Just as it seemed the flames of “Email Gate” were dying down, new fuel has been dumped on the flames by the request made to the Department of Justice to open a counterintelligence inquiry into whether or not former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indeed had classified information on her personal email server. If this is true, this would represent a “mishandling of sensitive government information” which has led two inspectors general to make a formal request with the DOJ for a counterintelligence inquiry to be opened.

The Clinton campaign fired back a statement on Twitter Friday morning, in full PR management mode, by saying:

“Any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted, it said.”

At the outset of her Presidential campaign, the emails had been a sore subject. Mrs. Clinton had claimed, repeatedly, that she used her private account due to its convenience. However, the use of her personal server also provided her a shield by protecting her correspondence from both congressional and Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests. After facing harsh criticism in the press, Clinton approved the release of some 55,000 emails from her account, after she and her cronies had culled those emails that she had declared “private” or “personal in nature”. This came out because her lawyer had told State Representative Trey Gowdy about the culling when he requested that Clinton turn over her server for investigation during the House investigation of the handling of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

“Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server,” Gowdy said in a statement. Gowdy had also asked that Clinton turn over her server to the State Department inspector general for an independent review. Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, said no. In his letter to Gowdy, Kendall said the former secretary of state “chose not to keep her non-record personal emails.

Thus, there are no … e-mails from Secretary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized,” he wrote.

But she “has maintained and preserved copies” of work-related, or potentially work-related emails she turned over to the State Department late last year. Kendall did not specify whether the emails were kept in paper or digital form.”

As the State Department reviewed the emails that were released, the Department decided that there were some that were retroactively classified. As a result, within the 3,000 pages of emails that were released, there were whole sections of messages that were redacted due to their retroactive classification. This even though they had not been “classified” when Clinton handled them during her tenure.

Now I am sure dear reader that you, like so many others, are thinking “But I thought that was all over with?”. Alas, no. Like so many things with this Administration it is yet another case of “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” On Monday of this week, a judge sharply questioned State Department lawyers as to why they had not responded to some FOIA requests that went as far back as four years from the Associated Press.

“I want to find out what’s been going on over there-I should say, what’s not been going on over there, ” said Judge Richard J. Leon of the United States District Court, according to a transcript obtained by Politico. The judge said that “for reasons known only to itself” the State Department “has been, to say the least, recalcitrant in responding.”

Two days later, House Republicans on the Benghazi subcommittee decided to summon current Secretary of State John Kerry to the Hill to answer questions about why they failed to produce documents that the panel subpoenaed. I suggest you grab your popcorn and turn on your CSPAN to catch those hearings next Wednesday. It is my belief that Secretary of State Kerry will trot out the same, tired line that the State Department has been relying on for months in regards to this issue-capacity of staff.

Oh poor baby. Cutting into your windsurfing or yachting time are we?

Sorry Secretary Lurch, the American people deserve to know if a Presidential candidate should spend time in the Big House instead of the White House.