Host of Bloomberg’s “With All Due Respect” Mark Halperin grilled Media Matters founder David Brock for being, well, pretty much the only one defending former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of privately controlled emails, asking if he’d give the same deference to Karl Rove.
“I’m going to create a moment here, David, self-consciously,” Halperin said. “I want you to say this sentence: Hillary handled her e-mail practices at the State Department perfectly.” (VIDEO: MSNBC Host Challenges Media Matters Founder’s Flimsy Defense Of Hillary)
“Yeah, she handled her e-mail at the State Department perfectly,” Brock agreed.
It was then Halperin sprang his trap. “If Karl Rove had kept his emails private, and then the White House said, ‘We need all your emails for preservation of government records,’ and he said ‘I handed them all over, trust me,’ would you trust Karl Rove if that’s what he said?”
Brock paused for a moment. “Well, uh, Secretary Clinton is the head of the agency, and the way I understand the way the law works, it is the call of the head of the agency to turn over what is relevant or pertinent. I trust that she did that.” (VIDEO: State Department Spox Struggles To Explain Hillary’s Private Emails)
“But if Karl Rove was asked—if Karl Rove had a private e-mail server at the White House, never used White House e-mail, wrote all of his e-mails on Rove.com, and then the White House said, ‘We would like you to hand over all e-mails that were relevant,’ would you the batch that Karl sent over to be complete or have questions?”
“I might have questions,” Brock admitted, “And I don’t think there is anything wrong with asking questions.”
“So why should Republicans, and the press, and the public trust that Hillary Clinton, on e-mails that she totally controlled and could have deleted if she wanted to or withheld if she wanted to, why should we trust that she handed them all over?” Halperin asked.
He returned to the same point later. “How do we know she handed them all over? You’re saying that America should trust her judgment? Are you saying America should blindly trust her judgment about what needed to be turned over and what was she was obligated to turn over?”
“I think the fact is that 55,000 pages of e-mail have been turned over, and they were preserved under the law,” Brock replied.
“That’s one of the strawmen,” he shot back. “55? There might have been 255,000 pages! …How do we know? That’s not the way government accountability is supposed to work.”