Wisconsin’s largest newspaper is excoriating Hillary Clinton’s “abysmal record” on open government, advising voters to “think long and hard” about it before voting in the state’s primary next week.
“Public officials keep secrets because they have something to hide — something they don’t want the people they are supposed to be serving to know anything about,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial board wrote in a Wednesday editorial.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2587111
Concerns raised by a panoply of Clinton scandals over the last two decades “may disqualify her from public office,” the paper argued, recounting Clinton’s opacity on issues ranging from unreleased tax returns in 1992 to the most recent controversy surrounding her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
“The issue immediately at hand — and under investigation by the FBI — is Clinton’s use of a private email server for State Department communications,” the editorial board said. “Clinton may have violated national security laws by making top-secret documents vulnerable to hackers and available to people without proper security clearance.
“Regardless of Clinton’s excuses, the only believable reason for the private server in her basement was to keep her emails out of the public eye by willfully avoiding freedom of information laws. No president, no secretary of state, no public official at any level is above the law. She chose to ignore it, and must face the consequences,” the paper added.
The paper’s position may serve as an unwelcome, albeit unsurprising, foretelling for the Clinton campaign of how the state’s April 5 primary could end. A Marquette Law School poll of Democratic voters released on Wednesday found Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with a narrow 49 percent to 45 percent lead over Clinton.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2587221
“Clinton has a long track record of public service but an equally long record of obfuscation, secrecy and working in the shadows to boost her power and further her ambition,” the Sentinel concluded. “We encourage voters to think long and hard about that record when choosing the next president.”
