On Wednesday’s Special Report with Bret Baier, the three-person political panel took turns slamming Hillary Clinton for how she has handled the ongoing controversy surrounding the use of a private e-mail server while Secretary of State.
National Journal reporter Ron Fournier, who has praised Clinton’s candidacy in the past, described her being forced to turn over her server to the government evidence that “her stonewall is crumbling and we're seeing that the Clintons in a case like this, can't even do the right thing the right way.”
Fournier sharply scolded Clinton’s initial decision to not turn over her private server after its existence was made public by the New York Times:
As soon as she got caught, she should have turned it over to the I.G. or to some kind of third party source. She had to have it dragged out of her and now they're trying to claim that she did this voluntarily and of course, that is patently, obviously ridiculous.
After host Bret Baier pointed out that the Clinton campaign would argue that none of the e-mails sent or received by the former Secretary of State were marked classified at the time, Fournier said such a distinction doesn’t matter:
There is an onus on a public official, especially secretary of state, to handle classified material in an appropriate way whether or not it is marked...It really does not matter. If she compromised our most sensitive secrets by putting on a – actually she did compromise it, but if it got in the wrong hands because she put it on a rogue server, that's her responsibility. That is wrong. It doesn't matter whether it was marked or not.
Fox News’ Charles Krauthammer said Clinton’s actions were “the old pattern that you obfuscate, you parse, you pretend, you tell lies” and her decision to have a private server was all about “control” not convenience:
She has now lost control. The point of this entire exercise was not convenience. It was to have control of the e-mails to keep them secret, and thus to avoid the Freedom of Information Act and congressional oversight which is a way to allow the public and the public's representatives to actually have a look at official business. Well, that doesn't exist anymore as of last night when she said she'd be turning them over.
In addition to the national security implications associated with Mrs. Clinton’s private server potentially containing classified documents, conservative columnist George Will pointed out that this sets a very bad precedent in terms of federal record keeping:
Let’s not lose sight of the following fact. Even if nothing incriminating or even embarrassing is found, what she was doing was attacking the national memory. She was taking the records of official government business and making them inaccessible to future historians and that's a serious affront.
See relevant transcript below.
FNC’s Special Report with Bret Baier
August 12, 2015
BRET BAIER: Ron.
RON FOURNIER: I've been covering the Clintons now since the mid 80s. Like I’ve said before, I'm not a Clinton hater. I have a lot of reasons to respect them and like them. They've been good to family, good to my career, but boy, this is Groundhog Day. The parsing we saw there. The deception we saw there. The victimization we saw there. It goes back to Arkansas. Now, some of us charges over the year haven't been true, but most of them are self-inflicted wounds, including this one.
What's happened here is her stonewall is crumbling and we're seeing that the Clintons in a case like this, can't even do the right thing the right way, that she should have turned – first of all, she shouldn't even have had the server off the books. As soon as she got caught, she should have turned it over to the I.G. or to some kind of third party source. She had to have it dragged out of her and now they're trying to claim that she did this voluntarily and of course, that is patently, obviously ridiculous.
BAIER: Now, here is where they're really going at it is that classified material they're insisting at the State Department was not classified at generation. Now, that is not what we are saying –
FOURNIER: It doesn't matter.
BAIER: – from sources in the I.G.'s office and U.S. officials all over the government.
FOURNIER: But the fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter. There is an onus on a public official, especially secretary of state, to handle classified material in an appropriate way whether or not it is marked. There have been people who have gone to jail, including a gentleman by the name of Thomas Drake, who worked for the NSC for mishandling classified material that was not marked. So, this is just part of a smoke screen. It really does not matter. If she compromised our most sensitive secrets by putting on a – actually she did compromise it, but if it got in the wrong hands because she put it on a rogue server, that's her responsibility. That is wrong. It doesn't matter whether it was marked or not.
BAIER: This is – the only reason we know this is because of the Benghazi Select Committee.
(....)
BAIER: Charles.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Look, this is the old pattern that you obfuscate, you parse, you pretend, you tell lies. For example she said she turned over all of her e-mails, not knowing that the Blumenthal e-mails would come to the Gowdy committee independently and when everyone had a look at them, they were not in the e-mails she turned over and her defense that this is an attack by Judicial Watch is preposterous. It’s the judge is not a part of this and he’s not a partisan in this and particularly right now, it's the intelligence community's I.G. – inspector general who's been driving this. He's an Obama appointee, as are the folks at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Look, her jeopardy is this. She has now lost control.
The point of this entire exercise was not convenience. It was to have control of the e-mails to keep them secret, and thus to avoid the Freedom of Information Act and congressional oversight which is a way to allow the public and the public's representatives to actually have a look at official business. Well, that doesn't exist anymore as of last night when she said she'd be turning them over. Once it's in the hands of the FBI, she has no control. Can they investigate the scrubbed e-mails and reconstitute the ones that were deleted?
From what I understand, the chances are relatively good and then we're going to get an answer as to how honest is her statement that the only things that were scrubbed were the private stuff about her mother's funeral, Chelsea's wedding, and her yoga lessons. I suspect, if that comes out, that will not turn out to be the case.
--
GEORGE WILL: Let’s not lose sight of the following fact. Even if nothing incriminating or even embarrassing is found, what she was doing was attacking the national memory. She was taking the records of official government business and making them inaccessible to future historians and that's a serious affront.
FOURNIER: And a terrible precedent.
