Hillary Clinton is entering the presidential race in a cloud of scandal surrounding foreign contributions to the Clinton family foundation and her use of a private email account and server to conduct official business while secretary of state. But she and her husband are no strangers to scandal.
There often seemed to be no end of the scandals during President Bill Clinton’s two terms in the White House and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns for the Senate starting in 2000 and the Oval Office in 2008. Political experts began diagnosing “Clinton Fatigue” long ago.

As NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd said shortly after the email scandal broke, “if Clinton fatigue, which is already a disease in the press corps, actually becomes a problem with the voting public, and these polls, maybe this is the first time that it’s becoming a problem, that’s — that is doom for her.”

Hillary Clinton may become America’s first woman in the Oval Office despite the heavy baggage of her last name, but the scandals will surely play a dominant role in the 2016 presidential race.

To help readers keep track of them all, herewith is a list of significant Clinton scandals over the years. It is by no means a comprehensive list. The Washington Examiner will update this list as needed in the months ahead.

Travelgate

Soon after her husband became president in 1993, first lady Hillary Clinton allegedly engineered the firing of seven employees of the White House travel office and the hiring of a firm with ties to the Clintons to replace them. Multiple investigations absolved the president of involvement but Hillary Clinton was found to have made false statements to investigators.

When first lady Hillary Clinton convened her task force to create her husband’s national healthcare program, it included multiple representatives from government, the health and insurance industries and academics. Despite the obvious potential for conflicts of interest in closed deliberations, the task force’s meetings werekept secret throughout its existence.

Whitewater

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bill and Hillary Clinton were associates of Jim and Susan McDougal in the Whitewater Development Corp., an Arkansas real estate investment firm that went under when McDougal’s Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan was closed by federal regulators for illegal accounting. Taxpayers lost $73 million due to Guaranty. The Clintons lost an estimated $67,000 on their investment, but McDougal helped pay off Bill Clinton’s campaign debts, and Hillary Clinton’s law firm received an unknown sum in fees for representing a Guaranty project that also failed.

Filegate

Hundreds of FBI background files on officials in previous Republican presidential administrations were improperly given in 1993 and 1994 to Craig Livingstone, the director of White House security who was a Hillary Clinton favorite. No illegal activity was ever proven, and Livingstone ultimately resigned.

Removing files from Vince Foster’s office

Vince Foster was President Clinton’s deputy White House counsel and long-time friend of Hillary Clinton. He committed suicide in 1993, and his body was found in a park just across the Potomac River from the White House. Files were also allegedly removed from his White House office before investigators were able to secure it as part of the official probe into his death.

Lost Rose Law Firm billing records

Congressional and Justice Department investigators began issuing subpoenas in 1994 for Hillary Clinton’s billing records as a partner in the Rose law firm at the center of the Whitewater scandal. She said her role was incidental, but when the records mysteriously turned up in the White House in 1996, they showed she met repeatedly with key figures in the scandal.

Commerce Department’s “pay to play” junkets

Seats on Commerce Department international trade missions were sold to corporate figures in return for big contributions to President Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who was reported to have opposed the scheme, died when one of the missions crashed in Croatia, leading independent counselDaniel Pearson to leave his investigation unfinished.

Renting Lincoln Bedroom

More than 800 people stayed overnight in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. At least $5.4 million in campaign contributions from many of those guests went into Clinton’s re-election effort. Among the paying guests were movie producer Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks SKG head David Geffen and long-time Hollywood powerhouse Lew Wasserman.

John Huang

A close associate of Indonesian industrialist James Riady, Huang initially was appointed deputy secretary of commerce in 1993. By 1995, however, he moved to the Democratic National Committee where he generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions from foreign sources. Huang later pleaded guilty to one felony count of campaign finance violations.

Charlie Trie

Like John Huang, Trie raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions from foreign sources to Democratic campaign entities. He was a regular White House visitor and arranged meetings of foreign operators with Clinton, including one who was a Chinese arms dealer. His $450,000 contribution to Clinton’s legal defense fund was returned after it was found to have been largely funded by Asian interests. Trie was convicted of violating campaign finance laws in 1998.

