Appearing on Fox News’s “Special Report” Tuesday night, columnist Charles Krauthammer continued his bashing of Hillary Clinton. Krauthammer considers the former secretary of state concealing her emails an “elaborate scheme” that was done to simply avoid Congressional oversight and the Freedom of Information Act.
The syndicated columnist added, echoing fellow panelist George Will, that Clinton “burned the tapes,” referring to former President Richard Nixon’s actions as he tried to cover-up the Watergate Scandal. Krauthammer made the remarks after State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said they had uncovered no record that Clinton had signed a 0F-109 form prior to her leaving the agency.
KRAUTHAMMER: This is an elaborate scheme, very obvious, not done for convenience, but done to conceal, and that’s what this is all about. George is right, she burned the tapes. And, you know, obviously as her defender, James Carville said, you don’t want Louie Gohmert, meaning a Republican member of Congress going through her emails. That’s the point. Not convenience. It was to prevent the Republicans or really the government, the Freedom Of Information Act, the public from looking at her emails which is required by State Department regulation, a departing official…must ensure that all record material that they possess is incorporated in the department’s official files. And if you don’t, if you willfully remove or destroy the records, the penalty can be fines, imprisonment, or both.’
BAIER: But Charles, when you hear them say this this equivalence of Collin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, we can’t find their signed OF-109s either, what do you say?
KRAUTHAMMER: It’s not the 0F-109 it’s the entire scheme she did to remove the files, to burn the files, essentially, and it wasn’t her job to decide what’s private or not. Once you leave the government, it is clear that the regulations are that the department archivists are the ones who decide what is government and what is not, and he decided and then acted to destroy the files.