Fact-checking Hillary Clinton's claim that her email practices were 'allowed' (Politifact)

Politifact ^ | 5/31/16 | Lauren Carroll

[Faith Presses On]

Hillary Clinton is sticking to her defense that her use of a private email server while secretary of state was "allowed," despite a critical independent audit that found it really wasn’t.

(snip)

But for anyone unaware of that nuance — say, the average voter — it sounds like Clinton is defending her email practices as a whole, as something that was fully permitted by the State Department, which is the argument she has been making all along. And that’s just not right.

The gist of the problem is that Clinton never asked anyone if she could use her personal email setup. And the report seems to find that if she had asked, the policy was clear that such a request should have been rejected.

"The private email server was only allowed in the sense that no one managed to prevent it from happening," said John Wonderlich, director of policy at the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency.

(snip)

No one ever stopped Clinton from conducting work over her private email server exclusively. But that’s not the same thing as it being allowed. Offices within the State Department told an independent inspector general that if she had asked, they would not have allowed it.

The report from the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General shatters one of Clinton’s go-to phrases about her email practice. We rate her claim False.

[Faith Presses On]

We shall see.

[ThunderSleeps]

It does not matter if State Dept. regulations "allow" you to use private email for business. (which I very, very much doubt anyway. No company nor government agency I know of allows such a thing) No-one is allowed to expose classified information in an unclassified environment. No one. Classified information would first have to be reviewed and properly declassifed before release. There are no shortcuts.

Clinton is guilty, guilty, guilty. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. There is no reasonable scenario where she does not get prosecuted, does not go to jail for the next several decades. (ie. life) Note, I said reasonable. It is entirely possible the ruling class, "more equal" pigs will drop all pretense and simply let her go. Pitchforks and torches may be in order.

[Faith Presses On]

I agree with you and think that’s going to be very hard for them to do, and they actually seem to be signalling that she’s not going to come out of this unscathed.

Remember how she was when the scandal broke? All cocky that she wouldn’t even have to turn over her server to investigators?

We’ve come a long, long way from that.

And the main Clinton/Democratic argument, that this was all a political witchhunt (the same argument Bill hid behind when he got impeached, with the media’s help), has been destroyed.

[PghBaldy]

It did seem very familiar.

[PghBaldy]

Once one is in lies very deep, there is no way out except more lies, or admission of guilt.

[Aliska]

Well, to some extent she does not admit guilt but was a mistake she would have done differently.

In another comment, I mistakenly thought it was Politico and saw to late a similar name but not the same.

[Cololeo]

What should be even more interesting is if they recovered e-mails regarding the Clinton Slush Fund. That proves the quid pro quo and makes it a RICO case along with treason and espionage. That whole side of this mess has not been explored, but should be fair game for President Trump.

[Cololeo]

Another way to look at this is if Zero tries to pardon her, it could be brought up that he never truly proved his status, (college record, birth certificate, etc) therefore may not have the legal power to pardon anyone.

[Ann Archy]

The Clinton Crime Family Slush Fund is where almost ALL of the crimes have been committed!! It’s so interwoven and complicated, the FBI is having a very difficult time in dissecting it.

[zzwhale]

like EVERYTHING THE CLINTOONS DO
its done sneakily and when they get caught
the signature coverup obstrucion lies and half truths flow
SHE IS GUILTY OF AT LEAST 10 FELONIES REGARDING THE E-MAILS
without any concvern whatso ever of her “movivaiton” or “knowledge” of the LAW
wiping the server (with a cloth.... hardy har har)) is obstruciton of justice.....
AND NOW WE AHVE AN E-MAIL INSTRUCTING HER MINIONS TO REMOVE THE HEADINGS/CLASSIFICATIONS AND E-MAIL THEM DUE TO A BROKEN FAX MACHINE...

thank you wikileaks

[SunkenCiv]

Politifact: We rate her claim False.

...but our top story -- Donald Trump hates the Constitution!!!

Partisan Media Shills Alert!

[zeugma]

How come all of the people who corresponded with her never noticed that her address didn’t end in “gov”?

Depends upon your email client if it even shows the actual recipient address. Also, you can easily set up a 'vanity' domain that merely seems to be a private address, when in fact mail for the domain is handled by the appropriate party. That's what the MX (mail exchange) records are for in DNS, to let email systems know how to route mail. There should also be appropriate SPF DNS records to make everything work correctly.

All of that said, the vast majority of folks don't know anything about how any of this stuff works. Someone should have raised red flags about this while she was SoS. The fact that there were plenty of the media who were likely aware of what was going on, yet never raised the issue is an indictment of their willingness to cover for her.