Johnny Chung

Gave more than $366,000 to the Democratic National Committee prior to the 1996 campaign, but it was returned after officials learned it came from illegal foreign sources. Chung later told a special Senate committee investigating 1996 Clinton campaign fund-raising that $35,000 of his contributions came from individuals in Chinese intelligence. Chung pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax evasion and campaign finance violations.

No controlling legal authority

Then-Vice President Al Gore repeated the phrase “there is no controlling legal authority” at least seven times during a news conference called to explain his multiple telephone calls from the White House to solicit contributions to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign in 1996. In fact, the law was and remains clear that partisan campaign contributions cannot be solicited on or using federal property.

Monica Lewinsky and impeachment

President Clinton became only the second chief executive ever impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998 after being found guilty of obstructing justice and committing perjury in connection with a grand jury investigation of his sexual relationship in the White House with intern Monica Lewinsky. He remained in office, however, after the Senate failed to convict him. When the news of the Lewinsky scandal broke, Hillary famously blamed a “vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

Pardongate

Shortly before leaving the Oval Office, Bill Clinton issued a number of controversial pardons for controversial individuals represented by lawyers with ties to the administration. The most controversial wasconvicted tax evader Marc Rich who was pardoned after his former wife made big contributions to the Clinton presidential library and to Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign.

The Bosnia airport sniper lie

During her unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton claimed to have come under sniper fire during her arrival as first lady at an airport in Bosnia in 1996. She recanted her claim after CBS News broadcast video of the arrival that demonstrated there was no sniper fire.

The email scandal

While serving as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, Hillary Clinton used a private email account and a server located at her residence in Chappaqua, N.Y., to conduct official government business. In a March 10, 2015, news conference at the United Nations, she said she did this as a matter of personal “convenience” and that she deleted thousands of emails she considered personal. Federal laws and regulations require government employees topreserve personal emails that deal with official business.

The Clinton Foundation

After leaving the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton established a foundation in his name to raise funds for his presidential library. In the years since, the foundation — now known as the “Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation” — has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy causes, with much of it coming from foreign governments, corporations and individuals. Critics claim the foundation is a tool for special interests to cultivate favorable relationships with the former and possible future president.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner

If journalists appearing on the major Sunday news shows seem a little slower than their guests, it will likely be because they were up late Saturday attending the annual four-day glitz-a-rama known as the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Even so, the guests scheduled to be interviewed is no less capable of making news. The lineup includes:

• NBC’s “Meet the Press” with host Chuck Todd: Same-sex marriage discussion with David Boise and former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson, co-authors of Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality.

Also scheduled are Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, 2015 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner host and “Saturday Night Live” cast member Cecily Strong and cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

Sitting at the political roundtable will be Yahoo! News’ Matt Bai, the New York Times’ Helene Cooper, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and Hutchinson. 9 a.m. EST

• ABC’s “This Week” with host George Stephanapolous: Leading the lineup will be “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer. Also appearing will be U.S. Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., and former White House counterterrorism adviser and ABC News contributor Richard Clarke.

Around the political roundtable will be Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile, Bloomberg TV co-hosts and Bloomberg Politics managing editors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, and CNN political commentator and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. 9 a.m. EST.

• CBS’s “Face the Nation” with host Bob Schieffer: Scheduled to appear are U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton and New York City Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller.

Also in the queue will be Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, Freedom to Marry founder and president Evan Wolfson and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. Look for the New York Times’ Peter Baker, CBS News’ John Dickerson, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus and Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel on the political roundtable. 10:30 a.m. EST.

• “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace: “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer will square off with former Clinton White House Counsel Lanny Davis. The political roundtable will have Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, the Associated Press’ Julie Pace, former Bush White House senior advisor and Fox News contributor Karl Rove and National Journal’s Ron Fournier. 9 a.m. EST.

• Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” with host Maria Bartiromo: Former Bush administration U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Robert Jordan; Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink will be grilled.

Former Reagan White House advisor and Fox News political analyst Ed Rollins, author, journalist, Fox News contributor and the Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow Judith Miller and the Heritage Foundation’s visiting fellow Steve Moore will gather around the political roundtable. 10 a.m. EST.

