Twenty-two emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server have been marked “top secret” and won’t be released, the State Department said Friday.
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“The State Department will be denying in full seven e-mail chains, found in 22 documents representing 37 pages”, that agency’s spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters.
The State Department said it would agree with a request from the White House that Clinton’s emails with President Barack Obama, 18 in all, also be withheld from public release for several years under the Presidential Records Act. They want all the documents to come out, and Fallon says this is simply a fight between the State Department and intelligence agencies about what constitutes a secret.
CORNISH: That’s NPR’s Carrie Johnson on the latest release of Hillary Clinton’s emails during her time as secretary of state.
Republicans jumped on the chance to throw mud on the Clinton campaign wall, hoping this time something will stick.
Clinton’s campaign spokesman says the emails should be released and called at least one case “over-classification run amok”.
There’s a new turn in the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Department officials wouldn’t describe the substance of the emails, or say if Clinton had sent any herself.
Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, insists she never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time.
He also indicated that the one-month extension would not apply for these and that Clinton or her staff may not have marked the emails properly.
And Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted that Clinton and the Obama administration have “obfuscated and misled at every available opportunity”, adding that she has “removed all doubt that she can not be trusted with the presidency”.
The State Department has asked for additional time to vet Clinton’s messages because of the impact of Storm Jonas on Washington DC on 23 and 24 January. But the matter could prove more troublesome now that Clinton’s former agency has confirmed that business conducted over the account included top-secret matters.
Like Clinton, the State Department discounted such a possibility last March. He said one was among those McCullough identified last summer as possibly containing top secret information. The other concerned North Korean nuclear weapons programs, according to officials.
The FBI also is looking into Clinton’s email setup, but has said nothing about the nature of its probe. She has struggled in surveys measuring perceived trustworthiness and any investigation, buoyed by evidence of top secret material coursing through her account, could negate a main selling point for her becoming commander in chief: her national security résumé.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed this report.
