There has been a recent ‘fracas’ stirred over Hillary Clinton’s misstep in using her personal email account for official government business which could have violated federal regulations ruling that that the correspondence of government officials must be retained as part of the agency’s official record. ‘Fracas’ might actually be underselling the hysteria that arose from the former Secretary of State’s fumble with Clinton’s “emails” or “email” being mentioned over 100 times on Sunday news commentary according to Nexis.
There is a glaring irony here considering the last email gate that arose from the party in power – that is, the Bush White House in 2007. That was the time that, in the midst of congressional inquiry, it was found that the White House had “coincidentally” lost a staggering five million emails, some of which might have been evidence in the ongoing case of the White House illegally firing U.S. attorneys for political purposes.
Those lost emails were run through personal accounts – that’s right: government business done on private emails. With there already having been evidence that some of these emails were used to discuss the firing of U.S. attorneys, one would expect an uproar in the media of the potential impropriety at work here, especially considering the whirlwind around Clinton’s emails.
This wasn’t the case, however, with those missing White House emails not having come up at all on the Sunday news networks the week the story broke. In 2015, one person’s emails are requiring intense media scrutiny. In 2007, millions of White House emails deserved not a peep or whisper. It’s not difficult to see the contradiction.