The Justice Department is affirming that Clinton had the right to delete personal emails from her private server. If this is true, it would mean that the several thousands of emails that Clinton admitted were deleted may still be retrieved. “Platte River has no knowledge of the server being wiped”, a company spokesman told The Washington Post.
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The extra scrutiny builds on the mounting pressure facing Clinton over her use of a private email account based on her personal server throughout her time as secretary of State.
In the Senate, two committees are also looking at Clinton’s email woes, and their Republican leaders say they could offer immunity to a former staffer tasked with installing the server in order to secure his testimony. Last month, she turned over both a thumb drive containing the emails and the server itself – something she had vowed never to do – to Justice Department investigators probing whether sensitive documents were properly protected. “The advertisement was seen as an apology for the Internet video that President Obama, then-Secretary of State Clinton, and other administration officials falsely blamed for inspiring “spontaneous demonstrations” resulting in the attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya”, Judicial Watch said in a statement earlier this year. Thus begins a new chapter in Hillary’s battle to keep private those communications that might damage her reputation and campaign.
All the emails from Clinton’s tenure at the State Department were on the server when the device was taken over by Platte River Networks in June 2013, four months after Clinton left the job. Clinton has said she deleted her emails after handing them over to the State Department in December.
“Well, I want people to understand this, so I am glad you asked“, Clinton said. I’m not sure why these personal, deleted emails should be an area of interest in a presidential campaign; in fact I’m not sure why any candidate’s personal, deleted emails should be scrutinized.
A spokesman for the firm, Andy Boian, told McClatchy recently that the server was kept in a “locked rack” at a facility in New Jersey until it was turned over in August to the FBI, which is conducting an inquiry to determine whether Clinton’s use of a personal email account breached national security. The FBI has been investigating the security of Clinton’s email setup. Her acknowledgement of the “mistake” came as the email controversy threatens to derail her presidential campaign.
For Clinton politically, she needs to get past this issue, because she continues to slip in the polls, and the more the emails dominate the discussion, the less she’s able to talk about the issues she cares about and believes plays well with the general public.
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So far, there is no evidence that she has sent or received any emails that were marked classified at the time. But he also repeatedly urged her aides to try harder to explain Mrs. Clinton’s actions to voters in a way that would persuade them she had done nothing wrong.
