Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exclusively utilized a personal email account for government business while at the department, a new report by the New York Times alleges, a situation which may have violated federal record-keeping laws.
The paper asserted that Clinton did not possess a government email during her tenure at the State Department, and that her aides took no action at the time to preserve the documents in the appropriate manner. The Federal Records Act would require those emails to be preserved on servers belonging to the State Department.
Two months ago, Clinton’s office handed over 55,000 pages of emails, according to Reuters , as part of an effort to comply with record-keeping laws. Those emails, however, were reviewed by Clinton’s staff, who decided which to turn over to the department.
#WhoCares @VanityFair : @HillaryClinton didn’t use gov’t e-mail during tenure as Sec’ of State http://t.co/wT45jzNZlx pic.twitter.com/DITinYF0zi
— Glenn Johnson (@glennlux) March 3, 2015
Clinton’s use of a private account proved to be alarming to experts, who asserted that personal email accounts aren’t as secure as official addresses. Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, expressed distinct surprise at the assertion that Clinton utilized a personal email account.
“It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business,” he said.
While at the State Department, Hillary Clinton only used her personal email account: http://t.co/GlSPMwwnNq pic.twitter.com/adxfLPR4PD
— SpeedReads (@SpeedReads) March 3, 2015
Though it was noted that Clinton wasn’t the first government official to employ a personal email address in the course of her work, Baron pointed to her exclusive use of the account as worrisome. Federal law asserts that letters and emails written and received by government officials, excepting classified material, are to be retained as a matter of public record, for the benefit of historians and the news media.
“I can recall no instance in my time at the National Archives when a high-ranking official at an executive branch agency solely used a personal email account for the transaction of government business,” Baron asserted.
Recently, it was revealed that the Clinton Foundation received payments from foreign governments during Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State. As the Inquisitr previously reported, an agreement established before Clinton’s nomination for the post allowed countries that had previously donated to the foundation to continue doing so at the same levels.
A spokesman for the former secretary asserted that Hillary Clinton followed the “letter and spirit of the rules” with her email, expecting that the documents would be preserved.
[Image: Twitter/ @Gizmorati]