Hillary Clinton’s problems — both political and legal — are her own doing, the result of her dubious decision while secretary of state to bypass the official government email system in favor of housing her own server in her New York home and using a personal email account to conduct official business, according to
Washington Post editorial writer Eugene Robinson.
Clinton had "no right" to control scrutiny of her communications by the public and political opponents, he writes.
"If you accept the job of secretary of state, you inevitably surrender some of your privacy," Robinson asserts. "Any public official's work-related emails are the modern equivalent of the letters, memos and diaries that fill the National Archives. They tell our nation’s history and belong to all of us.
"Even if your name is Clinton, you have no right to unilaterally decide what is included and what is not."
Rather than insulting Americans' intelligence "by claiming she only did what other secretaries of state had done," Clinton owes us all an apology, Robinson says. "None of her predecessors, after all, went to the trouble and expense of a private email server."
"She stonewalled for so long — there’s no other word for her stance — that recent pledges of openness and cooperation ring hollow," Robinson writes.
"If Clinton now has political problems because of the emails — or, potentially, even legal trouble — it’s her own doing"
Clinton’s polling numbers, popularity among women and minority voters, and substantial campaign war chest all but guarantee her a lock on the Democratic nomination, according to Robinson, but in a general election, "she has needlessly handed her Republican opponent a weapon. Her trustworthiness, as measured by polls, was always a relative weakness. Even if Democrats accept that the email flap is a partisan witch hunt, the GOP nominee will try to persuade independents otherwise."
The legal ramifications are more concerning, he writes.
"Clinton surrendered more than 30,000 messages to the State Department, and an initial review of just 40 emails revealed two that reportedly should have been deemed top secret. Unconfirmed reports — and common sense — suggest there are more.
"Were the questionable emails sent to her by others, meaning the responsibility to flag them as classified was not hers? Was the information considered secret at the time? Was having these emails on her server — and on a thumb drive in her lawyer’s office — at least a technical violation of the law?
"Clinton shouldn’t have to answer such questions. It’s her own fault that she does."
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