New Lies for Republicans to pick over

Wall Street Journal wrote:Hillary Clinton’s Personal Email Use Came Before Recent Rule Changes
Amendments to Federal Records Act passed last year

By
Brent Kendall
March 3, 2015 3:40 p.m. ET
16 COMMENTS

WASHINGTON—Federal laws and regulations on preserving government records only recently have begun to catch up with how U.S. officials communicate, a fact highlighted by the public stir over Hillary Clinton ’s private email use as secretary of state.

The Federal Records Act requires government agencies to preserve records documenting the “organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures and essential transactions” of an agency’s business. But it was only last year that Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, a law with a series of modern-day changes to improve recordkeeping and preservation.

The 2014 overhaul, which postdates Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, placed explicit limits on agency officials using private email accounts for official business. The new law said agency officials can’t create or send a government record on a private account unless they also copy or forward the email to their official government email address.

The National Archives and Records Administration in September 2013 issued guidance to federal agencies that said federal employees generally shouldn’t use personal email accounts to conduct official business, except in limited situations, such as during emergencies when an official may not be able to access an official account.

That 2013 guidance, which also postdated Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, replaced a 2008 memo on federal recordkeeping that didn’t specifically address email records.

But in 2009, the National Archives did issue regulations that said agencies allowing employees to do official business on nonofficial email accounts had to ensure that any records sent on private email systems are preserved “in the appropriate agency recordkeeping system.”

Mrs. Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department but only after they were requested in October of last year. That appears to have been a belated effort by the department to comply with the 2009 regulations. Mrs. Clinton supplied the email records in December.

“Both the letter and spirit of the rules permitted State Department officials to use nongovernment email, as long as appropriate records were preserved,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said.

A State Department spokeswoman said the agency was in the process of updating its records preservation policies to bring them in line with the 2013 National Archives guidance. “We have no indication that Secretary Clinton used her personal email account for anything but unclassified purposes,” the spokeswoman added.

A spokeswoman for the National Archives said, “We have reached out to the State Department to ensure that all federal records are properly identified and managed in accordance with the Federal Records Act and that controls and procedures are in place to manage records effectively in the future.”

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the issue was an important one because if private email records aren’t in the hands of the government, they are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act and congressional oversight.

Use of private email “is probably fairly widespread, but it needs to be fixed,” Mr. Aftergood said. “This would be an occasion to remind people of that.”

—Peter Nicholas contributed to this article.

Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

risingsun wrote:Hate to be the one to point it out, but you should have posted this one section down Quill lol

IndependentThoughts wrote:Can you imagine the uproar from the Democrats if Condoleezza Rice had decided the rules weren’t for her, during her tenure as Secretary of State?

This topic further galvanizes my opinions of those that embrace a political ideology as their own and places the talking heads of “their” party on a pedestal of perfection.  Regardless which party does wrong, wrong was done.  We all should expect a high standard of conduct from our elected and appointed officials, regardless of their political affiliation.  To absolve our officials from misconduct (especially when it’s been intentionally thought out and planned) is to give them unlimited power with no accountability to their constituents.

While many on the left attempt to downplay her most recent scandal, there are many more that have politically distanced themselves from her for it.  Even the commentators on the left have been harshly critical.

The Associated Press did a very thorough fact-check of Hillary’s response.  Despite what the quoted blogger asserts at the beginning of this thread, Hillary did break the law and intentionally circumvented the Freedom of Information Act and federal laws concerning official emails.  See the AP’s analysis here:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/03/10/ap-fact-check-hillarys-email-excuses-dont-hold-water/

Even Jon Stewart skewered Hillary for her actions and lame excuses:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/nsy1a2/on-her-majesty-s-secret-server

My favorite quote is at the end:
“You just told us that you didn’t follow the rules because carrying two devices would be too much of a pain in the ass.  You know what is a far bigger pain in the ass?  Deleting 30,000 emails.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Millions of White House e-mails may be missing, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino acknowledged Friday.

"I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost," Perino told reporters.

The administration was already facing sharp questions about whether top presidential advisers including Karl Rove improperly used Republican National Committee e-mail that the White House said later disappeared.

The latest comments were a response to a new report from a liberal watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), alleging that over a two-year period official White House e-mail traffic for hundreds of days has vanished -- in possible violation of the federal Presidential Records Act.

What did she do?  I'm almost embarrassed.  She failed to turn over emails???  When there was no law requiring it?  When there was no regulation requiring it?  When there wasn't even a rule requiring it?  About the only thing requiring her to disclose her emails, was it would have been polite.

...according to a former Department of Justice attorney and State Department protocol, she may have committed a felony by failing to turn over the proper documentation before leaving her position in 2013.

Every person who works inside the State Department must sign an official Separation Statement, which is a document requiring an inventory be taken of personal documents departing officials plan to take with them. These documents must be submitted to and approved by Department records officials. According to the State Department Records Management Handbook, officials who fail to turn over documents can face, "fines, imprisonment or both for the willful and unlawful removal or destruction of records as stated in the U.S. Criminal Code." Clinton has argued that she has turned over all the proper documents to the State Department, but just did it two years after leaving her position.

"State Department regulations also say that departing officials have to make sure that all of their official records are in the files of the Department of State upon departure. That couldn't be any clearer," Former DOJ Attorney Shannen Coffin said...