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Comment by okreallywtf | Hacker News Reader

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-...

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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.

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.

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.

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