Blow to Clinton’s campaign, as U.S. confirms her emails were ‘Top Secret’

The revelation comes at a particularly critical moment for Clinton who on Monday will compete in the first state contest to elect the country’s next president. The 37 pages include messages a key intelligence official recently said concerned “special access programs” -highly restricted, classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes. That means they won’t be published online with the rest of the documents, even with blacked-out boxes. Those officials would not discuss what was in the e-mails or whether secretary Clinton was the sender or the recipient, according to a report by CBS News.

Mrs. Clinton has been under fire since last March for her decision to use a private server to host her work related e-mails. Because of how recklessly Clinton and her top aides handled classified information, the IC must operate under the assumption that there are copies of these 22 emails floating around – whether in the possession of current or former government officials but unaccounted for or, worse, in the possession of, say, foreign governments that managed to hack into Clinton’s unsecured private system. More than 1,000 messages on Clinton’s email server have been designated classified. Now that a number of double-secret emails have been found on it, she puts forth two excuses: 1) the information wasn’t so classified when she received it and 2) there’s an ongoing inter-agency dispute over the proper classification.

Hillary Clinton’s private server held 22 e- mails that included top-secret information and are being withheld from release, the state department disclosed. “We feel no differently today”, said Brian Fallon, secretary of Hillary for America National Press.

Spokesman John Kirby tells the AP that no judgment on past classification was made.

Clinton’s chief Democratic rival, Sen.

“If someone on my staff did what she did, you know what would happen?” he said.

“We will pursue all appropriate avenues to see that her emails are released in a manner consistent with her call previous year”.

“Didn’t she look us in the eyes and tell us there was not a bit of classified information on her person server?”

Mrs Clinton’s campaign reacted with fury to the announcement, demanding that the emails be released in full in order to defuse a burgeoning scandal that could critically damage her 2016 presidential hopes.

Levin said he has represented clients who were accused of far less, including a Defense Department employee who came to the attention of federal investigators for working on classified information at home on his work laptop. Until now, none of the released emails were marked as classified, despite 1000 of them had lower classification levels.

The State Department will release more emails from Clinton’s time as secretary of state later Friday. “Let people sort them through”, Clinton said at a town hall sponsored by CNN in Iowa earlier this week.

Judge Napolitano called today’s revelations “another blow to Hillary Clinton’s credibility and another avenue for the FBI to investigate”.

Clinton and the State Department also claimed the vast majority of her emails were preserved properly for archiving because she corresponded mainly with government accounts.

They’ve requested to release the last batch messages on 29 February, which will be after the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses.