White House: Obama knew Hillary was using a private email account.

[pnwmom]

while she was Secretary of State.

Duh.

Of course he did.

And the members of Congress who are making a stink also knew. And Gawker published a story about this two years ago that didn't raise an eyebrow.



http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/politics/article/White-House-Obama-traded-email-with-private-6123620.php

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Barack Obama traded emails with Hillary Rodham Clinton while she was secretary of state and knew that she used a nongovernment email account.

Obama had been asked previously how he learned Clinton had used a nongovernment email system for official business, and told CBS News that it was through recent news reports.

But White House spokesman Josh Earnest says Obama was referring in that interview to the details of Clinton's home-based email setup and the fact that she was using private email exclusively. He wasn't referring to the existence of her private account, Earnest said Monday.

He said Obama and Clinton did exchange emails but not a large number. Earnest says any emails between the two would have been preserved according to the Presidential Records Act.

[Egnever]

1. I would think it was glaringly obvious to anyone she ever sent an email to

Not to mention wouldn't this have been known during the whole BENGHAZZIIIII!!! thing?

[pnwmom]

3. I know. That's what's been so ridiculous about all this.

All these people pretending to be so shocked.

[former9thward]

4. She did not turn the emails over during Benghazi.

So that would not have been known.

[stevenleser]

6. Any congressman, senator, or worker/member of the exec branch who received an email from her

Would have known. Internalize that point before firing back.

[former9thward]

12. So the committee should have asked for all emails

received by Clinton? And make that request to everyone in the federal government or any other country? I don't think you know how these committees work. Maybe you should internalize some things.

[stevenleser]

14. You're clearly still not getting it. nt

[pnwmom]

19. All they needed was one email to see that she was sending from a private account.

And then they could have checked the other emails they got from her and they would have seen they were all from the same account.

[pnwmom]

18. They're saying she didn't turn them all over -- but the ones she DID turn over

certainly carried her account address.

So they knew.

[former9thward]

37. The State Department is currently looking at 55,000 emails

she just turned over to them. None of them have been seen by anyone else.

[NYC Liberal]

58. "None of them have been seen by anyone else.” -- Except for the people she sent the emails to...

[former9thward]

64. And who are those?

[Egnever]

20. Oh please

Surely they had one email from her. It would only take one and if it was the scandal it is supposed to be the pukes would not have let it go. Hillareeee was hiding state department buseenes on secret emaiws!!111!BENGAAAZHI!!!

[Sancho]

66. Yes she did turn over the emails months ago...

A Senator from a Senate committee has seen them and said so...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11072075

In other reports, she backed up the server on Google and McAfee years ago. Her staff and the State Dept. also said years ago that no secret material was sent on email. They had a different system for that purpose.

[former9thward]

67. No, she just turned over 55,000 emails to the State Department

They have said it will take months to review them before they can be released.

[Sancho]

68. Watch the video..

At least one Senator said that she turned over all State email last summer. I don't think they bothered to look at anything except Benghazi until this became an "issue."

Actually, it's not an issue.

All the ones that anyone was interested in were looked at months ago. Who is interested in an email about a coffee pot that doesn't work or what time is the plane arriving?

Remember, there are RULES about anything secret, so only routine junk is on regular email.

Again, has anyone seen a single email received by some person anywhere that was a "scandal"? Has anyone said that they sent an email to Hillary that was revealing of some "scandal" that they KNOW must be there, but hasn't been revealed. Out of 55,000 surely to God that must be a bunch of juicy, scandalous emails about something! At least that is the GOP position.

The public does not have a right to Hillary's wedding plans for her daughter or whatever, but she has said it doesn't matter so let them go. She is letting the State take the blame for vetting what should be released.

[B2G]

69. 55,000 pages, not 50,000 emails

[former9thward]

73. You are right.

But State said they have to review them before being released.

[TwilightGardener]

8. She only turned over some Benghazi-related emails last year. That's when

the committee started going after the State Dept. for its failure to provide them sooner.

[Egnever]

21. Oh well only last year...

No one had any emails from her before that...Sounds suspicious to me.