• Fox News’ “MediaBuzz” with host Howard Kurtz: Luminaries scheduled include the Hill’s Bob Cusack, former Bush White House spokeswoman Mercedes Schlapp, Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor Joe Trippi, the Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik, the Washington Times’ John Solomon, the Washington Post’s Anne Gearan and former Bush White House press secretary and Fox News co-host Dana Perino. 11 a.m. EST

• CNN’s “Inside Politics” with host John King: The roundtable will feature the Washington Post’s Robert Costa, the New York Times’ Julie Davis, CNN.com’s Nia-Malika Henderson and NPR’s Steve Inskeep. 8:30 a.m. EST.

• CNN’s “State of the Union” with substitute host Jim Sciutto: This will have Sen. John McCain, R-Az., Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, and musician and Free America campaign co-founder John Legend.

At the political roundtable will be Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter, Republican strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson, the Wall Street Journal’s Carol Lee and CNN’s Jeff Zeleny. 9 a.m. EST.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is drawing a populist bead on lavish Wall Street pay packages as she revs up her march to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, but in some respects the fat-per-speech fee she can charge puts her far ahead of the top 10 highest-paid American CEOs.

“I think it’s fair to say that if you look across the country, the deck is stacked in favor of those already at the top. There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the American worker…,” Clinton said during her first campaign swing last week at an Iowa community college.

Bashing Wall Streeters is part of Clinton’s strategy of remaking her image to appear more sympathetic to middle class voters, while also appealing to left-wing Democrats who are attracted to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the even more radical supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who talks of seeking the 2016 nomination.

RELATED: Hillary: ‘We should be willing to walk away’ on trade deals

Clinton’s reported premium speaking fee of $300,000 per speech pales by comparison to the $131.2 million paid to McKesson CEO John Hammergren, but, depending upon how the data is calculated, there is more — and less — that meets the eye in Clinton’s assault on Wall Street compensation.

Clinton gives more than one paid speech per year, just as corporate CEOs typically receive their total compensation from multiple sources like stock options, pension contributions and salary. This means a fairer comparison is to look at Clinton and the top 10 CEOs by calculating their total compensation divided by the Department of Labor standard of 2,080 work-hours in a year, as in the nearby chart.

On that basis, the CEOs are pikers compared to an hour of Clinton speaking for $300,000. Hammergren, for example, makes only $63,076 for the same hour of labor. Clothing magnate Ralph Lauren, the second best-paid CEO on the Forbes list receives $32,067. Vornado Realty’s Michael Fasitelli, the third-place CEO, gets $30,961 per hour.

RELATED: Univision owner: ‘When Hillary is president…’

The per-hour average for the CEOs is $54,213, or about one-sixth of Clinton’s $300,000 premium speaking fee.

Clinton’s time on the public speaking circuit, however, involves more than merely talking in front of a crowd for an hour and then walking away with a check. She has to get to and from the speech location, prepare her remarks, get some sleep and eat some food. Those expenses must be covered by the hosting organization, but each hour of her time is irreplaceable.

Assuming that the $300,000 is paid for a 24-hour chunk of Clinton’s time instead of one-hour changes the CEO comparison figures dramatically. On that basis, she is paid $12,500 per hour, or roughly one-fifth the per-hour CEO average of $54,213.

RELATED: Dems give Hillary a pass as she shirks decision on Fast Track

The gap between Clinton and the CEO average closes somewhat if a 12-hour time period is assumed, giving her an hourly rate of $25,000. The gap closes even more if she only requires four hours to complete a speech commitment, with the hourly rate ballooning to $75,000, or $20,007 above the CEO average.

The numbers change even more if it is assumed Clinton delivers one speech per week for 48 weeks during a typical year, for a total annual compensation of $14.4 million and just under $7,000 per hour.

Further complicating any comparison of Clinton’s compensation with those earned at the highest reaches of the Fortune 500 is the fact that the former secretary of state and first lady claims to donate her speaking fees to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, a $2 billion tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charitable Goliath that provides a formidable base of operations for the family business.

