The Department of Hillary By Kimberley A. Strassel
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-department-of-hillary-1441321180
How it is that the nation’s diplomatic corps has become an arm of the Clinton presidential campaign?
Whatever the Clinton campaign is paying Mark Toner, it ain’t enough. Oh, wait; it isn’t anything. Which is interesting.
Mark Toner, you see, is a federal employee. Technically, he’s a spokesman for the State Department. This isn’t always clear, though, especially when the nimble Mr. Toner takes to the podium to ferociously defend the putative Democratic nominee six ways from Election Day. Hillary Clinton’s communications gurus Jennifer Palmieri and Nick Merrill—they do a fine job. But Mr. Toner? He’s the bomb.
And he’s not alone. Since the dawn of the Clinton email scandal, the entire State Department has been vigorously protecting Hillary Clinton. Whatever the motivation (and more on that later), what we are witnessing is an extraordinary all-hands government assist for a presidential candidate.
This assist was evident from the first moment, when Congress discovered the server and demanded the former secretary of state’s emails. The State Department scrambled to ask former holders of her office for private documents—giving Mrs. Clinton the excuse that everybody did it. State has ever since slow-walked the surrender of her correspondence to the House committee investigating the Benghazi fiasco. Chairman Trey Gowdy on Thursday had to conduct a hearing with former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills while still not in possession of her work emails.
State has also gone to bat for Mrs. Clinton in court. A federal judge had to order the department to release her emails starting this summer (rather than next year, as State had vaguely promised). A federal judge also had to order it to find out if Mrs. Clinton and her aides had in fact turned over all their email. The same judge had to order State to tell him what it had done to find her deleted email. On hearing the answer—absolutely nothing—he ordered the department to work with the FBI.
The State Department has also assisted with Mrs. Clinton’s “not marked as classified” diversion. And an utterly ridiculous diversion it is. If Mrs. Clinton left a top-secret briefing, then emailed what she’d heard, that information is classified. Markings don’t matter. And yet State has deliberately sent the media down Mrs. Clinton’s “markings” rabbit hole.
Ask yourself this: Why does the State Department care so much about what was classified in Mrs. Clinton’s emails—unless its goal is to help her story line? Or ask yourself about a Fox News report this week that State Department lawyers changed the categorization of several Clinton emails, making them “deliberative” rather than classified, a designation that shields them from congressional investigators.
And then there’s State’s lockdown on basic information. Mr. Toner in several wild news conferences this week refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether Mrs. Clinton sent classified material on her server; or whether her server was breached; or if she was bound by the foreign-affairs manual; or who exactly knew about and signed off on her arrangement; or how high up that knowledge went. At one point, when asked whether anyone at State had disagreed with her having a private server, Mr. Toner graciously acknowledged that this was an “appropriate” question, but that it was more “appropriate” for “other” entities to answer. The reporter’s stunned response: But “she was the secretary of state.”
We can’t know exactly what’s going on here, but some basic facts offer plausible explanations. This could be straight politics. State is still run by Obama officials, and President Obama wants another Democrat in the Oval Office to preserve his legacy. Mrs. Clinton, despite her travails, remains his best shot. The White House has every incentive (if no right) to provide Mrs. Clinton with cover for the email mess.
This also could be institutional damage control. If Mrs. Clinton does end up in legal hot water over misusing classified information, you can bet she’ll use the State Department as her defense. She’ll point out that State knew about the private server, cleared her use of it and provided technical help—and she will name names. Both career and political State employees might also face charges. How high up did that knowledge and signoff go; who aided in this misadventure? The State Department doesn’t want to go there.
This could also be personal damage control. Most of Mrs. Clinton’s cronies have left the department, but Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of management before she arrived, remains in his job. His name and his judgment have been questioned in both the Benghazi debacle and the Clinton server setup, since his group runs both diplomatic security and information management. Mr. Kennedy is still running State’s response to both the Benghazi and the Clinton email investigations—a flagrant conflict of interest.
State’s inspector general, Steve Linick, has plenty going on right now, but he might still ask how it is that the nation’s diplomatic corps has come to be an arm of the Clinton campaign. And now that Secretary of State John Kerry is done pandering to ayatollahs, he might also be asked to show some accountability on a scandal that is undercutting his department’s basic credibility. The State Department exists to serve the American people’s interests abroad. It isn’t the Department of Hillary.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
Comments are closed.
