The White House is taking a new approach to the Hillary Clinton email scandal: asserting that President Obama is above knowing or caring about the details of his former secretary of state’s work habits.
“Frankly, the secretary’s handling of her own personal email and the maintenance of her own personal email inbox is something that I’m not going to comment on and am not particularly interested in,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at Wednesday’s daily briefing.
But that attempt to brush the issue aside early in the daily press briefing only fueled an avalanche of questions one day after Clinton held a press conference claiming she set up the private server for convenience and defiantly informed the public that she deleted 30,000 emails she deemed personal in nature.
The admission earned her the title of “Deleter of the Free World” in a banner headline in the New York Post and spurred a torrent of questions from reporters on whether Obama knew that Clinton was acting as the sole arbiter of what was personal and what was official without any outside or government specialists involved.
“There’s been no evidence that’s been produced to raise any doubts about that,” Earnest said in response to more than two dozen questions on the topic Wednesday.
A reporter quickly pointed out the obvious: “No one can produce evidence because she deleted them.”
The White House’s and Clinton’s responses only stoked the skepticism of Republicans who made a mockery of Earnest’s Wednesday briefing performance in an emailed video montage titled, “White House won’t say if Clinton email scandal is over” featuring several clips of Earnest’s bruising tête-à-tête with reporters.
“If the White House can’t say whether all of Hillary Clinton’s officials emails are turned over, why should any American have confidence that she did?” a Republican National Committee spokesman asked.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, all but guaranteed Wednesday that the White House will continue having to carry water for Clinton for months.
Gowdy pledged to keep demanding that Clinton turn over her entire server, arguing that she doesn’t get to decide which of her emails are private and which are official and should be made public.
“One thing that’s clear is we don’t get to grade our own papers in life,” he said. “We don’t get to call penalties on ourselves. She doesn’t get to determine what is a public record and what is a personal record. Someone else needs to do that.”
The rest of Wednesday’s press conference was devoted to dodging and weaving, as Earnest continued to repeat his talking points to the obvious dissatisfaction of the White House press corps.
Reporters wanted to know whether the White House could say with certainty whether Clinton deleted any official emails.
“Well, again, I’d refer you to Secretary Clinton’s team for the details on the process they undertook to review, you know, a substantial number of emails,” Earnest said.
Reporters also asked whether the State Department and Clinton during her tenure at Foggy Bottom were living up to Obama’s pledge to run the most transparent government in history and serving as a model for other Cabinet secretaries.
Earnest simply didn’t answer that question, speaking only on what the White House has done to try to instill more transparency in government agencies but not how those actions were executed at State or any other department.
“I think we’ve been really clear about the guidance that we have offered to all agency employees from Cabinet secretaries on down,” he said.
Pressed on whether the White House considers the Clinton email matter closed based based onb what Clinton said during her Tuesday press conference, Earnest admitted it was clearly out of his hands even as he defended her compliance with the Federal Records Act.
“Well, ultimately, I think it will be up to all of you to make your own determination about how Secretary Clinton has resolved this matter,” he said.
It was the only response that didn’t spark more follow-ups, and if Wednesday’s briefing is any indication, for the White House, the last question on the email controversy can’t come soon enough.
