Vail Daily letter: Email issues
The Disingenuosity Of The Week award goes to Rohn Robbins for his column “Mr. Trump, hacking is a crime” (July 29 Vail Daily). It’s about Donald Trump’s suggestion that the press would thank the Russian government if it could produce the 30,000 emails that were deleted from Hillary Clinton’s personal server.
Robbins started off mentioning the hack of the Democratic National Committee server that is currently in the news. It appears to have happened in the past few months.
He then leaps over to the 30,000 emails Hillary Clinton had deleted from her personal server, before turning it over to the FBI. Like a number of others, Robbins claims Trump’s remark amounts to encouraging a crime. He even muttered darkly about treason.
There are two problems with these claims. First, in either case, the missing emails have already been hacked, if it happened at all. So Trump wasn’t inciting someone to hack in the future.
And, second, Hillary Clinton claims her deleted emails involved purely personal matters — her daughter’s wedding, yoga classes, etc. How could this constitute theft of vital political information?
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Hillary didn’t just click on the “delete” button; the server was cleaned so thoroughly that even the FBI’s experts couldn’t recover many of them. We have to ask — why was so much trouble taken over such mundane content?
Which leads to the question: Do you believe Hillary Clinton about what was in the emails she deleted? FBI Director James Comey testified that she was not truthful in her statements about her emails.
This is what could be going on — Robbins and Co. may be trying to deflect attention from the real issue, which is whether some those deleted emails deal with embarrassing matters like the Clinton Foundation’s activities and funding from foreign governments and commercial interests. And exorbitant speech fees. Pay for play. Or Bill Clinton’s latest amorous adventures. Or getting the Democratic National Committee to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign, which just came to light.
Who knows?
What would happen if the deleted emails were submitted to the court of public opinion? Before the election.
Lest anyone make the charge — I am not a Donald Trump supporter. He is bad, but Hillary is worse. Don’t blame me for the choices; I supported Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Dr. Ben Carson.
Terry Quinn
Eagle