Hillary Clinton’s big press conference Tuesday, where she “addressed” the subject of her official emails, she said this:
We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work- related emails and deliver them to the State Department. At the end, I chose not to keep my private personal emails — emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes.
No one wants their personal emails made public, and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy. . . .
In going through the e-mails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. About half were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work. I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision because the federal guidelines are clear and the State Department request was clear.
For any government employee, it is that government employee’s responsibility to determine what’s personal and what’s work-related. I am very confident of the process that we conducted and the e-mails that were produced.
Now, this is an issue because (a) Hillary’s emails as Secretary of State have been subpoenaed by a congressional committee, and (b) Hillary has admitted carrying on official correspondence with a non-governmental email account that was hosted on her own private server. Therefore, investigators are being asked to take her word for all this, because there is no verifiable record — no government computer with a hard drive that can be checked with forensic methods — to confirm what she’s claiming.
And here’s my thing: 30,000 “personal” emails in four years?
Do the math: That’s 7,500 emails a year or (divide 7,500 by 365) 20.5 personal emails every day, 7 days a week.
Gosh, Mrs. Clinton, you were the Secretary of State of the most powerful nation in the world, in charge of a federal department with 18,000 employees around the world, and you had time for 20 personal emails — “not in any way related to my work” — every single day? Madame Secretary, I don’t have time for that, and I’m just a damned blogger.
Does anyone actually believe that Hillary had 7,500 emails every year — at the same account she used for her State Department business — about planning Chelsea’s wedding, condolence notes, yoga routines, family vacations? Her husband doesn’t even use email, so who all had Mrs. Clinton’s private email address to be sending her these personal emails “not in any way related to my work”? Were these people not the least bit reticent about emailing the Secretary of State?
Think about it. In my line of work — and I’m just a damned blogger — there are some people I only contact with very important information. You don’t want to be the guy who’s bombarding, say, Mark Levin or Glenn Reynolds with an email announcing every little clever bit of snark you write. No, you only send those guys an email tip when you think you’ve got something hot, something big.
From such an understanding of ordinary email etiquette, therefore, we may assume a few things. First, that this private email address — the one Mrs. Clinton hosted on a server located in her home — was known only to a few people who were very close to her. It wasn’t like she was handing out business cards with this email address to people she shook hands with at cocktail receptions, OK? Exactly how many of those people would be emailing her about yoga routines? Or who, among these close associates of hers, after finding a joke on the Internet and in the process of spamming it out to their friends, would think, “Hey, this cat video is so funny, I’ll CC it to the Secretary of State”?
Does that make sense? No, it doesn’t make sense at all.
Hillary’s message to America: “Go to Hell.”
to