Vice President Fails To Demand An FBI Investigation After His Private Email Account Is Hacked

from the investigations-are-for-other-people dept

I can only assume Mike Pence is so self-absorbed he's literally incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy. Either that or he's completely shameless.

After engaging in a presidential campaign where much was made of Hillary Clinton's private email address/server, Pence went to court to prevent his AOL emails from being released to public records requesters.

I can only assume Pence is now welcoming an FBI investigation into his use of an AOL account.

Clinton routed sensitive documents through an insecure personal server. Pence is doing the same. While Clinton was advised against setting up her own personal email server, it's likely Pence has had an AOL account for a long, long, long time. Sure, there's a difference between taking matters into your own hands and leaving your email security up to a third party, but the end result is no different: both were using private accounts to handle government business -- business that included the classified and sensitive information.

The main difference here is we know Pence's email account has been hacked. There were attempts made on Clinton's email server, but nothing out there suggests any of those attacks were successful. Considering Pence's earlier adamance about Clinton's careless email habits, it's probably time to invite the FBI to take a look at his careless handling of sensitive documents.

Emails released to IndyStar in response to a public records request show Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges. Cyber-security experts say the emails raise concerns about whether such sensitive information was adequately protected from hackers, given that personal accounts like Pence's are typically less secure than government email accounts. In fact, Pence's personal account was hacked last summer.

Politicians routinely have to eat their words. They're rarely shy about casting the first (and several follow-up) stones, even while their own sins run dark and deep. But a guy who has an email investigation to at least partially thank for his new position should be following an own-words-based diet for the next several months. If nothing else, it might (MIGHT!) push him towards the occasional second thought before hitting "tweet."

If Pence were intellectually honest, he'd replace Clinton's name with his own in the statement he made to "Meet the Press" last year.

“What’s evident from all of the revelations over the last several weeks is that Hillary Clinton I operated in such a way to keep her my emails, and particularly her my interactions while Secretary of State with the Clinton Foundation governor of Indiana, out of the public reach, out of public accountability,” Pence said. “And with regard to classified information she I either knew or should have known that she I was placing classified information in a way that exposed it to being hacked and being made available in the public domain even to enemies of this country.”

Pence's former office is releasing a small subset of his AOL emails. The Indy Star has obtained around 30 of them, but the governor's office says it's withholding a majority of them because they're either (a) deliberative documents or (b) too damn sensitive to be released publicly.

If the governor's office won't release them, perhaps the hackers will. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, but sometimes an outsider kicking in the door and throwing open the blinds is the only way to achieve the transparency the public deserves.

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Filed Under: classified info, emails, fbi, foia, hacked, hillary clinton, mike pence, private servers, public records