They rated the statement 'my predecessors did the exact same thing' mostly false. Editorial choice -- they could have rated the statement 'none of my predecessors followed proper procedure for email either' and found it true.
Powell maintained his own email but without the server in his house, Rice claims she avoided all email, so we have exactly 0 secretaries of state who've handled email 'the right way' in 220-some-odd years of this fine country.
Indeed. I believe she should be investigated and prosecuted for this, but I nevertheless think it remains a mostly credible claim with respect to Powell. If I understand correctly, Politifact makes the argument that Powell used a personal e-mail address at an established service whereas Clinton installed her own mail server.
As someone who believes strongly in revitalizing self-hosting, I find focusing on Hillary's use of a personal mail server (and not on the fact that it was not an official e-mail account, full stop) to be unfairly marginalizing personal mail servers or personal servers in general. There's nothing wrong about running your own mail server. The problem is running your own mail server to give yourself a personal e-mail account to use in your job as Secretary of State. But the key part is using a personal e-mail account for your job that involves dealing with highly sensitive and classified materials—an action that would get most government employees fired if not imprisoned.
using this statue to prosecute would not only violate the spirit and intent of the law but also be very unlikely, given precedent, to result in any conviction. Hence a competent prosecutor would likely not seek to prosecute based on this law, nor should they, as it would be a waste of taxpayer money not to mention the ill effect it would have on our electoral process (sudden unnecessary prosecution against particular candidates unlikely to lead anywhere).
“Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both. “
Applying that to Hillary's case is a bit of a stretch. It's not like she was downloading all the confidential stuff at the White House and emailing it to herself. And anyone emailing to clintonemail.com would presumably guess that was going to the Clinton's email server.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/...
Politifact rates this idea mostly false.