2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHillary Clinton just had the Worst Week in Washington
"By now, Hillary Clinton almost certainly expected that she would be well into a general election fight against Donald Trump punching down at the target-rich real estate developer amid polls showing her sweeping into the White House.
Not so much.
Instead, Clinton spent the week in California, fighting for votes in advance of the Golden State's June 7 primary against the still-lingering challenge of Bernie Sanders.
But that was a cakewalk compared with what came out of Washington on Tuesday. The State Department's inspector general released an 83-page report detailing a series of missteps made by Clinton when she decided to exclusively use a private email server and address for all of her electronic correspondence as the nation's top diplomat.
Here's the key snippet, as reported by WaPo's Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger:
The inspector general, in a long-awaited review obtained Wednesday by The Washington Post in advance of its publication, found that Clintons use of private email for public business was not an appropriate method of preserving documents and that her practices failed to comply with department policies meant to ensure that federal record laws are followed.
The report says Clinton, who is the Democratic presidential front-runner, should have printed and saved her emails during her four years in office or surrendered her work-related correspondence immediately upon stepping down in February 2013. Instead, Clinton provided those records in December 2014, nearly two years after leaving office.
Clinton initially sought to downplay the report as old news. "Its the same story," she told Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas. "Just like previous secretaries of state, I used a personal email. Many people did. It was not at all unprecedented."
Except that it was. While other secretaries of state had used personal email addresses, none of them had exclusively done so. And as Helderman and Hamburger noted, the State Department IG report scolded Clinton not only for using the email address exclusively but also for slow-walking the release of those emails to the State Department.
For Clinton, who has struggled for more than a year with how to best respond to the email problem and to the broader honesty and trustworthiness questions it raises it was exactly what she didn't need as she seeks to finally close out Sanders and unite the party in the face of a surprisingly strong showing by Trump in early general election polls.
By Thursday night, Clinton was calling in to cable shows to revise and extend her initial dismissiveness about the IG report. Too late. Damage done."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/28/hillary-clinton-just-had-the-worst-week-in-washington/
Damage done. Worst week indeed!
winter is coming
(11,785 posts)NWCorona
(8,541 posts)Yurovsky
(2,064 posts)Sweet baby Jesus I wouldn't want her job when it comes time to break the news to Her Majesty that the peasants have abandoned her ...
yourpaljoey
(2,166 posts)-none
(1,884 posts)Whether she gets out maneuvered or gets let away be some sun glass wearing, dark suits to be booked.
yourpaljoey
(2,166 posts)YouDig
(2,280 posts)She's still gonna be the nominee, she's still gonna beat Trump. Getting the email stuff out of the way before the convention is a good thing in the long term.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)tazkcmo
(7,302 posts)click click click
There's no place like home.
click click click
There's no place like home.
click click click
There's no place like home.
Divernan
(15,480 posts)brooklynite
(94,745 posts)But I'm sure BENGHAZI will bring her down...
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)I've acknowledged that Hillary is currently ahead of Bernie.