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Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

By GERARD ESCAICH FOLCH 

It was an issue that helped bring down Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but Mr Pence's use of a civilian email server is likely to end up as no more than a minor blip for him.  

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Hillary Clinton was harmed by an email scandal that dogged her footsteps through the presidential campaign.

What happened in Mike Pence’s email mishap?

During his years as governor of Indiana, Mr Pence was using a personal AOL email account for official government business – an account which was eventually hacked.   

And this situation sounds all too familiar. You might be thinking, isn’t this what went down in Ms Clinton’s email scandal?  

Mr Pence was the State of Indiana governor from 2013 to 2017, before running as Mr Trump’s vice president.

Last year,  his emails were hacked. His contacts received an email from his AOL account saying he and his wife were stuck in the Philippines and needed money. After this, Mr Pence changed to another AOL account.

Ms Clinton’s situation does indeed sound similar. She was Barack Obama’s secretary of state during his first term, during which she used a private email server instead of a government address.

This, and the ensuing confusion over a missing 30,000 emails, became a major criticism of Ms Clinton during last year’s election.

But RMIT law lecturer Jonathan Kolieb, a former congressional liaison officer at the Australian Embassy in the United States, points out one of the first differences.

“Hillary Clinton used a personal email server, whereas Mike Pence used an AOL one,” Mr Kolieb said.

How were their scandals different?

Mr Kolieb also said the difference was in security of the servers, and said Ms Clinton’s account wasn’t hacked, unlike the Vice President’s.

“There was no evidence, as far as I am aware, that Hillary Clinton’s emails were hacked,” said.

And it doesn’t end here.

Melbourne University American politics lecturer George Rennie said what was different about Ms Clinton's situation was that she was advised against using a personal email server as secretary of state, yet continued to do so.

“She was very bluntly told by the State Department to not use the email server,” Mr Rennie said.

And Mr Pence himself made sure to differentiate his situation from Ms Clinton’s.

“There's no comparison whatsoever between Hillary Clinton's practice — having a private server, mishandling classified information, destroying emails when they were requested by the Congress,” Mr Pence said.

But despite these accusations, FBI director James B. Comey said his agency’s investigation found no evidence that any work-related emails were “intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them”, as reported in The Washington Post.

Mr Pence defends himself:

Did they break the law?

Swinburne University political scientist Bryan Cranston said private servers weren’t banned, but they were subject to certain laws.

“The law of Indiana allows [public officials] to use private servers if any email is retained to what you can call public records,” Mr Cranston said.

Legally, Mr Pence is not prohibited from using a private email server for sending public information, but is expected to keep those communications for public record requests.

This means both Ms Clinton and Mr Pence’s uses of email were lawful, but as reported in an analysis piece by Amber Phillips in The Washington Post: “It's not straight-up illegal to use a private account, but government employees are urged to use their work-related accounts for both security and transparency sake.”

But perhaps the biggest difference between the two scandals is their impact on each party’s political careers.

Mr Kolieb refers to Mr Pence’s saga as a “non-scandal scandal”.

He said this story “was such a trivial thing that happened in the past, compared to everyday scandals during Trump’s presidency”.

And Mr Cranston agrees.

“It won’t have any impact in Pence’s vice-presidency. All the attention is focused on Donald Trump.”