Posted by Kyle Chapman.
Hillary Clinton was accused of using a personal email account out of her home for her official email communication while she was Secretary of State. She used her family’s private email server, instead of using the official State Department email account maintained on federal government servers. Government officials argue that the use of a private server, private messaging system software, and deleting almost 32,000 emails has violated State Department procedures and federal laws of recordkeeping requirements. Some of these emails are deemed to be “Top Secret” and confidential information. In my opinion, this is a violation of federal law.
After a CNN interview, a new opportunity has shown some light for Hillary. Hillary stated, “Everything I did was permitted. There was no law. There was no regulation.” To clarify, the legal requirement to immediately preserve emails from a nongovernment email account was not put into law until two years after she stepped down as Secretary of State. She claims that she has done nothing wrong because there was no law enforced when she committed the act. Hillary stated that other Secretaries of State did the same thing, but there are no records of other secretaries setting up a private email server for all of their government communications. In addition, while Hillary was Secretary of State, she sent a cable containing her signature warning employees to avoid handling official business from a personal email account.
Therefore, Hillary was well informed of her actions. Even though there was not a specific law enforcing to preserve emails from nongovernment accounts, Clinton knew what she was doing. In that case, I find Hillary guilty for her actions.
This whole controversy started when officials were unable to locate emails in the investigation of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. It looks like as if she was covering her tracks by deleting those emails on her private server. Not only did this interfere with the investigation, but a hacker attempted to hack into her email server.
Mishandling top secret government information is a federal crime. In conclusion, I find Hillary guilty for the use of mishandling government information by using her own private email server.
Kyle is a management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.