The skill set of the Clintons includes mastery of handling scandals, because, as the saying goes, “Practice makes perfect.” Bimbo eruptions, shady commodities trades, dodgy land deals – ever since the earliest days in Arkansas politics, the Clintons have developed expertise in delaying, distracting, denying, evading, expunging, lying, intimidating, impugning, and otherwise minimizing the impact of their unethical and illegal activities.

Here are a few of the ways the Clinton Scandal Playbook is being followed:

Delay

In the words of Trey Gowdy:

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) delivered a classic response to news Hillary Clinton will turn over her private server to the FBI: “About damn time.”

The Chairman of the Benghazi Committee had been calling for Clinton to give the server to a third party arbiter for months.

“I can’t help but smile at the notion that somebody is voluntarily turning something over to the FBI,” Gowdy said. “They generally don’t ask. They generally tell you to do so.”

Control the visuals

Now that an FBI raid for evidence has been avoided by turning over her server “voluntarily,” the visuals have been temporarily managed. After repeatedly claiming that her server would remain private, she was forced to cough it up, on threat of subpoena. The New York Times obediently headlined, “Hillary Clinton Directs Aides to Give Email Server and Thumb Drive to the Justice Department,” as if a take-charge executive were going the extra mile to ensure transparency.

Impugn the questioners

Hillary’s campaign spokesman Jennifer Palmieri sent a now-notorious email to supporters concluding that the “bottom line” is that the issue is just the “kind of nonsense [that] comes with the territory of running for president.”

Evade

Well whaddya know? That server wasn’t even at Chappaqua. Fox News reports:

The FBI has taken possession of the personal e-mail server used by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state, according to a published report.

Barbara Wells, an attorney for Denver-based computer services firm Platte River Networks, told The Washington Post that federal agents picked up the server from a private data center in New Jersey Wednesday afternoon.

Expunge

(continuing from above):

The attorney told the paper that the server "was blank" and no longer contained useful information.

"The information had been migrated over to a different server for purposes of transition," Wells told the paper. "To my knowledge the data on the old server is not available now on any servers or devices in Platte River Network’s control." Wells added that the company had cooperated with the FBI and had been told it was not a target of the investigation.

Distract

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:

“Many Republican candidates for president,” Palmieri states, “have done the same things for which they’re now criticizing Hillary.” False. While it’s true that they had their own private e-mail servers, they also weren’t responsible for compliance with the Federal Records Act, which covers federal officials and requires archiving of all communications. They also had no requirement to comply with Barack Obama’s executive order that largely barred the use of private e-mail for public duties by federal employees. And most aptly for the purposes of this discussion, governors do not  access, retain, or communicate classified material, especially not Top Secret/compartmented intelligence data. The criticism of Hillary from the GOP’s presidential candidates references those points, along with the use of a private e-mail system to bypass the FRA and Congressional oversight.

Before this, though, Palmieri again tries to sell the idea that none of the data now marked as classified was restricted when the material was sent. “No information in her emails was marked classified at the time she sent or received them,” Palmieri argues. That’s the problem, not the alibi. Two Inspectors General have confirmed that the material in the four e-mails found in a sample of 40 they were allowed to inspect was classified at the time it was transmitted through Hillary Clinton’s e-mail system. The data was “classified when they were sent and are classified now,” according to their referral, and now they have confirmed that at least two of the four contained data that was classified TS/compartmented at that time. If it wasn’t marked, it clearly should have been.

Lie

Peter Suderman of Reason:

"I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material. I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material," she said.

The statement was clear and unequivocal. It was also not true.

When the inspector general (IG) for U.S. intelligence agencies reviewed just a small sample of the emails produced from her server—forty out of tens of thousands—the IG found that four were, in fact, classified. 

Yesterday night it was revealed that two of those emails were classified Top Secret.

Given that 10 percent of the emails in the small batch examined by the IG were classified, it’s more than likely that there are many, many more of the communications on that server are classified too. Clinton claimed that "there is no classified material," but what we know is that there’s definitely some, and almost certainly quite a lot of it.

Since her initial statement in March, Clinton’s campaign has updated her story. Her claim is now that none of the emails were classified at the time they were sent. "She followed appropriate practices in dealing with classified materials," campaign spokesperson Nick Merrill told Politico in July. "Any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted."

A joint statement in July from IGs at the State Department and the Director of National Intelligence indicates otherwise.

"[The four classified] emails were not retroactively classified by the State Department," the statement says. "Rather these emails contained classified information when they were generated and, according to IC classification officials, that information remains classified today. This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system." [Emphasis added.]

Intimidate

This one remains to be seen. Her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and her personal assistant, Huma Abedin, would make great fall-guys, wouldn’t they? A black and a Muslim – both women.

Vince Foster remains unavailable for comment.