EDITORIAL: Foreign money will fuel a shamless Clinton’s career

It’s not clear if Clinton has donated all of her public speaking fees to the foundation or whether such contributions result in a tax deduction for the Clintons. Neither foundation spokesman Craig Minassian nor Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill responded to Washington Examiner questions for this story.

Another aspect of Clinton’s decision to run against Wall Street lies in the area of taxes. Wealthy corporate CEOs pay top tax lawyers and accountants to protect as much of their income as possible from the tax man via tax shelters, loopholes and other financial devices.

Clinton is no different, at least according to the Republican National Committee, which issued a reminder earlier this week pointing to a June 17, 2014, Bloomberg report that, as a New York senator and presidential candidate, Clinton opposed repeal of the estate tax even as she and the former president acted like long-time members of the top 1 percent.

RELATED: The biggest defenders of the death tax are the experts at getting around it

“To reduce the tax pinch, the Clintons are using financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth. These moves, common among multimillionaires, will help shield some of their estate from the tax that now tops out at 40 percent of assets upon death. The Clintons created residence trusts in 2010 and shifted ownership of their New York house into them in 2011, according to federal financial disclosures and local property records,” Bloomberg reported.

To put it all in perspective, however, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last September that the median annual household income — counting all of a household’s income, not just individuals — was $51,939 in 2013, the most recent year for which data was available.

In other words, the average U.S. household makes slightly less in a year — $51,939 — than the average top 10 CEO makes in an hour —$54,213 — and vastly less than Clinton has been paid for one speech — $300,000.

RELATED: GOP dirt diggers dog Clinton

Is Hillary just like you? in Budgets and Deficits Policy on LockerDome

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

Sunday’s news shows are packed with 2016 presidential candidates, congressional leaders and Obama administration officials discussing the past week’s biggest news events and looking ahead for what may coming.

* On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” joining host Chuck Todd will be Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. Political roundtable will feature former Obama strategist David Axelrod, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, New York Times reporter Helene Cooper and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker. 9-10 a.m. EST.

* ABC’s “This Week” with host George Stephanopoulos will feature discussions with House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. ABC News’ Cokie Roberts will be on the political roundtable with ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, Republican strategist and ABC News contributor Ana Navarro and CNN contributor LZ Granderson. 9-10 a.m. EST.

* CBS’s “Face the Nation” hosted by retiring veteran newsman Bob Schieffer will focus on the 2016 presidential campaign, with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and former Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley. Schieffer’s roundtable will include David Catanese of U.S. News & World Report, CBS News’ Nancy Cordes and John Dickerson, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and American Urban Radio Network’s April Ryan. 10:30 -11:30 a.m. EST.

* Host Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” will sit down with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. The political roundtable will feature Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, the Daily Beast’s Jackie Kucinich, Fox News contributor and former Bush White House senior advisor Karl Rove, and Fox News political analyst Juan Williams. 10-11 a.m. EST.

* CNN’s “Inside Politics” with John King will include discussion among CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson, AP’s Lisa Lerer, the New York Times Jonathan Martin and CNN’s Jeff Zeleny. 8:30 a.m. EST.

* CNN’s “State of the Union” with substitute host Jim Sciutto will lead off with Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland. Also appearing will be former Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia to discuss his 2016 presidential race. Joining the roundtable will be the New York Times’ Peter Baker and CNN Politics’ Sara Murray. 9-10 a.m. EST.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

Support for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline appears to be increasing among liberals who live near the project’s expected route, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center surveys in 2013 and 2014.

Researchers Timothy Gravelle of the University of Essex and Erick Lachapelle of the University of Montreal used a “geocode” tool to identify survey respondents and measure the distance of their zip codes from the projected pipeline route.

“Proximity to the pipeline leads to a greater likelihood of favoring the pipeline,” Gravelle and Lachapelle said, describing the result as an “inverse NIMBY effect,” according to the Washington Post.

“The result suggests that anti-pipeline advocates may be losing the framing war to those who endlessly cite the pipeline’s alleged economic benefits,” the Post’s Chris Mooney said.

