http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in-light-of-clinton-email-scandal-media-continues-search-for-gop-comparisons/article/2561502In light of Clinton email scandal, media continues search for GOP comparisons
By T. Becket Adams | March 13, 2015 | 5:34 pm
Efforts by members of the press to find examples of Republican lawmakers with email habits similar to Hillary Clinton, who used an unauthorized email account to conduct official business as secretary of state, continue apace.
At MSNBC, producer Steve Bennen penned an article Friday titled "The Republicans who did 'exactly what Hillary did,' " lamenting the press' supposed double standard.
Bennen points to personal accounts used by Republican Govs. Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey.
The governors used personal accounts in addition to their government-issued accounts, as opposed to Clinton who relied exclusively on a private server when she had the top job at Foggy Bottom.
Elsewhere, The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky wrote Friday, "So Hillary Clinton operates under her own set of rules? Funny. Jeb Bush and Rick Perry operated under rules that look awfully darn similar."
News that Clinton used a likely compromised "homebrew" server to send and receive sensitive government documents has dominated headlines for the past two weeks. And although Clinton maintained this week in a press conference that no classified material ever passed through her server during four years she served at State, doubts remain.
"I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email," Clinton said Tuesday during a press conference that drew harsh bipartisan criticism. "I'm certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material."
But in an article titled "A Claim of No Classified Emails in a Place That Classifies Routinely," security experts told The New York Times that Clinton's claim appears highly, highly unlikely. Remember: Emails from one of Clinton's many accounts became public after an anonymous hacker, "Gufficer," leaked them to Russia Today, which is directly backed by the Kremlin.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that Clinton's use of a personal server likely saw the transfer of thousands of pages of classified government intelligence, and the fact that at least one of Clinton's accounts was compromised by a Romanian hacker, making her situation uniquely scandalous, U.S. newsrooms are invested in finding examples of Republican lawmakers who also used personal accounts.
"Hillary Clinton's Potential GOP Rivals Used Personal Email Accounts," blared one Wall Street Journal headline Thursday, with the subhead, "Bush, Rubio and Walker All Used Private Accounts."
The pro-Clinton non-profit Media Matters published an article Wednesday, titled "Two Names The Press Omits From Email Coverage: Colin Powell And Jeb Bush," arguing the same.
Almost immediately after Clinton's email woes went public, an "awkward" silence supposedly fell over top GOP lawmakers, likely due to the fact that many "of them are tormented by their own email demons," Politico claimed at the time.
At around the same time, the New York Daily News published an article, titled "5 other examples of politicians toying with the email rules," that like Bennen pointed to GOP lawmakers who have used personal email accounts while in office.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post's "Post Politics" section published a similarly-themed article, titled "Jeb Bush pounces on Hillary Clinton's email woes — but he's not perfect either," dinging the potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate for his use of both a personal and work account when he was Florida's governor.
Bush voluntarily made thousands of his personal emails available to the public. He hasn't released all of them though.
Clinton, for her part, transferred roughly 55,000 emails from her personal accounts to the State Department — but only after federal officials demanded she turn them over. The emails that were transferred to State were hand-picked by Clinton's team.
The emails that didn't meet Clinton's criteria for transfer were reportedly deleted, with many of them apparently never being read by her aides.
