Associated Press refuses to back down after Mike Pence threatens it over his private email scandal
Four months after Palmer Report first began reporting on Mike Pence’s private email scandal, it’s finally begun attracting the attention of corporate media outlets this week. Pence responded to the exploding scandal by berating and threatening the Associated Press — but to its credit, it’s refusing to back down.
The scandal centers around Mike Pence’s use of a private email account for government business while he was Governor of Indiana. Pence was inexplicably using a personal America Online email account for official business (AOL? what decade are we in?), and inappropriately used it to exchange confidential information about an FBI briefing involving a terrorist. Pence’s AOL email got hacked around the time he became Donald Trump’s running mate, suggesting Russia was behind it. Pence responded by merely switching to a different AOL email address for government business. And this week it finally hit the fan.
While the Associated Press was reporting on the scandal, it included the AOL email addresses that were used by Mike Pence and his wife, as they both conducted Indiana state business using those addresses. As it turns out, Mrs. Pence is inexplicably still using that same AOL email address, despite the earlier hacking incident. And now Mike Pence is outraged that his wife’s current email address was exposed to the public, even though hackers have already had it for months.
Pence sent a nasty letter to the AP on letterhead from the “Office of the Vice President.” That means he used the power of his office to attack and threaten the media – a trick he appears to have learned from his boss Trump. But the AP is refusing to back down, declining to retract the email address from its story, and refusing to apologize for doing its job. We trust Mrs. Pence has taken a cue from her tech-challenged husband and switched to a new AOL email address. Contribute to Palmer Report
