US House speaker: Hillary Clinton should hand over private email server

Turn the spotlight for a moment away from the theatrics of Donald Trump and examine an issue that is truly relevant in the 2016 presidential race and to national security.

A federal judge blasted the State Department during a court hearing Wednesday about the government agency’s lack of response to Freedom of Information Act requests having to do with documents from Hillary Clinton and her staff. In the first instance of the Times reporting Hillary Clinton’s use of her private email on her private server was the focus of an investigation as to whether there was criminality in the transmission of classified material.

Clinton was in the area for a fundraiser, held at the McGregor family’s property, which she attended after visiting her father’s grave in the Washburn Street Cemetery. “This is really a question for the State Department, they’re the ones who are bearing the responsibility to sort through these thousands and thousands of emails and determine at what pace they can be released”. And there has been no indication Clinton knew she was sending and receiving anything classified.

And, if she has no good explanation, she should at least apologize and assure Americans that she has learned an important lesson about the need to follow the rules. She said that none of the intelligence officials she spoke with at a recent security conference could explain why Clinton would use a private email server unless it was to thwart inquiries.

That’s appears not to be true.

But the inspector general of the intelligence community, in a letter to Congress, said a limited sampling of Clinton’s emails in question found at least four that contained classified information and should have been considered secret. It wasn’t true. What has happened is that the inspectors general made a security referral, which is legally required when classified information may have been compromised.

The dangers are obvious. (Though, to be sure, that would be cold comfort considering how porous government servers have been to Chinese hackers.). Politics might have contributed to Hillary Clinton hiding her emails.

“They could spend six to nine months deciding whether or not to investigate their former secretary of state”. The conservative watchdog group is trying to find out whether Clinton used her position as secretary of state to help the Clinton Foundation or any of its donors.

But these are not Republicans or a conservative press asking for the probe; they’re government watchdogs.

During a New Hampshire town hall on Tuesday, the Democratic presidential front-runner said that although the war in the Middle East is a top concern, the most immediate threat that ISIS poses to the US is the propaganda that the organization is spreading across the Internet to inspire new followers and gain new recruits.

A further and more robust investigation is necessary. This issue has moved beyond the gotcha games of the presidential campaign and into the realm of national security.