Those emails are being spun and spun and spun
Here is the text of an email sent to Clinton campaign supporters about the ever-growing email story in italics, with my comments in regular text
Friend --
You might hear some news over the next few days about Hillary Clinton's emails. Because you are an important part of this team, we wanted to take a few minutes to talk through the facts -- we need your help to make sure they get out there.
There's a lot of misinformation, so bear with us; the truth matters on this.
Here are the basics: Like other Secretaries of State who served before her, Hillary used a personal email address, and the rules of the State Department permitted it. She's already acknowledged that, in hindsight, it would have been better just to use separate work and personal email accounts. No one disputes that.
Not entirely true and certainly not accurate. While there are seven living former Secretaries of State, only four served in that post during a time when email was in common use. Former Senator Clinton, Condaleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright. Secretary Albright makes it quite clear that she did not use email during her tenure at State, at all. Secretary Rice did not use email for official correspondence, official email or personal email. General Powell has no emails from his tenure at State and his email account there was closed ten years ago. He says the State Department has copies of all his official email correspondence because it was all sent to people with .gov addresses.
While Secretary Rice and General Powell may have had personal email accounts during their tenure as Secretary of State, neither of them used their personal email for official correspondence. Nor did any of the three Secretaries of State who preceded Senator Clinton have a private email server.
The State Department's request: Last year, as part of a review of its records, the State Department asked the last four former Secretaries of State to provide any work-related emails they had. Hillary was the only former Secretary of State to provide any materials -- more than 30,000 emails. In fact, she handed over too many -- the Department said it will be returning over 1,200 messages to her because, in their and the National Archives' judgment, these messages were completely personal in nature.
It took a judge's order to get Senator Clinton to comply with the request to turn over her emails and she finally released her server. She has been anything but cooperative in this inquiry until the past 72 hours. The other three former Secretaries of State have nothing to turn over.
Hillary didn't send any classified materials over email: Hillary only used her personal account for unclassified email. No information in her emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them. She viewed classified materials in hard copy in her office or via other secure means while traveling, not on email.
That's not what the Intelligence Community Inspector General is saying. From a piece published by The McClatchy Company, publisher of 30 daily newspapers across 15 states:
"The inspector general for the Intelligence Community notified senior members of Congress that two of four classified emails discovered on the server Clinton maintained at her New York home contained material deemed to be in one of the highest security classifications - more sensitive than previously known."
There WERE classified emails on her private server, despite previous denials of this.
What makes it complicated: It's common for information previously considered unclassified to be upgraded to classified before being publicly released. Some emails that weren't secret at the time she sent or received them might be secret now. And sometimes government agencies disagree about what should be classified, so it isn't surprising that another agency might want to conduct its own review, even though the State Department has repeatedly confirmed that Hillary's emails contained no classified information at the time she sent or received them.
Possible but unlikely. Not to mention that the concept of classifying correspondence after its initial distribution to avoid releasing it stinks to high heaven of something wrong.
To be clear, there is absolutely no criminal inquiry into Hillary's email or email server. Any and all reports to that effect have been widely debunked. Hillary directed her team to provide her email server and a thumb drive in order to cooperate with the review process and to ensure these materials were stored in a safe and secure manner.
No criminal inquiry yet. If this happened with anyone below the Cabinet level the FBI would have already opened a criminal investigation. Senator Clinton is getting kid glove treatment and her intransigence in delaying the release of the personal server and complying with the judge's order are not the behavior of someone trying to build their plummeting numbers in the area of trustworthiness.
What about the Benghazi committee? While you may hear from the Republican-led Benghazi committee about Hillary's emails, it is important to remember that the committee was formed to focus on learning lessons from Benghazi to help prevent future tragedies at our embassies and consulates around the globe. Instead, the committee, led by Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, is spending nearly $6 million in taxpayer money to conduct a partisan witch-hunt designed to do political damage to Hillary in the run-up to the election.
Benghazi is almost certainly a red herring at this point. Let's face facts. Errors were made in how security was set up in Benghazi. Senator Clinton wasn't personally involved in those decisions. How the story was spun after it broke is another matter, but nothing she did was any more culpable than things done by many politicians trying to minimize the damage of a bad event.
Hillary has remained absolutely committed to cooperating. That's why, just as she gave her email server to the government, she's also testifying before the Benghazi committee in October and is actively working with the Justice Department to make sure they have what they need. She hopes that her emails will continue to be released in a timely fashion.
Val Kilmer's response is far better than mine could possibly be.
It's worth noting: Many of the Republican candidates for president have done the same things for which they're now criticizing Hillary. As governor, Jeb Bush owned his own private server and his staff decided which emails he turned over as work-related from his private account. Bobby Jindal went a step further, using private email to communicate with his immediate staff but refusing to release his work-related emails. Scott Walker and Rick Perry had email issues themselves.
All true. But a complete apples and oranges comparison. None of these people used a private email server for communications whose disclosure could damage and threaten the national security.
The bottom line: Look, this kind of nonsense comes with the territory of running for president. We know it, Hillary knows it, and we expect it to continue from now until Election Day.
It's okay. We'll be ready. We have the facts, our principles, and you on our side. And it's vital that you read and absorb the real story so that you know what to say the next time you hear about this around the dinner table or the water cooler.
