Hillary Rodham Clinton is facing a new set of questions about ethics and transparency — the sort that have dogged her and husband Bill for decades.
The latest disclosure, that Clinton used a personal email account while serving as secretary of state, comes on the cusp of her likely second bid for president. Combined with recent news about her family foundation raising money from foreign governments while she was at the State Department, it added fresh fuel Tuesday to the longstanding charge the Clintons play by their own rules.
“Does she believe that leadership means acting outside the law?” said Carly Fiorina, the former technology executive who is weighing a 2016 GOP presidential bid. “Does she believe that leadership can exist without transparency?”
Clinton’s aides were quick to dispute the notion that there was anything illegal or improper about her use of a personal email account for government work, noting that she was hardly the first secretary of state to do so. Meanwhile, her allies praise the work of the Clinton Foundation — and note that it isn’t required to disclose its donors but does so anyway.
Still, for the Clintons, it’s difficult for complicated explanations about allegations to compete with the simplicity of political perception.
Bill Clinton’s rise through Arkansas politics and his two terms in the White House were sometimes accompanied by allegations of questionable business dealings and ethics controversies, culminating in his 1998 impeachment. Hillary Clinton was caught up in some of them, including the Whitewater investigation into the couple’s real estate investments.
Officials at the Clinton Foundation did recently acknowledge an instance where they failed to seek State Department approval for a foreign government’s donation as required.
In the new matter, Clinton provided the State Department with emails from her personal account last year when asked, but only she and the relevant members of her staff know if she turned over all of them.
“The presidency is ultimately about trust, and whether it’s this latest series of ethical lapses that have come to light or the decades of secrecy surrounding the Clintons, it’s clear Hillary Clinton is someone with an awful lot to hide,” asserted Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
Clinton provided the emails to the State Department after the department asked several former secretaries, including Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, last year for records that should be preserved, said Department spokeswoman Marie Harf.
Harf said the agency already had the “vast majority” of Clinton’s emails, because they were sent to or came from department employees using official addresses. No classified information was sent or received over the email account, she said.
“Like secretaries of state before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any department officials,” said Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill. “For government business, she emailed them on their department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.”
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