In an interview Sunday afternoon, Scott Walker strongly criticized Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of private email as secretary of state and rejected accusations that he’s guilty of hypocrisy on the issue.
“It’s a logical assumption that the secretary of state is talking about highly confidential classified information. How can she ensure that that information wasn’t compromised?” Walker told THE WEEKLY STANDARD following an event with supporters in Des Moines. “I think that’s the bigger issue—is the audacity to think that someone would put their personal interest above classified, confidential, highly sensitive information that’s not only important to her but to the United States of America. I think is an outrage that Democrats as well as Republicans should be concerned about.”
Walker has been accused of hypocrisy by some Democrats because aides who worked for Walker when he was Milwaukee County Executive set up a private email network. But Walker said on Sunday that there is no equivalence between what happened in his office and what Clinton did as secretary of state. In addition to arguing that Clinton’s exclusive use of private email put classified information at risk, Walker pointed out that his actions as Milwaukee County Executive have already been thoroughly investigated.
“I mean, what, a quarter of a million emails or those related to me have come out, and what’s the wildest thing that came out of it? I think arguably the craziest news story out of it is that someone who appears to have been an intern years ago wrote a draft letter in response to a request to put up a menorah candle for Hanukkah and at the end said Molotov instead of Mazel Tov. If that’s the craziest thing you can look at, most people realize that really wasn’t much of anything,” Walker said.
During the course of a three-year investigation led by a Democratic prosecutor, hundreds of thousands of emails were examined and hundreds of witnesses were interviewed. No charges were ever filed against Walker, but two of his aides were convicted for doing political work while at their official Milwaukee County jobs.
“While Walker’s county administration made some questionable hires, Walker himself avoided much taint,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported when the investigation closed in 2013. “Certainly, the governor comes out of this pretty much Clean Gene,” William Jennaro, a former judge and prosecutor, told the Journal Sentinel.
Walker also argued on Sunday that critics were wrong to “ignore the last four years” of his governorship, during which time “we have an established policy at the state where all of that information goes through the state server, so any of that is open through the state’s open records rules.”
