The Clinton Blame Game

The State Department discovered what some Americans have known all along — that Hillary Clinton puts her own personal interests before the best interests of the country.

The inspector general found that Clinton’s deletion of thousands of emails from her personal server was a direct violation of the Federal Records Act.

The 78-page State Department Inspector General audit released Wednesday showed that Clinton violated the Federal Records Act, and by doing so, put national security at risk. The inspector general found that Clinton’s deletion of thousands of emails from her personal server was a direct violation of the Federal Records Act.

In order to spread blame — or to make it look as if Clinton was simply doing what others before her have done — the audit noted that former Secretary of State Colin Powell also used a personal email account. But that the scale and scope of Clinton’s was much different. Powell did not host his personal email on a private server located in his home — Clinton did.

“By Secretary Clinton’s tenure, the department’s guidance was considerably more detailed an more sophisticated,” the report said. “Secretary Clinton’s cybersecurity practices accordingly must be evaluated in light of these more comprehensive directives.”

That nugget of information was all Clinton needed to use the correspondence of previous secretaries of state as scapegoats for her ill-intentioned behavior. “While political opponents of Hillary Clinton are sure to misrepresent this report for their own partisan purposes, in reality, the Inspector General documents [show] just how consistent her email practices were with those of other secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email,” the Clinton campaign said in a statement.

Clinton responding to the report’s findings in a statement that in true Clinton fashion accepted zero responsibility for her deceitful actions. “Contrary to the false theories advanced for some time now, the report notes that her use of personal email was known to officials within the department during her tenure, and that there is no evidence of any successful breach of the secretary’s server,” the campaign said.

[lz_graphiq id=hvcrz3F2aj3]

The statement led some to wonder whether or not the Clinton campaign read the same report they did. In the report it includes emails from the technology department repeatedly saying that Clinton’s personal server had been hacked. Despite warnings and briefings from State Department officials that there were significant cybersecurity risks when it came to personal email accounts, Clinton refused to give it up or to even ask permission.

Clinton has consistently said there was knowledge of her personal email use and that it was permitted, but the report shows something much different. The report came to the conclusion that Clinton violated the agency’s email rules when she decided to use her own private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Additionally, the report said that Clinton had not sought permission to use a private email server and that if she had asked it “would not have approved her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct department business” — damning to Clinton’s argument that her decision was permitted.

What’s more, at every turn Clinton has made a mockery out of the FBI investigation into her potentially criminal behavior, and her supporters have downplayed the entire situation. In March Clinton praised herself, saying she’s been transparent. “I’ve been more transparent than anybody I can think of in public life,” Clinton said to CBS News. A laughable statement, considering new secrets are exposed daily surrounding her less-than-transparent actions.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1bcSSSEjSc”]

“In November 2010, Secretary Clinton and her Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations [Huma Abedin] discussed the fact that Secretary Clinton’s emails to department employees were not being received,” the report said. “The Deputy Chief of Staff [Abedin] emailed the secretary that ‘we should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.'” But Clinton stood steadfast in her decision to use a personal account, so that way her personal communications would not be made transparent to the public. “Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”

How convenient that Clinton spun the facts to her advantage — knowing full well that the report said her email correspondence violated the Federal Records Act and left classified material vulnerable to hacking.

The scandal surrounding her email correspondence is still alive and well thanks to the evidence contained in the State Department audit — leading some to question whether or not she’s fit to be president of the United States. If she was willing to risk national security once, what’s stopping her from doing it again?