Clinton’s Email Excuse Doesn’t Add Up

Hillary Clinton’s ridiculous excuse in the wake of controversy over her using a personal email address on a homebrew server -- that she didn’t want to carry two devices -- looks even more ridiculous now.

The Associated Press published today emails, obtained from the State Department through a Freedom of Information Act request that shows Clinton used at least two devices, an iPad and a BlackBerry.

Whoops. All it took was four released emails to poke major holes in Clinton’s email excuse.

It gets even worse. The same four released emails also indicate Clinton mixed up personal emails with work emails. As Sam Biddle at Gawker points out, in one Sept. 18, 2011, exchange, Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded the then-secretary of state an article discussing the wreckage of an American military drone in the Middle East.

Clinton’s response didn’t include anything about a drone. Instead, she asked about an ornamental bench.

“I like the idea of these. How high are they? What would the bench be made of? And I'd prefer two shelves or attractive boxes/baskets/ conmtainers (sic) on one. What do you think?” Clinton replied.

The email chain indicates Clinton realized her mistake after Abedin asked about the off-topic reply. Simple email screw-ups happen when you commingle work and personal emails. But it’s a much bigger potential problem for a head of state who, as Biddle points out, has access to state secrets, intelligence at the highest level and knowledge that generally shouldn’t be public. What if Clinton had sent sensitive diplomatic information to her famous-on-Instagram yoga instructor? A misstep like that would have been a doozy.

Mind you, this much new information was revealed from four newly released emails. Clinton turned over 50,000 pages of emails to the State Department, the equivalent of 30,000 emails on her private email server. Yet, that’s only half the 60,000 total emails she sent as secretary of state, and those emails were deleted.

Given this small sample size of released emails, I’d take a bet that a great many revelations -- from bone-headed to potentially very serious -- were deleted along with those emails.