Clinton ‘surprised’ by staffer’s use of personal email

Senior adviser Jake Sullivan reported “issues sending secure fax”, prompting Clinton to reply that if they couldn’t send it by fax, they should “turn it into nonpaper w/no identifying heading and send nonsecure”. Clinton has maintained she never sent classified information over this unsecured server and that if she or her staff did, it was an accident.

While the USA public may be bored of Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails”, as her rival Bernie Sanders put it, the latest batch of messages – released in the dead of night – offers tantalizing glimpses into what the former secretary of state knew, and when. Ironically, an email thread from four months earlier shows Clinton saying she was “surprised” that a diplomatic oficer named John Godfrey used a personal email account to send a memo on Libya policy after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.

The auditor said the problems predate Clinton, who was President Barack Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 until 2013, citing “procedural weaknesses” as well as inadequate staffing, poor training and a lack of a written procedures.

A Republican member of the House Benghazi committee said he’s “hopeful” the Justice Department will bring charges against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for having classified information on her private email server.

In a separate email chain released on Thursday, Clinton appears to criticize one of her staffers for using a private email address to conduct government business – something she herself was doing at that very moment.

But now an email sent by Clinton might prove to be a bombshell in that investigation.

A new report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) claims the State Department has botched FOIA requests for years. Why is it just now being released?

Ironically, “the Department has not sent out a notice or memorandum reminding employees of their FOIA responsibilities since March 2009, when former Secretary Clinton sent a message commemorating Freedom of Information Day”, investigators said.

That’s when Clinton orders Sullivan to pull the data and send it through her non-secure channel. Was her instruction actually carried out?

Arends and his veterans group have a vested interest in Clinton’s State Department records as well as the integrity of the security clearance process.

The FBI is already investigating Clinton’s off-the-books email setup, but Arends hopes that Lynch will open another inquiry into Clinton’s email to Sullivan. He said many documents are created, stored or edited on secure systems even if they’re not classified. The emails recovered so far indicate violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan political activities by officials using government property while on official duty.

Friday’s e-mail batch was released a week after the department failed to meet a court-ordered target to publish 82-percent of e-mails by the end of 2015.

In a second breach of a court-mandated deadline, the State Department published the most recent collection of Clinton’s emails at 1:39 a.m. ET (06:39 GMT) on Friday.