[pnwmom]

45. Hillary has turned over Benghazi related materials whenever they've been requested.

And she's been the subject of multiple investigations that have turned up nothing.

You're sinking really low to take the Rethugs' side on this now.

[TwilightGardener]

53. I'm just reporting facts, not taking a side. The committee discovered

the private email address only last year when a few hundred emails were given to them from the State Dept., and that's what prompted all of this.

[pnwmom]

54. Not true. They're lying. The private email address has been publicly known since at least

March 2013, when it was reported in a story by Gawker.

And just as Hillary emailed Obama from that account, she certainly had occasion to email members of that committee, some of whom have been pursuing her since even before Benghazi. They have known about her email address all along. They just decided to make an issue of it now.

[TwilightGardener]

61. I don't know about that. The Gawker thing showed she had private email, but

not necessarily that all of her business was being done on it, with nothing in government possession. The GOP didn't break this story--they're not behind it, although they certainly intend to use it.

[pnwmom]

62. What difference does it make whether ALL or only PART of her government

business was done on her private account?

They didn't give a damn till they decided recently to use this in a political stunt.

[TwilightGardener]

63. Because policy of the WH and of the State Dept. was that government email

should be used unless there was an emergency or some other good reason to use private email for official business, and the emails were supposed to be forwarded for archiving soon after they were made. Not years later.

[spanone]

2. the media is going to work overtime swaying this next election.

[TwilightGardener]

5. Everybody has a private email account for private matters. I think we all expect that.

So apparently he had no idea Clinton never communicated any other way in her role as SoS?

[pnwmom]

11. Nothing in this article implied she and Obama were communicating

with the personal account only for personal matters. So he obviously knew she used it for work.

And it isn't true that she never communicated any other way because she has already said that she didn't use the account for classified transmissions.

[TwilightGardener]

15. Classified stuff wouldn't go out in email like that, so that's neither here nor there.

Unless, of course, she broke those rules, but her staff was almost certainly not that stupid. To clarify, Obama didn't know that she completely avoided having a government account altogether.

[pnwmom]

17. And most likely didn't care -- or he would have told her to get on the system. n/t

[TwilightGardener]

24. Only problem is, I don't know if the President knew he was emailing with her

on what was most likely an inadequately-secured server.

[pnwmom]

25. Shouldn't he have tried to find out?

And that is pretty funny considering she was one of the government officials whose emails did NOT get leaked by Wikileaks in 2009 -- as they would have if she'd been using a .gov account.

And that the government system had another major hacking in 2014.

The government servers themselves aren't all that secure. Maybe that's why Obama didn't tell her to stop.

[TwilightGardener]

29. Government servers have IT staff monitoring them, performing

checks and updates, etc. No one has any idea what went on with Hillary's home servers. She herself advocated State employees using government mail because it was more secure. And just because we know of hacks to government systems, because they were made public, doesn't mean her system also wasn't hacked.

[pnwmom]

31. If Wikileaks had hacked into her account they would have dumped it

when they dumped everything else.

[TwilightGardener]

35. Wikileaks aren't the only hackers out there. China and Russia, for example, sure

wouldn't let us know they were hacking the SoS's mail server.

[Fumesucker]

65. I'm not sure anyone really cares about Chinese and Russian hacking..

As long as the emails didn't get to something like Wikileaks to be released to the public which would embarrass the administration I rather suspect China and Russia were off the radar since they would be highly unlikely to release the emails publicly.

[samsingh]

7. i thought i read a report where he said he did not know

not that i care one way or the other - it's a nonissue designed to hurt Democrats.

[TwilightGardener]

10. He didn't know that she never used a government account for SoS matters, I guess.

And had a home server set-up, and didn't comply with archiving policies.

[JonLP24]

9. LOL

I just saw a story yesterday where Obama says he didn't know, then the White House says he did know.

The scandal itself doesn't interest me, it is how they respond to the aftermath that does.

