Hillary Clinton Deletes All Private Emails Used as Secretary of State

It was recently reported by CNN.com that Hillary Clinton has deleted all private emails during her tenure as the Secretary of State during a subpoena delivered by Rep. Trey Gowdy, Chairman of the house committee investigating the attacks not he US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  As a preface, she claimed to have used private emails for both convenience and expediency regardless that this is prohibited and poses grave and severe security concerns among others.  The Federal Records Act requires the State Department to keep all correspondence and records from all former and current employees, especially in the commission of executing department affairs.  Although some lawyers have opined "that she technically didn't do anything illegal, others would disagree..." according to the Nationalreview.com, and it is clear that she used a private server, in violation of law and department policy, that was intentionally wiped clean thus circumventing this law.  This issue is two-fold:  both from a legal aspect and an ethical one too.  We will not delve into the events of Benghazi, but we will examine why such a high-ranking public official decided to handle public affairs on a private and personal server and seemingly destroyed these records even though she was well aware that they were public record.  The greatest ethical dilemma here, in my opinion, is the fact that she did not encourage transparency and destroyed the records because damning evidence could potentially destroy her bid for the Democratic Presidential seed in 2016, which she was clearly a favorite and frontrunner of prior to this incident revealing her duplicitous nature.  The ethical question here I would pose would be, if she was so secretive and deceptive with her handling of Benghazi and clearly covered up any evidence thereof, can we trust such a former public official to the highest echelon of elected service?


Resource

         Frates, C. (2015, March 28). Hillary Clinton deleted all email from personal server - CNN.com. Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/27/politics/hillary-clinton-personal-email-server/index.html

         Coffin, S. (2015, March 4). Did Hillary Commit a Felony?, by Shannen W. Coffin, National Review. Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414835/did-hillary-commit-felony-shannen-w-coffin