MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell chastised former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for ignoring her responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Act when she failed to turn over all of her work emails to the State Department, and said it was never a good idea for her to use her own email system.
“That was an absolutely unacceptable choice from the start,” O’Donnell told Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe” Tuesday.
O’Donnell said he did not think the content of Clinton’s emails was particularly concerning, but said the issue was her failure to hand over the documents in the “proper, custodial preservation of State Department emails.”
“There’s no question about it, it was very clearly in violation,” O’Donnell said.
“And so then, after the violation is made, when she’s a candidate for president, Hillary Clinton says, ‘I have now turned over all State Department emails, all of them, and the only stuff I didn’t turn over, after my lawyers went through the server and checked it all, was personal stuff involving weddings and material like that.'” O’Donnell said. “What we’ve now discovered is that that statement, as she said it, is not true.”
Scarborough said that the contents of those other, deleted emails would never be known because “she wiped out the server.”
Liberals should care that Clinton’s actions thwarted public disclosure policies under the Freedom of Information Act, O’Donnell said.
“That was to contradict the Freedom of Information Act, Americans’ freedom, the press’ freedom to be able to request these kinds of documents. That’s what it was about,” O’Donnell said.
