A State Department spokesman on Thursday questioned why those with knowledge of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email didn’t provide better information, adding “there was only a partial understanding of how much Secretary Clinton relied on personal email”.
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State Department officials took pains to accommodate Hillary Clinton’s email practices as secretary, according to newly released testimony by a career agency official.
When IT staffers raised concerns about her email arrangement, the report says their superior told them “never to speak of the secretary’s personal email system again”.
“I have turned over all of my emails”.
The email controversy and a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into whether laws were broken as a result of Clinton’s use of a server kept in her NY home have overshadowed the Democratic front-runner’s campaign.
The events have all come to a climax just as she was close to defeating Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. However, Lukens said, Clinton was “very comfortable” using a BlackBerry – even though she would have to leave her office to use the device due to security protocols. The investigation was requested by current Secretary of State John Kerry and looked at record-keeping policies and practices at the State Department. “It’s the IG in her department that is making this determination”.
High-ranking government officials are aware of the regulations governing their tenure while in office and their responsibilities for the handling of records once they leave it.
Use of the private server made it impossible for the department to comply with Freedom of Information requests without her personal cooperation.
This week’s report from the State Department Office of Inspector General will make it harder for apologists to explain away the Clinton email fiasco, but they’ll keep trying.
The attack continued later that day, prompting another official to write to two of Clinton’s top aides, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, to warn them not to send Clinton “anything sensitive”.
It further said the State Department, and the Secretary of State’s office especially, “have been slow to recognise and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership”. It’s been clear for months that Clinton skirted the rules.
The IG says, “Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service”.
This time, Hillary Clinton should not be allowed to get away with it, nor should she have her incidents of malfeasance rewarded by being elected president of the United States.
THE REPORT: Clinton declined through her lawyer to be interviewed for the report. Another staffer reported a similar exchange.
The Clinton campaign when answering questions about the email scandal, which is an offshoot of the Benghazi scandal, often claim that Republican heads of the State Department, especially Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, did the same as Clinton and suffered no condemnation.
Clinton has acknowledged in the campaign that the homebrew email setup in her NY home was a mistake.
In a November 2010 email discussion, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Huma Abedin, who remains a close Clinton confidant, suggested it was time to “talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department …”
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Also in May 2011, Clinton told aides that someone was “hacking into her email”, after she received a message with a suspicious link, the new audit report said. Other emails, which Clinton says were exclusively personal – a contention that can not be verified – were destroyed.
