# A question about the Hilary Clinton email business. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 26, 2019, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229 "2019-02-26T06:36:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2019, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229/101 "2019-03-01T18:37:36Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > I don’t know what \*all \*other Secretaries of State have done (although apparently Powell told her to just do whatever she wanted). But the last time a S of S was elected president was 1849, so maybe she was the first one to be so scrutinized. > > Also, “everybody does it” has never been a good defense. It really depends on what you’re defending. I don’t think that anybody’s trying to argue that she didn’t use a private email server for government communication, or that there are no rules that disallow this. However when I hear that somebody asked if something was allowed, and _were told by a reliable source that it was_, I find it hard to judge them too harshly for doing it. Particularly since the entire investigation is very, very, clearly a goddamn partisan witchhunt, driven by hatred and party politics rather than concerns about the law or even about national security. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2019, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229/102 "2019-03-01T19:43:32Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Foolish Americans who think it is a big deal that a presidential candidate puts her privacy and convenience over the security of the country and thinks that laws are only for the little people. There’s more projection here than at a 20-screen megaplex. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2019, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229/103 "2019-03-01T20:16:27Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Cut the crap and answer the question: Is there _any_ evidence that her private emails were hacked? When you use the term “strong evidence”, it definitely implies that there might be other, weaker evidence out there, otherwise you would have just used the term “evidence”. I really see no use in arguing about such hair-splitting when you are embracing categorical, incorrect statements on the same subject. > [@begbert2](#): > > But I will readily concede that the presented evidence is not sufficient to conclude that nobody hacked Hillary’s emails and then kept their findings to themselves. Which, aside from the minutiae of how we arrive that the endpoint, is the real point of all of this – and the point that **Czarcasm** and **Chronos** seem to be fighting a pitched battle over. It’s bizarre. > [@](#): > > On an unrelated now, I’m also quite certain that it’s logically impossible to give a shit about Hillary’s emails while also giving Trump a pass without being a massive hypocrite. I am very loathe to criticize anyone as being a hypocrite, as I believe as a principle that hypocrites can still be right, but I agree this is one of the things that totally blows my mind about this whole issue. Clinton was negligent in that she fired a gun in the air a couple times without sufficient regard for what the consequences could be… but we only found out about it years later. Today, right in front of our eyes, Trump is taking steps regarding the protection of secrets that equate to machine-gunning school buses, but because we know about it contemporaneously, nobody is really all that outraged about it. It’s just stunning to me. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2019, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229/104 "2019-03-01T20:23:39Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I really see no use in arguing about such hair-splitting when you are embracing categorical, incorrect statements on the same subject. I don’t know if it is perfectly logical…but I think I’m going to take that as a “no, I can’t think of a single shred of evidence that supports the idea that Hillary Clinton’s private emails were hacked”. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2019, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229/105 "2019-03-01T22:37:38Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Cut the crap and answer the question: Is there _any_ evidence that her private emails were hacked? “Well, your honor, we have plenty of hearsay and conjecture - those are _kinds_ of evidence.” ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2019, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229/106 "2019-03-01T22:56:36Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I am very loathe to criticize anyone as being a hypocrite, as I believe as a principle that hypocrites can still be right, but I agree this is one of the things that totally blows my mind about this whole issue. > > Clinton was negligent in that she fired a gun in the air a couple times without sufficient regard for what the consequences could be… but we only found out about it years later. Today, right in front of our eyes, Trump is taking steps regarding the protection of secrets that equate to machine-gunning school buses, but because we know about it contemporaneously, nobody is really all that outraged about it. It’s just stunning to me. Makes perfect sense to me. The type of people who harp on and on and on and on about Clinton’s emails don’t actually care about the rules or the laws or the secrets or the country. They only care about who their enemies are. Clinton is Teh Enemy, so they’ll use anything -truth, lies, whichever- to attack her. The fact that she engaged in some unknowing malfeasance it just cake, but they’d attack her even if they had to _invent_ the malfeasance. On an unrelated subject, have we heard any proof that her account was in fact hacked yet? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-about-the-hilary-clinton-email-business/830229.md?page=5)