Hillary’s Latest Email Contradiction

Yesterday I discussed Hillary’s latest lies. Last night Politico posted what it claims were “new inconsistencies” regarding how her

private email setup mangled the facts and fueled lingering questions about how her team decided which messages to turn over to her former agency.

One of Clinton’s assertions fell into doubt Friday as the State Department said it was unaware of any basis for her claim that the agency “had between 90 and 95 percent of all [her] work-related emails” even before she turned over 54,000 pages of records last December.

Pressed by House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy on the issue late in the 11-hour hearing, Clinton said her former agency made the assessment that nearly all her emails were already on file….

In a fact sheet released in March, Clinton’s office said about 90 percent of the emails she turned over were produced because they contained “state.gov” or other official federal government addresses. Her team did not assert at that time that State had concluded it already had 90 percent of her work-related emails.

Even leaving aside the unanswered question of whether the members of “her team” that “decided which messages to turn over” had appropriate security clearances to review top secret classified information, Hillary’s claim that State already had, or at one time had, “more than 90 percent were sent to or from a state.gov email address” starkly reveals her stunning claim to personal ownership and management of what after all by law are public records and also shows her disdain for the Freedom of Information Act.

Consider, for example, how impossible it will be in the future for the State Dept. to meet its legal obligation to respond, say, to a legitimate FOIA request from a journalist, historian, or curious citizen to produce all emails from Hillary that mention Benghazi, Christopher Stephens, the notorious video, etc. To comply, all the records of everyone in the State Dept., the White House, and even other agencies would have to be searched to find any messages sent from Hillary, an impossible task. Or, if you’re in a Brooklyn Bridge-buying frame of mind, you could simply believe Hillary’s assertion that “her team” handed over all her government-related emails.

Politico also writes that “State officials have said that their electronic record-keeping practices at the time were lax and that sending or receiving an email on an official account did not guarantee that it would be archived. In fact, automatic archiving for senior State officials, other than the secretary did not begin until February of this year.”

What, “lax” record-keeping at State “at the time.” Let’s see, who was in charge of State “at the time”? Maybe that person should be held responsible for “lax” and irresponsible stewardship of the public’s information. But at least even during that lax time the emails of “the secretary” were guaranteed “automatic archiving.” Oh wait, “the secretary” in question had absconded with all “her” records.

There was a time, within living memory, when historians would have complained about such desecration of the public record, but as I noted here that time has passed.