Top Republicans Also Used Private Email
[su_right_ad]Republicans should check their own email addresses before they pile on Hillary Clinton.
On March 2, Jeb Bush, former Republican Governor of Florida, tweeted: “Transparency matters. Unclassified @HillaryClinton emails should be released. You can see mine, here. jebbushemails.com.”
[su_thin_right_skyscraper_ad]However, not all of his Bush’s emails were released from his private email.
Earlier this year, The Tampa Bay Times reported, “The former governor conducted all his communication on his private Jeb@jeb.org account and turned over the hand-selected batch to the state archives when he left office. Absent from the stash are emails the governor deemed not relevant to the public record: those relating to politics, fundraising and personal matters while he was governor.”
The Associated Press recently stated, “Like Clinton, Bush decided which messages were considered personal and not subject to disclosure.”Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) recently gave his thoughts about Clinton and her emails to The Weekly Standard:
I think that’s the bigger issue—is the audacity to think that someone would put their personal interest above classified, confidential, highly sensitive information that’s not only important to her but to the United States of America. I think is an outrage that Democrats as well as Republicans should be concerned about.
However, Gov. Walker’s office had a private e-mail network when he was a Milwaukee County executive, noted Bloomberg News.
NorthJersey.com reported that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s (R) staff used private emails to talk to one another, including the famous “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” email.
According to the Associated Press, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s (R) administration used private emails in 2012 when trying to come up with a PR strategy to announce that hundreds of millions of dollars were being cut from Medicaid in the state.
Jon C March 14th, 2015 at 9:50 am
The Republicans who did ‘exactly what Hillary did’ http://on.msnbc.com/1EGk6p9 via @maddow
Spirit of America March 14th, 2015 at 10:28 am
That article leaves out 2 very important details, and they are the only 2 I care about because of the impact.
1st, none of those listed(or any others regardless of position/side of isle) used a private server & domain located on private premises like hc did, making the article ignorant of the entire setup at best, disingenuous/misleading on purpose at worst. While the ‘using of a private email account’ was done by many on both sides, a private server/domain/on private property has never been done.
2nd, due to the setup(hc’s), it makes it virtually impossible(there is a way, but it takes a lot of work) to collaborate via forensics that all she did was delete personal email, while the ones mentioned in the article, their setup makes double-checking very easy to do.
Dwendt44 March 14th, 2015 at 12:52 pm
As the list of reasons to criticize the Clintons keep getting shorter and shorter, you hang on to the very few remaining until the very end, OK. That way you won’t be accused of JUST hating Hillary because she’s Hillary.
Spirit of America March 14th, 2015 at 1:06 pm
Actually, my post is neither pro/con hillary, it is a tech post as to why the situation is very different from all the others.
Say one of the repubs had a private gmail
account, used it for gov business, then deleted those emails. If wrong doing is suspected, the investigators can subpoena gmail for all emails for that account, get them, then read/compare with the repubs ‘story’ of no wrong doing or even just deletion of gov business. See, even though people ‘delete’ emails from their account, the emails just don’t show up for the user, gmail still has them and stores them for years.
Now, w/hillary situation, because it is on a server that is privately controlled(w/mx), it is virtually impossible to get to the deleted emails to dbl-check her story. One merely needs to delete emails(and appropriate log files), set up another hd and port over just the retained emails/new/changed log files and destroy the original hd. The new hd can not be forensically checked and find the deleted emails simply because they were never on the new hd.
That’s why I say it is different, nothing to do with hillary per se, just the setup/usage.
Dwendt44 March 14th, 2015 at 7:40 pm
Is that what Bush and Cheney did when they deleted all those e-mails about how and why we invaded a country that didn’t attack us?
Spirit of America March 14th, 2015 at 8:31 pm
No, you didn’t forget, you are intentionally changing the subject and talking about others to avoid talking about whether hillary did the same thing, or something different.
What’s the big deal in saying her setup was unique?
Dwendt44 March 14th, 2015 at 8:50 pm
Recovery the supposed ‘smoking gun’ was your concern. But only for Hillary, not Bush and the boys, right?
You know her ‘set up’ was unique how?
Spirit of America March 14th, 2015 at 9:04 pm
“But only for Hillary, not Bush and the boys, right?”
I never said that, matter of fact, I point out how bush and the boys emails CAN be gotten if you read my post.
And if you read my post, it explains very well how the setup is different, very well, even for the non-techies that may read it.
I never said she did anything right or wrong, legal or illegal, I am merely talking about the technicalities, period. One can’t say what others did was the same in toto w/what she did, they are different.
Red Eye Robot March 14th, 2015 at 1:05 pm
How many on that list were Secretary of state? How many were bound by federal law to use US government email?
mea_mark March 14th, 2015 at 2:37 pm
From what I understand there was no law saying she had to use government email until 2 years after she left. Her emails that relate to her job with the government are supposed to be turned over for historical records.
NW10 March 14th, 2015 at 9:54 am
https://claytoonz.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/cjones03062015.jpg
Dwendt44 March 14th, 2015 at 12:53 pm
Don’t go tossing facts into the discussion, it only confuses those with Hillary Derangement Syndrome.
