Pence attacked Clinton for email while conducting public business using AOL account that was hacked
“The fact that these emails are stored in a private AOL account is crazy to me.”
On Thursday evening, the Indianapolis Star broke news that Vice President Mike Pence “routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.”
The Star’s report, which is the result public records requests made by the publication, “show[s] 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.”
Not only was Pence using an AOL account to conduct state business, but his account was vulnerable to hackers as well. In fact, Pence’s account was actually hacked last summer — a period of time during which he was regularly attacking Hillary Clinton for her email practices.
“While there has been speculation about whether Clinton’s emails were hacked, Pence’s account was actually compromised last summer by a scammer who sent an email to his contacts claiming Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and in urgent need of money,” the Star reports. “In response, Pence sent an email to those who had received the fake communication apologizing for any inconvenience. He also set up a new AOL account.”
While the state of Indiana provided the Star with a number of emails from Pence’s AOL account that dealt with state business, the administration of Pence’s successor, Gov. Eric Holbomb (R), withheld others from release because “they are deliberative or advisory, confidential under rules adopted by the Indiana Supreme Court or the work product of an attorney,” the Star reports. In other words, they shouldn’t have been in his private email account in the first place.
But Pence attacked Clinton for her emails anyway, and applauded FBI Director James Comey for reigniting the controversy surrounding them in the campaign’s final days.
During a Meet the Press appearance in September, Pence criticized Clinton for using a private server to keep emails away from the public while he was doing the exact same thing.
“What’s evident from all of the revelations over the last several weeks is that Hillary Clinton operated in such a way to keep her emails, and particularly her interactions while Secretary of State with the Clinton Foundation, out of the public reach, out of public accountability,” Pence said. “And with regard to classified information, she either knew or should have known that she 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.”
Meanwhile, Pence used his AOL account to correspond with his homeland security adviser about the the latest FBI information “regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges,” the Star reports. Pence also used AOL account to correspond with his homeland security adviser “on subjects including Pence’s efforts to prevent the resettlement of Syrian refugees and the state’s response to a shooting at Canada’s national parliament building.”
Two new reports indicate Pence was wrong.thinkprogress.org
One expert the Star spoke with — Gerry Lanosga, a professor at Indiana University and past president of the Indiana Coalition for Open Government — called Pence out for his hypocrisy.
“There is an issue of double standard here,” Lanosga said. “He has been far from forthcoming about his own private email account on which it’s clear he has conducted state business. So there is a disconnect there that cannot be avoided.”
Another expert — Justin Cappos, a computer security professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering — characterized Pence’s email practices as “crazy.”
“The fact that these emails are stored in a private AOL account is crazy to me,” he said. “This account was used to handle these messages that are so sensitive they can’t be turned over in a records request.”