Hillary Clinton and BleachBit - Signal app, Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic

The Hillary Clinton BleachBit scandal revolves around her use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, and the subsequent efforts to obliterate evidence to cover up her crimes. This wasn’t just a casual choice to use a personal Gmail account for convenience, this was a fully operational, custom-built server stashed in her Chappaqua, New York home, a setup designed to keep her communications off the government’s books. Why? Because Hillary Clinton, in her infinite hubris, figured she could dodge federal record-keeping laws, sidestep Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and shield whatever shady dealings she didn’t want the public to see. And when the jig was up, she didn’t just quietly comply—she unleashed a digital shredder called BleachBit to nuke the evidence into oblivion.

In March 2015, The New York Times dropped a bombshell, revealing that Clinton had exclusively used this private email server for all her official correspondence—personal and governmental alike—while heading the State Department. This wasn’t some minor breach of protocol; it was a slap in the face to transparency laws meant to ensure the public knows what its leaders are up to. The Federal Records Act demanded that official communications be preserved, and a 2009 regulation explicitly required that any personal email use still feed into government systems for archiving. Clinton didn’t just ignore that—she built an entire parallel system to bypass it. Convenient for hiding something.

When the State Department, in late 2014, politely asked Clinton and other former secretaries to turn over any work-related emails, she had her legal team cherry-pick what to hand over. Out of some 60,000 emails, she forked over about 30,000 she deemed “work-related,” while claiming the other half were personal—think yoga schedules and wedding plans, she said with a straight face. The rest? Deleted. Gone. Or so she thought. Enter the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which was digging into her role in the 2012 Libya attack and wanted those emails preserved. On March 4, 2015, they issued a subpoena for all relevant records. Clinton’s response? A big, fat middle finger in the form of a tech-assisted cover-up.

Here’s where BleachBit comes in—a free, open-source software designed to wipe data so thoroughly it’s beyond recovery, even by forensic experts. This isn’t your average “empty recycle bin” move; it’s the cyber equivalent of tossing evidence into an industrial incinerator. According to FBI documents released in September 2016, Clinton’s team didn’t just delete those 30,000-plus “personal” emails—they handed the job to Paul Combetta, an IT specialist with Platte River Networks, the Denver firm managing her server. In December 2014, Clinton’s then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills had told Combetta to scrub emails older than 60 days. He didn’t get around to it until March 25-31, 2015—conveniently right after the Times story broke and the subpoena landed. Coincidence? Please. Combetta later admitted to the FBI he had an “oh shit” moment, realizing he’d forgotten to wipe the archive earlier, so he fired up BleachBit to shred the files and overwrite the server’s free space, ensuring nothing could be salvaged.

This wasn’t an accident or a routine cleanup—it was a deliberate act to destroy potential evidence under congressional scrutiny. The timing alone reeks of guilt. Clinton’s camp claims she didn’t know about the BleachBit wipe, pinning it on underlings acting independently. Sure, and I’m the Queen of England. She’s the one who set up this clandestine server in the first place, who picked what to disclose and what to torch, and who fostered a culture where her aides thought obliterating subpoenaed records was a-okay. Her prints are all over this, even if she didn’t personally click the “delete” button.

The FBI investigation that followed was a masterclass in frustration. Director James Comey, in July 2016, laid out how Clinton’s crew had been “extremely careless” with classified info—110 emails across 52 chains contained sensitive material, eight at the Top Secret level. Yet, despite recovering over 17,000 of those “deleted” emails (thanks to backups and recipients’ servers), Comey recommended no charges, saying there was no proof of intent to break the law. Intent? She built a secret server, hoarded classified data, and had it wiped after a subpoena—how much more intentional does it get? Oh, and Combetta? He got immunity from the Justice Department, a cushy deal that ensured this scandal stayed a political football rather than a courtroom reckoning.

Critics like Rep. Trey Gowdy didn’t mince words. On Fox News in August 2016, he blasted Clinton’s use of BleachBit, saying, “They didn’t just push the delete button; they had them deleted where even God can’t read them. You don’t use BleachBit for yoga emails.” He’s damn right. This wasn’t about protecting Chelsea’s wedding RSVPs—it was about burying something incriminating, likely tied to the Clinton Foundation’s influence-peddling or her State Department decisions. The FBI found work-related emails she swore didn’t exist, proving her “personal only” excuse was a lie. And don’t forget the hammer-smashing—her aide Justin Cooper admitted to physically destroying old devices, adding another layer of obstruction to this fiasco.

Clinton’s defenders cry double standards, pointing to other officials using private email. But none of them built a private server, stuffed it with classified info, and then torched it with industrial-grade software while under investigation. Donald Trump’s “lock her up” chants may have been theatrical, but they tapped into a real outrage: if anyone else pulled this—say, a mid-level bureaucrat or soldier—they’d be in Leavenworth faster than you can say “espionage.” Clinton skated because of who she was, not because she was innocent.

The fallout? It tanked her trustworthiness in the 2016 election, amplifying perceptions of her as a scheming elitist. The BleachBit scandal isn’t just about emails—it’s about a woman who thought rules didn’t apply to her, who gambled with national security for personal gain, and who bet she could erase the evidence and laugh her way to the White House. She lost that bet, but the fact she faced no real consequences is a stain on justice. This wasn’t incompetence; it was arrogance, executed with a cold, calculated precision that BleachBit could never erase from history. 17GEN4.com