Hillary Clinton might have played hooky from ethics class. Literally.


Every year, State Department employees are required to take a refresher course in ethics, which seems like a good plan for people who help guide world events. But when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, there's no evidence she and several of her top aides ever went to class.
Documents obtained by the Republican National Committee via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit reveal the department has no record that Clinton and aides including Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Jake Sullivan (both of whom followed the former secretary to her presidential campaign) took a single ethics course. A State representative cautioned that lack of records may not confirm Clinton cut class, noting that since she resigned the agency has switched to online classes with better records.
Still, with ongoing controversy over the ethics of the private email server Clinton used while in office — not to mention the ethics of her family's foundation accepting donations from countries and businesses that lobbied State during Clinton's tenure — this doesn't look good. Instead of playing hooky, maybe Clinton should have asked for remedial tutoring.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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