Hillary Clinton has again refused to acknowledge the email controversy swirling around her invisible campaign, attempting to take the high road on her core issues as Clinton loyalists continued to insist the email row was “all about nothing” and Democrats in early campaign battlegrounds grew tired of Clintonland’s wall of silence.
While Clinton took the stage in New York on Monday, the White House acknowledged that Barack Obama had sent messages to a personal email account used by his former secretary of state, the vetted contents of which have become an early test of a presidential run that is expected to begin next month.
Speaking alongside Melinda Gates - philanthropist and wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates - at a second straight public event focused on the Clinton Foundation’s “No Ceilings” campaign, Clinton spoke indirectly to her base on women’s pay, science-and-technology education and climate change while obliquely ignoring a cavalcade of criticism from the right.
“There has never been a better time in history to be born a female,” the former secretary of state told an audience in New York’s Times Square, in detailing the findings of a 20-year report that explored barriers old and new to gender equality in the workplace and across the globe. “The data also shows how far we still have to go.”
Political watchers, pollsters and even the liberal media establishment were busy pushing back on the Clinton family foundation’s ties to countries with questionable records on women’s rights and pouncing on early vulnerabilities, one week after word first emerged of 55,000 pages of emails sent from a ClintonEmail.com account rather than official state department channels.
The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters that Obama had emailed Clinton on her private address but that the president had not sent a “large” number of messages to the account. All of Obama’s emails remain archived, Earnest said, and he “assumes” the president recognized that her address was not from the state department. “They did have the occasion to email with each other,” Earnest said.
Under federal law, correspondence including emails to and from government officials must be preserved for history and to ensure openness in government. Earnest said the president “was not aware of the details” of how Clinton compiled with the federal records rules, or how the private server at the Clinton home in New York had been set up.
“There’s always going to be a distraction in Clintonland,” James Carville, the longtime Clinton friend and campaign strategist, said on MSNBC as Clinton took the stage in New York on Monday. “Let’s all get our breath here.”
See my new profile pic to raise awareness on how far we've come in reaching equal rights for women & girls worldwide. http://t.co/MzqVBq6FTL
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 8, 2015
Clinton changed her Twitter profile avatar on Sunday in support of International Women’s Day – swapping out the notorious photograph of the former secretary checking her Blackberry with sunglasses on. But aside from a tweet sent late on Monday night saying that she had asked the state department to release her emails, Clinton and her close-knit group of aides have remained nearly silent.
CNN, citing a source close to Clinton, reported Monday afternoon the former secretary of state was expected to address the controversy “as soon as within 48 hours”. Sources told Politico Clinton was likely to hold a press conference “in the next several days”.
Meanwhile, Republicans have ramped up into full campaign mode, with nine potential presidential candidates swinging through Iowa this weekend – boosting both their own conservative bona fides and a new attack line on Clinton.
Texas senator Ted Cruz called for a Department of Justice investigation into Clinton’s emails from her time at the state department, telling reporters in Des Moines on Saturday: “There needs to be an investigation as to whether she violated the criminal laws of the United States.
“When a major public official publicly acknowledges that she has carried out conduct that on its face seems directly in conflict with federal criminal law, one would expect the Justice Department to investigate that and investigate that promptly.”
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, in an interview with the conservative Weekly Standard after the Iowa Agricultural Summit, called out what he called the former secretary of state’s “audacity to think that someone would put their personal interest above classified, confidential, highly sensitive information”.
Walker has been linked to email troubles of his own, but the unending conservative chorus was raising concerns in presidential primary states, where the presumptive Democratic frontrunner has been nearly invisible with limited public appearances and no interaction with voters.
Although her nascent campaign has hired a large number of staff poised to start at the beginning of April and an unaffiliated Super Pac has kept an active presence on the ground, that hasn’t been a substitute for the personal appearances that early voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have come to expect as the campaign calendar starts earlier.
Jeff Link, a top Iowa-based political consultant, described Iowa Democrats as “a little jealous” of their Republican counterparts, as candidates like Jeb Bush swing from Iowa this past weekend to New Hampshire next week. (Bush announced the hire of Republican strategist Scott Jennings on Monday, who was linked to the use of a private email domain, GWB43.com, to avoid scrutiny while working in the Bush White House.) The GOP, Link said in an interview last month, has “candidates in all the time, holding big events and are building enthusiasm and organization”.
However, Pete D’Alessandro, a longtime operative who served as the political director for former Iowa governor Chet Culver, noted that Clinton doesn’t need to be “Jimmy Carter … and spend 150 days” campaigning in Iowa.
D’Alessandro added that, while staving off an early start to her campaign, Clinton had successfully reduced the amount of time that Democratic activists will focus on controversies such as the email row rather than her key campaign issues.
The scrutiny on Clinton has been mollified in part by the relatively limited efforts of her potential competition from the left. The former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley sent out 20 staffers – 11 to Iowa – and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has been active with events for local Democratic parties and a speech to the National Press Club in Washington on Monday. But neither has built up a truly sustained presence in early states, let alone formally declared their candidacy.
One prominent Iowa Democrat who declined to be identified so he could speak freely said he remained convinced that Clinton may still face primary competition from within her own party, telling the Guardian that “someone is going to be the anti-Hillary”.
Clinton, in her remarks before an adoring crowd of mostly women in New York, stuck with the usual.
“Women are on the frontlines of climate change. It’s important to remember that women are not just victims, they are agents of change, drivers of progress,” she said in unveiling the report, which Gates called a “blueprint for action” on gender inequity and education.
The report’s release comes just two days after Bill Clinton defended the family foundation for accepting donations from countries, such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with poor records on sex discrimination and human rights issues.
“Do we agree with everything they do? No. But they’re helping us fight Isis,” he said on Saturday, referring to donations from the UAE. “My theory about all of this is, disclose everything and then let people make their judgments.”
Saudi Arabia alone has donated at least $10m to the Clinton Foundation since 2001, according to reports swirling from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.
“I believe we have done a lot more good than harm,” Clinton said.
Hillary Clinton’s remarks on Monday were scant, between messages from Gates, Chelsea Clinton and Malala Yousafzai. The former secretary called for the inclusion of women in peace negotiations ahead of another event on Tuesday, when Clinton was expected to deliver a keynote address at a United Nations gathering on women’s empowerment.
The Super Pac affiliated with her as-yet-nonexistent campaign, Ready for Hillary, was expected to host a fundraiser on Tuesday night.
Gillian McClees was visiting New York from Minnesota, looking at potential colleges with her mother after they took in the Clinton speech.
“I am more about the issues,” she said, when asked if she cared about Clinton using her private email while at the state department.
