account that Hillary Clinton used exclusively when she was secretary of state showed that there are no copies of any emails she sent during her time in office, her lawyer told a congressional committee on Friday,” the New York Times reports.

“After her representatives determined which emails were government-related and which were private, a setting on the account was changed to retain only emails sent in the previous 60 days, her lawyer, David Kendall, said. He said the setting was altered after she gave the records to the government.”

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Clinton Benghazi Emails Provide Rare Glimpse

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New York Times: “The roughly 300 emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private account that were turned over last month to a House committee investigating the attack showed the secretary and her aides closely monitoring the fallout from the tragedy, which threatened to damage her image and reflect poorly on the State Department.”

“They provided no evidence that Mrs. Clinton, as the most incendiary Republican attacks have suggested, issued a ‘stand down’ order to halt American forces responding to the violence in Benghazi, or took part in a broad cover-up of the administration’s response, according to senior American officials.”

“But they did show that Mrs. Clinton’s top aides at times corresponded with her about State Department matters from their personal email accounts, raising questions about her recent assertions that she made it her practice to email aides at their government addresses so the messages would be preserved, in compliance with federal record-keeping regulations.”

Clinton Foundation Tapped Foreign Donors

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“The Clinton Foundation swore off donations from foreign governments when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. That didn’t stop the foundation from raising millions of dollars from foreigners with connections to their home governments, a review of foundation disclosures shows,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“All told, more than a dozen foreign individuals and their foundations and companies were large donors to the Clinton Foundation in the years after Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, collectively giving between $34 million and $68 million, foundation records show.”

A Nixonian Path to the White House

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“The effective kickoff of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was an act of deck-clearing so breathtaking, so brazen, that it remains difficult to process,” Michael Gerson writes.

“The former secretary of state summoned reporters to the United Nations, made a statement on Iran nuclear negotiations, then admitted deleting more than 30,000 e-mails she had deemed personal from the account she exclusively used while in office. This was the culmination of a deliberate, multiyear end run around congressional oversight, the Freedom of Information Act and the archiving of federal records. Documents she found inconvenient to sort while in government were convenient to destroy after leaving office.”

Clinton Foundation Donors Not Disclosed as Promised

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“In 2008, Hillary Clinton promised Barack Obama, the president-elect, there would be no mystery about who was giving money to her family’s globe-circling charities. She made a pledge to publish all the donors on an annual basis to ease concerns that as secretary of state she could be vulnerable to accusations of foreign influence,” Reuters reports.

“At the outset, the Clinton Foundation did indeed publish what they said was a complete list of the names of more than 200,000 donors and has continued to update it. But in a breach of the pledge, the charity’s flagship health program, which spends more than all of the other foundation initiatives put together, stopped making the annual disclosure in 2010.”

Why Can’t the Clintons and the Media Get Along?

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Josh Marshall: “The relationship between the Clintons and the press and the political class generally is codependent, toxic and frankly ridiculous on both sides – with extreme self-protection and legalism on one hand and hyperbole, nonsense and wolf-crying penalties on the other. Like any perennial and bad relationship it is exhausting to watch and generally impossible to pick apart where one part ends and other starts. Which is a reaction to the other, which is first? I have no idea anymore. It hardly matters.”

Jonathan Ladd: “With the media feeding frenzy the past two weeks over Hillary Clinton maintaining a private e-mail account while she was secretary of state, the 1990s dysfunctional marriage between the Clintons and the DC press has come roaring back—no lessons learned or maturity built up on either side since Bill was president. On the Clinton side, there is a hostility and lack of openness to the press that is self-defeating. It provokes the negative coverage it intends to avoid. On the press side, the DC establishment media always seems to believe that the current scandal will be the one to bring down the Clintons, all evidence to the contrary.”

Boehner Will Launch Broad Probe of Clinton Emails

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House Speaker John Boehner “is expected to announce this week a new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices as Secretary of State, including her admission that more than 31,000 emails were destroyed because she determined them to be personal,” ABC News reports.

