Interviewing Mrs. Clinton, Avoiding The Tough Questions

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

The carefully selected members of the media chosen to interview Hillary Clinton during her run for the Democratic nomination are sure to continue providing her with nothing but softball questions, giving her candidacy an opportunity to claim its honesty and transparency where little exists. Previously we cited Andrea Mitchell’s interview on MSNBC. Most recently it was Chuck Todd, whose interview on NBC’s Meet the Press last Sunday exposed how these reporters deliberately avoid discussing topics which run counter to their favored progressive narratives.

“And a reminder, and I know there’s always conspiracy theories out there, there are no limitations to this interview,” said Todd.

He asked several questions about Hillary’s private email server but few regarding the classified information found on that server, a much more serious issue.

While the Clintons like to blame the attacks on themselves as partisan politics, Hillary’s lies are becoming harder and harder for the liberal media to defend.

When Todd questioned Mrs. Clinton about her claim that she had turned over her emails as part of a general request from the State Department, he had to press her to provide answers about the discrepancy between the timing of when State asked for her records, and when the campaign claimed that this request was made.

“Well, we have explained that,” replied Clinton. “The campaign has explained it.”

This is far more than the mere discrepancy that Todd made it out to be.

The Washington Post Fact Checker gave Clinton three Pinocchios, because “there was a pressing need for the State Department to seek Clinton’s e-mails” due to the “Benghazi inquiry—and the State Department had made clear…its interest in the Clinton e-mails months before an official letter was sent.” The New York Times recently reported that experts in government classification laws said that Clinton aides may have “violated federal laws that govern how intelligence information is handled.”

The question remains how much of the State Department’s turning against Hillary Clinton is being orchestrated by the White House, which appears to be backing Vice President Joe Biden.

As we have reported, Mrs. Clinton’s receipt of classified email over a private server remains a national security concern: “Whether or not classified information was sent and received, not whether or not it was marked classified—which is the current iteration of her evolving explanation—is the real issue.”

On Monday’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, on CNN, he demonstrated Mrs. Clinton’s inconsistent, evolving answers regarding the selection process for deciding which of her emails were personal and which were business, as Accuracy in Media’s Don Irvine cited. Yet on the transcript page of that show, CNN simply omitted that segment, as if it never occurred.

Mrs. Clinton has provided a wealth of excuses in the past that have been proven to be false. When questioning Mrs. Clinton about her dealings with the Clinton Foundation, for example, Todd focused on whether these emails would have been personal or work.

“You know, I did not communicate with the foundation,” replied Mrs. Clinton. “Other people in the State Department did. In accordance with the rules that had been adopted.”

This was another of her many transparent lies, as can be seen in an email already released to the public in June.

An October 28, 2009 email shows Mrs. Clinton copying Doug Band and Justin Cooper on a message to Clinton confidante Sid Blumenthal. “Bill Clinton’s senior adviser Justin Cooper was the man responsible for running the email network, according to archived Internet records,” reported Breitbart on September 2. “Cooper also works as a top fundraiser for the Clinton Foundation. He also serves as a senior adviser to Teneo Holdings, a private corporate advisory and investment banking firm founded by former Bill Clinton adviser Doug Band.” Band was active with the Clinton Global Initiative and on the Clinton Foundation’s Board of Directors at the time.

“Sid—I’m copying Doug and Justin who are traveling with Bill [Clinton] since he will be in Europe and may have some ideas about what could be done, and asking that they share it w him and then get back to you,” wrote Mrs. Clinton.

Questions also remain about possible pay-for-play during Mrs. Clinton’s term as Secretary of State.

“Newly released financial disclosures reveal Bill Clinton received $16.46 million in payments from a George Soros-backed for-profit education company, as Hillary Clinton’s State Department funneled tens of millions of dollars to a group run by the company’s chairman,” reported Peter Schweizer for Breitbart in August. “From 2010 until just days before the 2015 release of Clinton Cash, Bill Clinton served as [Laureate Education’s] ‘honorary chancellor.’”

“When the Clinton campaign team obtained a copy of the book and its Clinton-Laureate connection revelation, Bill Clinton abruptly resigned.”

Todd could have also taken Hillary to account for her many falsehoods and role in the Benghazi cover-up, such as her decision to coordinate with the White House to blame the 2012 Benghazi attacks on a YouTube video.

As a counter to Todd’s biased reporting, and in our continuing effort to help keep the media on an aggressive yet unbiased path, we are offering up some suggested questions on various topics that the press should start demanding that Hillary Clinton answer:

  1. You’ve apologized for not using two separate email accounts. But you haven’t apologized for using a private, unencrypted server, which could have easily—and probably was—hacked by Chinese, Russian and North Korean operatives. Will you now apologize for endangering national security?
  2. If in your position as Secretary of State you would have received training on how to handle classified information then why did you and your aides exchange information now marked “Confidential” with Tony Blair regarding his role as Middle East Envoy over your unsecure server?
  3. Why did your department send out a memo encouraging department staffto “Avoid conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts” yet you yourself used a private server for your work as Secretary?
  4. Why did the State Department and the White House coordinate the Benghazi YouTube video narrative when your staff became aware that this was a terror attack approximately a half hour into the attack?
  5. Why did the State Department provide inadequate security leading up to the attacks, despite multiple requests for assistance from Tripoli?
  6. If you neither sent nor received classified emails using your private server, then why has the Inspector General marked two of them as classified, and Reuters identified another 87 exchanges as born classified?
  7. If you assumed that the State Department would capture your emails when they were sent, then why were your aides also using private email accountsfrom your server?
  8. You told Chuck Todd, “I’m not by any means a technical expert. I relied on people who were.” Bryan Pagliano, who maintained your private server while simultaneously working at the State Department, has pled the Fifth and won’t talk to the FBI. How does this reflect on your statements that you have been transparent with the public?
  9. While you chose to erase and destroy more than 30,000 emails from your time as Secretary of State, why didn’t you allow an independent figure to determine which emails were personal, and which were somehow business related?
  10. If you provided all of your work-related emails, why has the Defense Department now found approximately 10 exchanges which were not turned over in the first place?
  11. Why has the State Department now turned over 925 additional emails to the House Select Committee on Benghazi some of which, according to The Daily Beast, were “previously assessed to be of a ‘personal nature and unrelated to the former Secretary’s official capacity?’”
  12. If you say that you’ve deleted all your personal emails, then why have emails from an “old friend,” Sidney Blumenthal, been released by the State Department? Does that mean Blumenthal, who was being paid $10,000 a month by the Clinton Foundation, was conducting official business for you as Secretary of State?
  13. You have said you’re very proud of the “life-saving and life-changing work” that the Clinton Foundation is currently performing. Why, then, does it only spend approximately 10 percent of its funds on direct charitable grants?

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