Kansas Republican Party criticizes Hillary Clinton over e-mail use

The Kansas Republican Party has criticized Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on social media over her use of a private e-mail account during her tenure as secretary of state.

The move comes as Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration also faces scrutiny over its use of private e-mails.

“It makes you wonder: Did Hillary Clinton and her top staff use private emails – with the ‘homebrew’ server in her home – so she could conduct diplomacy and fundraising at the same time?” a post on the state party’s official Facebook page states. “Clinton: corruption and incompetence, combined.”

The party then provides a link to a release from the Republican National Committee attacking Clinton, the former first lady and former Obama cabinet official, over the e-mail controversy. It provided the same link on its Twitter page with the note: “Hillary Clinton – corruption and incompetence combined.”

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Clinton almost exclusively used a private e-mail account during her time as secretary of state and documented how this enabled her to circumvent open-records requests.

Clinton is not the only public official to face scrutiny over the use of private e-mails for official business. For example, Florida Gov. Rick Scott faces a lawsuit about his use of private e-mail.

The Eagle reported in January that Shawn Sullivan, Brownback’s budget director, e-mailed a draft of the state’s budget to other administration officials and a pair of lobbyists with ties to Brownback just before Christmas using a private e-mail account.

Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, introduced legislation that would make private e-mails regarding official state business open records, but the bill has been tabled for the session. House Speaker Ray Merrick’s office would not respond when asked why Ward’s bill was tabled after requests were made to keep it alive.

Sullivan said he used private e-mail, which would be exempt from the Kansas Open Records Act because of a loophole, only because he was on break for the holiday. Additional records, however, showed that the exchanges began weeks before that.

The governor said he primarily uses a private cellphone to communicate – instead of a state-issued phone that would be subject to the open-records law – for convenience. The administration said it has no policy on when staff members can or cannot use private e-mail accounts.

Clay Barker, the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, drew a distinction between Clinton’s use of private e-mails and a private home-based server and Sullivan’s use of private e-mail on a private computer to send lobbyists budget information.

“I think the difference is it looks like from what I read in the media is that Hillary Clinton did this as part of a systematic policy over four years, that all her e-mails were private,” Barker said.

Barker said he was unsure of the Brownback administration’s policies, but based on his reading of The Eagle and other media outlets, he said, Sullivan’s use of private e-mail appeared to be only a few occasions.

“I really can’t speak to Brownback. We’re just pointing out that Clinton seems to – this just goes beyond, you know, the periodic or occasional use that somebody in any government level might use a private e-mail,” Barker said. “This seems to be a systematic policy decision on her part to keep this all hidden. … Just seems kind of odd for a secretary of state to be doing that.”

Asked whether he thought there was any inconsistency between his reaction to Clinton’s and the Brownback’s administration’s uses of private e-mail, Barker replied, “I can’t really speak to what the governor’s doing. That’s outside my purview. We’re questioning Hillary Clinton.”

Ward said Tuesday that he hoped the controversy surrounding Clinton would help sway Kansas Republicans to close the loophole in the state’s own law, which enables public officials to avoid falling under the open-records act if they use private e-mail on a personal electronic device. His tabled bill would close that loophole.

“If Hillary was first, you know the Republicans would’ve been banging the drums or are banging the drums for some sort of law or some sort of rule that requires disclosure, because it’s politically advantageous … and so I think this helps a lot to demonstrate why it’s not just an anti-Brownback bill,” Ward said Tuesday. “It’s really about transparency.”

Ward’s proposal would extend only to e-mails in which there is a substantial public interest and would allow private exchanges between an official and his or her spouse, for example, to remain private.

“If I sent a draft of the budget, that would ring the bell,” Ward said. “If I send a peace proposal for the Middle East, that would ring the bell.”

Barker said he couldn’t comment on whether the Kansas Republican Party would support such legislation given its stance on Clinton’s e-mails.

This story was originally published March 4, 2015 at 11:15 AM.