Hillary talks but questions grow

Clinton, at the urging of senior members of her own party, addressed the issue Tuesday, as the brouhaha entered its second week.

Rather than concede wrongdoing, the former secretary of state called her actions a matter of “convenience” and said that her family’s email server would remain outside the public’s view. Democrats privately suggested that Clinton’s remarks were more about saving face than giving an exhaustive account of her reasons for not using a government email account.

“She had to say something — she was getting destroyed,” said a veteran Democratic strategist with close ties to the Clintons. “If she wanted to answer all the questions, she’d probably still be talking. This was about conveying, ‘I’m not hiding.’ She obviously knew that questions would linger.”

But after the very awkward press conference, Clinton’s problem may not be lingering questions but new mysteries her comments have created.

During her four years as President Obama’s first secretary of state, Clinton avoided using departmental email and hosted her correspondence on a private server, in possible violation of both federal law on record keeping and norms for security of government communications.

In her statements Tuesday, Clinton conceded having deleted some “private” correspondence, which she said made up about half of the 60,000 emails she sent and received during her time as Obama’s top foreign policy official.

Clinton relied exclusively on a nondescript email address, “[email protected],” rather than an official government account. She also hosted her mail on a private server registered to an “Eric Hoteham,” based out of her New York home.

Among the questions being raised by government watchdogs is how Clinton decided that roughly 30,000 emails on her account were private, which she then opted not to give to the State Department. The agency is now reviewing another 30,000 emails that Clinton says represented official work. The numbers Clinton has provided would mean she dealt with an average of about 625 work-related emails per month, a seemingly low amount of correspondence for a high-ranking official.

Clinton also appears to have contradicted at least two public reports on her communications use. She claimed that many of her private messages were exchanged with husband Bill Clinton, but the popular former president recently told the Wall Street Journal that he has only sent two emails in his life — both during his late-twentieth-century administration.

Clinton also said she used only one communications device for the sake of convenience.

“I opted for convenience to use my personal email account — which was allowed by the State Department — because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails, instead of two,” she said Tuesday. “Looking back, it would have been better if I had simply used a second email account and carried a second phone, but at the time, this didn’t seem like an issue.”

But two weeks ago the former first lady and U.S. senator from New York told Re/code’s Kara Swisher that she uses an “iPhone, in full disclosure, and a Blackberry.”

Conservatives are also taking aim at Clinton’s refusal to make her private email server available to a third-party investigator.

The former secretary of state said the types of emails being shielded from the public were on topics as innocuous as “yoga routines” and “family vacations.”

She said the server was established to handle Bill Clinton’s communications, had not been exposed to security breaches and was located on a property closely monitored by the Secret Service.

However, the nothing-to-see-here message isn’t an easy pitch for a political figure who has been criticized for her secrecy.

“There is no way to accept State’s or Secretary Clinton’s certification she has turned over all documents that rightfully belong to the American people,” argued Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., whose investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi terrorist attack, unearthed the private Clinton emails. “Secretary Clinton alone created this predicament, but she alone does not get to determine its outcome.”

Clinton’s challenge now is not all that different from what Mitt Romney encountered in 2012, when he was unable to put to rest questions about his tax returns.

What remains to be seen is whether Clinton’s refusal to turn over tens of thousands of emails will make her appear inauthentic with voters, as Romney learned before relenting on his tax documents.

Until Clinton provides a clearer portrait of the 31,830 emails her office is now labeling “private,” she can expect plenty of skepticism about messages that were either deleted or remain on her family’s server in New York, Republicans and Democrats agreed.

Rather than open up her communications to a complete vetting, Clinton framed her actions as consistent with those taken by her predecessors.

Republicans weren’t buying it.

“The expectation that we merely trust that Secretary Clinton shared all relevant emails and that the process of vetting the emails was as thorough and unbiased as it should have been is insulting given the Clintons’ well-established history of misleading the American people,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said. “This matter cannot be put to rest without a thorough forensic examination of the email server and an unbiased independent review of the records in question.”

And even Clinton allies said that the former secretary of state should develop a more thorough explanation for practices revealed well after she left Foggy Bottom.

“Even though she hasn’t announced yet, you could argue that her campaign started [Tuesday],” said the Democratic strategist and Clinton ally. “There was some rust. She’ll need to get sharper. But I think she has avoided disaster — at least for now.”