WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton is facing a new set of questions about ethics and transparency — the sort that have dogged her and husband Bill for decades.
The latest disclosure, that Clinton used a personal e-mail account while serving as secretary of state, comes on the cusp of her likely second bid for president. Combined with recent news about her family foundation raising money from foreign governments while she was at the State Department, it added fresh fuel Tuesday to the longstanding charge that the Clintons play by their own rules.
“Does she believe that leadership means acting outside the law?” said Carly Fiorina, the former technology executive who is weighing a 2016 GOP presidential bid. “Does she believe that leadership can exist without transparency?”
Clinton’s aides were quick to dispute the notion that there was anything illegal or improper about her use of a personal e-mail account for government work, noting that she was hardly the first secretary of state to do so.
Using private e-mail accounts for government business is allowed only if the official retains a copy of each record on her official account or forwards a copy within 20 days.
But the law requiring those steps was signed by President Barack Obama in November, nearly two years after Clinton left the State Department.
Meanwhile, her allies praise the work of the Clinton Foundation — and note that it isn’t required to disclose its donors but does so anyway.
Still, for the Clintons, it’s difficult for complicated explanations about allegations to compete with the simplicity of political perception.
Bill Clinton’s rise through Arkansas politics and his two terms in the White House were sometimes accompanied by allegations of questionable business dealings and by ethics controversies, culminating in his 1998 impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. Hillary Clinton was caught up in some of them, including the Whitewater investigation into the couple’s real estate investments.
Officials at the Clinton Foundation did recently acknowledge an instance where they failed to seek State Department approval for a foreign government’s donation as required.
In the new matter, she provided the State Department with e-mails from her personal account last year when asked, but only she and the relevant members of her staff know whether she turned over all of them.
“The presidency is ultimately about trust, and whether it’s this latest series of ethical lapses that have come to light or the decades of secrecy surrounding the Clintons, it’s clear Hillary Clinton is someone with an awful lot to hide,” asserted Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
Clinton’s spokesman says she followed the “letter and spirit” of State Department e-mail rules.
