Hillary Clinton’s Email Scandal, Will it be Forgotten or Haunt Her?

Recently, it has been revealed that Hillary Clinton used her personal email account during her time as Secretary of State. Clinton stated that she used her personal email because it was more convenient at the time, and this would allow her to have everything on one device.

Since most of the emails she sent were to addresses with .gov, they were automatically archived. The State Department asked for the emails from her time as Secretary of State recently, since she had not turned them over yet, even though her term as Secretary of State was back in 2009. Clinton turned over 30,490 emails, which was half of the emails that were on her account. The other half of emails were considered personal, things like her daughter’s wedding dress plans or emails about her mother’s funeral, and she deleted them. In hindsight Clinton wishes she had used a second account for her work emails considering that this has blown up in her face, but alas she cannot change the past.

Republicans are asking for an investigation about the missing emails. They feel there were important emails concerning Benghazi and Libya. In USA Today the spokesman for John Boehner, Michael Steel, says that Clinton did not turn over the emails because she felt like it was the right thing to do. However, when a Secretary of Sate is no longer in office, they usually turn in the emails, that seems to be the protocol.

It is going to take several months for the State Department to go through all the emails that Clinton had turned over. Another aspect of this scandal is the question of security with the information. Clinton says that there was no security breach on her personal server. The server was originally made for former President Bill Clinton, which would have all the safeguards needed to avoid any breaches.

Now this scandal begs the question if this is going to hurt Clinton when it comes to the presidential election. Clinton’s in the lead for the polls and is said to be a heavy contender in the next election.

For instance, when she was forced into an impromptu press conference about the emails, she was initially at the United Nations giving a speech about gender equality. After her speech, all the press wanted to hear about was this email scandal.

It can also be assumed that the Republican party will bring this up again when it gets closer to election time. If this does affect Clinton in the election it may cost the Democrats the presidential election. In all honesty, there isn’t another candidate that has as good of chance of winning the election. Since it will take so long to go through all the emails that Clinton had turned in, it can only come up again later down the road. Only time will tell if this will haunt Clinton as she continues her way to the White House.

Photo: Richard Drew, AP