Nationally, public opinion has been all but fixed for several years, with conservatives and Republicans joined by small numbers of Democrats in support for the proposed pipeline that would bring millions of barrels of oil gleaned from Canadian tar sands south to refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S.

Environmentalists have spent hundreds of millions of dollars seeking to generate public opposition to the project, claiming it will adversely affect local environments and risk massive oil spills due to maintenance problems or terrorist attacks.

Advocates of the project argue that pipelines are far safer and environmentally responsible than freight trains, which are the main alternative for moving petroleum to refineries. Advocates also point to multiple econometric studies that project the creation of thousands of jobs, mostly in the construction industry as the pipeline is built.

President Obama has delayed approving construction of the northern half of the project for six years. The State Department has concluded the project does not threaten the environment.

Canadian energy industry and government officials have said their country’s vast tar sands resources would be shipped to other customers, mainly in China and elsewhere in Asia, if the Keystone pipeline is not completed.

The researchers suggested that a possible explanation for the greater support for the project among people living closer to it is that local media have emphasized potential economic benefits more than the risk of environmental damage.

“The promise of local jobs and other economic benefits work against environmental considerations of local spills and global risks related to climate change,” the researchers said. The attraction of such benefits seems to affect opponents nearly as much as supporters, with a result that more liberals than expected are expressing positive attitudes about Keystone.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz will tell Congress Tuesday that FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration officials repeatedly “raised baseless allegations” to “impede” his staff’s investigation of sexual misconduct.

“These delays created an unnecessary waste of time and resources, both on the part of the OIG personnel and the component personnel,” Horowitz will tell the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“The delays experienced in this review impeded our work, delayed our ability to discover the significant issues we ultimately identified, wasted department and OIG resources during the pendency of the dispute, and affected our confidence in the completeness of our review,” Horowitz will testify.

Horowitz will also tell the committee, which is headed by Rep. Jason Chafetz, R-Utah, that he and his investigators cannot be “completely confident that the FBI and the DEA provided us with all information” they should have gotten.

After long delays in getting uncensored documents from either agency, Horowitz said his staff found “it still was incomplete. For example, we determined that the FBI removed a substantial number of cases from the result of their search and provided additional cases to the OIG only after we identified some discrepancies.”

He said DEA officials first delayed responses, then provided censored documents and continued withholding documents the inspector general staff should have been given.

“Rather than delay our report further, we decided to proceed with releasing it given the significance of our findings,” Horowitz will testify.

The investigations he will be referring to concerned revelations that Secret Service agents had patronized prostitutes and violated security regulations while in Cartagena, Columbia, and how the FBI and DEA handled allegations of sexual misconduct by their employees. The reports were made public in January 2015 and March 2015.

But those two reports were not “an isolated incident,” Horowitz will say. “Rather, we have faced repeated instances over the past several years in which our timely access to records has been impeded, and we have highlighted these issues in our reports on very significant matters such as the Boston Marathon Bombing, the department’s use of the Material Witness Statute, the FBI’s use of National Security Letters, and ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious.”

Congress approved an appropriations rider — Section 218 — in the Justice Department funding bill that barred any part of the law enforcement agencies like the FBI and DEA from resisting the inspector general’s requests for documents or other lawful investigative activities.

But the Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder continued its obstruction, according to Horowitz.

“Despite the Congress’s clear statement of intent, the department and the FBI continue to proceed exactly as they did before Section 218 was adopted — spending appropriated funds to review records to determine if they should be withheld from the OIG. The effect is as if Section 218 was never adopted,” Horowitz will tell the committee.

Go here for Horowitz’s prepared testimony, which was made public late Monday.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

State Department Inspector General Steve Linick has launched an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s close confidant, Huma Abedin.

The focus of the inquiry is Abedin’s highly unusual special status, which allowed her to be paid by a private consulting firm at the same time as drawing a salary as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.

Abedin received the “Special Government Employee” classification but department officials have declined to provide information about who approved the designation for Abedin or the justification for it.

Linick told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that he “intends to examine the Department’s SGE program to determine if it conforms to applicable legal and policy requirements, including whether or not the program, as implemented, includes safeguards against conflicts of interest.”

