Hillary Clinton's email scandal enters its third week

[Formerly Once-Ler]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hillary-clintons-email-scandal-enters-its-third-week/article/2561579

News coverage of the scandal involving Hillary Clinton's use of an unauthorized personal email account when she served as secretary of state has entered its third week, and the media's continued interest in the story disproves Clinton supporters' claims that the issue would soon fade away.

"Clinton camp issues clarification on deleted emails, claims 'every' message was reviewed," FoxNews.com said in a headline, reporting Monday that Clinton's aides are now contradicting their earlier claim they didn't read thousands of now-deleted emails once stored on the former first lady's "homebrew" server.

Meanwhile, Washington Post fact-checker Glen Kessler reviewed Clinton's widely criticized press conference from last week, noting that her many claims and declarations leave much to be desired. In an unusual move, however, Kessler declined to grade Clinton using the column's famous "Pinocchio" rating, pointing to the "fluid situation." Associated Press last week announced it was suing the State Department over access to public records.

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., awkwardly gave her take on the Clinton email scandal.

"I think [Clinton] assumed that what was supposed to be public would be public and what was her own personal stuff wasn't going to be public, and I think she might have been too focused on the latter part of that," McCaskill said.

Clinton fared no better in opinion pages. The New York Times' Maureen Dowd penned an icy "open letter" this weekend condemning the presumed 2016 Democratic Party presidential candidate.

"You exploit our better angels and our desire for a finer country and our fear of the anarchists and haters in Congress," Dowd said, addressing Clinton. "Because you assume that if it's good for the Clintons, it's good for the world, you're always tangling up government policy with your own needs, desires, deceptions, marital bargains and gremlins."

A Forbes column conceded Monday that we "may never get the full story of Hillary Clinton's emails," adding, "Maybe we all will learn that no one in government knows how to use email except Hillary Clinton."

USA Today also kept up the pressure Monday, publishing a column titled, "Three transparency laws Hillary may have violated."

A Reuters op-ed, titled "What Hillary Clinton's email, Benghazi troubles have in common with the living dead," used very breathless language to describe the scandal.

"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email trouble has its hands around the neck of her planned presidential run," the op-ed reads. "The question is whether someone can figure out how to stop it before it kills her ambitions. The answer is that it's going to be a close call."

Even President Obama got in on the action this weekend, poking fun at Clinton's latest woes during his remarks at the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C.

Referring to his 2008 primary against Clinton, the president said, "Back then, I was the young, tech-savvy candidate of the future. Now I'm yesterday's news, and Hillary has got a server in her house. I didn't even know you could have one of those in your house. I am so far behind. I would have gotten one."

But Clinton is not without her defenders.

The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky continued his defense of the former secretary of state Monday, repeating his claim that the email scandal is a non-story and that U.S. newsrooms are wasting their time.

"The rapidly-deflating Clinton email 'scandal' looks like it has more to do with a sclerotic government bureaucracy than any personal wrongdoing on the part of Hillary," he wrote in a column titled ""The Plot Thins on the Clinton Email 'Scandal.'"

Tomasky's "non-story" defense comes after longtime Clinton supporters, including Democratic strategist James Carville, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton Lanny Davis, and Media Matters founder David Brock, staked out similar positions last week, arguing that the email story is much ado about nothing.

"It's made up. You take pi, you subtract 3.1415 and you don't end up with very much," Carville said Sunday in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

"I suspect she didn't want [Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas] rifling through her emails, which seems to me to be a kind of reasonable position for someone to take," the colorful pundit added in a moment that prompted the Christian Science Monitor to wonder if Carville is "hurting Hillary Rodham Clinton more than he's helping her."

But even with all the attention paid to Clinton's email problems, it doesn't appear that it will hurt her chances for becoming the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential candidate.

Clinton is easily the preferred Democratic candidate, outstripping her potential rivals, including Vice President Joe Biden, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with 86 percent of support from self-identified Democratic respondents in a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey.

Also, although it appears newsrooms are still interested in the Clinton email scandal, she will reportedly return to her regular schedule this week after "stemming [the] tide on emails," as MSNBC put it in a headline Monday.

"Clinton seems to have succeeded in at least partially calming the uproar," the report noted, citing data from TV Eyes, "despite many headlines suggesting Clinton had created as many new questions as she answered."

This is my favorite part of the story.

"It's made up. You take pi, you subtract 3.1415 and you don't end up with very much," Carville said Sunday in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

Clinton's political strategist and his press secretary think there is nothing to the email scandal.  That passes for [expletive deleted] news today.

[libertybele]

In reality, this is not the first time that Hillary has been in the hot seat and she has managed to survive for decades.  However, I believe that this is coming straight from Obama and Jarrett. Not only are they hoping that Hillary will take the blame for Benghazi, but they want Warren or someone else to run.  Only thing is, and perhaps this is just wishful thinking on my part, I think she is going to take them down with her.  Certainly, she isn't going down without a fight.