JK on Clinton emails

[karynnj]

14. Like you, I would love to know the real thoughts going through his head

It also looks like the SD had to struggle pretty hard to get the emails - that they should have had within a short time of being written even if they were on a private server.

Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman and the State Department have cast her decision to hand over her emails as motivated by efforts to update the department’s record management system. “When the department asked former secretaries last year for help ensuring their emails were in fact retained, we immediately said yes,” Nick Merrill, the Clinton spokesman, said on Sunday.

But it was the review of Benghazi-related documents last summer that, within the State Department, set off the chain of events leading to the public disclosure this week of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email account, according to the current and former department officials.

The decision to ask Mrs. Clinton for her emails went all the way to Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff, who, along with officials working on the response to the Benghazi requests, signed off on it.

Beginning in August, senior State Department officials held negotiations with Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers and advisers to gain access to her personal email records. At one point, her advisers met face-to-face with department officials in Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/us/politics/hillary-clinton-asks-state-dept-to-review-emails-for-public-release.html

At one of the early House hearings, Kerry designated his very trusted chief of staff, David Wade, as the person to get everything the committee needed so they would be done with Benghazi.

Later, even as Issa, and the new committee threatened Kerry with subpoenas accusing him of stonewalling - there was obviously no proactive action by the Clinton people to give them the records the SD should always have had!

Reading the rest of the article, it is clear that the SD spokesperson is actually trying to put Clinton in the best possible light. However, from another behind the scenes NYT article, there are Clinton people angry that Obama aides are not doing enough to protect HRC.

" Moreover, Mrs. Clinton’s relationship with the Obama White House, which she and her aides worked hard to improve and nurture, once again seems strained. Some of her allies have grumbled that the president’s aides could have done more to support her — perhaps, one said, by pointing out that the president himself and Mrs. Clinton’s successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, both use private accounts in addition to their government email addresses."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/us/politics/when-hillary-clinton-joined-obama-administration-friction-was-over-staff-not-email.html?ref=politics&_r=0

Note also that they speak of Kerry as using both private and personal accounts - which in fact contradicts what the SD has said - he is exclusively using the government server for his State Department work. Obama also uses the government account. Note also the sneakiness in the language in that sentence -- it does not say for government business. This sentence would be true if Obama or Kerry had a private account that was used exclusively for 100% private (not work) messages - to their wives, children, family. Yet it is implicitly equated to HRC using EXCLUSIVELY a commingled account for all her work and personal emails, which is completely ridiculous.

This is really a mess that HRC's fear of transparency has created for the SD, the administration and Kerry and Obama personally. The behind the scenes articles are interesting because the one thing I absolutely do not see is the Clinton aides taking any responsibility for anything here.