Why the Hillary Email Imbroglio Matters for Those Who Care About Secrecy and Transparency

Trevor Timm

August 2, 2015

Sorry, Hillary Clinton fans: her email errors are definitely newsworthy 

The Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and its supporters have spent the last week trying to paint the continuing scandal over Clinton’s private email server as a partisan persecution with no significance to the presidential race. But anyone who cares about government transparency, overclassification and cybersecurity should care about Clinton’s email scandal – including her strongest supporters. 

Put aside the House’s Benghazi committee and Republican attempts to turn every Clinton misstep into a Great Benghazi Conspiracy. There’s plenty of legitimate reasons this remains a disturbing episode, and it’s a wonder Clinton’s camp isn’t more forthcoming with the media. Whether her supporters like it or not, this is a story, and it’s going to continue to be a story as emails continue to be released over the next year.

First, there’s Clinton herself. She repeatedly denied having classified information in her emails, yet now we find out there are likely “hundreds” of emails containing it (more on that later). One of her closest aides, Philippe Reines, excoriated Gawker months ago for claiming he was using a private email address to conduct state business during his tenure at the State Department, yet he apparently just turned over 20 boxes of emails containing just that. Does the public not deserve an explanation about these seemingly false statements?

Using private email for public business is also a tried-and-true tactic to evade public records requests, no matter what Clinton defenders might say. And it is beyond question that it worked, as Foia requests filed for these emails were stonewalled for years and only thanks to the attention are now just starting to trickle out. It may be part of the reason why Clinton’s State Department had a “dismal” record on transparency, which is certainly an issue a lot of non-Republicans care about.

Should citizens not have serious concerns given Clinton was a target of dozens of intelligence agencies as Secretary of State and put herself at increased risk of spying by using private email with unknown security features? In an age where both political parties claim that cybersecurity is such a serious concern that they are willing to trample citizens’ basic privacy rights, it’s a wonder the argument is being made presidential candidates should be above reproach.

The Clinton campaign and its supporters have jumped on the mistakes in the initial New York Times report about Inspectors General allegedly making a “criminal” referral to the Justice Department, only to walk back the story the next day. The Times mistake culminated in the campaign writing an almost 2,000-word screed aimed at the Times that was posted on hillaryclinton.com Thursday night.

Clinton’s camp can quibble over whether it was a “criminal inquiry” or “security inquiry” until they are all blue in the face, but the underlying story remains correct: it’s against the law to mishandle classified information, and there are apparently many, many emails with classified information in them, despite Clinton’s repeated denials.

If the Clinton camp wants to argue that none of the information should have been classified, or that anything can be classified after the fact, then great – the classification system is bloated, corrupt and broken, and the intelligence community, which now wants veto power of the email release schedule, should be number one in line for blame. Maybe the hundreds of emails that the intelligence agencies have identified as containing classified material are genuine secrets. More likely, it’s innocuous or mundane information that won’t actually affect anything except their maniacal control over information.

Fix the classification system. It’s clear there are way too many secrets. If Team Clinton wants something else to blame for the trouble their candidate is in now, blame that.

Then, there’s the State Department and embarrassingly bad Freedom of Information Act policy of the “most transparent administration in history.” It’s clear during Clinton’s tenure and afterwards that, like many in the federal government, the State Department flagrantly flaunted the Freedom of Information Act, despite a legal responsibility to respond to requests in a reasonable manner.

That the State Department stonewalled Foia requesters for over four years for Clinton’s emails should be a scandal in itself, and the fact that open government groups are up in arms over it has nothing to do with loving or hating Hillary Clinton.

The State Department is still somehow dragging its feet on Foia requests, asfederal Judge Richard Leon just excoriated the agency for its pattern of delays involving even the simplest requests for the emails. Responding to a request to release a mere 60 emails, the judge said, “Now, any person should be able to review that in one day – one day… Even the least ambitious bureaucrat could do this.”

None of this means that Clinton’s presidential campaign is over or she is going to jail (of course she’s not). But it does show exactly why government transparency is important, and the Clinton campaign, the State Department and the Obama administration in general should be embracing transparency, rather than running from it.