State Dept Officials Knew of Hillary Clinton’s Secret Email Account

“At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the (State) Department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business”, the OIG said. It wasn’t clear if any information in the document was classified to begin with. The total number of classified emails found on Clinton’s personal server has risen to 1,340 with the latest release.

The next step for investigators would be isolating the document Clinton instructed Sullivan to strip of its markings and convert into an unsecure email.

“We are releasing the documents today so as to be responsive to the court’s December 31st goal for posting 82 percent of the Clinton email collection by that date”, according to the State Department.

“It raises a host of serious questions and underscores the importance of the various inquiries into the transmittal of classified information through her non-government email server”, he said.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement the agency is “committed to transparency, and the issues addressed in this report have the full attention” of current Secretary of State John Kerry.

After seeing the email, Clinton directed her assistant Robert Russo to “pls [sic] prepare [a] response”. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has repeatedly maintained that she did not send or receive classified material on her personal account.

Secretary of State John Kerry asked the inspector general to conduct the review in March after Clinton’s email practices became public, and in September appointed a “transparency coordinator”, Janice Jacobs, to improve document preservation efforts going forward.

“It appears that the information contained in the emails referenced herein was classified, that the classified information was illegally transmitted, and that the Secretary ordered said classified information be stripped of its classification markers and transmitted through unencrypted channels”, Arends wrote to Lynch.

In her emails, Clinton herself raised concerns about the spillage of closely held information in another message to her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

In response to a public records lawsuit, the State Department is releasing Clinton’s emails at the end of each month after partially or entirely redacting any containing sensitive USA or foreign government information. In October, the AP found Clinton’s server was connected to the Internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers.

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. “Waay down”, Reines wrote.