State Department’s Office of Inspector General report shreds Clinton’s secret server defence

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General has released its report about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Though the report uncovers no smoking guns — no records of Clinton saying “Heh, heh, heh, they’ll never FOIA my emails NOW!!!!” — what it does lay out is deeply troubling, even though her supporters have already begun the proclamations of “nothing to see here, move along.”

It lays to rest the longtime Clinton defense that this use of a private server was somehow normal and allowed by government rules: It was not normal, and was not allowed by the government rules in place at the time. “The Department’s current policy, implemented in 2005, is that normal day-to-day operations should be conducted on an authorized Automated Information System (AIS), which “has the proper level of security control to … ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the resident information.”

It also shreds the defense that “Well, Colin Powell did it too” into very fine dust, and then neatly disposes of the dust. As the report makes very clear, there are substantial differences between what the two secretaries of State did...