For going on 24 hours, I keep reading about Hillary Clinton's stint as Secretary of State and how she used a private email service instead of an official Dept of State email.
I keep reading how this is making a mountain out of a molehill.
That the law that the Republicans are trying to say she broke wasn't a law until after she wasn't Secretary of State anymore.
That it's No Big Deal.
None of that is the primary issue here. What is? The Freedom of Information Act, which was enacted on July 4, 1966. And perhaps, National Security.
More below the fleur-de-kos...
For those unfamiliar with FOIA:
What is FOIA?
Enacted on July 4, 1966, and taking effect one year later, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides that any person has a right, enforceable in court, to obtain access to federal agency records, except to the extent that such records (or portions of them) are protected from public disclosure by one of nine exemptions or by one of three special law enforcement record exclusions. A FOIA request can be made for any agency record.
Before sending a request to a federal agency, you should determine which agency is likely to have the records you are seeking. Each agency’s website will contain information about the type of records that agency maintains.
Like all other employees of the Federal Government, any Secretary of State's official communications (
update per dadadata's comment
excepting those which may contain classified data even classified data may be FOIA'd but may arrive as a completely
redacted document) are subject to the FOIA. For this reason alone, Secretary Clinton SHOULD have used only an official Department Of State federal government email service. Because any
official communications which she sent via personal, private email
cannot be archived to a secure government server and made available when any FOIA request for information contained in them is received. She is not
entitled to choose whether or not those communications are archived, she was mandated by Law to do so.
The secondary question is, if she ONLY used a private, personal email service, what about any data related to National Security? If she sent data of that scope via an unsecured, private, personal email service was that data compromised at any time?
THESE are the issues which should be discussed, not the Federal Records Act.
