“While political opponents of Hillary Clinton are sure to misrepresent this report for their own partisan purposes, in reality, the inspector general documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email”, he said.
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Mitchell then shot down Clinton’s response to the IG report and her justification for using the server in the first place.
One of these officials told the IG that the Clinton team said department legal staff had approved the arrangement.
Mrs. Clinton has insisted she would “talk to anybody, any time” about the emails, adding, “I’ve encouraged all of [my staff] to be very forthcoming”.
The inspector general’s office examined email record-keeping under five secretaries state, both Democratic and Republican. But the inspector general said it could not show evidence of a review by legal counsel. And it virtually ensures that Clinton’s email practices will be front and center in Donald Trump’s fusillade of attacks against her credibility and honesty between now and November 8. “Her use of personal email was known to officials within the department during her tenure, and that there is no evidence of any successful breach of the secretary’s server”.
Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, declined to be interviewed for the inspector general’s investigation, U.S. media outlets reported on Wednesday.
Some senior State Department employees interviewed for the report admitted there was “some awareness” that Clinton was using a private server.
Hillary Clinton disregarded various State Department guidelines for avoiding cybersecurity risks, an internal audit found on Wednesday. All of her colleagues did: current Secretary John Kerry and former Secretaries Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright.
He attributed issues with retention of emails to “shoddy” record keeping at the State Department. It has also been raised as an issue in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Separately from the State Department audit, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have been probing whether Clinton’s use of a private email server imperiled government secrets. “Sadly, Secretary Clinton and her staff refused to cooperate with the Inspector General despite her claims of transparency and a willingness to answer anyone’s questions”, Grassley said in a released statement.
Because she didn’t request government approval for the personal server, Clinton also never verified that the devices she used to send and receive official correspondence “met minimum information security requirements”. The report said that Clinton while serving as Secretary of State failed to follow the department rules pertaining sensitive emails. No one will come out of this news cycle – with the exception of the hardest of the hard-core Clinton people – believing she is a better bet for the presidency on May 25 than she was on May 23. The audit-78 pages in total-said Clinton ignored directives from the State Department in regards to private email as concerns about the legality of passing classified government documents through a private account were brushed aside. Her technical support advisor told operations staff “someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to”.
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A longtime Clinton staffer, Heather Samuelson, led the effort to identify Clinton’s work emails.