[HereSince1628]

13. If that didn't generate an objection from the president, it must be taken as

tolerance if not assent. Case closed on Sec Clinton

Maybe a policy review should happen in light of public discomfort with sudden awareness of widespread use of private account, but that's a different can of fish

[Kingofalldems]

22. A lid on what sir?

[Kingofalldems]

39. You aren't getting away that easy,

you inferred a Watergate like plot with the 'tape on the door' remark.

Let's see some evidence.

[Kingofalldems]

41. Where is the coverup?

[leveymg]

26. No! He said Saturday that he wasn't aware of any improper use at the time.

Nobody outside of a small circle of aides at the State Dept. who were also instructed to not use the .gov system in communicating with HRC were aware that Clinton's private server was not being backed up on gov't servers, and thus was not compliant with the requirements under the 1950 Federal Records Act as amended in '76. Here are the details you are leaving out:

Obama said on CBS on Saturday that he learned about Clinton’s use of a private email and server “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.” According to Earnest, this comment should not be assumed to mean that Obama and Clinton never emailed back and forth.

“The point that the president was making is not that he didn’t know Secretary Clinton’s email address, he did,” Earnest said. “But he was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up or how Secretary Clinton and her team were planning to comply with the Federal Records Act.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/obama-hillary-clinton-personal-email-115899.html#ixzz3TvIJOx6D

The law as it stood since 1976 has specifically required that all "machine readable" documents be safeguarded and handed over to the Archivist. Hillary did neither until she was confronted about it long after she left office.

[pnwmom]

27. Yes! Obama's spokesman has clarified what Obama said yesterday.

Obama was fully aware that she used a private email to communicate with him. He just didn't realize the extent of her use of it. And apparently didn't care enough to try to find out.

From the article at the OP, which you apparently didn't bother to read.

The White House has drawn scrutiny over Clinton's exclusive use of private email and whether Obama or his aides should have done more to ensure her correspondence was secure and properly preserved. In a weekend interview, Obama told CBS News that it was only recently "through news reports" that he'd learned that Clinton was using a nongovernment email system.

But White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday that Obama had personally exchanged emails with Clinton on her private account — [e-mail] — and was therefore familiar with the address. Earnest said Obama had been referring to when he learned the specifics of Clinton's email system — such as the fact that she had a privately run email server and was using the private account exclusively.

"The president — as I think many people expected — did over the course of his first several years in office trade emails with the secretary of state," Earnest said, adding that the number of emails they exchanged was not large. But it wasn't until recently that Obama learned how Clinton and her team planned to ensure the emails were properly maintained to comply with the Federal Records Act.

[leveymg]

28. You're being misleading here. Obama does not say he knew that she was out of compliance

with the law, or even what the law required, or that he continenced how she set up and used her email or what she did with it. He simply says that they exchanged email. The President wasn't aware of the details, and that is exactly what's being repeated. This is not exculpatory.

[pnwmom]

30. No, I'm not. I agree that Obama didn't say he knew she was out of compliance with the law.

Why would he? She was NOT out of compliance with any actual law.

And you are being misleading when you say "he simply says that they exchanged email." He ALSO said that he was aware that she was using a personal email account. He noticed where the emails she traded with him were coming from.

And if he didn't order her to stop -- and there's no evidence that he did -- he tacitly condoned it.

[leveymg]

36. Not exculpatory. Not in compliance.

The legal issue is not gov't communications over private email, it has to do with preservation and timely conveyance to the Archives.

There is a separate security issue having to do with the private system's vulnerability to hackers, but that is not a question of law at this point.

There is no tacit condoning of legal and security issues the President was unaware of.

[candelista]

50. "There is no tacit condoning of legal and security issues the President was unaware of."

WTF does that mean? If we cancel out the two negations, it means that the President was aware of tacit condoning, whatever that means.

The WH said the other day that he didn't know about her private account being used for govt business. Now it turns out that he did. That looks like a contradiction, innit?

[leveymg]

59. Obama didn't condone any wrongdoing he was unaware of.

There, is that clearer? The only new information in the later White House statement is that the President and SoS exchanged email. That's hardly an exoneration.

