Another day, another factual revelation that shows former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been less than honest with the American people.
At some point, it becomes tiresome to ask the same question over and over again. But Clinton leaves us no choice. How many times must she be caught lying before the current presidential campaign has come to an end?
Clinton had maintained, and in fact swore, that she had turned over all work-related emails from the private server she chose to use, in contravention of government secrecy and transparency laws. As it turns out, even this claim was untrue. At least one set of emails exists from 2009 that she hadn’t turned over — between herself and David Petraeus, who was at that time running CENTCOM.
As the Associated Press put it, the emails “don’t appear to deal with highly classified material … but their existence challenges Clinton’s claim that she has handed over the entirety of her work emails from the account.”
That Clinton spent nearly six years hiding her email correspondence from Congress, the public, and the State Department is beyond dispute. And this is no small matter, as such concealment raises important questions about her honesty and fitness for higher office. The fact that she also mishandled classified information only adds to the problem.
But setting all of this scandal’s merits aside, it is also astounding how incompetent her personal and campaign staff must be to allow such deceptions to occur. Even if lying comes naturally to Hillary, one would expect her campaign and those around her to recognize that this sort of thing is not good for her from a political perspective.
The presidency of Clinton’s husband stands as a testament to the fact that even the most embarrassing scandals can be defused with immediate contrition and transparency. Anyone willing to admit and release everything at once can be forgiven.
Instead, Clinton continues to hold back whatever she can, as long as she can. This was, of course, the entire point of her using a private server to conduct all of her government business. Unfortunately for Clinton, the American people have noticed that she thinks they are suckers. The polls show that the joke is really on her. The latest Quinnipiac poll shows that 63 percent of Americans and 68 percent of independent voters view her as untrustworthy and dishonest.
Clinton’s reputation for dishonesty now precedes her. The Democratic primary has become a waiting game: How many Democratic voters are willing to believe their own eyes, and how soon before that number becomes insurmountable for her? If she does win the presidency, it will only be by persuading a very large segment of people who already believe her to be a liar. When American parents teach their children to tell the truth, they may someday use this story to illustrate why.
