Oh, Those Private-Server Government Emails!

Sure, the Obama administration is hopping mad about Hillary!’s blatant attempt to skirt FOIA and just about everything else during her tenure as secretary of state. But,naturally, it knew all about them long in advance:

Senior Obama administration officials, including the White House chief of staff, knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private email address for her government correspondence, according to some 3,000 pages of correspondence released by the State Department late Tuesday night. The chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, requested Clinton’s email address on Sept. 5, 2009, according to one email. His request came three months after top Obama strategist David Axelrod asked the same question of one of Clinton’s top aides.

But it’s unclear whether the officials realized Clinton, now the leading Democratic presidential candidate, was running her email from a server located in her home in Chappaqua, New York — a potential security risk and violation of administration policy.

Of course it’s “unclear.” In the plausible-deniability world the Clintons inhabit, “you can’t prove it!” is the operative motto.

The emails ranged from the mundane details of high-level public service — scheduling secure lines for calls, commenting on memos and dealing with travel logistics — to an email exchange with former President Jimmy Carter and a phone call with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Carter mildly chided Clinton about how to handle the release of two hostages held in North Korea, while Clinton recounted that Rice, her predecessor, “called to tell me I was on strong ground” regarding Israel.

Clinton’s emails have become an issue in her early 2016 campaign, as Republicans accuse her of using a private account rather than the standard government address to avoid public scrutiny of her correspondence. As the controversy has continued, Clinton has seen ratings of her character and trustworthiness drop in polling.

Axelrod said Wednesday that while he knew Clinton had a private email address, “I did not know that she used it exclusively or that she had her server in her home.” The White House counsel’s office also was not aware at the time Clinton was secretary of state that she relied solely on personal email and only found out as part of the congressional investigation into the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attacks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Naturally, Axelrod has previously denied knowledge of Clinton’s email server. If this woman gets anywhere near the White House instead of the Big House next year, we’re even farther gone than we think.