# Hillary Clinton Email Controversy Hillary Clinton Email Controversy is the 2015 to 2016 political scandal over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton running her official State Department correspondence through a private server kept at her Chappaqua home. First reported by The New York Times in March 2015, the story stretched across the 2016 presidential race, feeding an FBI probe, a bathroom-closet IT shop reveal, and a Reddit slip-up that turned IT contractor Paul Combetta into a meme. ## Origin The story surfaced piecemeal. As early as March 2013, Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazar, better known as Guccifer, released a batch of email correspondence between Sidney Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton that first exposed the clintonemail.com domain[5]. The controversy did not go mainstream until March 2, 2015, when The New York Times reported that Clinton had used personal email accounts exclusively for official business as Secretary of State, potentially in violation of the Federal Records Act[6]. Eight days later, on March 10, 2015, Clinton held a twenty-minute press conference in a hallway outside the United Nations Security Council. She defended the setup as a matter of convenience, said the private server had never been hacked, and disclosed that her aides had already deleted more than 30,000 emails deemed personal, including messages about her yoga classes and family events like Chelsea Clinton's wedding and Dorothy Rodham's funeral[1]. - **Platform:** News media / Reddit (meme spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2015 ## Overview Once the story went national in early 2015, the political fallout produced two distinct meme threads. The first grew out of the paper trail around Clinton's IT contractor, Paul Combetta of Platte River Networks in Denver. After The Daily Mail revealed that the company was run out of an apartment loft with servers in a bathroom closet, forums treated the setup as visual shorthand for sloppy operational security around classified material[4]. The second and stickier thread turned Combetta himself into a meme character. In September 2016 he was outed on /r/The_Donald as the person behind a 2014 forum post asking how to remove a 'VERY VIP' email address from an archive[3]. The reveal led to a run of Photoshops, including an 'I'm Rick Harrison' from Pawn Stars with Combetta's face on it that drew more than 5,300 upvotes on the sub within a day[5]. The 'but her emails' shorthand that grew out of the cycle stuck around long after election day as a partisan reference point[6]. ## How It Spread By summer 2015, the story shifted from records-keeping to classified information. In July, Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough told Congress that four of forty randomly sampled emails from Clinton's private server contained classified intelligence-community material, none of which carried classification or dissemination markings at the time they were sent[2]. In August, the FBI seized the server itself, which had been professionally wiped, and a Washington Times report the following month said several emails contained sensitive surveillance imagery of the North Korean nuclear program[5]. By early September 2016, the story reached its meme-native phase. Paul Combetta invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than testify before the House Oversight Committee about deleting the archive[3]. Days later, /r/The_Donald sleuths surfaced a Google-cached 2014 /r/exchangeserver thread that matched him to a request to strip a 'VIP' name from batched emails, prompting the Congressional Science Committee to threaten a subpoena of the Reddit poster[5]. Follow-ups in Fortune, the New York Post, and other outlets ran with the amateur-detective angle after users linked the 'stonetear' handle to an Etsy listing, an old Slashdot post and a stonetear@gmail.com address[3]. The story kept feeding meme cycles through election day. FBI Director James Comey's July 5, 2016 press conference calling Clinton 'extremely careless' and his October 28 letter reopening the probe over emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop kept the topic in cable news rotation until Comey's November 6 follow-up said the additional review did not change his July conclusion[6]. ## How to Use The meme templates that came out of the controversy fall into a few common patterns. The most-copied is the Photoshopped 'I'm Rick Harrison' Combetta face-swap that started on /r/The_Donald[5]. Another common riff pairs an image of a cheap home closet or bathroom shelf with captions about the Platte River Networks setup where Clinton's IT firm actually ran out of an apartment in Denver[4]. Text-based versions often lean on Clinton's UN press conference framing of the deletions as personal matters like yoga classes[1]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Hillary Clinton Email Controversy? It is the 2015 to 2016 political scandal over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using a private email server at her home in Chappaqua for official State Department business, first reported by The New York Times in March 2015[6]. ### Where did Hillary Clinton Email Controversy come from? The clintonemail.com domain was first exposed in March 2013 when hacker Guccifer released Sidney Blumenthal emails, but the story went mainstream after The New York Times reported on March 2, 2015 that Clinton had used only personal email as Secretary of State[5]. ### What does Hillary Clinton Email Controversy mean? In meme use it is shorthand on right-leaning forums for perceived Democratic entitlement and sloppy operational security, often carried by Combetta-face image macros and 'stonetear' jokes[3]. ### How do you use Hillary Clinton Email Controversy? Common formats include the 'I'm Rick Harrison' Combetta face-swap posted on /r/The_Donald and text macros riffing on Clinton's UN press conference quotes about deleting personal emails[1]. ### Is Hillary Clinton Email Controversy still popular? The active meme cycle peaked in September to November 2016 around Comey's on-again, off-again FBI investigation, after which the story dropped out of daily news but still comes up as a partisan reference[6]. ### Who is Paul Combetta and why does he matter? He is the Platte River Networks IT specialist who wiped Clinton's server and later invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than testify to the House Oversight Committee[3]. ### What was the 'stonetear' Reddit post? A 2014 /r/exchangeserver post asking how to strip a 'VERY VIP' email address from an archive, matched to Combetta after Redditors linked the username to an Etsy account and a stonetear@gmail.com address[3]. ### Where was Hillary Clinton's private email server kept? At her home in Chappaqua, New York, but the IT vendor Platte River Networks ran out of a Denver apartment loft with servers in a bathroom closet[4]. ### What did FBI Director James Comey say about the case? On July 5, 2016 Comey called Clinton 'extremely careless' but did not recommend charges, then reopened the probe on October 28 before closing it again on November 6[6]. ### How many classified emails did investigators find in the initial sample? The IC Inspector General told Congress that four of forty randomly sampled emails contained classified intelligence-community information, none of which carried classification markings at the time they were sent[2]. ### What did Hillary Clinton say at her UN press conference? She defended using the private account as a matter of convenience, said the server had never been hacked and said aides had deleted over 30,000 emails deemed personal, such as messages about her yoga classes and family events[1]. ## References 1. [https://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-hillary-clinton-email-un-20150310-story.html]() 2. [https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/24/politics/hillary-clinton-email-justice-department/]() 3. [https://fortune.com/2016/09/21/hillary-clinton-emails-reddit/]() 4. [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3201367/Hillary-s-email-firm-run-loft-apartment-servers-BATHROOM-raising-new-questions-security-sensitive-messages-held.html]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/hillary-clinton-email-controversy]() 6. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/hillary-clinton-email-controversy Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library