MSNBC Panel: Hillary’s Email Conduct Was Different From Powell’s, Comparisons Are ‘False Equivalence’

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On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” MSNBC Political Correspondent, National Journal Senior Political Columnist Ron Fournier, and hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rejected claims that Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email practices are no different from former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s.

During a discussion of Clinton’s emails, Huffington Post Senior Politics Editor Sam Stein stated, “[T]he Clinton people turn around and say, listen, there’s been reports that show that Colin Powell did almost identically the same thing, which is a forwarding of information that was later deemed classified, on his private email account, and there was not an uproar over him. Now the magnitude of what Colin Powell did is probably different.”

Scarborough and Hunt objected that Clinton’s conduct was different because regulations against it weren’t implemented until 2009. Stein responded, “Yeah, but if the standard is that you’re leaving classified information around, and that it could be taken by –.”

Brzezinksi then cut in, “Which is why they put the regulations in place.” Fournier further rejected the Powell comparison as a “false equivalence”.

Hunt added, “But this is why Democrats are privately still really nervous, and part of why i think [Democratic presidential candidate Senator] Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign, to a certain extent — I mean, nobody wants to say out loud, oh hey, now we have somebody who is strong enough to step up into those shoes as our nominee, if, in fact, this scandal blows up, in a way that, as you were saying, with criminal charges. Nobody wants to say that out loud, but there are a lot of Democrats who are still really nervous about that.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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