Just read the letter, please. Really - please. Reserve judgement until you do, is all I ask. Thank you.
David Brock, of very good Media Matters fame, and more recently, of the Citizens for Responsibility in Ethics in Washington (CREW), has been very publicly behind Hillary Clinton regarding the recent private email story:
Media Matters Founder and Chairman of the Board David Brock called on The New York Times to issue a "prominent correction as soon as possible" after publishing what he called a "wholly inadequate" article about Hillary Clinton's use of a non-government email account during her tenure as secretary of state.
Now read
this letter (cached; find pdf
here) CREW sent to the SEC in 2011. Here's how it starts:
Dear Inspector General Kotz:
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) respectfully requests that you investigate whether employees of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are purposefully using private email accounts to avoid having their emails captured by the agency’s record keeping system, and the extent to which SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro has knowingly allowed this practice. Last Friday Bloomberg reported that in response to investigations by your office, many of which have included a review of millions of internal emails, “many in thea gency” now “rely largely on private e-mail accounts and cell phones, rather than their govemment-issued devices . . .” As a result of this practice, “staff conduct is harder to monitor.”
CREW called for an investigation of SEC employees—based soley on the fact that they used private, non-government email addresses.
Further on they state:
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has issued implementing regulations that, among other things, delineate additional requirements for agencies in managing their electronic mail records. See 36 CPR. § 1236.22.l Those regulations specify:
Agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that Federal records sent or received onsuch systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system.
Note: That should end - definitively - all discussion on whether or not 1236.22 had been updated with this provision during HRC's time as Secretary of State. This letter was written in 2011.
Now CREW goes even further:
If, as reported, SEC employees are using electronic mail systems not operated by the agency, the SEC still must take steps to ensure emails generated by those systems are preserved in an SEC record keeping system. The clear implication from the Bloomberg article, however, is that SEC employees are using their private email accounts precisely because they know their messages will not be preserved, and are doing so to avoid accountability to your office and others. Moreover, if Bloomberg has ready access to this information, it is even more readily available to Chairman Shapiro, who bears an affirrnative duty under the FRA to ensure agency compliance with the record keeping requirements.
When SEC employees use private email systems, the agency must "investigate whether employees of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are purposefully using private email accounts to avoid having their emails captured by the agency’s record keeping system." And when they do it, CREW agrees with the Bloomberg summary, that agency "employees are using their private email accounts precisely because they know their messages will not be preserved, and are doing so to avoid accountability to your office and others."
When Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State, uses private email, David Brock says: she has handled here emails "perfectly." (And CREW says nothing at all.)
CREW made another point in 2011:
We therefore respectfully request that you immediately open an investigation into these issues and also take steps to ensure that, on an ongoing basis, all emails sent or received by SEC employees in the course of their employment, whether or not through the use of agency email accounts, are preserved in the SEC’s record keeping system.
In 2011, CREW recommended that the SEC make sure
all employees emails - even if they used non-govenment email - be preserved "on an ongoing basis." When Hillary Clinton uses private email, and turns in her
chosen emails -
2 years after leaving office - she's handled her emails "perfectly."
That. Is. Awful.
The hypocrisy here is of course impossible to miss. And it goes a long way toward undermining David Brocks's, and CREW's reputations.
Note: The NARA CFRs are instructions to federal employees on how to follow the law - the Federal Records Act [added] FOIA, and others. Violate those regulations and you are by defintion violating the law.
UPDATE: Wow. Sure looks like the DOJ thinks what HRC did was a crime: