The e-mail scandal that has been plaguing Mrs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign took a potentially damaging turn when the State Department declared 22 e-mail messages that passed through her private computer server “top secret”.
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“Spokesman John Kirby said the emails were not marked classified at the time they were sent”.
And the issue continues as the FBI investigates the matter and presidential candidates, now including Democrat Bernie Sanders, use it to try to discredit Clinton.
‘There is nothing new and I think the facts are quite helpful here, ‘ Clinton told CNN, before going on to say that the emails were nothing ‘more than dispute about retroactive classification’.
He was referring to the “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement” – or Standard Form 312 – that Clinton signed on January 22, 2009, a day after taking over as secretary of state.
Facing the increasing questions, Mrs. Clinton said on ABC’s “This Week” program Sunday that she wants everything out in the open, including releasing the information that the government has said is too secret to be shared.
Days before voting begins in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton is facing new, serious allegations about whether she mishandled classified information while serving as the nation’s chief diplomat. Her campaign also pushed back against what is sees as “overclassification run amok”.
Kirby confirmed that the “denied-in-full emails” are among those McCullough cited.
This is the first time her emails have been labelled classified at any level.
He said the emails would not be disclosed, even with blacked-out boxes, as the agency released more of the emails from Clinton’s tenure as the country’s top diplomat.
– It remains unclear if the information could have come from publicly available sources despite now being classified as “top secret”. “In the State Department, to put it on to an unclassified system, no matter what that system is”.
The FBI also is looking into Clinton’s email setup, but has said nothing about the nature of its probe. Independent experts say it’s unlikely Clinton will be charged with wrongdoing, based on details that have surfaced so far and the lack of indications that she meant to break laws.
“And, you know, I regret that seems to be part of the atmosphere”, she added. Thousands of pages of Clinton’s emails have been marked with a lower level of classification.
The State Department has been ordered by a federal judge to release all of Clinton’s emails by Friday in response to a public records lawsuit.
Hillary, did you ever remove the status of “classified” from a previously so designated communication, or ever instruct someone to do so?
“This is very much like Benghazi”, she said, referring to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in that Libyan city that left four Americans dead.
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They’ve requested to release the last batch messages on 29 February, which will be after the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses. About 1,600 pages of the remaining 9,000 pages were released Friday.
