http://www.nationalreview.com/node/423015/print Hillary Clinton’s Sycophantic Inner Circle
By Brendan Bordelon — August 25, 2015
How could Hillary Clinton’s staff let her get away with it?
It’s one of the most perplexing questions surrounding the massive scandal over Clinton’s use of an unsecured, private e-mail server when she served as secretary of state. How could it be that no one in the State Department pointed out that Clinton was violating government policy and putting sensitive information at risk? Why didn’t her closest advisers warn that the move could torpedo her resurgent presidential ambitions?
State Department staffers aren’t talking — not yet, at least. But the thousands of Clinton e-mails reluctantly released by the State Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit are illuminating. They reveal a Secretary of State heavily insulated from her agency’s rank-and-file by a devoted inner circle, one which relentlessly lavished praise on Clinton and sometimes functioned more like receptionists than top strategic advisers. Many of the same confidantes appear set to take high-level jobs in a future Clinton White House, meaning her “yes-man problem” is likely to persist should she become president.
The vast majority of the 3,500 e-mails released so far were sent or received by just four members of Clinton’s inner circle at State: Cheryl Mills, Bill Clinton’s lawyer during his impeachment trial, who became Secretary Clinton’s chief of staff; Huma Abedin, Clinton’s longtime aide, who became her deputy chief of staff; Jake Sullivan, a foreign-policy adviser to Clinton’s 2008 presidential run, who became her top foreign-policy adviser at State; and Philippe Reines, Clinton’s long-serving Senate spokesperson, who became a senior advisor.
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