Separately, Kirby said the department also was withholding eight email chains, totaling 18 messages, between President Barack Obama and Clinton.
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“These documents were not marked classified at the time they were sent”, Kirby told a news briefing, explaining that the emails had been reviewed prior to public release and found to contain top secret information.
But even so, the move by the State Department to apply such high-level classification to some of the e-mails on her server casts significant doubt on Clinton’s contention that she never discussed highly classified information using her personal e-mail.
He said there were seven email chains being withheld from the public due to the sensitive information they contain, which includes SAP.
In July, after the State Department began retroactively classifying many of Clinton’s emails, she revised her claim saying that she was “confident” that she “never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time it was sent or received”.
Clinton has asked the State Department to release her emails in order to defuse the controversy, but it is taking officials months to sort through all the material to determine whether there is classified information in them.
The Obama administration is confirming for the first time that Hillary Clinton’s unsecured home server contained some closely guarded secrets, including material requiring one of the highest levels of classification. As we’ve explained previously, tonight’s release will not meet the court’s due date for producing all of the remaining emails, but we are still striving to produce as many documents as possible today. “Hillary Clinton’s attempt to skirt government transparency laws by relying exclusively on an unsecure email server in her basement put our national security and diplomatic efforts at risk”, Priebus said.
Although in September she had said her decision to use the private account was a mistake, at the town hall earlier this week she said she did not believe it amounted to “an error in judgment”. For the past 10 months, the Clinton emails have been a campaign issue.
Question: Do you concede that information that met the “classified” or “top secret” criteria was sent and received via Secretary Clinton’s server?
Although Clinton’s Democratic rivals have avoided attacking her on the email issue, Republicans have pounded her on the topic, and the latest news will undoubtedly figure heavily in their criticisms. Marco Rubio called it “unacceptable” and said, “this is a disqualifier”. The department has so far released approximately 42,000 pages of Clinton’s correspondence.
“I’m not going to speak to the content of these documents”, said State Department spokesman John Kirby at a briefing with reporters.
Her campaign also pushed back against what is sees as “overclassification run amok”. The US government’s decision will now add newer problems to Clinton at a time when she is seeking to retain her frontrunner position in the Democratic presidential nomination race. That would mean the last of the emails would not be released until the end of February-after the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, officials there told a federal judge this week.
Pompeo went on to suggest that military and intelligence communities may “have had to change operations, because the Clinton server could have been compromised by a third party”. Refresh this page for updates as they become available.
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The Clinton campaign demanded Friday that the emails be released in full.
