Andrea Mitchell -- Experts can find no reason for a private e-mail system except to thwart oversight

From Hot Air:

The media seems ready to turn on the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal, if one uses MSNBC as a gauge. It’s not a surprise to see Joe Scarborough, a center-right host, focusing intently and in detail on the wide range of issues and potential crimes that Hillary and her team may have committed. However, his sparring partner Mika Brzezinski also seems horrified by the IG referral to the DoJ and FBI, along with the report that four out of a sample of 40 e-mails sent by Hillary and reviewed by the intelligence community contained material that was classified when it was sent and remains classified to this day. And following the discussion during the earlier segment of Morning Joe, NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell followed it up with a surprising — but common-sensical — assessment of the scandal in a nutshell, although not without providing a rationalization or two along the way (emphasis mine, via The Blaze and Mediaite).
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That’s the critical problem for media outlets that want to dismiss this or rationalize it as just another attack on the Clintons. There is no explanation for the home-brew e-mail system, and the only way one can ignore the obvious motivations for it — to cover up what was being done — is to pretend that a sitting Secretary of State can work for four years without ever sending or receiving classified data through an e-mail system. That was absurd on its face from the beginning, but most of the media seemed inclined to treat it as “no harm, no foul” simply on Hillary Clinton’s claim alone.

Now, however, the IG referral makes that impossible. It may not be a “criminal referral” at the moment, but the FBI doesn’t investigate referrals to assess civil penalties, and IGs don’t send referrals to the FBI unless they see evidence that a crime may have been committed. The pretense of nothing but pleasantries and scheduling routing through the “clintonemail” server has been shattered, and now the media has to scramble to cover it more seriously.

National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who has been asking tough questions for months about the scandal, agrees that the private server is the “original sin,” echoing Mitchell. But it’s obvious that it was intended to keep people from finding out about other sins, and Fournier wants to know what those were.

If the DOJ was not so corrupt.