Both men have spent months going after Clinton; a debate would have been the ideal opportunity for them to attack her uncontested.
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The audit found that of Clinton’s predecessors, only Colin Powell exclusively used private email as she did, though he didn’t rely on a home server. Gration, who served under Clinton, was in the middle of a disciplinary process initiated against him for this email use (among other things) when he resigned. “It said Clinton never requested permission to use her personal server, and it “would not” have been approved, in part, because of “the security risks in doing so”.
But in a March 2015 memo to reporters, shortly after the existence of Clinton’s homebrew server was made public, her office said there was “no evidence there was ever a breach” of her system. “None of those emails were turned over”, he said.
“They will be keeping it in mind”, he said.
Indeed, many independents already have doubts about Clinton’s honesty and integrity, and the email scandal reinforces those perceptions, West said. Thus Californians probably will vote in the June 7 primary without the benefit of knowing what Clinton has to say for herself on the legal record – and with an FBI criminal investigation pending.
In one meeting with Bentel, a staff member anxious that messages sent or received using the private server could contain documents that needed to be preserved under federal regulations. After famously commenting that he was sick of hearing about the former Secretary of State’s “damn emails”, Sander later expounded on the matter in an interview with CNN. [Photo by Jessica Kourkounis/Getty Images] Nevertheless, the findings of the inspector general are likely too eyebrow-raising for any of Hillary Clinton’s detractors – including Bernie Sanders – to ignore altogether.
The inspector general also found Clinton’s email set up violated agency policies and could have left sensitive government information vulnerable.
Far from challenging fossil fuel companies, the emails obtained by The Intercept show that State Department officials worked closely with private sector oil and gas companies, pressed other agencies within the Obama administration to commit federal government resources including technical assistance for locating shale reserves, and distributed agreements with partner nations pledging to help secure investments for new fracking projects. Indeed, during a debate with Hillary Clinton much earlier in the campaign, the Vermont Senator denounced efforts by Republicans and the media to make an issue out of the controversy.
An official statement from campaign spokesman Brian Fallon stopped just short of claiming that the inspector general’s report was actually a vindication. The State Department’s inspector general delivered his report on Hillary Clinton’s emails Wednesday – and it wasn’t good news for the presumptive Democratic candidate. And there is one line from the report that could be devastating for Clinton. An ongoing FBI investigation into whether or not Secretary Clinton committed a federal crime by bypassing the official State Department computer system is still underway.
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After Judicial Watch received the court’s blessing to move ahead, the group moved to depose Clinton, as well as five other current and former State Department officials about Clinton’s private server. She has also said that she did not want personal matters on her work email. But the report did note, rather dryly, that “the use of non-departmental systems creates significant security risks”. Three former senior aides, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, also declined.
