Clinton's shaky email defenses: Column Campaign proves she doesn't lie by citing fact-checkers who point to clever deceptions.

Jenna Adamson | USA TODAY

After Hillary Clinton provided her much-discussed private server to the proper authorities last week, her campaign sent out an email blast to supporters and posted on its website a fascinating briefing to bring all the “facts” about the email "nonsense" together. Yet, the links the briefing provided to clear Clinton’s good name are a bit curious.

If you follow them, you'll find that when Clinton is given every benefit of the doubt, she is innocent of specific deliberate falsehoods. At the same time, the links indict her for a campaign of deliberately misleading statements, dating to a news conference in March. Consider some of the key questions, and the answers provided by the fact-checking websites cited by the Clinton campaign (emphasis added in boldface italics):

Was using a private email account allowed?

"Yes,” the campaign said, citing a PolitiFact post. Here's what Politifact found:

“We interviewed several experts on government transparency and records preservation. While Clinton might be able to put together a case that she 'complied' with the rules, experts said her actions are nevertheless hard to defend .”

.” “It seems she didn’t break a rule simply by using a personal email to conduct business. Rather, by using personal emails exclusively, she skirted the rules governing federal records management."

governing federal records management." “(Former Justice Department official Daniel) Metcalfe pointed to Clinton’s use of the word ‘allowed’ and ‘opted’ throughout her press conference, when referring to her decision to use private email. He said both words give the false impression that the law and its proper implementation presented her with a choice. She might have been ‘allowed’ to use only a private email account in that no one stopped her, Metcalfe said, but that’s not the same thing as lawfully complying with rules.”

What about the allegation that Clinton used multiple secret email addresses?

Clarifying the “honest misunderstanding” surrounding the issue, the Clinton campaign cited a FactCheck.org post. Said FactCheck:

“This doesn’t prove, of course, that Clinton did not have more than one @clintonemail.com address while secretary of State. All four experts told us the only way to know for sure how many @clintonemail.com accounts Clinton had while in office is to conduct a forensic examination of her mail server.”

Did Clinton delete any emails while facing a subpoena?

"No,” the campaign claimed.Technically true, said a FactCheck.org post, if Clinton meant by “I’ve never had a subpoena” that the emails were deleted before she received the subpoena.

The FactCheck post continued:

“We asked the Clinton campaign what she meant when she said that she 'didn’t have to turn over anything' to the State Department. ... Clinton should have preserved the emails before she left office . The State Department policy on preserving emails dates to 1995 after the National Archives and Records Administration issued government-wide regulations on emails. … In 2009, NARA specifically addressed the issue of emails ‘created or received outside of official electronic systems maintained’ by the federal government, according to Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle and a former director of litigation at the National Archives.”

. The State Department after the National Archives and Records Administration issued government-wide regulations on emails. … In 2009, NARA specifically addressed the issue of emails ‘created or received outside of official electronic systems maintained’ by the federal government, according to Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle and a former director of litigation at the National Archives.” “Clinton has taken the position that she complied with department policy because ‘the vast majority of my work emails went to government employees at their government addresses, which meant they were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.’ Baron, in his letter to the Judiciary Committee, disagreed. He said it is an ‘erroneous assumption ’ that emails ‘sent to or received from a .gov address are being automatically preserved somewhere in a federal agency.’ He said, ‘Very few federal agencies have implemented an automated system for archiving email .’ ”

that emails ‘sent to or received from a .gov address are being automatically preserved somewhere in a federal agency.’ He said, ‘Very .’ ” “In her (July 7 CNN) interview, Clinton also said that ‘previous secretaries of State have said they did the same thing.’ … Although (Colin) Powell did acknowledge that he used personal email for official business, there’s no evidence that he — or any other previous secretary of State — maintained emails on a personal server .”

.” “She later said, ‘I had one device. When I mailed anybody in the government, it would go into the government system.’ She did not have one device for sending emails. She had two — a BlackBerry and an iPad — according to the Clinton emails released so far by the State Department.”

A second link, this time from PolitiFact, explained that “the timeline generally supports Clinton’s contention. ... She deleted emails in fall 2014 after she was asked to turn over email related to Benghazi. The official subpoena didn’t come until March 2015,” but…

“Clinton’s choice of words is still somewhat misleading, especially to people who haven’t followed the controversy. ‘I’ve never had a subpoena’ implies that up to the day of the (Jul 7 CNN) interview, she has not received a subpoena related to her emails, which is incorrect. Additionally, in the months when she was sifting through these emails, there was a pending formal request — though not an official subpoena — for the emails. So she knew at the time that the State Department and the Benghazi Committee wanted to look at them.”

The fact that the Clinton campaign has been forced to cite websites that conclude the candidate did everything to mislead, confuse and otherwise obscure the truth, short of outright falsehoods, suggests there's more to this story than a lot of nonsense.

Jenna Adamson is a USA TODAY Collegiate Network fellow.