A State Department report criticizing Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email sever during her time as secretary of state is breathing new life into the scandal that has tormented her for over a year.
The report released on Wednesday by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded that Clinton’s use of private email to conduct public business was “not an appropriate method” of preserving documents and that it violated the government’s policies on email use and records retention.
Hilary Clinton disregarded federal law requiring her to preserve her records as secretary of state, a recent report from the State Department’s Inspector General confirms. Hillary also apparently admitted, in one email to her confidante Huma Abedin, that the reason she had set up her email server was to avoid “access” by federal officials in charge of preserving official records as required by law.
“Secretary Clinton should have preserved any Federal records she created and received on her personal account,” the IG’s report states, “by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary. At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service.”
Here’s a quick refresher of what Hillary did instead:
Instead of using government-issued email, which is standard for official communications, she set up her email account, housed in her own server in her personal home in New York. Using a private email account for official business on occasion was neither unprecedented nor prohibited. But Hillary used it exclusively and kept it secret from the relevant federal authorities.
When she left government, Clinton didn’t immediately hand over all official records, and authorities were still unaware of her secret personal server, according to the IG report.
The National Archives and Records Administration only learned she had her own email server when the story surfaced in the media two years after she left, according to the IG report.
After officials learned of the email account in 2014, Clinton finally handed over more than 30,000 emails to State Department officials. But she never handed over all of her emails from her time as secretary: She and her personal attorneys and advisers decided which emails to pass along and which were none of the government’s business. She has since deleted many of those not handed over.
Source – washingtonexaminer.com |AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez