Clinton used a private email server in her own home to conduct both official and personal business, and continued using it despite warnings from her own staff that the arrangement compromised cyber security. Kerry and the most recent secretaries of state except Clinton all agreed to be interviewed for the investigation. I am not sure how the Obama administration is going to justify not indicting her if the Federal Bureau of Investigation recommends it.
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Even though they refused to talk to the inspector general, most of those aides will be deposed in one of Judicial Watch’s open-records lawsuits.
And Clinton has said she turned over all her business-related emails as soon as the State Department asked for them. Clinton insists nothing that passed through her email system was classified at the time she saw it.
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”. To the extent the FBI has limited its inquiry to security issues and the possible mishandling of classified information, for example, the inspector general’s report finding violations of the federal records laws potentially implicates a different criminal statute. And Clinton’s response highlights how her defense – which began with confident assertions that she followed all the rules and broke no laws – has now been reduced to the argument that “others did it too” or that the rules she violated were not significant.
Despite earlier claims by Ms. Clinton that the State Department tech security wizards were OK with her habits, the OIG “found no evidence that the secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server”.
For one, it showed that the November 2010 email exchange Clinton had with Abedin was not among the records that the Democratic front-runner turned over to the State Department in December 2014.
The 78-page audit showed someone who clearly believes she’s above State Department regulations.
The back-and-forth were not included in the roughly 30,000 emails the Clinton team had handed over to the State Department.
The report singled out one Clinton aide who sent 9 emails a day using a personal account.
Hillary Clinton defended her email practices as secretary of state on Thursday, saying the rules that governed its use were hardly a “model of clarity”.
Colin Powell was the only secretary of state who used personal email for work, but not to the extent she did, and he did not use a private server. She’s said she made a mistake by setting up server in her NY home and that she never sent or received anything marked classified at the time.
As for Secretary Powell, his use of a personal email account came before the State Department’s full realization of the security risks involved.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, “We are already working to implement numerous improvements to our email and records management systems, many of which were underway before the IG review began”.
Whether Clinton should be charged with anything other than poor judgment remains unclear.
The report cites “longstanding, systemic weaknesses” related to communications that precede Clinton’s appointment as secretary of state.
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However, even with a loss in the primary, Mrs Clinton would nearly certainly win enough delegates to capture her party’s nomination. But the State Department’s report on her private email server once again calls into question her trustworthiness and illustrates her disregard for the rules at a pivotal moment in the campaign.
