Tag: Email-Gate

Posted on

State Department Audit Criticizes Hillary Clinton’s Email Practices

An audit by the State Department Inspector General criticized not only former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but also former Secretary of State Colin Powell, for non-compliance over personal email use and preservation.

From NBC News:

“At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department issues before leaving government service,” says an audit by the State Department Inspector General, obtained by NBC News.

“Because she did not do so, she did not comply with the [State] Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

The audit found that the non-compliance over personal email went beyond Clinton, and that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, also failed to preserve government-related emails when he was secretary of state.

The State Department asked Powell to try to receive relevant emails from his internet provider, but “as of May 2016 the Department has not received a response” from Powell, the audit said.

Indeed, the report’s conclusion cites “longstanding, systemic weaknesses” in electronic record-keeping “that go well beyond the tenure of any one secretary of state.”

Clinton’s campaign spokesman tweeted out this statement:

Posted on

Condoleeza Rice aides, Colin Powell Also Had Classified Info In Private Emails

Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell

ABC News is reporting that Hillary Clinton wasn’t the Secretary of State to utilize a private email account.

It turns out immediate staffers for Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell himself, used non-State department email accounts while serving at SOS. These accounts have been found to have classified information on them.

Colin Powell and the immediate staff of Condoleezza Rice, both of whom served under President George W. Bush, also had information that was later deemed classified on non-State Department email accounts, according to a new memo from the State Department’s Inspector General, described to ABC News by Rep. Elijah Cummings.

That memo, dated Feb. 3 and addressed to Under Secretary of State for Management, Patrick Kennedy, was shared with Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. ABC News has not seen the memo.

Cummings, who has long been critical of the many Republican-led investigations into Clinton’s email use, says this is just further evidence they are out to derail her campaign for President.

“Based on this new revelation, it is clear that the Republican investigations are nothing more than a transparent political attempt to use taxpayer funds to target the Democratic candidate for President,” Cummings said in a statement.

Since Rice and Powell were in a Republican administration, it’ll be interesting to see how rabid anti-Hillary folks will try and square this new information.

Posted on

U.S. State Department: Recently Released Clinton Emails “Not Marked Classified”

The AP is reporting that a group of emails meant to be released today as part of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal email server are being withheld because they contain “top secret” information.

It has not been reported whether any of the information was classified at the time of transmission.

State Department spokesman John Kirby clarified Friday, “The documents are being upgraded at the request of the Intelligence Community. These documents were not marked classified at the time they were sent.”

Kirby told the AP that the decision to withhold documents in full as “not unusual.”

The Associated Press learned seven email chains are being withheld in full from the Friday release because they contain information deemed to be “top secret.” The 37 pages include messages recently described by a key intelligence official as concerning so-called “special access programs” — a highly restricted subset of classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes or government eavesdropping.

Even if Clinton only read, and didn’t write or forward the secret messages, she still would have been required to report classification slippages that she recognized. But without classification markings, that may have been difficult, especially if the information was in the public domain.

Department officials wouldn’t describe the substance of the emails, or say if Clinton sent any herself.

“We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails,” Clinton campaign spokesman Brain Fallon said in a statement. “Since first providing her emails to the State Department more than one year ago, Hillary Clinton has urged that they be made available to the public. We feel no differently today.”

Fallon accused the “loudest and leakiest participants” in a process of bureaucratic infighting for withholding the exchanges. The documents, he said, originated in the State Department’s unclassified system long before they ever reached Clinton, and “in at least one case, the emails appear to involve information from a published news article.”

“This appears to be over-classification run amok,” Fallon said.

Posted on

Department Of Justice: Hillary Clinton Had Authority To Delete Personal Emails

Not many folks picked up on this story at the end of the week wherein the Department of Justice issued a statement that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broke no laws and was within her rights to delete personal emails.

“There is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision.  She appropriately could have done so even if she were working on a government server.”

Gee, wonder why no one paid attention to this? Things that make you go “hmm…”

Watch below:

Posted on

Hillary Clinton Addresses Email-Gate

Hillary Clinton addressed the recent news story regarding her decision to send departmental emails through a private email server at her home today saying it had been a matter of “convenience,” and that she regretted not keeping parallel government and private accounts.

“I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email,” she said when asked if any of her emails compromised security. “Looking back, it might have been smarter” to have used government email, she conceded.

Watch Clinton’s remarks below via Politico: