Hillary Clinton violated the rules and failed to inform key staff members about her use of a private e-mail server, according to a scorching State Department Inspector General report. As for Secretary Condoleezza Rice (2005-2009), the inspector general concluded she did not use either personal or department email accounts for State Department business.
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The report, though, stated repeatedly that not a single person could be found at the State Department who ever approved the way she was using personal email accounts and private servers.
In November, 2010, Huma Abedin, her then deputy chief of staff discussed with her about “putting you on State email” to protect her email from spam.
The email controversy and a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into whether laws were broken as a result of Clinton’s use of a server kept in her NY home have overshadowed the Democratic front runner’s campaign. We have posted information on our website and the information that we had is out there, it’s been clearly public.
And finally, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon made an appearance on Special Report to try and explain away the IG findings.
“I have turned over all my emails”, Clinton said late Wednesday in an interview with Univision’s Los Angeles affiliate.
That’s the main conclusion that can be drawn from the 80-plus page report from the department’s inspector general.
Already, Clinton faces questions about her trustworthiness, with months of polling showing voters give her low marks for integrity.
She told CNN’s Brianna Keilar in July that “the truth is everything I did was permitted and I went above and beyond what anybody could have expected in making sure that if the State Department didn’t capture something, I made a real effort to get it to them”. I hope the American people will forgive me and I hope they will let us move onto the issues that matter.
Clinton told Abedin she was open to getting a separate email address but didn’t want “any risk of the personal being accessible”. Clinton’s top aides also did not cooperate with the investigators.
The ultimate impact of Clinton’s email controversy on her campaign will not be known until after the Federal Bureau of Investigation announces its findings.
The attack continued later that day, prompting another official to write to two of Clinton’s top aides, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, to warn them not to send Clinton “anything sensitive”.
Clinton has maintained that received permission to use her private email.
Clinton’s likely general election opponent, Republican Donald Trump, called the report “devastating”.
Lukens said he opted for this solution because although personal email could be checked on standard government computers connected to the department’s system, he described the process as “cumbersome” because passwords had to be changed every eight to 12 weeks. That analysis found Clinton ignored clear guidance that her email setup broke agency rules and could have left government secrets vulnerable to hackers.
The inspector general’s report found “extensive use of personal email accounts” by Mills, Abedin, Sullivan and Reines, who turned over a total of almost 72,000 pages of hard copy documents and 7.5 gigabytes of electronic files to the State Department.
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Current Secretary of State Kerry asked Steve Linick, the State Department inspector general, to investigate after Clinton’s email arrangement came to light past year.
