Questions and discussion could also be raised about candidates on the Democratic side of things.
One topic that I am interested in discussing are the Hillary Clinton emails. Her actual "crime" if it is ever deemed to have risen to the level may not seem to be much, but the implications of her actions could have had much more serious consequences, what it says about her character and attitude towards her duties, and how fair it is to simply dismiss this as a nonissue.
The facts seem fairly straight forward. During her tenure as Secretary of State, rather than using the government run, maintained and secured email system, she used her own private server and email system for both personal and official business. It may be debated whether that was at the time illegal, but it certainly was not smart. And it was not that she would have had difficulty in obtaining IT support to do whatever necessary. Not for the Secretary of State to wait on hold for a tech support with badly accented English.
As it turns out, there was highly classified material on her server. Whether or not anybody actually hacked into to her server is still undetermined, but it is not as though her private email system would not have been a target of opportunity. The government has not always been successful at keeping spys out of its own computer networks, should it just be assumed that Hillary Clinton's was more secure?
Even if having the server and using it for low level official business was not illegal, a topic of some debate, that highly classified material ended up there is a matter for serious concern. Her reason for using her private email system for all her email correspondence was that it was more convenient, otherwise she thought that she would have to carry two devices, one for private one for business - something that many, many people do for a variety of reasons. Does this speak to an attitude that favors her personal convenience over good practices, or a feeling that rules should not apply to her?
General David Petraeus resigned, pled guilty, was fined, and now is being threatened with demotion and loss of some pension benefits for mishandling classified material when he allowed his biographer with whom he was having an affair read some classified material. There is no evidence that the material was ever leaked further, or that damage was done to national security. General Petraeus could have faced more serious penalties, but still what he got for what he did was not insignificant.
Should former Secretary of State have her own mishandling of classified materials simply ignored because she is a Clinton and a presidential candidate?
