At long last, Hillary Clinton has graciously decided to take non-pre-approved questions from journalists during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, in which she will provide a carefully crafted response to her current email scandal.
The media will finally have a chance to question the Lady Clinton directly, without having to go through one of her spokesman or rely on a tweet. This presents a very rare opportunity for the press and one that I hope (not holding my breath) that they’ll take to ask Clinton some tough but necessary questions.
The first questions are the most relevant to Clinton’s current scandals. The last questions are there because this might be the only chance the press gets to question Clinton for who knows how long (she hasn’t been as open to the press as Republican presidential hopefuls have been).
Now there are far, far more questions that need to be asked of Clinton, but I suspect she will only take a few at her press conference, so I kept this list somewhat short.
1. Why didn’t you even have an official email address?
I could maybe understand occasionally using a personal email address for work purposes, but Clinton created her personal account specifically for work purposes and didn’t even have a .gov email address. Why?
2. You sent 55,000 pages of emails for the federal record. How many pages were not sent? Why didn’t you send them electronically so that they would be searchable?
Clinton’s staff shipped 55,000 pages of email correspondence to the State Department. This means they went through her emails and decided what should be included in the federal record. This also means that we don’t know what wasn’t included. It could all be actual personal emails to her daughter Chelsea about her pregnancy or to her friends and other family members, but we’ll never know. Clinton’s team decided what emails we get to see and which ones we do not. That should worry transparency advocates.
3. Did you personally decide which emails to turn over to the State Department?
It seems unlikely that Clinton herself poured through the thousands of emails she sent during her time as secretary of state. Given that, we should probably know who on her team decided what was relevant and what was not.
4. How secure was your “homebrew” email server?
Christopher Budd at GeekWire raises the point that since we don’t know how secure Clinton’s email server was, or whether it was protected by the government, we don’t know whether her emails — and the State Department as a whole — were compromised. If the server was stored in her home in New York, as reports indicate, was it set up and run by government officials? Was there a team running or physically protecting the server, or was it just sitting there?
Was this server under the same protection as official government servers? How can we be sure it wasn’t compromised?
5. Who else in your State Department exclusively or frequently used a personal email address to conduct official business? Will their correspondence also be turned over for the federal record?
If Clinton used a personal email address and no one questioned her about it, then it stands to reason that personal email addresses were commonly used in her State Department. We need to know the extent of personal email addresses used for official business and whether we will ever know what communications were sent outside the purview of the law.
6. The use of personal email for official business caused at least one person in your State Department to be forced out. Why the double standard?
Former Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration was ostracized for his use of personal email (in addition to many other reasons that led to his resignation). Why was it not acceptable for him to use a personal email address but okay for Clinton to use one? If it was about the content of his emails, shouldn’t we know the content of all of Clinton’s emails to ensure there wasn’t a double standard?
7. Did you know that personal emails would not be included automatically in federal records as required, and that they can’t be searched to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests? If so, how do you explain your exclusive use of them?
It seems impossible that she didn’t know or was never told. We need to know why she used the personal email in spite of her knowledge of the law.
8. Government transparency is a big deal in U.S. politics right now. How can you claim you will be a transparent president if you used a personal email, circumventing federal law, and only turned over some of your emails after you left the office?
Even then, she only turned over those emails after she was asked by the federal government.
9. You condemned President George W. Bush for “secret White House email accounts” back in 2007. How is your use of a secret, personal email account different?
This question comes from the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, who wrote a column about this very hypocrisy last week.
10. Do you condemn Sen. Bob Menendez’s actions?
Menendez, D-N.J., is going to be indicted by the Justice Department in the coming weeks for accepting gifts from a wealthy donor in exchange for political favors. The Clintons are reportedly close to the donor in question as well.
If this were happening to a Republican senator, we all know that every GOP presidential hopeful would have to condemn their actions. Why should Clinton be any different?
11. You claim that American women earn 78 cents to the dollar that men earn, yet using the same metrics, you paid women in your Senate office 72 cents to the dollar. How do you explain that? Will you continue to cite that statistic?
Her spokesman already provided an answer to this question, sort of. He countered by saying Clinton had a female chief of staff and were some of the top-paid people on her staff. But who were the highest-paid people throughout her time as senator had more to do with loyalty than what positions they held. And that still doesn’t answer the fact that using the same metric that claims women in America only earn 77 cents to the dollar of men, Clinton paid women even less.
12. Additionally, women executives at the Clinton Foundation earned only 63 cents to the dollar of male executives. How can you be a champion for equal pay when you don’t pay women equally in your offices?
In reality, the metric used to determine the gender wage gap is flawed. Clinton needs to admit that there is more to the statistic than she has been claiming. She might not give up the statistic, but at least we’ll know she’s using it for political purposes.
13. How would you, as president, be able to stand up to the foreign governments that gave your foundation millions of dollars?
This is similar to the question Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus asked recently. These governments, which have abysmal human rights records (especially when it comes to women) gave the Clintons millions of dollars. How is that not a conflict of interest?
14. Given your past actions against women (the wage gap in your office, taking money from countries that abuse women, victim-blaming her husband’s accusers), how can you claim to be a women’s advocate?
She might be traveling the country claiming to be helping women, but those are just words.
15. How will you deal with the Islamic State?
Clinton voted for the Iraq war and later regretted that decision. How would she work to stop the Islamic State from continuing its attacks overseas? Would she continue the Obama administration’s tactic of virtually avoiding engagement or would she actively work to stop them?
16. Would you continue the Obama drone programs?
As secretary of state, Clinton defended and even expanded the use of drone strikes. Given the Democratic Party’s current wariness of drone use, how would Clinton handle the issue in the election and as president?
17. Is there any part of Obamacare that needs fixing? If so, how would you fix it?
Even President Obama suggested Congress try to fix Obamacare rather than repeal his signature healthcare law. What parts, according to Clinton, need fixing and how would she fix them?
18. When do you believe life begins? Do you believe late-term and partial-birth abortions are moral?
I realize that this question is a little out of left field, but it’s still more relevant than the ones Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been asked recently. Democrats are often allowed to simply say they’re pro-choice and move on, while Republicans must always explain just how pro-life they are. I want to know just how deeply pro-abortion choice Clinton is.
Does she believe sex-selective abortion is acceptable for those who would rather not have daughters? Is she for late-term abortions without exceptions? With some exceptions? Does she believe a baby is not truly a human being until the umbilical cord is cut? What science on this issue would she cite? She’s supposedly an advocate for women, and this is a women’s issue — she should have a very specific answer.
