Constituents in my congressional district routinely ask me about the chances of Hillary Clinton being elected President. Hard-working Tennesseans are gravely concerned about what another four years of Obama-like policies will do to our country. They know America is headed in the wrong direction. However, I am convinced that Hillary Clinton will not be elected because she is untrustworthy and ineffective.
Fifty-seven percent of the American people do not believe Hillary Clinton is trustworthy according to an ABC-Washington Post poll conducted in March. The fog of Clinton scandals has eroded public trust in the former Secretary of State and it is the latest one which I find the most appalling. The State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) provided another reminder of Secretary Clinton’s lack of honesty last week by issuing a scathing report detailing her illegal use of a private email server to conduct official government business. Even the liberal Huffington Post was prompted to run a piece titled “State Department Report Justifies Indictments for Hillary Clinton. Democrats Need Bernie Sanders.”
The OIG’s report clearly states that Secretary Clinton circumvented the Federal Records Act and failed to comply with Departmental policies. Page 38 of the report notes that an email between Clinton and aide Huma Abedin revealed that Secretary Clinton used her home brew server not for “convenience,” as she initially proclaimed, but to avoid having her emails made public. Further, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) and the Bureau of Information Resource Management (IRM) are the two entities at the State Department responsible “for ensuring the security of Department electronic information.” The report’s Cybersecurity section notes that “DS and IRM did not – and would not – approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business.”
Secretary Clinton’s self-serving conduct callously placed the interests of American foreign policy a distant second to her own and likely compromised sensitive national security information.
For example, the OIG’s report states that the Secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations was notified by an advisor to President Clinton on January 9, 2011, that the private email server may have been hacked twice that day. The advisor to President Clinton wrote, “We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.” Rather than report a possible breach of a server containing troves of national security information, the Clinton team treated cyber attacks like a 3rd grader whose computer freezes up in class.
In addition to being deceptive, Hillary Clinton was also ineffective as Secretary of State. The Obama/Clinton foreign policy helped produce the Arab spring, a reckless intervention in Libya, the rise of ISIS, a dangerous Russia Reset, and Chinese military expansion in the South China Sea. On August 28, 2009, the Washington Times noted that the Administration was sacrificing European missile defense as part of planned concessions to Russia in order to secure the Kremlin’s assistance in deterring Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Times added that Secretary Clinton promised to deploy a “security umbrella” against Iranian nuclear aggression, but that “Mrs. Clinton’s promises are less credible if the United States is simultaneously opening and closing the defense umbrella.” This severe diplomatic miscalculation provided an early example of the type of “leading from behind” that has left our allies feeling betrayed and enemies emboldened.
Ironically, it was Secretary Clinton who once questioned then-candidate Obama’s experience by running a campaign ad of her receiving a 3 a.m. phone call with the question “Who do you want answering the phone?” Secretary Clinton got that call on the night Ambassador Christopher Stevens was murdered during an obvious terror attack in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9-11. She never picked up. Secretary Clinton was present as Ambassador Stevens’ coffin was literally being carried off of a plane and into an airport hangar at Andrews Air Force Base on September 14, 2012 and said that “we’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with.” A blatant lie.
Hillary Clinton has always operated under a shroud of secrecy and played by her own set of rules. Her time as Secretary of State once again revealed that she is not only untrustworthy, but ineffective. The Obama/Clinton foreign policy sowed the seeds of world turmoil that we are currently witnessing. If being Secretary of State was considered a test run for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton is clearly unfit to serve.
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