Take a look at more details here, including a complete Q&A, and pass them along:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/email-facts/
Thanks,
Jennifer
Jennifer Palmieri
Communications Director
Hillary for America
Friend --
You might hear some news over the next few days about Hillary Clinton's emails. Because you are an important part of this team, we wanted to take a few minutes to talk through the facts -- we need your help to make sure they get out there.
There's a lot of misinformation, so bear with us; the truth matters on this.
Here are the basics: Like other Secretaries of State who served before her, Hillary used a personal email address, and the rules of the State Department permitted it. She's already acknowledged that, in hindsight, it would have been better just to use separate work and personal email accounts. No one disputes that.
Not entirely true and certainly not accurate. While there are seven living former Secretaries of State, only four served in that post during a time when email was in common use. Former Senator Clinton, Condaleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright. Secretary Albright makes it quite clear that she did not use email during her tenure at State, at all. Secretary Rice did not use email for official correspondence, official email or personal email. General Powell has no emails from his tenure at State and his email account there was closed ten years ago. He says the State Department has copies of all his official email correspondence because it was all sent to people with .gov addresses.
While Secretary Rice and General Powell may have had personal email accounts during their tenure as Secretary of State, neither of them used their personal email for official correspondence. Nor did any of the three Secretaries of State who preceded Senator Clinton have a private email server.
The State Department's request: Last year, as part of a review of its records, the State Department asked the last four former Secretaries of State to provide any work-related emails they had. Hillary was the only former Secretary of State to provide any materials -- more than 30,000 emails. In fact, she handed over too many -- the Department said it will be returning over 1,200 messages to her because, in their and the National Archives' judgment, these messages were completely personal in nature.
It took a judge's order to get Senator Clinton to comply with the request to turn over her emails and she finally released her server. She has been anything but cooperative in this inquiry until the past 72 hours. The other three former Secretaries of State have nothing to turn over.
Hillary didn't send any classified materials over email: Hillary only used her personal account for unclassified email. No information in her emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them. She viewed classified materials in hard copy in her office or via other secure means while traveling, not on email.
That's not what the Intelligence Community Inspector General is saying. From a piece published by The McClatchy Company, publisher of 30 daily newspapers across 15 states:
"The inspector general for the Intelligence Community notified senior members of Congress that two of four classified emails discovered on the server Clinton maintained at her New York home contained material deemed to be in one of the highest security classifications - more sensitive than previously known."
There WERE classified emails on her private server, despite previous denials of this.
What makes it complicated: It's common for information previously considered unclassified to be upgraded to classified before being publicly released. Some emails that weren't secret at the time she sent or received them might be secret now. And sometimes government agencies disagree about what should be classified, so it isn't surprising that another agency might want to conduct its own review, even though the State Department has repeatedly confirmed that Hillary's emails contained no classified information at the time she sent or received them.
Possible but unlikely. Not to mention that the concept of classifying correspondence after its initial distribution to avoid releasing it stinks to high heaven of something wrong.
To be clear, there is absolutely no criminal inquiry into Hillary's email or email server. Any and all reports to that effect have been widely debunked. Hillary directed her team to provide her email server and a thumb drive in order to cooperate with the review process and to ensure these materials were stored in a safe and secure manner.
No criminal inquiry yet. If this happened with anyone below the Cabinet level the FBI would have already opened a criminal investigation. Senator Clinton is getting kid glove treatment and her intransigence in delaying the release of the personal server and complying with the judge's order are not the behavior of someone trying to build their plummeting numbers in the area of trustworthiness.
What about the Benghazi committee? While you may hear from the Republican-led Benghazi committee about Hillary's emails, it is important to remember that the committee was formed to focus on learning lessons from Benghazi to help prevent future tragedies at our embassies and consulates around the globe. Instead, the committee, led by Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, is spending nearly $6 million in taxpayer money to conduct a partisan witch-hunt designed to do political damage to Hillary in the run-up to the election.
Benghazi is almost certainly a red herring at this point. Let's face facts. Errors were made in how security was set up in Benghazi. Senator Clinton wasn't personally involved in those decisions. How the story was spun after it broke is another matter, but nothing she did was any more culpable than things done by many politicians trying to minimize the damage of a bad event.
Hillary has remained absolutely committed to cooperating. That's why, just as she gave her email server to the government, she's also testifying before the Benghazi committee in October and is actively working with the Justice Department to make sure they have what they need. She hopes that her emails will continue to be released in a timely fashion.
Val Kilmer's response is far better than mine could possibly be.
It's worth noting: Many of the Republican candidates for president have done the same things for which they're now criticizing Hillary. As governor, Jeb Bush owned his own private server and his staff decided which emails he turned over as work-related from his private account. Bobby Jindal went a step further, using private email to communicate with his immediate staff but refusing to release his work-related emails. Scott Walker and Rick Perry had email issues themselves.
All true. But a complete apples and oranges comparison. None of these people used a private email server for communications whose disclosure could damage and threaten the national security.
The bottom line: Look, this kind of nonsense comes with the territory of running for president. We know it, Hillary knows it, and we expect it to continue from now until Election Day.
It's okay. We'll be ready. We have the facts, our principles, and you on our side. And it's vital that you read and absorb the real story so that you know what to say the next time you hear about this around the dinner table or the water cooler.
Take a look at more details here, including a complete Q&A, and pass them along:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/email-facts/
Thanks,
Jennifer
Jennifer Palmieri
Communications Director
Hillary for America
posted by me at 3:58 PM
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