The Patriot Post® · Hillary Clinton's Transparent Deception

Hillary Clinton is reportedly telling donors she will enter the presidential race in April. She sees it as a move that would assuage worries within her party and prime the fundraising pumps. But Mrs. Clinton has far greater problems than when to announce her coronation bid.

Illustrating everything voters don’t like about the Clintons, The New York Times broke the story that Clinton did not use or even set up an official government email account during her entire tenure as secretary of state. Instead, she used private email for all her official correspondence. Furthermore, the Times reported, her staff did nothing to preserve her personal emails on department servers. Failing to use a government email account for all correspondence is a violation of the National Archives and Records Act.

According to Jason Baron, former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, “It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario – short of nuclear winter – where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business.”

The Times reports Hillary’s staff turned over 55,000 pages of her emails to Rep. Trey Gowdy’s Select House Committee on Benghazi. But Gowdy responded that only “several hundred of these emails were … turned over” to his committee. He said also Clinton seems to have used multiple personal accounts. The primary one, clintonemail.com, was set up on the day her Senate confirmation hearings began in 2009. In other words, she had a plan.

“It was not as if she had both an official and a private email account,” Gowdy said. “She did not use personal email in addition to government email. She used personal email in lieu of government email. And she had more than one private email account.”

“[O]nly she has the complete record,” Gowdy continued. “And the committee is going to have to go to her, her lawyers and her email providers to ensure we have access to everything.”

Gowdy added, “One should also be concerned about the national security implications of former Secretary Clinton of using exclusively personal email accounts for the conducting of official U.S. foreign policy.”

By filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Judicial Watch recently obtained a number of emails that prove the State Department knew immediately that our embassy in Benghazi was under attack by terrorists. The emails tell the story in a chilling series of short messages that describe the worsening events that occurred Sept. 11-12, 2012, as well as reveal the administration’s series of lies about what really happened. Not being privy thus far to Clinton’s own emails, we are left to wonder if the thousands of emails she generated on private servers over her four years as secretary of state will completely discredit her – that’s no doubt why she employed the method.

Clinton is by no means the first or only public official to use private email for public business, but she might be the first to do so exclusively. And media outlets Left and Right are attacking her for it.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review asked a particularly salient question about all the investigations into Benghazi. With the multi-thousands of pages of paper floating around, he said, “[Y]ou’d think the non-existence of an official e-mail account would have been noticed. Why did it take so long?” Goldberg credits Gowdy for being the first to notice the missing account.

But Ron Fournier, writing in National Journal, had harsher words for the aspiring first woman president: “Two weeks ago we learned that the Clinton Foundation accepted contributions from foreign countries. Assurances from … Obama … that [none] were made during her tenure … were false.” Both Clinton’s and Obama’s actions were “sleazy and stupid,” Fournier added. “We’ve had sleazy and stupid – and, now, with these emails, suspicious. If she runs, are we going to have a full Seven Dwarfs? Seedy. Sanctimonious. Self-important. Slick.”

Fournier concluded that it may be time for Clinton to abandon her White House bid.

Naturally, Hillary is defiant. Tuesday night at an EMILY’s List party, she repeated ad nauseam her usual sermon about women’s empowerment and hammered away at “that old trickle-down economics” class warfare. She said nothing about the emails. After all, the presidency is her right, and she will continue to pursue it.

We hope Gowdy’s committee throws a wrench in the gears of Clinton’s election machine. He’s determined to get the emails, while she’ll do whatever she can to stop him. But many Democrats who’ve already been whispering about dumping Hillary (again) might decide the timing is right to find a better candidate.