Mediaboss Marketing

Hillary Clintons feisty albeit belated damage-control effort defending her decision to use a private e-mail server exclusively while she was President Barack Obamas secretary of state may have reassured supporters of the former first lady, but the many still-unexplained gaps in her answers have stoked a firestorm among enemies of the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.

The brouhaha over hdr22@clintonemail.com isnt going away, anytime soon.

Whether Ms. Clintons exclusive use of a private server and e-mail address eschewing the U.S. State Departments for both official government and personal communications was simply convenient as she claims, or a clever means of giving Hillary and Bill Clinton control over what becomes part of the historical record, it has set another round of partisan nastiness.

Whats not yet clear is whether the controversy poses a serious threat to her quest for the Oval Office.

At the very least, Ms. Clinton will face more questioning by Republicans in Congress. For her first damage-control session, more than a week after the the news broke, Ms. Clinton picked her forum: the United Nations, away from the tougher Washington media pack. And she abruptly ended the raucous session Tuesday after only 20 minutes. Up on Capitol Hill, where Republicans now control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the going will get much tougher and Ms. Clinton wont be the one deciding when its over.

Ms. Clinton admits that she destroyed tens of thousands of e-mails after first culling those that involved government business and turning them over to the State Department at its request. The destruction of roughly 32,000 e-mails is okay, she insists, because they were all personal and didnt have anything to do with her service as U.S. state secretary. And, she adds, neither the public nor Republicans nor the prying media nor historians have any right to second-guess her.

For any government employee, it is that government employees responsibility to determine whats personal and whats work-related, Ms. Clinton said. I went above and beyond what I was requested to do.

But there was no explanation as to why she waited nearly two years after she left office before turning over copies of the official e-mails to the State Department.

In the end, I chose not to keep my personal e-mails e-mails about planning Chelseas wedding or my mothers funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends, as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes, Ms. Clinton said. No one wants their personal e-mails made public and I think most people understand that and respect that privacy.

Thats not out of character, given Bill and Hillary Clintons long and troubled history of documents mislaid and fiercely adversarial approach to investigations. After all it was Ms. Clinton, then first lady, who claimed it was a vast right-wing conspiracy behind, then unproven, allegations that Mr. Clinton was having sex with a White House intern.

Read more from the original source:
GOP smells blood in Hillary Clinton e-mail affair