article_snippet: During the four years that Hillary Clinton's was secretary of state Hillary Clinton's used (brace yourselves) a personal email account!
article_snippet: Perhaps Hillary Clinton's thought this was a way of ensuring that Barack Obama didn't read Hillary Clinton's emails.
article_snippet: It is true that by using a commercial account, Hillary Clinton's opened Hillary Clinton's up to being hacked.
article_snippet: It is also true that the rules of the National Archives and Records Administration stipulate that personal emails should only be used in "emergency situations" -- and as a historian I recognize the need for transparency and for keeping a record of everything written and sent for the appreciation of future generations.
article_snippet: And we'll recall, by the way, that officials in George W. Bush's administration did something like this -- using nonofficial email accounts for official business -- and were hounded by the Democrats for it.
article_snippet: But whenever Hillary Clinton's pinged an email to an official government account, then the conversation would still have been archived, and Hillary Clinton's office insists that emails from Hillary Clinton's personal account were handed over anyway.
article_snippet: The suggestion that Hillary Clinton's thought Hillary Clinton's might have "something to hide" would only make sense if Hillary Clinton's had used her personal account on some occasions but not others.
article_snippet: Hillary Clinton's would have to have been blessed with the gift of clairvoyance to know back in 2009 that there would some day be controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton's handling of a siege of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya -- and that it might be best to use personal email so as to cover Hillary Clinton's tracks in the future.
article_snippet: Or else wondering if there's been some careful selecting of the emails to put the former governor in a good light.
article_snippet: But there is a far less serious context to "email-gate," too: the presidential election.
highlights_snippet: Timothy Stanley: Hillary Clinton's use of personal email is a nonscandal .
  