Ex-ambassador alleges ‘different standard’ at State Department on private emails

Former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration, who lost his post in 2012 in part over a private email account, said Sunday that a “different standard” was applied to his case and that of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“As I was going through it, I did not perceive that it was a double standard, because I did not know of Secretary Clinton’s use of a commercial email account,” Mr. Gration said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But as I reflected on it in the last couple days, it does feel like there was a different standard that was used in my case and that has been used in hers.”

Ms. Clinton, who is expected to seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has been embroiled in a controversy over her use of a commercial email account for official business during her tenure as head of the State Department.

“To now find out that in reality other people in the department, to include my supervisors, were doing things differently and were looking the other way, I think that’s hard,” Mr. Gration said. “I didn’t break any laws willfully. If I made mistakes, I apologize for those, but I don’t believe I did anything wrong.”

“And I can’t speak the same for Secretary Clinton. Other people will have to make that decision. She’ll have to work that out herself,” he said.

Mr. Gration, a retired Air Force major general who flew 274 combat missions in Iraq, also said he assumed that State Department Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills would have known of Ms. Clinton’s use of a commercial email account.

Ms. Mills forced Mr. Gration to resign by in 2012 after an inspector general’s report said he had “lost the respect and confidence of the staff to lead the mission,” and cited his use of a private email account for government business.

“In the end, we’ll have to ask Cheryl Mills that question, but I would assume that she knew,” Mr. Gration said. “Secretary Clinton and Cheryl Mills were in very close dialogue on all issues, and I know that in my view, that she would have known that Secretary Clinton was not using the open net. So I do find it sort of unusual that she stated that this was one of the reasons why I had to move on, and as I look back, it seems a bit unfair.”

Ms. Mills previously served as deputy White House counsel to former President Bill Clinton.

Nick Merrill, spokesman for Ms. Clinton, said in a statement to CNN: “All of the many reasons the Department took the action it did are well-documented in the Department of State’s Inspector General’s report.”