The Clinton Scandals

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Last week, Congress received a brief, nine-page report from the State Department, which summarizes the department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account to conduct work business while she was secretary of state. The report can be fairly summarized in two sentences: She shouldn’t have done that. But it wasn’t that big of a deal. Thus, America finally has closure on a minor scandal that many of the nation’s most powerful and influential news editors treated as if it were the most important issue facing voters in the 2016 election. “In just six days,” according to an analysis of 2016 coverage published in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), “the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” And the Times was hardly alone in this regard.

The State Department’s report reaches two broad conclusions. Clinton’s “use of a private email system to conduct official business added an increased degree of risk” that classified information would be compromised. But “there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.” In 2016, the State Department’s inspector general also determined that Clinton’s Republican predecessors, Secretaries Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, also received classified information on their personal email accounts.

So Clinton committed the same mistake committed by her predecessors — Powell reportedly advised Clinton to use a personal email account for non-classified communications shortly after Clinton became secretary — and the State Department’s report found no systemic mishandling of information.

Hillary Clinton: the shameful conclusion to the But Her Emails debacle - Vox