Democratic front-runner candidate for the presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, has been dealing with an email scandal that is just not going away.
For the last year, the FBI and Department of Justice have been probing into Clinton’s emails that were on her private server during the time she was Secretary of State.
According to an article written in the New York Post last week by Jamie Schram, “Over the past year or so, investigators have flagged dozens of Clinton’s emails marked as confidential or classified — and recently it was reported that her private server contained intelligence from the government’s most highly classified programs.”
Last week, former House majority leader, Tom Delay, said, “I have friends in the FBI and theysay they’re ready to indict her.” Delay continued, “They’re ready to recommend an indictment and they also say that if the attorney general does not indict, they’re going public.”
Then on Jan. 29th, Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times wrote an article saying that, “The State Department on Friday said for the first time that “top secret” material had been sent through Hillary Clinton’s private computer server, and that it would not make public 22 of her emails because they contained highly classified information.”
Brian Fallon of the Clinton campaign said this story, “appears to be over-classification run amok.” Then said, “We understand that these emails were likely originated on the State Department’s unclassified system before they were ever shared with Secretary Clinton, and they have remained on the department’s unclassifiedsystem for years.”
Also in defense of Clinton, Democratic Senator from California, Diane Fienstien said it makes no sense to her that, “Secretary Clinton can be held responsible for email exchanges that originated with someone else” and that “The only reason to hold Secretary Clinton responsible for emails that didn’t originate with her is for political points, and that’s what we’ve seen over the past several months.”
However, her rivals do not see it that way. Republican Senator from Florida and presidential candidate, Marco Rubio, said during the seventh Republican debate, “Hillary Clinton is disqualified from being Commander and Chief of the United States” and that the first thing she would have to do if she was elected president would be to “pardon herself.”
New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, said, “She put our national security at risk for her convenience.” Senior political science major at Monmouth University, Nicole Benis said “I think it’s outrageous that someone with such a scandal and essentially a criminal background, since they were government emails, could still be considered for president.”
FBI director, James Comey said, “My folks don’t give a rip about politics” and that “We’re competent, we’re independent and we’re honest.”
According to an article written by Bob Cusack and Ian Swanson of The Hill, Comey was appointed by President Obama and handled the mishandling of classified information by CIA director, General David Petraeus, and former Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger.
With the first hurdle for the nomination on Monday, Clinton is looking at the possibility of this scandal effecting her presidentialrun. Going into the Iowa caucus, Clinton is clinging on to a five point lead over Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, which is down from her twenty-two point lead she previously enjoyed just a month ago—according to a Monmouth University poll taken one week before the Iowa caucus on January 28th.
Dr. Joseph Patten, Chair of the Political Science Department, said Hillary’s email scandal is a “potential problem” and that “Hillary’s problem is that people don’t like her.” He said that “Bernie Sanders is galvanizing the liberal wing of the party” but “Hillary does better with African American voters.”
Dr. Stephen Chapman, Assistant Professor of Poltical Scinence, said “I think she already has likeability issues” but continued “I would not equate this election with 2008.”