[candelista]

71. That says nothing.

It's logically impossible to condone something that you're not aware of. So, right, it's not an exoneration. It's a meaningless claim.

[pnwmom]

56. Now you're changing the subject.

But you haven't demonstrated that the LAW in place had any time limit on an archiving requirement that she failed to comply with.

If the President was concerned about her using private email he would have done something. As it is, her personal account wasn't subject to the Wikileaks hack that the rest of the government was subject to. So it's funny to hear people argue about security when for all we know her account was more secure than the antiquated governmental system.

[karynnj]

33. You do know that Obama knowing would not make this acceptable

What it does is tar him with the same brush.

If this is seen as a problem and as a blow against transparency, what this means is that HRC excessive paranoia and desire for secrecy have led to Obama himself being criticized for not micromanaging what email his SOS used.

Not to mention, if Obama was cool with this, how do you explain SOS Kerry, doing more traveling and far more negotiating - using State,gov?

[pnwmom]

44. Yes, it would, since she broke no law.

His tacit approval makes it clear that she wasn't breaking any important policy either.

How do I explain Kerry only using State.gov? Simple. The law changed in 2013 -- after she left the office.

And you don't know that Kerry did "far more negotiating." Just looking for one more way to slam Hillary, apparently.

[karynnj]

46. Lots of mistakes here

The law changed in 2014 - more than a year after Kerry started. As to negotiating more - he negotiated:
- the US/Chinese pact on climate change and a lesser agreement with India
- the removal and destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons
- the resolution of the Afghan election
- the formation of the 60 plus coalition fighting ISIS
- the Iran interim agreement and - hopefully - a final agreement
- the unsuccessful Israel/Palestine effort

Note that is for slightly more than a year.

I know HRC did much of the negotiations for TPP and its European equivalent. She also, had many speeches that raised the issue of women's rights. (Even when she was SoS, Kerry was the one who negotiated to get Kharzi to abide by the election rules.)

I fully agree that HRC has far more chance to be President, but I'll argue any day that Kerry, a son of a diplomat, is easily the better at diplomacy.

[pnwmom]

48. You're giving Kerry full credit for negotiations that began

during her term. She should share some of that credit. And you're neglecting to list any of Hillary's accomplishments.

And the law didn't go into effect until 2014 but it was fully debated on and then passed in 2013. Kerry correctly decided to use the government accounts from the outset of his term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton's_tenure_as_Secretary_of_State

[Rex]

32. I thought this issue had already dropped from the radar.

GOPers grasping at straws.

[karynnj]

47. When it was a top subject at WH and SD briefings, it is not yet off the table

[candelista]

51. Premature thought.

[Vinca]

34. Let me guess . . . grounds for impeachment???

[William769]

43. It's all about the smear campaign.

And as usual in the end it will be much ado about nothing and Hillary will be as strong if not stronger than she already is.

[candelista]

49. That is a very flimsy attempt at damage control.

You need to tell a story to explain your prediction. As it is, it's just your say-so.

[William769]

52. I don't swallow the rw trash talking points & then try to use them to smear a good Democrat.

But then again decent people in the Democratic party don't act like that.

Liberals take the high road something that other people could learn from.

[candelista]

72. As opposed to who? Ppl in this thread who have legitimate concerns about their own party leaders?

According to you, smothering these concerns and covering them up is "the high road"? It's being a "good Democrat"?

You have some strange values, Bill.

[morningfog]

55. I don't have a problem with using a private email if one were not provided by State, but

mixing State business and personal business on the same account is just stupid.

[libdem4life]

57. What, nobody noticed that her email address was not .gov? Give me a break. n/t

[840high]

60. ....

[NM_Birder]

70. Obama, claims to have not known about the fucking server. THAT is the issue

not the private e-mail account...who cares lots of officials do it.

The private server. Obama claims to have not known that her e-mail were captured on a private server, off the system, that is inexcusable for both of them to dance around.

this is the problem with absolute party loyalty. To have absolute party loyalty, you have to excuse and say thank you when your hero's shit on your hopes for a better way. You can't hold anyone accountable for fuck ups when you support them without question.