Obama Administration: ‘Top secret’ info in Clinton emails

However, senior committee leaders were told by Inspector General Charles McCullough II that “several dozen emails containing classified information” were classified “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET AND TOP SEDCRET/SAP levels”.

The Democratic presidential front-runner has consistently downplayed the significance of the email issue, insisting that she made an error in judgement but did not put America’s secrets at risk.

Separately, Kirby said the department is withholding eight email chains, totaling 18 messages, between President Barack Obama and Clinton. None will be released publicly. But up until now, as The Washington Post notes, the State Department had not agreed that any of the emails should be classified as top secret, and her campaign had relied on the difference to suggest that the classification of her emails was largely a dispute between agencies.

This time it’s the State Department itself, which said Friday that 22 messages on Clinton’s private server contained top-secret material.

But Hillary never sent classified emails on her private server.

Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, said in a statement that Friday’s development was a case of “over-classification run amok”.

Fallon said that the process of sifting through Clinton’s emails had been marred by “bureaucratic infighting that has too often played out in public view”.

So far, officials haven’t really described what’s in the emails or even if Clinton sent them.

There’s a new turn in the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Clinton has blasted the State Department for retroactively classifying emails that were not considered classified before.

The FBI has also been looking into whether classified material was mishandled during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department from 2009 to 2013.

The State Department has been under a court order to release the documents in batches, once a month, as part of a lawsuit filed by reporter Jason Leopold of Vice News, who sued after the department failed to promptly respond to his request for the public documents. About 55,000 pages from Clinton’s email archive are the subject of multiple lawsuits.

“We are aware that there is intense interest in this matter, and we are announcing this decision now because the (Freedom of Information Act) process regarding these emails has been completed”.

And this week, State added another delay: It got a late start in getting clearances from various intelligence agencies, so it now won’t finish until February 29 – after the New Hampshire and SC primaries.

Not necessarily. A large proportion of documents that our government classifies are not actually that sensitive – more on that below. She has struggled in surveys measuring perceived trustworthiness and any investigation, buoyed by evidence of top secret material coursing through her account, could negate a main selling point for her becoming commander in chief: her national security resume. “I understand there’s great curiosity”. Several of the GOP candidates in last night’s Fox News channel debate also used the issue to cast doubt on Clinton’s trustworthiness, and those candidates pointed out that the FBI is investigating, too. “And as we have seen there is a lot…”