Clinton’s refusal to hand over private email server troubling

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been around Washington politics long enough to know that Republicans on Capitol Hill are hoping she continues to resist turning over her private email server for review.

Saying no even to the independent inspector general for the State Department or some other neutral party to conduct an inventory of the server continues to feed the public’s perception that Clinton has something to hide.

It doesn’t matter to the Republicans in Congress and her other detractors that she turned over 55,000 pages of emails relating to her official duties and has urged the State Department to make them public.

Some of the emails have been released to the House committee investigating the terrorist attack on the American consulate outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The chairman of the committee, Republican Trey Gowdy, has set a deadline of Friday for the former secretary of state to “relinquish her server to a neutral, detached and independent third party, such as the inspector general for the State Department, for review and an independent accounting of any records contained on the server, including a determination of which documents in the secretary’s possession belong to the State Department and which are private.”

Gowdy has warned that if Clinton fails to meet the deadline, the issue could be sent to the entire House, which has subpoena powers.

There’s no reason for such political gamesmanship.

Clinton insists that the private emails had nothing to do with her official duties as secretary of state and were mostly personal in nature. For instance, there were emails relating to her daughter Chelsea’s wedding.

But given that the same nongovernment email account also was used for State Department business, Clinton cannot be blind to the fact that this is red meat for the Republicans, and they aren’t going to let go any time soon.

That said, we do not believe the independent inspector general or a neutral third party is an adequate solution. The IG is a public employee. As for the neutral third party, having one individual is not a reasonable solution.

We believe the former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady should be given the opportunity to name a person who would join the neutral third party selected by the Republican leadership in the House to go through the server. That way, her personal interests would be protected.

Credibility

It’s naive to believe that Republicans on Capitol Hill are interested only in determining whether Clinton is telling the truth when she says the personal emails have nothing to do with her official duties as secretary of state.

They want to read all the salacious details of her personal communications. Remember how excited GOP members of the House and Senate got over former President Bill Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky?

The Hillary Clinton emails should be reviewed by individuals who are not part of government and are not partisan. It’s a tall order, but if the goal is to determine the nature of the emails, then the Republicans will have no objection to the independent review away from Congress.