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'Emailgate' Hillary Clinton's Watergate

In Watergate, "a third-rate burglary," the mystery was due to an 18½-minute gap in the tape recording of discussions by President Richard Nixon and not about government records. Emailgate, after two years, the State Department asked Hillary Clinton for email records that should be preserved and she turned over 55,000 hard copy pages after deleting 30,000.

"As much as I've been investigated and all of that," Hillary said in 2000, "why would I ever want to do email?" But as secretary of state, Hillary had no choice and she set up a private server in her house. Was she worried that communicating through email would leave a trail that might be subpoenaed? Remember, Hillary's "what difference, at this point, does it make" at the committee investigating the Benghazi attack, knowing fully that any emails were not with our government.

What's OF-109? A government employee must sign Form OF-109, a formal separation statement, certifying under penalty of law the departing official has "surrendered to responsible officials all unclassified documents and papers relating to the official business of the government acquired by me while in the employ of the (State) Department" and the employee does not get to determine what is classified or not, personal or not. Check the State Department Foreign Affairs Manual, Volume 5, Handbook 4. It's the policy, stupid.

This reminds us of the similarity between the 18½-minute gap that doomed a presidency and an email server wiped clean by a lawyer, Hillary Clinton, who served on a Watergate committee staff.

Robert Meale

Woodstock

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