Hillary Clinton didn’t have to use a government email address — but, as many have wisely suggested, she should have.
Right as the eighth congressional investigation into the attacks on Benghazi was dying down on Capitol Hill last week, the New York Times reported on the previously unreleased bit of information regarding Clinton’s email.
The Editorial Board believes both the motivation and response was as partisan as it was predictable.
By this point it shouldn’t surprise anyone the “leak” likely originated from a congressional committee that increasingly looks like an arm of the Republican National Committee.
The GOP has shamefully politicized the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and embassy staff for years, all in the name of attacking Clinton given the near certainty she will run ?for president.
Though they might claim to search for the truth, the reality is so many of the past seven congressional inquiries have actually been ?motivated by the trutherism of the fringe on the right.
Sinister conspiracies abound in the minds of these people — going as far as purporting Clinton might have killed people herself, and of course, that she’s trying to hide it.
The latest email saga falls nicely with the narrative they’ve built around her as Washington’s Lady Macbeth.
But the episode itself does raise some valid questions about her ?preparedness going into 2016.
First is the notion that she broke the law and the possibility ?Emailgate/Email-ghazi could drag on.
The Obama administration’s public records law stating, “Agency employees should not generally use personal email accounts to conduct official agency business” wasn’t put in place until two years after Clinton left the State Department.
And a 2009 National Archives and Records Administration guideline stipulating federal records sent or received outside systems operated by agencies be preserved in appropriate record-keeping systems seems to have been met when she handed over 55,000 pages of private emails from her time in the Department.
So to that end, it should render the faux-scandal moot.
It likely won’t, because what ‘Ghazi committee will turn down an ?opportunity to grandstand?
A second and more pressing question is whether the latest episode showcases how Clinton will deal with controversy moving forward.
Despite knowing about her private email usage as far back as August, her team was caught off guard when the story broke.
The subsequent response from Clinton and her team hasn’t been enough.
To the Editorial Board, it looks like her team has been negligent, if not outright incompetent, in dealing with the fallout.
As we move deeper into 2016, attacks on her character are only likely to intensify. Team Clinton has to be ready.
Because before the country can be ready for Hillary, she needs to prove she’s ready herself.
