After five months, the State Department told Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that “no records responsive to your request were located” despite many members of the department corresponding with Clinton on her private address and “evidence that the Secretary’s then-Chief of Staff was informed of the request”, according to the report.
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A spokesperson for Grassley’s office told CNN that it is working under the assumption the email was classified, since Clinton’s aides would have had other ways to send the document to her if it wasn’t, such as through email.
The Freedom of Information Act request, Linick found, “neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers” such as Gmail or Yahoo. So far, it has released 43,148 pages of emails.
At the very least, this is yet another example of Hillary Clinton using her own highly suspect judgment to unilaterally decide how sensitive material should be handled.
While her Democratic primary opponents have mostly declined to use the private server against Clinton, Republican candidates have been using every opportunity to paint her as untrustworthy and unlawful. “I was surprised that he used personal email account if he is at State”, she wrote in the email dated February 27, 2011.
“It raises a host of serious questions and underscores the importance of the various inquiries” into Clinton’s e-mails, Grassley said in a statement.
The report also indicates that dozens of senior government officials would send Clinton business emails to her private account, Newsweek reports.
Clinton then replied with another email.
The email, sent in June of 2011, follows an exchange about whether Clinton had received the information. “Judicial Watch plans to share this report with several federal courts considering our requests for discovery about the Clinton email issue”, he continued. At that time, officials said they were too overworked and understaffed to release the messages on time.
But the inspector general said even as the number of requests skyrocketed, the department cut funding for the division responsible for handling the requests – adding to what seemed to outsiders to be a veil of secrecy surrounding Mrs. Clinton’s activities at the department.
“If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure”.
Clinton directed her assistant, Robert Russo, to “pls prepare [a] response” following the email.
Campaign officials also noted that just because something resides on a secure system doesn’t mean it can’t include unclassified material.
Of those, 66 contain classified information. It found the department responded to just 14 out of 417 requests regarding the five most recent secretaries of state within 20 days, the amount of time specified by law.
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The report, issued by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, recommends the State Department hire and dedicate more staff for the goal of producing records, to which the State Department says it agrees.
