Clinton broke email policies, audit reveals
Report says staff rejected guidance
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton and her team ignored clear guidance from the State Department that her email setup broke federal standards and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers, a department audit has found. Her aides twice brushed aside concerns, in one case telling technical staff “the matter was not to be discussed further.”
The inspector general’s review Wednesday also revealed that hacking attempts — which came twice in one day — forced then-Secretary of State Clinton off email and the temporary shutdown of her server at one point in 2011, though she insists the personal server she used was never breached. Ms. Clinton and several of her senior staff declined to be interviewed for the investigation.
Earlier this month, Ms. Clinton declared that she was happy to “talk to anybody, anytime” about the matter and would encourage her staff to do the same.
Opponents of her Democratic presidential campaign pointed to the audit as proof that Ms. Clinton has not been truthful about her private email use as fresh evidence she is not trustworthy or qualified to be commander in chief after violating the Federal Records Act and endangering national security.
Ms. Clinton, campaigning in California, didn’t mention the controversy and ignored reporters’ shouted questions.
Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Ms. Clinton, who served as the nation’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013, declared the audit showed her email use was consistent with what others at the department have done.
The 78-page analysis says Ms. Clinton ignored clear directives. She never sought approval to conduct government business over private email, and never demonstrated the server or the Blackberry she used while in office “met minimum information security requirements.”
Twice in 2010, information
management staff at the State Department raised concerns that Ms. Clinton’s email practices failed to meet federal records-keeping requirements. The staff’s director responded that Ms. Clinton’s personal email system had been reviewed and approved by legal staff, “and that the matter was not to be discussed any further.”
The audit found no evidence of a legal staff review or approval. It said any such request would have been denied by senior information officers because of security risks.
The inspector general’s inquiry was prompted by revelations of Ms. Clinton’s email use, a subject that has dogged her presidential campaign. And the March 2013 hacking of the email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a confidant of Ms. Clinton, exposed Ms. Clinton’s private “clintonemail.com” address. It has now become part of the investigation of whether Ms. Clinton mishandled sensitive emails.
The audit did note that former Secretary of State Colin Powell had also exclusively used a private email account. But the failings of Ms. Clinton were singled out in the audit as being more serious than her predecessor.
Ms. Clinton’s account came to light during the probes into the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. In March 2015, a New York Times report raised questions about whether her use of it violated federal rules governing retention of and access to official records. And last October, Ms. Clinton testified during an 11hour hearing before a House committee.
The State Department has released more than 52,000 pages of Ms. Clinton’s work-related emails, including some that have since been classified. Ms. Clinton has withheld thousands of additional emails, saying they were personal.
Separately from the State Department audit — seen as one of the two big dominoes in the Clinton email controversy — the FBI has been investigating whether Ms. Clinton’s use of the private email server imperiled government secrets. It has recently interviewed Ms. Clinton’s top aides.
Ms. Clinton has acknowledged in the campaign that the homebrew email setup in her New York home was a mistake. She said she never sent or received anything marked classified at the time, and says hackers never breached the server.
The audit said four of her closest State Department aides — Ms. Mills, Ms. Abedin, policy chief Jake Sullivan and strategy aide Philippe Reines — some of whom used their personal email accounts extensively for official business, all declined interview requests.