Why the Clinton Email Scandal Is So Sticky...Ron Fournier

[mystery-ak]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/73900/why-clinton-email-scandal-is-so-sticky?mref=scroll

 Why the Clinton Email Scandal Is So Sticky

Reasonable doubt stems from the Clintons’ history of innuendo and inquiry.

“You can’t com­plain,” Bill Clin­ton said be­fore he did. In an in­ter­view broad­cast by CNN on Sunday, Clin­ton likened the email scan­dal dog­ging his wife’s pres­id­en­tial cam­paign to the White­wa­ter land deal and oth­ers scan­dals that shad­owed his polit­ic­al ca­reer. “It al­ways hap­pens.”

Yes, sir. That’s sort of the point. Many voters are tired of Clin­ton con­tro­ver­sies and their side ef­fects: De­flec­tion, de­cep­tion, de­ri­sion and di­vi­sion.

He also blamed the email flap on Re­pub­lic­ans who want to un­der­cut Hil­lary Clin­ton’s cam­paign and on polit­ic­al re­port­ers who aren’t in­ter­ested in sub­stance.

Stip­u­lated: Re­pub­lic­ans are par­tis­an and re­port­ers are shal­low.

An­oth­er fact: It’s not our fault.

The GOP did not cre­ate a secret email sys­tem in­de­pend­ent of the Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act, con­gres­sion­al over­sight, and his­tor­ic­al archives. The me­dia did not dis­cuss and dis­trib­ute clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion on the un­se­cured serv­er. Hil­lary Clin­ton’s cam­paign – not the vast right-wing con­spir­acy – has re­peatedly and in­ten­tion­ally misled the pub­lic.

I feel sorry for the Clin­tons. I really do. Start­ing with the White­wa­ter land deal, which I first in­vest­ig­ated in the mid-1980s and found no wrong­do­ing on the part of the Clin­tons, this ex­traordin­ar­ily tal­en­ted couple has been the sub­ject of spuri­ous ru­mors and al­leg­a­tions that have no basis in fact. (I won’t list them all, but in­clude every con­spir­acy the­ory you’ve read about Vince Foster’s sui­cide.)

I un­der­stand their siege men­tal­ity.

And yet, Bill and Hil­lary Clin­ton re­peatedly dis­play a will­ing­ness to ag­gress­ively deny wrong­do­ing when the facts prove them wrong. Des­pite her deni­als, a fed­er­al pro­sec­utor found “sub­stan­tial evid­ence” that Hil­lary Clin­ton had a role in the 1993 White House travel of­fice fir­ings. Five years later, Bill Clin­ton lied to the pub­lic about his af­fair with Mon­ica Lew­in­sky.

Which is why the email scan­dal is so sticky. Hil­lary Clin­ton’s de­fense can be boiled down to two words – “Trust me” – and we can’t. There will be no trust be­fore a cred­ible in­de­pend­ent re­view of the email she de­leted.

There will be no trust un­til she ad­mits what she did was wrong – and not be­cause of “the con­fu­sion it cre­ated,” as she likes to say, but be­cause it vi­ol­ated a fed­er­al policy and the fun­da­ment­als of good gov­ern­ment: trans­par­ency and ac­count­ab­il­ity.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to Madeleine Al­bright, the sec­ret­ary of State un­der Bill Clin­ton, who was asked on MS­N­BC’s “Morn­ing Joe” today wheth­er she would let her deputy sec­ret­ary of State put all email on a private serv­er.

“I would not,” she said. “No.”

Easy an­swer. Straight an­swer. This scan­dal is stick­ing around be­cause Hil­lary Clin­ton can’t seem to sum­mon the same.

Morning Joe
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@Morning_Joe

Would @madeleine allow a Deputy Secy. of State to use a personal email server? Here's her answer.
6:06 AM - 28 Sep 2015

video at link