Now they tell us?

Republicans investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account to run government business as the nation’s top diplomat got a boost Wednesday when a State Department official confirmed in a Senate hearing what anyone who cares about national security and the rule of law already knew:

Government is the public’s business and must be accessible to the public, not hidden away on private email servers where secrets can be kept forever – or destroyed on a whim.

“I think the message is loud and clear that that is not acceptable,” Joyce Barr, the State Department’s assistant secretary for the Bureau of Administration, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The actions that we’ve taken in the course of recovering these emails have made it very clear what the responsibilities are with regard to record-keeping,” she said, according to The Hill.

That’s terrific, of course. But Barr is testifying more than two years after Clinton left the State Department, and six years after she decided she had a right to keep her dealings as secretary of state away from the American public.

Republicans leaped on Barr’s testimony.

“These kinds of things just absolutely undermine the confidence of the American people,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “It was a bad decision. I hope that we go so far as to say that, if you do this in the future, you get fired.”

Not Hillary, and not Democrats. They think she should be promoted for behavior her own former department considers “unacceptable.” And to the presidency of the United States, for God’s sake.

To arrogance to injury — something the Clintons are remarkably good at — Clinton has told the government and the public that her staff had gone through her emails, determined which ones the public had a right to see, and destroyed the rest.

Barr told the senators that means the American people will have to take Clinton’s word on it.

“We have been told that she has provided those to us,” she said.

She doesn’t sound like she believes it either.

Social media users were not amused at the State Department’s finding that the woman who used to run it used methods that were “not acceptable.”

@thehill A bit late (conveniently) for that, eh?

— Kenton McCarthy (@colonelguano) May 6, 2015

. @thehill when @HillaryClinton deleted the #emails, she effectively deleted gov docs. #Hillary #presidentialelection2016

— Jon Cianfaglione (@JJCianfaglione) May 6, 2015

@thehill When did Captain Obvious take over at the State Dept?

— Weird Ralph (@weirdralph) May 6, 2015

@weirdralph@BluegrassPundit@thehill So, from NOW ON, they won’t let any future SOS’s use private email–but no consequences for Hil!

— Contrarian Scientist (@MsContrarianSci) May 6, 2015

Just one consequence, if Dems get their way. It’s called the presidency of the United Stated.

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Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

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