Hillary Clinton’s Potential GOP Rivals Used Personal Email Accounts

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Some of Mrs. Clinton’s potential GOP rivals for the presidency in 2016, operating under state law, wrestled with similar issues.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a likely Republican presidential candidate, primarily used a personal email account on his own computer server when he was in office from 1999 to 2007. In December, he posted online hundreds of thousands of emails from both the private and government accounts. Mr. Bush’s spokeswoman said that emails from the private account unrelated to government business weren’t turned over to the state or preserved.

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But much like with Mrs. Clinton, the decision over which emails should be considered official and which remain private was made by Mr. Bush. It is unclear how many emails Mr. Bush withheld because he deemed them unrelated to state business.

“He did exactly what Hillary did,” said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, a Florida-based government watchdog group. In turning over emails from his private account, she said, Mr. Bush and his staff “went through those emails and decided what were public-record emails and what wasn’t.”

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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who is also considering a White House bid, used a private account to send emails to reporters in 2008 when he was a leader in the Florida House. When the Orlando Sentinel filed a public-records request for the emails from the private account about the legislative session, Mr. Rubio’s spokeswoman said they had been deleted.

The law appears to have left it to Mr. Rubio and his staff to decide which material was significant enough to preserve from his private and government accounts, said Ms. Petersen of the watchdog group.

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Another likely GOP presidential candidate, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, used a private email account to conduct public business while he was Milwaukee County executive. He relied on private emails to exchange messages with his closest aides, including correspondence on county business.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clintons-potential-gop-rivals-used-personal-email-accounts-1426205325