Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton weighed in on the controversy about her private, unarchived government emails, telling Twitter: “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”
State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said the department will review her emails for release as quickly as possible. There are around 55,000 (surviving) emails for the department to review. I say “surviving” because her team went through her emails and selected which ones were relevant to turn over to State and, of course, whatever survived the deleting process.
We have no evidence that Clinton turned over all her emails and that’s why the government just doesn’t allow (or trust) its employees to use any email account they want to conduct government business and hope they turn over the appropriate communications. In this case, Clinton set up a private email account immediately prior to taking the secretary of State position and it appears she set it up to avoid her communication being logged and archived. Her personal email system was set up for privacy not security.
“You erase it and everything’s gone,” said Matt Devost, a security expert who has had his own private e-mail for years.
When this story broke, I raised the question whether Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Benghazi Select Committee, would subpoena the emails from her ISP since, apparently, none of Hilary’s emails were included in the numerous hearings and investigations concerning the Benghazi terror attack. Well, it turns out he will, although it’s doubtful anything of interest will be produced, since she is her ISP.
AP reports: “The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, plans to investigate whether Clinton may have violated federal requirements that written communications of officials are preserved. The committee will join with a special committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, which issued subpoenas Wednesday for Clinton’s emails when she was secretary of state.”
Questions still remain about the government’s knowledge of Clinton’s private email use. Did she ever email President Obama? Didn’t he notice she wasn’t using the proper email account? Did Clinton email other State Department employees? No one noticed the private account? Furthermore, Gowdy and the Benghazi Select Committee learned six months ago Clinton was using a private email account for government business, so why did he wait so long to subpoena her email records?
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