Lawmaker accuses Clinton of records management mess at State

The Democratic Party has chose to dump a bunch of the Clinton emails which purport to show that none other than the Republican former Secretary of State Colin Powell advised Hillary on how to use her email servers. So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department on their personal email accounts.

A retired Army general, Powell served as America’s top diplomat during Republican President George W. Bush’s first term. And at the same time it shows that Powell looked for a run around the bureaucracy, but that’s different than Hillary Clinton trying to avoid accountability under the Freedom of Information Act, to Congress, et cetera, by setting up an inaccessible server in her basement. Clinton, the Democratic Party presidential candidate, has said her decision was wrong, but it has continued to dog her effort to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November 8 election. “I was not aware at the time of any requirement for private, unclassified exchanges to be treated as official records”, Powell said.

Clinton has previously said she was advised by Powell he used a non-government AOL account to communicate with staff and world leaders, and intentionally kept it hidden in order to skirt burdensome State Department regulations about document retention.

The latest twist in the ongoing story is Cummings’ release of early-2009 emails between Powell and Clinton. “There is a real danger”.

Powell says officials had concerns about mobile phones, too, but tells Clinton: “I had numerous meetings with them”.

Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was the one who released the emails.

Now, there’s still a difference between Powell’s handling of the email server and Clinton’s. “Her people have been trying to pin it on me”, he said.

Powell in the email also warned Clinton about using a BlackBerry.

“Be very careful”, he wrote.

“With respect to records, if I sent an email from my public email account to an addressee at another public email account it would not have gone through State Department servers”, Powell said in a statement, according to Politico. “Or something embedded in my shoe heel”, Powell said in the email. He said he used an “ancient” version of a PDA – the predecessor of the modern-day smart phone.

He then explained that emails he sent to a public email account from his public email account did not go through State Department servers. “They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn’t back off”. A spokeswoman for Powell did not respond to a request for comment. In it, Powell answers two questions from Clinton as she prepares for her new role in January 2009: “What were the restrictions on your use of your blackberry?” and “Did you use it in your personal office?” “But it’s okay; I’m free”.