Could Email-Gate Be Hillary Clinton’s Political Undoing?

The IRS isn’t the only one with an email problem.

Two days ago, The New York Times broke a story that really shouldn’t be that surprising to those who are familiar with the unscrupulous antics of Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, State Department officials said, and may have violated federal requirements that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record.

Mrs. Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

And it gets even better – during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton not only used a personal email account, she also used her own email server instead of using a third-party provider like Gmail or Yahoo Mail, Time reports:

Clinton used a private email server registered back to her family’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., the AP reports. That means she or someone working for her physically ran her own email, giving her wide-ranging control over her message archives. It also could have made her emails more vulnerable to hackers or physical disasters like fires or floods.

But who set this up for Clinton? Unless ol’ Hilldog possesses some as-yet unpublicized technical wizardry skills, it was likely someone else.

The AP traced Clinton’s private email server to the name Eric Hoteham. But that name doesn’t appear in public records databases, campaign contribution records, or Internet background searches.

Mysteriously, Hoteham was listed as the customer at Clinton’s $1.7 million home on Old House Lane in Chappaqua in records registering the Internet address for her email server since August 2010.

The Hoteham name is also associated with a separate email server, presidentclinton.com, and a non-functioning website, wjcoffice.com, all linked to the same residential Internet account as Clinton’s email server.

The AP may have discovered who Hoteham is:

An aide to then-first lady Clinton was identified in a 2002 congressional report as Eric Hothem, whose name is spelled differently than in the Internet records. Hothem, a financial adviser in Washington, was not available to take a phone call when reached at his office Wednesday. He was a special assistant to Clinton as far back as 1997, and considered one of the family’s information technology experts.

And the plot thickens…

Hothem, the former Clinton aide, surfaced in at least two Clinton administration controversies. A congressional report in 2002 investigating pardons said a Citibank account linked to Hothem wired $15,000 to President Clinton’s brother, Roger, in March 2001, while investigators were trying to compel Roger Clinton to testify about his role in several pardon cases. The president’s lawyer told investigators the money came from a personal account of the Clintons and was intended for Clinton’s brother to hire a lawyer.

In early 2001, Hothem was also named by a former White House chief usher as saying the Clintons were permitted to take furniture when they left the White House that later was determined to belong to the government.

Sue Hothem, his wife, is a well-known fundraiser and political consultant in Washington. Last year, she was named a vice president for the technology lobbying group TechNet. It said she previously headed development efforts for the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute. (source)

Clinton’s private email account surfaced publicly in March 2013 after a convicted Romanian hacker known as Guccifer published emails stolen from former White House adviser Sidney Blumenthal. The Internet domain was registered around the time of her secretary of state nomination.

Her reliance on a private email address (one of which was [email protected]) is certainly suspicious (like many things associated with Killary). While using a private email account may not have been against the law, it was definitely unethical:

“What she did was not technically illegal,” Patrice McDermott, a former National Archives staffer and the head of the transparency group Open The Government coalition, told The Hill newspaper. But, she said, “it was highly inappropriate and it was inappropriate for the State Department to let this happen.”

Operating her own server would have provided Clinton with additional legal opportunities to block government or private subpoenas in criminal, administrative, or civil cases because her lawyers could object in court before being forced to turn over any emails.

It also means much of her correspondence was not openly available via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which gives the public right to access information from the federal government.

And, the practice also would complicate the State Department’s legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits, or public records requests. The department would have to take Clinton’s word for it, and accept her assurances she was handing over everything required.

Late last year, Clinton’s team did turn over more than 50,000 pages of emails from her personal account to the State Department when the Federal Records Act was passed.

But did they turn in all of her emails? If not, will all of them be turned in now?

It isn’t looking good, as Jack Linshi of Time explains:

For several years, media outlets have filed requests for Clinton’s official correspondences during her tenure under FOIA. These requests have remained unreturned or unfulfilled, though the State Department has acknowledged their receipt. Theoretically, all of Clinton’s emails concerning government matters during her tenure fall under FOIA’s domain—but they are inaccessible if they were sent between Clinton’s private account and a third-party agency, such as a nonprofit foundation or a private consultancy. Clinton would need to provide these emails herself.

As of the time of this writing, Clinton hasn’t explained why she used her own server and personal email account instead of using an official State Department email address.

Maybe that’s because, in 2007, Hillary had this to say about secret email accounts (kudos to Blake Neff of The Daily Caller for digging this one up):

“Our Constitution is being shredded. We know about the secret wiretaps, the secret military tribunals, the secret White House email accounts,” Clinton said. “It’s a stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok. It is everything our founders were afraid of, everything our Constitution was designed to prevent.”

Clinton has put the White House – the one that vowed to run the most open government in history – in the awkward position of having to answer for her, because she won’t say a darn thing about this.

And the White House doesn’t seem to know what to say, other than that administration policy is for government emails to be used for official business.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi, on the other hand, is saying plenty: late this afternoon, the committee issued subpoenas to the State Department to look deeper into the issue.

From The Washington Post:

“The Select Committee on Benghazi today issued subpoenas for all communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton related to Libya and to the State Department for other individuals who have information pertinent to the investigation,” according to a statement by committee spokesman Jamal Ware. “The Committee also has issued preservation letters to internet firms informing them of their legal obligation to protect all relevant documents.”

Last September, we learned that Clinton Cronies scrubbed and shredded Benghazi-related documents in a State Department basement.

Even after those – and other – revelations, not much has come of investigations into the Benghazi tragedy. It seems that Clinton is immune to prosecution, despite vast evidence of wrongdoing and corruption.

Will this latest scandal finally give the Select Committee on Benghazi the evidence it needs to complete their investigation?

Time will tell.