Hillary Clinton's 'email controversy' raises questions about ethics, transparency

Washington: Hillary Rodham Clinton is facing a new set of questions about ethics and transparency — the sort that have dogged her and former president Bill Clinton for decades. The latest disclosure, that Clinton used a personal email account while serving as secretary of state, comes on the cusp of her likely second bid for president. Combined with recent news about her family foundation raising money from foreign governments while she was at the State Department, it added fresh fuel on Tuesday to the longstanding charge that the Clintons play by their own rules. “Does she believe that leadership means acting outside the law?” said Carly Fiorina, the former technology executive who is weighing a 2016 Republican Party presidential bid. “Does she believe that leadership can exist without transparency?” Clinton ignored the issue during a speech Tuesday night at the 30th anniversary gala of EMILY’s List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. Looking out at the ballroom of female Democrats, Clinton asked if they were hopeful of seeing more women running for local offices like school board member, governor, mayor and member of Congress. “I suppose it’s only fair to say, ‘Don’t you someday want to see a woman president?’” she asked, generating loud applause. Polls show Clinton is the dominant front-runner among Democrats, and no one in the field of potential challengers is showing signs of electrifying the party the way President Barack Obama did in 2008 when he beat Clinton for the nomination. The Republicans have a crowded field of prospective candidates, with no clear favourite. [caption id=“attachment_1712435” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Hillary Clinton in this file photo. AFP[/caption] Clinton’s aides say there was nothing illegal or improper about her use of a personal email account for government work, saying she was hardly the first secretary of state to do so. Meanwhile, her allies praise the work of the Clinton Foundation — and note that it isn’t required to disclose its donors but does so anyway. Bill Clinton’s rise through Arkansas politics and his two terms in the White House were sometimes accompanied by allegations of questionable business dealings and by ethics controversies, culminating in his 1998 impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. Hillary Clinton was caught up in some of them, including the Whitewater investigation into the couple’s real estate investments. Officials at the Clinton Foundation recently acknowledged an instance where they failed to seek State Department approval for a foreign government’s donation as required. In the private e-mail matter, she provided the State Department with emails from her personal account last year when asked, but only she and the relevant members of her staff know if she turned over all of them. Clinton provided the emails after the department asked several former secretaries, including Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, last year for records that should be preserved, said Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. People familiar with Clinton’s private email address said it was known to about 100 people, but was not widely distributed throughout the department. The people familiar with her email spoke only under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Details of Clinton’s State Department email use, first reported by The New York Times, put the White House in the awkward position of defending its record on transparency and standing by Clinton. Spokesman Josh Earnest said administration guidance to agency employees specifies that they “should use their official email accounts when they’re conducting official government business.” He repeatedly sidestepped questions Tuesday about whether Clinton had broken any laws by not using official email, which must be archived under the Federal Records Act. Meanwhile, Republican former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a potential challenger, made a show of transparency last month by making available more than 275,000 emails sent to and from his personal account during his time in office, even though they had long been available to the public at the Florida state archives. Associated Press