Clinton said “she deleted all of the personal emails because she felt she ‘had no reason to save them.’ The revelation has only raised more questions among Clinton’s detractors about what was in those emails and why she used the private account in the first place.”

David Remnick: “Why do I suddenly feel twenty years younger yet thoroughly exhausted?”

Clinton Adversaries Almost Always Overplay Their Hand

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Time: “Along with her husband—the 42nd President of the United States—Hillary Clinton is the co-creator of a soap-operatic political universe in which documents vanish, words like is take on multiple meanings and foes almost always overplay their hand. Impeachment can be a route to higher approval ratings; the occasional (and rare) defeat merely marks the start of the next campaign. Whatever rules may apply to them, the law of gravity is not one. Still, Clinton’s failure to defuse the email issue, along with a growing list of questions about the family’s relentless fundraising and her husband’s choice of companions, has revived hopes among erstwhile rivals in the Democratic Party that the Hillary dreadnought might actually be sinkable. Backbiting inside the Clinton campaign—a hallmark of her failed 2008 presidential effort—has begun to leak into the political press. Republicans who were morose over their presidential chances mere months ago have a spring in their step.”

“Though members of Congress are calling for her to turn over the email server for forensic examination, they would be wise to proceed cautiously. A key page in the Clinton rule book is the one that reads: When in doubt, drive your enemies crazy—then sit back and watch them implode.”

House Plans Subpoena Over Clinton Emails

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House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said he “was prepared to subpoena former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to answer questions about her private email accounts,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Chaffetz said his committee “would by Friday formally request answers to a series of questions from the State Department and Mrs. Clinton about the former secretary and presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential candidate’s email. The committee will seek, among other things, access to the electronic versions of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, not merely the printed copies she said she submitted to the State Department.”

Associated Press Sues to Get Clinton Records

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The Associated Press filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, the AP reports.

“The legal action comes after repeated requests filed under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act have gone unfulfilled. They include one request AP made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013.”

“The FOIA requests and lawsuit seek materials related to her public and private calendars, correspondence involving longtime aides likely to play key roles in her expected campaign for president, and Clinton-related emails about the Osama bin Laden raid and National Security Agency surveillance practices.”

The Clinton Way

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First Read: “What we learned yesterday is that Hillary Clinton hasn’t changed a thing. In her news conference responding to her use of personal emails as secretary of state, Clinton was 1) lawyerly, 2) dismissive of the news media’s interest in the story (that’s why she began her remarks talking about her speech at the UN and the Iran negotiations), 3) telling reporters and the public that they were going to have to trust her regarding the emails she preserved versus those she didn’t, and 4) giving Democrats and defenders just the bare minimum (she will release all of her work-related emails but not turn over her private server). Folks, this is the Clinton Way. Secretive. Lawyerly. Dismissive of the press. And if there’s a big danger here, it’s looking like a candidate of the past instead of a candidate of the future when nearly 60% of American voters want change, per our most recent NBC/WSJ poll.”

“But there’s one other important thing to remember about the Clinton Way: With just one big exception — in 2008 against Barack Obama — they win.”

How Did Hillary Send Bill Email If He Doesn’t Use It?

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Hillary Clinton said that “personal emails between her and her husband, former President Clinton, exist on a private account. But the former commander-in-chief’s spokesman has said Clinton has only sent two email messages in his lifetime, and both were when he occupied the White House,” The Hill reports.

Said Mrs. Clinton: “The server contains personal communications from my husband and me and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private and I think that the State Department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that were provided.”

But the ex-president’s spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that Mr. Clinton doesn’t use email.

Clinton Will Address Email Controversy

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Hillary Clinton “will soon address the controversy over her use of a private email account at the State Department, and is likely to hold a press conference in New York in the next several days to answer reporters’ questions,” Politico reports.

“The pressure on Clinton has ratcheted up as critics, including some congressional Democrats, have called on her to publicly address the reports. That pressure only increased on Monday as a spokesman for President Obama told reporters that Clinton and the president had, in fact, exchanged emails using Clinton’s private email account during her tenure at Foggy Bottom from 2009 to 2013.”

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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