The State-Clinton Foundation Nexus

Hillary Clinton did not set up her private server to intentionally expose national secrets. The exposure of national secrets was the result of unintended consequences. The server was set up “to keep secret the details of the Clintons’ private life—a life built around an elaborate and sweeping money-raising and self-promoting entity known as the Clinton Foundation,” writes Kimberley A. Strassel in the WSJ.

Mrs. Clinton’s problem—as we now know from this week’s release of emails from Huma Abedin ’s private Clinton-server account—was that there was no divide between public and private. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and her family foundation were one seamless entity—employing the same people, comparing schedules, mixing foundation donors with State supplicants. This is why she maintained a secret server, and why she deleted 15,000 emails that should have been turned over to the government.

Most of the focus on this week’s Abedin emails has centered on the disturbing examples of Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band negotiating State favors for foundation donors. But equally instructive in the 725 pages released by Judicial Watch is the frequency and banality of most of the email interaction. Mr. Band asks if Hillary’s doing this conference, or having that meeting, and when she’s going to Brazil. Ms. Abedin responds that she’s working on it, or will get this or that answer.

The emails between Ms. Abedin and Doug Band “don’t even bother with salutations or signoffs. These are the emails of two people engaged in the same purpose—serving the State-Clinton Foundation nexus.”

Hillary Clinton, as one of our nation’s top officials, created a private server that allowed her to continue “a secret, ongoing entwinement with her family foundation.”

Then she destroyed public records.

Ms. Strassel: “If that alone doesn’t disqualify her for the presidency, it’s hard to know what would.”