http://www.newsmax.com/PrintTemplate.aspx/?nodeid=628301Newsmax
Ari Fleischer: 'I Guarantee You' Hillary's Emails Were Hacked
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 06:32 PM
By: Bill Hoffmann
Former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tells Newsmax TV he believes Iran, Russia and China routinely read Hillary Clinton's emails detailing sensitive government business.
Fleischer, who served under George W. Bush, said the disclosure that Clinton had used a personal email account — not a government one — during her time as secretary of State made her dispatches vulnerable to hacking.
"If it's done from a personal account, I guarantee you China, Russia and Iran have them," Fleischer said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
The New York Times reported on Monday that Clinton used a personal email address to conduct official government business during her stint as secretary of state, possibly violating rules that official correspondence be retained.
But Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill responded: "Like Secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any [State] Department officials. For government business, she emailed them on their Department account, with every expectation that they would be retained."
Asked if the use of a personal email account, could be in violation of federal law, Fleischer told Steve Malzberg:
"If you or I get subpoenaed, we have no choice, we turn everything over. You're not supposed to have a team around you who decides what you turn over, what you don't and what people are told exist and what doesn't exist.
"The sleaziness of this aside and the fact that you have a government official who is doing business in the way that was designed to hide their business, there's another issue here that is terribly serious....
"If it's a personal email, it's simple for it to get hacked by a foreign adversary. Think of a secretary of State for every day that she's in office is cc'ing Iran, Russia, China and other adversaries on every single email that she sends and every one that she receives."
Fleischer said he believed the point of Clinton's breach was "she wanted to have maximum control over her information as the secretary of State.
"When you do that as a government official and you put all your government communications that only you control because the internet is registered to your home, you're circumventing the rules," he said.
But Fleischer, now president of Ari Fleischer Sports Communications, added that Republicans should not jump to conclusions.
"Laws are broken. One of the things that's wrong in Washington is everybody wants to put their opponent in jail. There's right and wrong as opposed to illegal and legal, and in this case, right and wrong is really where our focus should be," he said.
"It's wrong for cabinet secretaries to circumvent the laws and the rules, whether it's legal or otherwise — to set up their own system of communicating. You don't do that.
"When I was in government we were told if you have a personal email account, that's fine.
"Put your personal business on your personal [email] and your government business on your government [email] and there were people in the Bush White House who got in trouble because they tried to do government work through the Republican National Committee and they did get in trouble. You should not do it. Same standards should apply to Mrs. Clinton."
