Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says he sent Hillary Clinton a memo touting his use of a personal email account after she took over as the nation’s top diplomat in 2009.
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The Times also cited an upcoming book that described a dinner conversation where Powell told Clinton to use her own email except for classified information.
Also reportedly included in the FBI’s documents was an email exchange between Powell and Clinton sometime in the early months of her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat – and after she already had chose to use private email – in which Clinton asked Powell about his email operations.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, adding to Clinton’s struggles as she looks to put to rest the controversy surrounding her email server. Powell told Clinton using personal email “vastly improved” communication with his department, he said in a release Thursday.
Clinton has denied those allegations but says it was a mistake on her part to use a personal email. Powell used a commercially available email account for unclassified messages but used a secured State Department computer for classified material.
“Judicial Watch is a right-wing organization that has been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s”, Fallon said.
“We will move quickly to get these answers”, Tom Fitton, the group’s president, said in a statement.
Judicial Watch has until 14 October to submit questions to Clinton, who must respond within 30 days, according to the decision.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Instead, she sent and received all of her emails on her personal BlackBerry, which was hooked up to an email server housed at her home in NY.
In Friday’s order, Judge Sullivan said her written testimony is necessary “to enable her to explain on the record the goal for the creation and operation of the clintonemail.com system for State Department Business”.
However, the State Department overhauled its email protocols when Clinton assumed the office and forbade private servers like the one Clinton used, according to the Times.
“The judge also ordered the government to start turning over emails the FBI recovered from Clinton’s server in its now closed criminal investigation”.
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FBI Director James Comey however, said that while there was no clear evidence that Clinton and her aides meant to violate secrecy laws, “there is information that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”.
