The Obama administration doesn't trust Hillary
Of course Republicans don't trust Hillary Clinton when she claims she has turned over all government-related documents created on her secret email server. Some Democrats appear to have doubts as well. But surely Clinton's old colleagues in the Obama administration — the people who worked with her for four years and know her well — surely they trust the word of the former secretary of state?
Not at all. Listen to the administration's official voices, particularly at the White House and the State Department, and you'll hear bureaucrats carefully keeping their distance from Clinton. Nobody wants to fully vouch for her truthfulness.
Start at the White House. On Wednesday, spokesman Josh Earnest faced a question about Clinton's admission that she destroyed half of her emails — more than 30,000 — because she deemed them to be personal.
"Does the president trust Hillary Clinton when she says that all 30,000 of those emails were personal, none work-related?" a reporter asked.
"Well, there has not been any evidence that's been produced to raise any doubts about that," Earnest said.
Note the absence of the word "yes" in that answer. The reporter then noted that "no one can produce evidence because [Clinton] deleted them." Earnest pointed out that "it is the responsibility of a government official, in this case Secretary Clinton, to ensure that all of the personal email that related to her official government work was properly maintained by the State Department."
Notice again the absence of any expression of trust in Clinton's word. Notice also the emphasis that handling email in a responsible manner was Clinton's — not the president's — job.
Gamely, the reporter tried one more time. "Yes or no — does the White House trust that Hillary Clinton did what your expectation is that she should have done?"
"The answer that I would say is that there is no evidence that's been marshaled thus far to demonstrate that there should be a lack of trust in that regard," Earnest said.
Does that sound like the White House has full confidence in Hillary Clinton?
Similar scenes have played out at the State Department. One question raised repeatedly at the daily news briefing is whether the 55,000 total pages of emails Clinton turned over to State is in fact everything having to do with her time as secretary.
"Will any attempt be made to check whether these are all the emails, or will you just be accepting the secretary's word on this?" a reporter asked spokeswoman Marie Harf last Friday.
"Her staff has said these were all the responsive emails they had to our request, and that's really a question for her staff to answer," Harf answered. Note that Harf put the entire burden on Clinton, and not on the State Department; the spokeswoman said, in effect, we're only telling you what Clinton has told us.
In the minutes that followed, Harf went back and forth with reporters on whether Clinton has in fact turned over everything. Harf said Clinton produced emails that "cover the breadth of her time at the State Department," but Harf stopped short of declaring that was everything.
"You can't say for sure?" a reporter asked.
"Correct," Harf said.
This week, another State spokeswoman, Jen Pskai, took the same position when a reporter asked, "Am I correct in thinking that you are satisfied that the 55,000 pages turned over … is in fact the totality of the business-related emails that are there?"
"That is what Secretary Clinton's team has conveyed," Psaki said.
Yet again, note the absence of any confidence that Clinton has told the administration the whole truth and nothing but the truth about her emails.
From the White House's perspective, there's nothing to be gained from climbing out on a limb to defend Clinton. Nobody in the administration can in good conscience defend what she did, especially now that she has admitted destroying 30,000-plus emails out of a larger group of documents that were the subject of active requests and subpoenas from Congress.
So that is the position Clinton finds herself in today. Republicans are after her for more information, Democrats are nervous about defending her, and the administration colleagues who are in the best position to vouch for her won't even say they believe what she has told them. Clinton may escape this mess, but she'll have to do it on her own.
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