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Comment by cmsimike | Hacker News Reader

I've always voted democrat as "the lesser of two evils" but this email situation has really ruffled my feathers (and is why I am voting third party). I get that there is favoritism in everything, but the idea that Hillary (at least before looked like she) walked away scott-free after committing what I believe to be a very serious crime whereas any one of us in a similar situation would have been thrown in jail right away and smeared as a terrorist didn't sit well with me for obvious reasons.

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While I get this sentiment, I would honestly like to know if you feel she has been judged fairly and consistently compared to other email related scandals out there. Most notably the bush white house emails [1] and Colin Powell's use of a personal email account (if not a personal server, though in some ways using an AOL email server has other complications over a private server)[2]

I'm not saying the email scandal is a non-issue, but I find it very interesting that so much emphasis is placed on what she has done despite plenty of other questionable incidents previously. It follows well the narrative that she is being at the very least held to a different standard than other politicians.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...

[2] http://heavy.com/news/2016/08/did-colin-powell-use-personal-...

Other politicians wished they were held to the same standard as the Clintons.

The Bush admin had plenty of other controversies and they were reamed by the media repeatedly for those (and justifiably so). It's not like it was hands off.

Maybe this is a bigger issue because of the continued lying about what happened, which is an ongoing issue for Clinton.

I admit her handling of the issue has not been great, but that is a trend with most of her "scandals". How she handles them is often worse than the scandal itself (in that there tends to be smoke but no fire).

This to me supports the idea she wasn't trying to hide her state dept emails where they couldn't be accessed via FOI requests. If that were the goal, they would have done what the bush administration did and use that server almost exclusively so that both sender and receiver were on a private server. As it was, emails to and from other state dept staffers using their state dept emails would have copies. If that was an attempt to hide official emails it was not a good one.

You left out Petraeus who did worse and still only received probation.

The reality is that most cases of mishandling classified information result in little more than a stern talking to from your manager, re-training, and a blemish in your file.

Probation means charges and conviction.

Those were bad, but there are differences that matter:

The law has changed. Requirements were less strict back when email was new and exotic. We don't punish people for violating laws passed after the not-yet-crime is done; this would violate the constitution.

Bush and Powell were not under investigation, and thus didn't destroy evidence while under investigation.

Bush and Powell didn't have the issues with classified material, possibly excepting one disputed Powell email.

I don't think most people would be jailed for it. There's no evidence of it being malicious so as my dad (who was in the military) put it, "if the government jailed people for doing things that were stupid there would be no one left".

You have _a lot_ more faith in the sanity of the Government than I do. Hell, I mean, the FBI statement itself said,

"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case"

If a normal citizen were to have done the same -- a citizen which didn't have the same profile, stature, or benefits of connection as Hilary, the "reasonable-ness" from the prosecution's vantage point would likely sky rocket.

People are jailed for far less round these parts.

I don't like the double standard that would cause a lower-level employee prosecuted or worse, but if this is an issue I would like to see a more consistent standard applied across government.

Also, how many CEO's do you know that do stupid stuff with customer data and break rules in an organization? I'm not saying is right or that it shouldn't be punished but the double standard to me is the problem. If it wasn't Hillary nobody would care but there has been a marketing campaign against her for so long its practically Pavlovian at this point.

> If a normal citizen were to have done the same -- a citizen which didn't have the same profile, stature, or benefits of connection as Hilary, the "reasonable-ness" from the prosecution's vantage point would likely sky rocket.

Then again, a normal citizen doesn't really have a lot of people sending them classified emails. I don't think this is a situation where you can extrapolate from VIP to non-VIP…

I disagree completely with this. I _want_ to believe I live in a country where not only laws are applied but common sense too.

Do I believe Hillary acted with malicious intent? I don't. I do believe she broke the law.

The reality I believe in is that if it were me somehow in this situation, there would be no common-sense applied, just the letter of the law. No judge would look at my past and see someone making a mistake, or try to get to know me to better understand me. Just gitmo.

> Do I believe Hillary acted with malicious intent? I don't.

She just wanted email on her Blackberry so she could conduct business while traveling.

+1 I am also a lifetime Democrat who is not voting for Clinton for this and other reasons. I decided to vote for Jill Stein, rather than not vote at all.

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