Red Eye Robot March 14th, 2015 at 1:01 pm
Jeb is Top republican? Yesterday Alan was selling Lindsay Graham as top republican. By tomorrow it will surely be Santorum or Huchabee. Or Eric Cantor perhaps.
StoneyCurtisll March 14th, 2015 at 3:51 pm
It just shows what little faith anyone has in the republican clown car of candidates…
arc99 March 14th, 2015 at 6:19 pm
The headline reads “Top Republicans”
Notice the ‘s’ at the end of the word Republican. It means plural, more than one.
I suggest you learn basic English syntax before attempting your lame sarcasm.
By the way, over at right wing blog redstate.com if you tried making similar obnoxious remarks about their publisher and editor, your account would be banned.
So how about some props for Alan’s liberal website providing a forum for the diversity of opinion that is prohibited by your right wing home-boys.
jybarz March 14th, 2015 at 7:48 pm
Oh boy, nothing but net!
rg9rts March 15th, 2015 at 5:17 am
He’s a moron that get his jollies coming here …I’ll bet he isn’t taken seriously at home either
AndInThisCorner March 14th, 2015 at 3:19 pm
But that would mean admitting to their hypocrisy….. Impossible I tells ya!!
Obewon March 14th, 2015 at 3:58 pm
Classic Repub projection. Former guber Jeb blames Hillary, Condi & Colin Powell for his exclusive use of his own private email domain too.
“The former governor conducted all his communication on his private Jeb@jeb.org account and turned over the hand-selected batch to the state archives when he left office. Absent from the stash are emails the governor deemed not relevant to the public record: those relating to politics, fundraising and personal matters while he was governor.”
Proving once again why room temp IQ is a GOP supporter requirement.
Robert M. Snyder March 14th, 2015 at 4:16 pm
The thing that everyone seems to be missing is that well-run organizations take proactive steps to create what is called “institutional memory”.
Let me illustrate this with an example. At a company where I used to work, the tech support staff did not keep records of technical support calls. Every time someone called for help, there was no history of previous conversations. If a customer called on Tuesday and spoke with Joe, and then called back on Thursday and spoke with Lisa, Lisa had no way to see what things Joe had already discussed with the customer on Tuesday. This led to a lot of inefficiency. Customers had to explain things over and over. Tech support people ended up asking a lot of the same questions over and over. The left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.
We solved the problem by creating a database in which every tech support call was logged. Every time a customer called, the system recorded the date and time, the name of the customer, the name of the support person, and any notes that the support person entered. If a tech support person went on maternity leave or took a different job, the impact was minimized because people could go to the database to find out the important historical facts. The database provided “institutional memory” which allowed the institution to continue functioning smoothly as old people left their positions and new people came into those positions.
Every time I hear stories about people using personal e-mail to conduct official business, it causes me to think that our government is not doing a good job of creating institutional memory. When Condi Rice became Secretary of State, what records were left behind by Colin Powell? When the torch was passed from Condi to Hillary, what records did Hillary have access to? When John Kerry took over for Hillary, what records did he have access to?
If the president of Latvia calls John Kerry and says “Are you making any progress on that thing that Hillary promised”, John needs to know what was discussed. Did Hillary really make promises to the Latvian president, or is he just blowing smoke? And it promises were made, exactly what was promised? Were conditions placed on those promises? Was the Latvian president expected to do some things in exchange? Exactly what was the understanding?
Whenever two people have a conversation, their memories of that conversation will tend to fade and diverge over time. That is why institutional memory is so important.
We are now living in the information age. Modern technology makes it possible to store and retrieve this type of information in ways that couldn’t even be imagined in the 1950’s when laws were created to ensure that communications were archived. This type of information is no longer of use only to historians. Information is now a vital resource for the effective management of any organization.
We ought to have a culture in government that regards information as a shared resource. We ought to be developing and using systems that capture important information and make it available to the people who follow us in our positions.
Conducting business correspondence using personal communication channels isn’t just a legal matter. It’s a question of organizational culture. Smart, progressive organizations capture important business correspondence in database systems where the information can be used as a resource. If there is widespread use of personal communication channels for business purposes in government, then our government is not using information effectively.
I would like to suggest that we begin to place a greater emphasis on institutional memory. When John Kerry passes the torch to the next secretary of state, he needs to ensure that there is continuity. The new team should not have to call John Kerry on the telephone to find out about conversations that he had with foreign leaders. That information should have been captured in a database system.
When the Latvian president calls, the State Department staff should be able to quickly pull up a chronological history of prior correspondence to see what was said, when, and by whom. If we don’t already have that capability, we need to create it. But any database system is useless without an organizational culture that encourages people to devote the time and energy needed to capture important correspondence in the system.
Creating that sort of culture is hard work, because people are not naturally inclined to think about helping the next guy who is going to be doing their job in the future. It sounds to me like we do not have that sort of culture in the State Department, and that concerns me.
Obewon March 14th, 2015 at 4:59 pm
Missing from Jeb@Jeb.org the FL guber email dump is his IQ debunker: ‘I kept emailing Terry Schiavo but she never responded’-Jeb.
Tim Coolio March 14th, 2015 at 9:38 pm
It’s not Hillary they are afraid of but Bill, they remember how his campaign speech helped
Barack in 2012!