USA Today editorial board: Clinton ‘broke the rules’

USA Today’s editorial board on Tuesday condemned Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while secretary of State.

“Everyone, including Hillary Clinton, now agrees that the newly confirmed secretary of State made a mistake in 2009 when she decided, for the sake of ‘convenience,’ to run her own email system out of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. rather than use an official State Department email account,” it said in a new editorial.

{mosads}“But a new report by State’s inspector general makes clear that within two years, Clinton’s bad decision had turned into something far worse: a threat to national security, one that she repeatedly ignored despite multiple warnings,” it added.

“Those warnings, coming in a span of six months, should have made any responsible public official, even one without Clinton’s access to classified information on cyber threats from the vast U.S. intelligence network, aware of the national security dangers of failing to secure the secretary of State’s email communications.”

An internal watchdog determined in a report last week that Clinton and her senior aides did not comply with State’s record-keeping practices.

The department’s Office of the Inspector General found that Clinton circumvented policies designed to follow federal records laws by using a personal email address routed through a private server.

The Democratic presidential front-runner may also have jeopardized sensitive national intelligence with the setup, it added.

USA Today on Tuesday said Clinton must justify her technology decisions to voters if she wants the presidency.

“If Clinton wants to become president of the United States, she needs to explain how she could make such a reckless decision,” its editorial board said.

“While Clinton is under potential criminal investigation by the FBI for the mishandling of classified information sent through her email, remaining silent might be in her best interests and it is certainly her right,” it added.

“But to be president, she is going to have to convince voters that she can put the national security of the United States above her own short-term self-interest. It’s already clear that, in using the private email server, Clinton broke the rules. Now it remains to be seen whether she also broke the law.”