Hillary Clinton Needs to Take Her Emails off the Table

The Clinton campaign needs to take the accusations FBI Director James Comey levelled against Hillary Clinton off the table.  That is, the Clinton campaign needs to provide a narrative to counter the one that Comey, Trump, and the right wing are pushing.  Namely, that Hillary Clinton does not care about U.S. security requirements and is so careless she was willing to risk the lives of American servicemen for her on convenience.  (See Hillary Needs Joe Biden to Refute James Comey’s Negative Opinions about Her.)  Three points have become clear since Comey’s initial statement and subsequent appearances before Congress.  First, Hillary Clinton did not send any emails correctly marked as classified (i.e., contrary to classification procedures, they were only marked with a “C” in the next and no header indicating classified material to follow); two or three emails were incorrectly marked as classified.  Moreover, the two or three emails that were incorrectly marked as classified with a “C” in the text, were not classified and thus, should not have been marked as classified.

Second, Clinton was following the recommendation of former Secretary of State Colin Powell to follow his practice and use private email for non-classified material.  Although the State Department’s email system had improved enough by Secretary’s Clinton’s tenure so that private email was not required, Powell’s recommendation does explain, in part, why she used private email.  Third, the experience State Department officials that sent Secretary Clinton emails that contained classified material did so after having chosen NOT to use the classified email system that all State Department officials, including Secretary Clinton, have access to and are supposed to use for classified material.
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Unless the Clinton campaign pushes an alternative narrative, Secretary Clinton will be handicapped if she chooses to hold a press conference because of the barrage of email questions she will face.  Further, if a counter narrative is not pushed before the debates, Donald Trump will trumpet her email controversy as an all-purpose way of avoiding questions and a way of shifting attention from his own inadequacies.  Just as the nine Benghazi reports clear Secretary Clinton and take that issue off the table, another email narrative is needed to take to take it off the table.