Hillary Clinton State Department Email Scandal

It seems that Hillary Clinton just can't end the nightmare that started at the U.S. State Department.

If only one's past could be erased as easily as the delete button at the top of an email.

But not so fast.

We should all be reminded that even emails are stored on servers, and when you click the delete button, the email is not necessarily gone forever.

An email originates on your server, and is sent to another server. A person may attempt to delete the email on their own server, but that doesn't get rid of the copy of the email on the receiving end.

This is where the Hillary Clinton Email Controversy comes into play. She may have had an aid wipe her own personal server clean, but the recipients of each of her emails may still have a copy of her emails.

Let's first recap the Benghazi scandal that got Hillary embroiled on controversy.

Hillary Clinton's Resignation after the Benghazi, Libya Scandal

Hillary Clinton resigned from the position of Secretary of State on February 1, 2013 over who was responsible for the Benghazi scandal, and in the words of Taylor Swift can't seem to "Shake it Off." To recap the 2012 Benghazi attack, she accepted personal responsibility for the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya (Chris Stevens), U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Office Sean Smith, CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods, Glen Doherty, and 10 other Americans that were injured due to lack of security.

Oh, does this remind me of the ever popular question asked to Presidential hopefuls: What would you do if you received a [national emergency] phone call at 2:00 a.m. in the morning?

In the case of Hillary, she did nothing, and Americans died. Now I state something that I feel to be very obvious, yet many still don't see.

Why does Hillary Clinton deserve to be President of the United States when she allowed innocent Americans to die as Secretary of State?

Since John Kerry has taken over the office, Hillary Clinton has only wanted to forget about the disastrous end to her job as Secretary of State, and this newly opened email controversy is dragging her back down into the mud.

Most people would want to disappear after resigning office amidst a scandal, but Hillary is not your typical woman, and she is not going to back down. Even Senators in her own party are stating that she should address the email scandal, but Hillary remains silent on the whole issue.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) issued a direct message to Hillary Clinton on Sunday, March 8, 2015. She said [to Hillary]: "Step up and come out and state exactly what the situation is."

Senator Dianne Feinsten (D-CA) would like Hillary Clinton to come forward about her most recent scandal regarding using her personal email account while employed by the State Department, because she believes that remaining silent will hurt the public perception of Hillary Clinton. (Source: NBC News, Meet the Press)

"I think that the fact that she is putting them forward will allow us to make sure that people have the information they need."

-President Barack Obama (Source: CBS News)

John Kerry is the first Secretary of State to use "a standard government email address." (Source: The Washington Post)

Many people are asking the question: What did Hillary Clinton do that was so wrong?

It has been confirmed as fact that Hillary Clinton used a personal email account when she conducted official U.S. Government business as Secretary of State. She did this, despite having a U.S. Government provided email account, which she did use.

Why would Hillary use her personal email account when conducting U.S. Government business?

That is a good question. Government protocol (The Federal Records Act) allows the use of personal email account to conduct U.S. Government business only if all email communications are historically preserved for future scrutiny. The big issue is that her emails were sent and stored on private servers (that she owned) rather than government servers, so that she could safeguard her privacy.

The fact that she used her personal account makes people wonder if she was trying to hide something or email communications from Government scrutiny.

The State Department spokeswoman maintains that most of Hillary's emails were sent to and from other department employees. (Source: NPR) The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton provided 55,000 pages of emails (from her personal email) to the State Department.

The State Department's Office of the Historian estimated that the department produces two billion emails a year.

Does 55,000 pages (that she provided) supply every email that Hillary ever sent?

Probably not. And there are a few more questions that need to be addressed:

Three Good Questions about the Whole Hillary Clinton Email Situation

1. Why did Hillary not take a state.gov email address while Secretary of State?
2. Why did Hillary Clinton's aides take no action at the time when Hillary was in office to preserve her emails, and why was this done only after The New York Times reported on it?
3. Why does Hillary Clinton remain silent on the issue, rather than clear up any impropriety suggested by The New York Times?

What should concern the American public even more, is that Hillary thinks that her stellar performance and resignation as the Secretary of State deserves a promotion to the highest position of office in the land -- as President of the United States.

How Many Scandals Before the American People Start to Lose Trust in Hillary?

Hillary running for President sounds about as absurd as Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards still expecting to be nominated as Vice President in 2008, after confessing that he had an affair on his wife with Rielle Hunter. His reputation plummeted overnight, losing his squeaky clean image of being a family man.

On Tuesday, March 10, 2015, Hillary Clinton's office assured the public that she fully complied with all federal laws while serving as Secretary of State. They stated that they were not even asked by the State Department to supply her emails (while in office) until October 2014, and that the State Department recommended to supply printed copies of her emails, rather than send them an electronic archive of the emails.

Indicated by The Wall Street Journal article, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has more questions for Hillary Clinton, and wants to be supplied the electronic archive of her emails. In fact, he believes that electronic records should be easily supplied, since they were electronic records to begin with. The House Panel is prepared to subpoena Hillary Clinton to provide her emails in electronic form.

Jason Chaffetz also made the following statement.

"Somebody's been doing some scrubbing over the past few years...if you leave office, then you don't have your security clearance. So who was it that went through all these emails, sorted them, and printed them all off?"

Perhaps I can answer this for Mr. Chaffetz. Hillary Clinton's emails were not stored on a government server. They were stored on her private server, logged to her home in Chappaqua, NY, and it is reasonable to believe that all of her emails are on a server at her home. So the security clearance part of his question is sort of irrelevant, but he does make a good point about who has been going through Hillary's emails and sorting and perhaps deleting, and printing them out for the State Department. The person doing this job probably did not have a security clearance, and was then privy to classified information.

Hillary Admits She Should have been Smarter About This

Hillary Clinton has conceded that she should have used better judgment and used two separate emails, and two separate mobile devices to send and receive emails. She thought that one device would make her life simpler, but as we know, it did not. (Source: WSJ)

On Friday, March 27, 2015, news outlets provide more news on Hillary's email scandal. It is now public that Hillary has wiped her private servers clean. No more emails. Oopsie!

Not a mistake.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) publicly shared this information after Hillary Clinton's lawyer informed him of this, after Gowdy asked Clinton to turn over her server containing emails sent while serving as Secretary of State. Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, stated in a letter to Trey Gowdy that Hillary Clinton "chose not to keep her non-record personal emails." He indicated that she chose to do this sometime in late October 2014.

But wait a second, there were official "on the record" emails still on her private server?

She claimed to have surrendered 55,000 emails printed and delivered, but Gowdy was concerned about gaps of time found between her emails, which should have had activity while she was in office. These tiny things don't matter to Hillary, because she was preoccupied while Secretary of State, planning for her daughter's wedding.

So no more questions. Drop it. It's not like it's a matter of national security, this time around.

This is business as usual, for Hillary Clinton, because this email scandal is not going to get in her way of a bid for President of the United States.