Clinton’s email woes return

Hillary Clinton has faced a steady drip of revelations about her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Cristobal Herrera / EPA

The saga of the candidate’s email use is back in the media. But what exactly did she do?

The US election is only days away and yet it can seem as if some of the topics discussed have been playing in the media forever. The most recent one: emails, and specifically emails from Hillary Clinton.

The Clinton email saga has been playing out for almost two years. But what exactly is at issue?

The story began in March 2015, after it was revealed that Mrs Clinton, when she was US secretary of state, had used a personal email server, located at her home in New York.

That caused consternation in the media. US officials usually use government servers, for a number of reasons: they can be protected better, they can be monitored by government officials and they can be made public via freedom of information requests.

Critics said the reason Mrs Clinton used a private server was to bypass all these possibilities and make sure that what she wrote would remain private unless she herself released it. But as a government official, what she wrote ought to have been part of the government record and therefore open to scrutiny.

Mrs Clinton’s argument was much simpler: it was easier to communicate with a private server because it allowed her to carry just one phone for official and private emails, instead of two.

An FBI investigation followed, watched carefully by the media and her opponents, which, in July this year, concluded that while Mrs Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information, she should not face criminal charges.

The issue was so damaging to Mrs Clinton because it fed a perception among the public that she believes the rules only apply to others, not to her (a criticism also levelled at her husband). But the FBI investigation drew a line under the incident, several months before the election.

What changed a week ago was that the FBI suddenly warned the US Congress that it had in its possession further emails that could be “pertinent”. These emails appear to have come from the laptop of the husband of one of Mrs Clinton’s aides Huma Abedin, who is being investigated over explicit photos he sent to young women.

Although it is unclear if there is anything at all of interest in the emails, the revelation by the FBI so close to an election has sparked fury from the Clinton campaign – and joy from Donald Trump’s campaign. The nuance of the story has been lost in the maelstrom of the election and the suggestion that Mrs Clinton may have broken the law has again resurfaced.

Will it matter? “I think,” Mrs Clinton said this week, “most people have decided a long time ago what they think about all of this. Now what people are focused on is choosing the next president.” She may be right. But the real danger is that some of those who may vote for her will be so exasperated by these latest revelations that they simply stay home. With the opinion polls so close, and Mr Trump’s supporters so enthusiastic, Mrs Clinton will need a big turnout to win the election.