Longtime Clinton supporter Lanny Davis appeared frustrated Friday morning as he attempted during an interview on MSNBC to defend Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account when she served as secretary of state.
For Davis, who served as President Bill Clinton’s special counsel, the scandal is not only a non-story but an example of a double standard by the media, which has given less attention to Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s use of a personal email account when he served as governor of Florida.
“There’s a double standard in media coverage where we are not pointing out that there is precedent for what Hillary Clinton did, whether it is a governor or whether it is Secretary of State [Colin] Powell,” Davis said, adding also that his co-guest, MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald, has only been reporting speculation and not facts.
“Secretary of State Powell did not control his own home server,” MSNBC’s Tamron Hall said, correcting Davis. “We know that.”
“Excuse me! Governor Bush did!” Davis shot back. “When you make these distinctions, you’re in argument now, you’re not doing facts. You want to argue with me? That’s your right as host of a program.”
“I am not a host of a show that argues,” she said. “I asked you a question.”
“Then why not talk about Jeb Bush having a home server?” the Clinton supporter asked. “Why did you omit that?”
“We have discussed what you referred to as the document dump by Jeb Bush as well,” Hall said, referring to Bush’s decision recently to release thousands of personal emails from his time as Florida governor.
“Excuse me! It was a partial release! It was not a document dump. That’s false,” Davis contended.
Clinton’s team after she departed the State Department hand-selected which of her personal emails would be turned over to the federal agency. Clinton’s team has not yet explained the criteria used for deciding which emails were selected to be transferred to State officials. It’s unclear which of her thousands of emails were withheld from State officials.
