House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server during her time as secretary of state provides an "interesting contrast" to her predecessors at the State Department.
Pelosi said Thursday that she wants to see the process play out and compare Clinton’s actions with previous Secretaries of State.
Past secretaries of state did not set up secret private servers in their home to avoid FOIA requests. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice might have used private email accounts, but they were not under the same laws, such as the Federal Records Act, that Clinton was under.
Clinton decided she would be the final arbiter of what counted as a personal email and what would be sent back to the State Department as work related communication. She announced that she has already deleted more than 31,000 of the emails not released. Her main defense that she emailed other government accounts so that her emails would be kept on record has already been discredited by State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki.
Democrats have not defended Clinton by excusing her actions, but by pointing fingers at Republicans who have acted similarly. Quickly, the image of an open and transparent government touted in 2008 has vanished.
Clinton is yet another black mark on Obama’s failed campaign promise to deliver "the most transparent government in America’s history."