The confirmation came in a letter made public late Friday by Grassley, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley has been unsuccessfully seeking documents concerning Abedin’s role at the department since 2013. He requested the probe out of concern with potential conflicts of interest resulting from Abedin working for the government and Teneo Holdings, a strategic consulting firm founded by Doug Band and DeClan Kelly, long-time advisers to former President Clinton and to Hillary Clinton.

“This program is meant to be used in a limited way to give the government special expertise it can’t get otherwise,” Grassley said Friday. “Is the program working the way it’s intended at the State Department or has it been turned on its head and used in ways completely unrelated to its purpose?

“An independent analysis will help to answer the question. An inspector general review is necessary. Available information suggests that in at least one case, the State Department gave the special status for employee convenience, not public benefit.”

Abedin, who was often seen in the background of news photos of Clinton during official events, also used Clinton’s private email server, as did then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills and possibly other close aides.

Clinton confirmed last month that she used the private email account and server, which was located at her Chappaqua, New York, residence, to conduct official government business throughout her four-year tenure as the nation’s chief diplomat.

Federal law and regulation require all federal employees to use government email accounts to conduct official business and promptly to give their employing agency copies of any private emails that dealt with official business.

Clinton said that she deleted about 30,000 emails that were personal, and turned over to the department 55,000 pages of emails that concerned official business. That only happened, however, last year in response to a State Department request for the communications.

In a related development, Linick acknowledged in his letter to Grassley that he and his staff were unaware of Clinton’s use of the private email and server before it was first reported by the New York Times last month.

Linick told Grassley that “in the past when faced with employees who were using non-government email accounts for government business, the OIG questioned such activities.” He cited an August 2012 instance in which it was found the U.S. embassy in Nairobi was using commercial email instead of State Department systems.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

Former IRS senior executive Lois Lerner appeared to be pressuring Treasury Department inspector general investigators to back off their conclusion that the federal tax agency had improperly targeted conservative and Tea Party nonprofit tax exemption applicants.

In an email on Jan. 31, 2013, Lerner encouraged Troy Patterson of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to back off of his investigators’ view that the tax agency was targeting political groups for excessive attention.

“We feel your folks are being too narrow in their view and have decided that because of the language on the earlier BOLO list regarding Tea Party, everything that followed was tainted. They seem to believe that if a case was initially sent to the advocacy group, but ultimately determined to be an approval, that our action in putting it into the advocacy group in the first place is incorrect, and illustrates ‘targeting,'” she said.

“BOLO” was the tax agency’s abbreviation for categories of nonprofit applicants to “be on the lookout” for as they were received.

Lerner continued in the email to Patterson, arguing that she was “willing to take the blame for not having provided sufficient direction initially, which may have resulted in front line staff doing things that appeared to be politically motivated, but I am not on board that anything that occurred here shows that the IRS was politically motivated in the actions taken.”

The email was made public Thursday by nonprofit government watchdog Judicial Watch, which obtained it via a Freedom of Information Act request. The email was among multiple documents the tax agency only provided after being ordered to do so by a federal judge.

The IRS had previously claimed all of Lerner’s emails were lost when her computer crashed and the hard drive was subsequently destroyed as a matter of routine practice by the agency’s information technology staff.

That comment prefigured Lerner’s stance a few months later when she answered a planted question during an American Bar Association presentation in which she admitted the IRS had targeted Tea Party applicants but claimed it was done mistakenly by tax agency reviewers in its Cincinnati office.

Lerner subsequently pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer multiple questions posed to her by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

In another email made public Thursday by Judicial Watch, Lerner said she wanted a training program set up to teach underlings reviewing conservative and Tea Party non-profit tax exemption applications to be “sensitive” to “the fact that anything we write can be public — or at least be seen by Congress.”

In a Feb. 16, 2012, email to colleague Holly Paz, Lerner, who was then head of the federal tax agency’s exempt organizations division, said “we are all a bit concerned about the mention of specific Congress people, practitioners and political parties.”

