Two inspectors general have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Rodham Clinton mishandled sensitive government information on a private email account she used as secretary of state, senior government officials said Thursday.
Advertisement
(REUTERS/Jim Young) U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens to remarks at a roundtable campaign event with small businesses in Cedar Falls, Iowa, United States, May 19, 2015. “In [a memo] the inspectors general said that at least one email made public by the State Department contained classified information”.
Clinton subsequently turned over 55,000 pages of emails for release, comprising roughly 30,000 individual messages to the state department, but deleted 32,000 more emails from her server, stating that they were personal in nature.
Since that practice was revealed in March, Clinton has said she used the account for convenience, but it also shielded her correspondence from congressional and Freedom of Information Act requests, the Times reports.
The DOJ has yet to decide whether it will launch a formal investigation, the officials told the Times.
In an interview with CNN July 7, Clinton declared there was “no law” barring her from exercising “full authority” to choose how she wanted to communicate as secretary of state. Clinton, for her part, has denied numerous times that she did not keep classified information on the private email account.
Advertisement
While Clinton is the clear frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s nomination, several recent polls have found a majority of voters find her untrustworthy, a feeling likely to be exacerbated by a criminal investigation by the federal government. Three thousand pages of emails were released last month.
