Before we get into the details of the Hillary Clinton email story, note that I'm writing this on Tuesday morning, and with each passing hour the story seems to be getting a little clearer. It may turn out to be significant, or it may turn out to be a big nothing; at the moment things seem to be moving in the latter direction, but that could change. Last night, when The New York Times published this story revealing that when she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton did not have an official email address but instead used her personal email account for official business, people were reacting as though it was a blockbuster, a new scandal in the making. As everyone noted, it plays right into concerns about the Clintons' penchant for secrecy, and the poor staff work that so plagued her 2008 campaign (the assumption being that if her staff were more on the ball, they wouldn't have allowed her to use a private email for official correspondence).
But what a story "plays into" tells us nothing about what's there and what isn't. So was there any actual wrongdoing? According to Anne Gearan of The Washington Post, John Kerry was the first secretary of state to use a .gov email address. That wasn't made clear in the Times story, and it would certainly seem like a mitigating factor; if Clinton wasn't doing anything different from her predecessors, then this looks less like a conspiracy to conceal something.
The State Department says that last year they requested that former secretaries of state give them any work-related emails from their private accounts for preservation; in response, Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails. Three hundred of those pages were relevant to requests that the special congressional committee on Benghazi had made, so they were passed along to the committee. This morning, Elijah Cummings, the ranking minority member on that committee, issued a statement saying the committee should release those emails to the public. Of course, if they do release them and they don't contain anything incriminating, some people will say that proves that the real emails detailing nefarious behavior are being hidden.
There's no question that government officials, especially those at the highest levels, should have a .gov email address through which all official business is conducted. Since she used a personal account, we have to rely on Clinton's word that what she passed along to the State Department is complete. While I'm not an expert on these regulations, according to Josh Gerstein of Politico, it wasn't until last year, after Clinton had left the government, that a law was passed requiring officials to forward any official business conducted on personal email accounts. If she wasn't breaking any laws or even breaking with previous practice, it still might not have been the right thing to do, but it wouldn't be scandalous either.
Now let me be clear about one thing, because we have a long campaign ahead of us. My personal feelings about Clinton are complicated, to say the least. Defending her from legitimate criticism is about the last thing I have any enthusiasm for, and there are plenty of people who actually get paid to do that.
If Clinton ends up being the Democratic nominee, there will be about a hundred short-term controversies over things she did or said, whether allegedly or actually. Many of these will be ridiculous. There will be faux outrage over statements on the campaign trail, and enthusiastic conspiracy theorizing over Benghazi and who knows what else. She'll also get some criticism she deserves, whether it's about her tenure at the State Department, her activities outside government, or her policy positions.
This will not be the last time that a story breaks, and in the first few hours people start shouting "Major Clinton scandal!" Then it will turn out that when all the facts are in, it's something else: maybe nothing, or maybe something questionable or even problematic in some way, but not really scandalous. Whether you're disappointed or relieved with the way this story is turning out, don't worry. There will be plenty more.