Lerner suggested that Paz’s staff in the IRS Rulings and Agreements department “could put together some training points to help them understand the potential pitfalls, as well as how to think about referrals.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the latest email disclosures “show that the IRS scandal is not over. These documents point to document gaps caused by the refusal of the Obama IRS to search for Lois Lerner’s emails. The incredible email from Lois Lerner admitting (and denying) culpability by her and the IRS in the scandal further undermines President Obama’s lie that the IRS scandal was entirely the fault of ‘bonehead decisions in local offices.'”

Fitton was referring to comments by Obama during an interview during the Super Bowl halftime in 2014 with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

Department of Commerce Inspector General Todd Zinser mistreats whistleblowers in the federal bureaucracy and should be fired by President Obama, according to a trio of nonprofit government watchdogs.

The groups — including the Project on Government Oversight, Government Accountability Project and National Whistleblowers Center — said in a letter made public Thursday that Zinser attacks whistleblowers and protects underlings who join him in suppressing employees who come forward with information about waste and fraud in government.

“IGs are supposed to root out fraud, waste, and abuse—a job they would not be able to do without whistleblowers. If there is anyone in government who should understand the importance of utilizing and protecting whistleblowers, it is an IG,” the groups told Obama.

“This is why it is particularly worrisome that there have been multiple allegations and investigations of Mr. Zinser’s own retaliation against whistleblowers. A 2013 report by the Office of Special Counsel found that Mr. Zinser had shielded two top deputies charged with threatening two employees with retaliation if they blew the whistle on mismanagement at the Commerce IG’s office,” the groups said.

The groups told Obama that the oversight subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology has demanded an explanation from Zinser of his handling of the two deputies, his past actions regarding whistleblowers and the circumstances surrounding his hiring of other senior aides.

Zinser was also accused in the letter of concealing from the Senate during his confirmation hearings his role in retaliation against a Department of Transportation whistleblower. A recently discovered 1996 report by the Office of Special Counsel described Zinser’s actions in the case as “draconian in nature” and “motivated by animus,” the groups said.

Zinser’s problems with whistleblowers have not gone unnoticed. The Washington Examiner reported in December 2014 that “in 2013, the Office of Special Counsel rebuked Commerce IG Todd Zinser for coercive tactics used by his top deputies to secure gag orders against four departing employees.”

In response to the letter, Zinser told the Examiner that “the U.S. House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman referred this matter to the Council of Inspectors General in December 2014. I also asked the council for a review in April and June of 2014. We cooperated with the review of the U.S. House science committee and we will cooperate with the Council of Inspectors General.”

This story has been updated to reflect Zinser’s response.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.

A House committee investigating the destruction of more than 5,000 official cellular telephone text messages by the Environmental Protection Agency wants a major nonprofit activist group to provide copies of all its communications with Gina McCarthy, the agency’s chief, on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

“You and Administrator McCarthy have apparently worked closely together on important issues, and as your text message to the administrator indicates, you have similar goals on Keystone XL,” Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas., told League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski in a letter made public Tuesday.

Smith is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. The panel subpoenaed McCarthy’s billing records for the device March 25, 2015.

Prior to issuing the subpoena, the panel was told by the environmental agency that McCarthy had received only one text message dealing with official business. That message was from Karpinski and complimented McCarthy on her comments about Keystone. McCarthy responded by telling Karpinski that she doesn’t use text messaging for government business.

Smith and McCarthy have tangled frequently regarding congressional oversight, particularly with regard to the agency’s refusal to provide documents the panel requested concerning the evidence used to justify proposed environmental regulations.

“As the committee continues its oversight of EPA’s claim that Administrator McCarthy has only sent or received one text message that qualifies as a federal record, additional information is required…Please provide all documents and communications between Administrator Gina McCarthy and the League of Conservation Voters, including yourself, regarding Keystone XL from January 2013 to the present, including text messages, emails and phone records, by noon on April 21, 2015,” Smith said in his letter to Karpinski.

Karpinski’s group has received nearly $90 million in 1,056 contributions since 2000 from liberal philanthropies and individuals, including the Tides Foundation. Tides pioneered the use of an umbrella foundation of wealthy individuals wishing to remain anonymous to funnel millions of dollars in “dark money” to their favored causes.

Go here for the full text of Smith’s letter to Karpinski.

Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.