The hits just keep on coming. Hillary Clinton, two days ago, satisfied no one with her Turtle Bay press conference. The Clinton email scandal will stay. Not only because Clinton broke several rules (including many of her own) and probably the law also. But also because this proud, independent woman has run out of friends.

Clinton email affair gets serious

Recall who broke the Clinton email story: Michael Schmidt at The New York Times. This did not come from any right-wing organ, nor even The Washington Times. It came from The New York Times. And Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Junior, instead of firing Schmidt and retracting the story, has not only let it run, but has let others follow up on it.

More telling, the Progressive Web organ Common Dreams picked up on it. They flatly accused Clinton of “skirting public disclosure laws while heading the State Department.”

During Clinton’s four-year tenure at the State Department, she never had a government email address nor did her aides take any action to preserve her correspondence on department servers. Under the Federal Records Act, such communications are considered government records and are supposed to be archived “so that congressional committees, historians and members of the news media can find them,” the Times reports.

Further, experts said that there is no guarantee of security with personal email accounts.

A stylized drawing of an e-mail server. Graphic courtesy Pixabay.com

They said that before they knew how personal the Clinton email accounts were. The domain “clintonemail.com” could have sat on a shared, semi-dedicated, “virtual private,” or fully dedicated server. Even such a server would have had professionals guarding it, backing it up, and keeping it safe from viruses. But two days ago Hillary Clinton admitted: she uses no third-party Web host. The domain sits on a private server in her home. People set up such private servers only when they don’t want to deal with third parties. Perhaps they plan to do things typical Terms of Service for Web or email hosts would never let them do. Or perhaps they plan to do things and keep those things ultra-secret, even from those having a legal business to know. Which is what Hillary Clinton must have planned. And she registered that domain on the day of her confirmation hearing.

But she admitted something else two days ago. She deleted more than thirty thousand emails from that server. And she did this without first consulting her successor or anyone else in the government department she ran. For that reason, The New York Post calls her “the deleter of the free world.”

She could go to prison for that, hints Judge Andrew P. Napolitano:

I have not seen Mrs. Clinton’s signature on any documents, but standard government procedure is for her to have signed an agreement under oath when she began her work at the State Department requiring her to safeguard classified records, and another agreement under oath when she ended her work that she had returned all records to the government.

She violated both agreements, and she violated numerous federal laws.

For that, says the judge, Clinton could get three years in prison and a bar from ever again holding office of honor, trust or profit under the United States or any State. Stephen Dinan, also at The Washington Times, agrees. Three years in prison per message, he warns. He also picked up on this: the Associated Press sued the State Department and alleged non-cooperation with discovery. (Judicial Watch also sued, on the same grounds.)

“Judge Nap” wonders whether the White House gave Clinton special treatment. Or did they? Ben Wolfgang of The Washington Times doubts that. “White House to Hillary Clinton: You’re on your own!” chuckles his headline. Press Secretary Josh Earnest didn’t even want to talk about it. And he flat-out told Wolfgang and other members of the White House Press Corps: ask the Clintons about the Clinton email problems!

The real Clinton email problem

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As Monica Crowley points out, Hillary Clinton, as many laws as she broke, shouldn’t have this kind of trouble. If people liked her better, the White House would leap to her defense. (In fact, CNAV doubts The New York Times would ever have published the story to start with.) The problem, says Crowley: people don’t like Hillary Clinton. Even her fellow Democrats and leftists don’t like her. (And they must not! The Clinton email story has proved ridiculously easy to source, even from left-wing sources!) At least Bill Clinton worked hard to create the part of a likeable rogue, and act the part. Hillary Clinton didn’t even do that. She did not command respect; she demanded it. The one does not equal the other.

Suzanne Fields weighed in further: Clinton has none to blame but herself. Maybe Ms. Fields was talking about this.

One Democrat tried to offer constructive criticism: Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). On NBC’s’ Meet the Press, she told Hillary Clinton plainly: “step up” and tell the facts behind the Clinton email story. The senator certainly sounded like a friend. She did not even seem to suspect Clinton of doing anything wrong. She said the longer she tried to ignore the Clinton email story, the worse people would assume. Yet, two days later, Clinton almost told the American people to eat cake. Or worse.

Crowley still calls Clinton “the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination.” Or is she? She certainly worked hard enough to distract everyone at that press conference. Before she even talked about the Clinton email mess, she laid out two campaign platform planks:

1. Men and women still do not get equal treatment under the law or at work. (False, or at least debatable.)
2. Forty-seven Republican Senators betrayed their country by writing to the Iranian mullahs to say in effect, “We will not concur with any treaty licensing you to develop nuclear weapons in ten years.”

In short, sexism becomes the new racism, and the Republican Senate becomes the new Bush. But if the never-married-and-never-will-marry women whom Crowley identified as the Clinton “core constituency” want a champion of “sexual justice,” they need not stay with Hillary Clinton. Elizabeth Warren will serve just as well. Dick Morris knew that nine months ago. (Crowley also described Obama as “on the way out.” Rush Limbaugh, recall, fears otherwise. And always has.)

So the Clinton email scandal will stay. For two reasons. First, the proud, independent Hillary Clinton ran out of friends. Second, the ultra-left not does not like her, but does not even trust her. They have others they trust better than her.

Update:

Dick Morris said today the Clinton email story will likely knock Hillary Clinton out of the nomination race, if not now, then later. The contents of the emails, or the lack of content in several-month gaps, will embarrass the Democrats too much to let them nominate her next year.

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