We the People: Use the facts, not the spin, when making judgments

Believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see.

The right wing ministry of propaganda called Fox News has joined the frenzy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for her personal and official activities when she headed the State Department.

The New York Times reported that she relied exclusively on a personal email account when she was Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013. “Experts” have since concluded, without a scrap of evidence, that she has committed several felonies under the Federal Records Act (FRA).

The spin doctors speak authoritatively and people listen to them as if they possessed authority on the subject. Wild speculation gets substituted for accurate information. The facts must be presented before an analysis is complete.

According to Potomac Law Group partner Neil Koslowe, a former Justice Department special prosecutor with expertise on the FRA law, “There’s [no] blanket prohibition on any federal employee from using a personal email account to conduct government business”.

If Mrs. Clinton destroyed documents or mishandled sensitive material, then those violations could be criminal but there is no evidence to suggest even an improper use of her email as Secretary of State.

There are federal regulations that require emails to be “preserved in the appropriate agency record keeping system,” but the FRA law had no specific deadline for turning over the emails to be preserved to the appropriate agency.

David Ferriero, chief federal archivist, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2013 and said a responsible agency “discourages the use of private email accounts to conduct federal business, but understands that there are situations where such use does occur.”

The FRA was amended by Congress after the hearings and 21 months after Mrs. Clinton left office. It was changed to “prohibit the use of private email accounts by government officials unless they copy or forward any such emails into their government account within 20 days.” That would mean when Mrs. Clinton used her private email account, as long as she retained the emails to be preserved, she was in compliance with the record keeping portion of the FRA.

Instead of disseminating information and talking about improving practices, the Republican Party moved to shift the discussion toward suspicion and speculation. It never discussed almost five million emails that disappeared from George Bush’s White House records.

Similarly, 47 Republican senators, led by a junior and inexperienced member, Senator Tom Cotton, sent a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran to undercut President Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran that warned any deal he made with the president would be basically worthless.

Senator John McCain recognized the Iran letter was a mistake. He said, “I think we probably should have had more discussion about it, given the blowback …”. Secretary of State John Kerry described this as a “stunning” breach of protocol. Since the move drew bipartisan criticism, the Republicans went on a disinformation offensive.

Apparently, Republicans can’t be blamed for the letter because Joe Biden, when he was a senator, in 1986 was critical of sitting President Reagan’s “no sanctions” policy against South Africa. In 2015, Vice President Biden denounced the Republican senators’ letter since it was, “expressly designed to undercut a sitting president in the midst of sensitive international negotiations,” … and … “threatens to undermine the ability of any future American president, whether Democrat or Republican, to negotiate with other nations on behalf of the United States.”

The conservative media would like to the people to analogize Mr. Biden’s criticism in 1986 with the current foreign policy action taken with Iran. When Mr. Reagan rejected economic sanctions as “immoral and utterly repugnant” because they would also hurt the people of South Africa, Senator Biden with dramatic indignation stated that he was “ashamed of … a policy like this that says nothing … [and] I’m ashamed of the lack of moral backbone to this policy.”

This doesn’t justify the Republican attack on the White House’s U.S.‑Iran nuclear negotiations. In 1986, Congress eventually passed the Comprehensive Anti‑Apartheid Act over the objection of President Reagan, who complained it intruded on his prerogative to conduct foreign policy. Then, Congress acted properly and overrode Mr. Reagan’s veto, which settled the matter legally.

The lesson to be learned is that legislators can disagree and criticize the foreign policy of a sitting president but they don’t need to initiate separate communications with a foreign power.  The hypocritical partisan politicking and shameless self-promotion of major‑party politicians of both parties may yet be the ruination of our incredible republic. Citizens, keep informed.