On Thursday night, the left-wing media became giddy over a report of Vice President Mike Pence using a private email account back when he served as governor of Indiana. The account, which contained sensitive information, was apparently hacked last summer.
“Pence communicated via a personal AOL account with top advisers, according to emails released in a public records request. The topic of emails included the state’s response to terror attacks and an update about the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges, relayed from the FBI by a top adviser,” reported The Hill.
Cue the “Mike Pence is a hypocrite for criticizing Hillary Clinton!!!!” chants.
Except, no, it’s not comparable to Hillary’s secretive fiasco. At all.
Then-Governor Pence was legally obliged to use a private email account, according to Indiana state law. “Under Indiana state law, public officials are not prohibited from using personal email accounts, but are encouraged to preserve the exchanges for transparency reasons,” notes The Daily Caller.
And according to a statement from Pence’s officer, such emails are being archived: “Government emails involving [Pence’s] state and personal accounts are being archived by the state consistent with Indiana law, and are being managed according to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.”
So what exactly is the “scandal” here? So far, it’s another nothingburger with extra nadaketchup
Now, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a whole different story. While Pence may have used a private account from time to time, Hillary set up an unsecure server (less secure than a Gmail account per the FBI) and used it exclusively to handle both private and work-related emails, some of which contained classified information. All of this was in effort to evade public scrutiny, although she claims it was for reasons of “convienice.”
Right. I’m sure she also had her team stash the server in an old bathroom closet and smash mobile devices with a hammer for reasons of “convenience,” too. Definitely not secrecy.
As you might recall, Hillary continuously claimed that she never sent nor received anything that was marked classified “at the time it was sent and received.” This Clintonesque language was a way for Hillary to talk her away around information that was retroactively marked classified. But even that was a flop, as noted by FBI Director James Comey: “A very small number of the emails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information,” he stated.
And adding to Hillary’s woes, the former secretary of state took BleachBit to roughly 30,000 emails that she claimed were all “personal,” about yoga and Chelsea’s wedding and such. Come to find out, the FBI found at least 30 of those deleted emails were about Benghazi, a major scandal in which Hillary was the star.
Oops!
So no, the hyper-paranoid lying liar who set up a private server to evade public scrutiny, mishandled classified information and lied about it repeatedly is not the same as Vice President Pence lawfully using a private email account for email exchanges (which are currently being archived) containing unclassified information.
Try again.