Inspector General’s Report Refutes All of Hillary Clinton’s Defenses For Using Private Email Server (New at Reason)

Hillary Clinton has offered a number of defenses for using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination has pointed to the use of private email by her predecessors. She has also claimed that she asked permission to use her private server for official business, and that she was informed such behavior was “allowed.”

But, Andrew Napolitano writes in a new column, the State Department’s inspector general released a report last week that “refutes every defense she has offered to the allegation that she mishandled state secrets”:

It revealed an email that hadn’t been publicly made known showing Clinton’s state of mind. And it paints a picture of a self-isolated secretary of state stubbornly refusing to comply with federal law for venal reasons; she simply did not want to be held accountable for her official behavior.

The report rejects Clinton’s argument that her use of a private server “was allowed.” The report makes clear that it was not allowed, nor did she seek permission to use it. She did not inform the FBI, which had tutored her on the lawful handling of state secrets, and she did not inform her own State Department IT folks.

The report also makes clear that had she sought permission to use her own server as the instrument through which all of her email traffic passed, such a request would have been flatly denied.

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