Hillary Clinton told FBI investigators last month that Gen. Colin Powell, her predecessor as secretary of state, suggested that she use a personal email account for State Department business.
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The aforementioned audit said Clinton’s set-up had violated federal record-keeping rules, and while the FBI did not issue an indictment, Comey did take her to task for behaving recklessly with sensitive information. Powell confirmed he did write Clinton an email talking about how his use of a personal email account “vastly improved communications within the State Department”. Even though they can’t undo the FBI’s recommendation that Clinton not be prosecuted for mishandling classified information – which already has been accepted by the Justice Department – obtaining the documents would make it easier for them to second-guess the decision.
The NYT also cites a book by political journalist Joe Conason that says during a conversation at a dinner party hosted by another former secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, in Washington in 2009, Powell advised Clinton to use her “own email” except for classified communications.
Clinton and her campaign have repeatedly pointed to the use of personal email by Powell and other government officials to try to explain the email controversy to voters, but Clinton has not said publicly that Powell personally recommended that she shun the official.gov email system.
“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat”, Mr. Conason writes.
Powell’s office released a statement late Thursday saying he had no recollection of the dinner conversation with Hillary Clinton.
Howard Krongard, a former watchdog for the State Department, told Fox News in May that he would have immediately opened an investigation if he caught wind of a secretary of state used a private account.
Conason is described by the newspaper as a “longtime defender of the Clintons”.
Krongard shot down the notion that she was in line with her predecessors’ in using a private email account for State Department business. By the time Clinton took over the department in 2009, a comparable email system for unclassified messages was in place. Clinton aides have expressed concerns that in the meantime congressional Republicans will try to leak parts of the materials to hurt Clinton’s campaign.
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Powell did not, however, have a private server in his home, the Times reported.
