Why is the State Department vigorously protecting Hillary Clinton on her email scandal and how high up did the knowledge and sign off go? “Whatever the motivation,” Kimberley A. Strassel writes in the WSJ, “what we are witnessing is an extraordinary all-hands government assist for a presidential candidate.”
Ask yourself this: Why does the State Department care so much about what was classified in Mrs. Clinton’s emails—unless its goal is to help her story line? Or ask yourself about a Fox News report this week that State Department lawyers changed the categorization of several Clinton emails, making them “deliberative” rather than classified, a designation that shields them from congressional investigators.
And then there’s State’s lockdown on basic information. Mr. Toner in several wild news conferences this week refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether Mrs. Clinton sent classified material on her server; or whether her server was breached; or if she was bound by the foreign-affairs manual; or who exactly knew about and signed off on her arrangement; or how high up that knowledge went. At one point, when asked whether anyone at State had disagreed with her having a private server, Mr. Toner graciously acknowledged that this was an “appropriate” question, but that it was more “appropriate” for “other” entities to answer. The reporter’s stunned response: But “she was the secretary of state.”
If the State Department exists to serve American interests abroad, how is it that our nation’s diplomatic corps has come to be an arm of the Clinton campaign? Read more from Ms. Strassel here.
