Hillary Clinton was in high spirits at a rally in California Wednesday, throwing up a Nixon-esque peace sign and laughing heartily, hours after an audit revealed that she broke federal rules with her use of a private email server.
The audit, performed by the State Department inspector general, also found that information technology officials were not aware of Clinton’s use of a private email server, contrary to Clinton’s past claims.
“[The Office of the Inspector General] found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server,” the report stated.
If officials had consulted about the server they would not have permitted it because of the associated “security risks.”
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who broke news of Nixon’s Watergate scandal, has compared the two scandal-ridden figures in the past.
“In a way, [the Clinton email scandal] reminds me of the Nixon tapes,” Woodward said. “Thousands of hours of secretly recorded conversations that Nixon thought were exclusively his, that he was not going to get them.”
