Ms. Clinton had plenty of warnings to use official government communications methods, so as to make sure that her records were properly preserved and to minimize cyber-security risks. This week, the State Department’s inspector general exposed still more.
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Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 has been justifiably criticized as an error of judgment.
What does it say about Hillary Clinton that she was so determined to shield herself from public disclosure laws that she was willing to break every rule in the book, and then with a straight face tell the public that she did nothing wrong?
Instead, Clinton retained – and has since produced – about 30,000 emails, or 55,000 pages, supposedly all relating to federal business. The report said she should have given all her official government email to the State Department.
The inspector general’s report did not examine whether Clinton’s use of personal email had compromised any highly classified information; that’s the subject of an FBI investigation that’s still underway.
“The crux of the issue was that BlackBerrys and iPhones are not allowed in the secretary’s office suite, so the question was: How is the secretary going to be able to check her e-mails if she’s not able to have the BlackBerry at her desk with her?” the official, Lewis Lukens, said in a deposition released Thursday by the conservative government transparency group Judicial Watch. “Secretary Clinton’s cybersecurity practices accordingly must be evaluated in light of these more comprehensive directives”, it said.
Critics have questioned whether her server might have made a tempting target for hackers, especially those working with or for foreign intelligence services.
Mr Trump has taken to calling Mrs Clinton “crooked” in tweets to his supporters, and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus issued a strongly worded statement. But Clinton did not turn over that particular email, which was later obtained by the investigators. Clinton also set up and maintained her own email network hosted on a server in her basement, while Powell simply used a commercial account.
But the real focus of the new report is on Clinton’s compliance with public record laws. In August 2011, chief of staff Mills, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and two other State Department officials exchanged emails about providing Clinton with a State Department BlackBerry to replace her personal one, which was malfunctioning, apparently because “her personal email server is down”.
The inspector general’s office examined email record-keeping under five secretaries state, both Democratic and Republican.
THE REPORT: According to the findings, it’s unclear how widespread knowledge was about Clinton’s use of a personal account.
Democrats keep arguing that, oh, it’s nothing, just more of the right-wing conspiracy to get the Clintons.
The inspector general’s report says the department has “not done a great job” of ensuring that officials understand the guidelines and have the tools to follow them in a straightforward way. I worked in bank IT for several years before I went to business school, and when this story first broke, I enjoyed an amusing hour or so envisioning what regulators would have said if we’d tried any of these sorts of excuses on them.
But she has said she will speak to the FBI as part of a separate criminal investigation into possible security breaches related to her private server.
But Clinton suggested on Thursday that she wanted it both ways – she wanted the convenience of using one email account for personal and work matters while also avoiding regulations regarding the capture of federal records from those accounts.
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But the report notes that interviews with officials from the Under Secretary for Management and the Office of the Legal Adviser found “no knowledge of approval or review by other Department staff” of the server. Clinton has withheld thousands of additional emails, saying they were personal.
