The Final Word on Hillary's Emails

As you may have heard by now, Hillary Clinton used a private email server to do her job when she was America's Secretary of State from 2009-2013.  A lot of people are upset about this, insisting that she broke the law somehow, saying things like "What's she trying to hide?  I can't believe she's still a free woman!  If anyone else had done this, they'd be in jail!!!"

Ladies and gentlemen, meet another former Secretary of State: Colin Powell:

That's a picture of Mr. Powell on Februrary 5, 2003, lying to the United Nations about the threat Iraq posed to the world.  That little vial in his hand is supposed to represent the anthrax virus, a biological weapon which the Iraqis didn't have.  It turns out, of course, that Iraq didn't have any so-called 'weapons of mass destruction', but Powell and the Bush administration lied to the American people and the world to justify invading Iraq just a few days later.

This has nothing to do with Hillary's email server, or Benghazi!, or any of the other nefarious things Hillary has been accused of.  I mention it only to point out that there are worse things a person can do as Secretary of State than to break the rules about how email is handled.

However, as it turns out, Mr. Powell actually IS relevant to a discussion of Hillary's email server, because you see he also used a private email address to conduct government business while he served as Secretary of State.

In fact, what Powell did was one step worse than what Clinton did.  Clinton turned over her server and everything on it when the State Department and FBI requested it.  Yes, she had deleted SOME emails, because that's how email works.  You read it, and when you don't need it any more, you delete it.  But the point is, when the State Department asked for her emails, she turned over everything she had.

When the State Department asked Powell to turn over his emails, he blew them off.  From a May report by the State Department Office of Inspector General:

At a minimum, Secretary Powell should have surrendered all emails sent from or received in his personal account that related to Department business. Because he did not do so at the time that he departed government service or at any time thereafter, Secretary Powell did not comply with Department policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act. In an attempt to address this deficiency, NARA requested that the Department inquire with Secretary Powell’s "internet service or email provider" to determine whether it is still possible to retrieve the email records that might remain on its servers. The Under Secretary for Management subsequently informed NARA that the Department sent a letter to Secretary Powell’s representative conveying this request. As of May 2016, the Department had not received a response from Secretary Powell or his representative. 

Strangely, I have read no recent accounts of anyone demanding that Colin Powell be locked up --- or worse yet, executed --- because he lied us into the Iraq War.  And not because he used a personal email account to conduct government business, either.

So let's treat Hillary the same way we treat Colin Powell.  Don't lock her up, and don't say mean things about her.  Instead, think of her as a beloved elder statesman.  For some reason, that's how many people look at Powell.