By Bronte Price, PoliticKING
According to a State Department Inspector General report, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to follow the rules or inform key department staff regarding her use of a private email server.
The report states, "At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department's policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act."
Inspector General Report: Hillary Clinton Refused To Make Secret Email Account ‘Accessible’ https://t.co/n0lUA2Y77Spic.twitter.com/RYWPv0fCjT
— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 25, 2016
The report looks at record keeping laws, policies and practices at the State Department from 1997 to the present. The report says, "According to the staff member, the Director stated that the Secretary's personal system had been reviewed and approved by Department legal staff and that the matter was not to be discussed any further." The same director also reportedly "instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary's personal email system again."
But the report notes that interviews with officials from the Under Secretary for Management and the Office of the Legal Adviser found "no knowledge of approval or review by other Department staff" of the server.
Clinton told CNN in July that "the truth is everything I did was permitted and I went above and beyond what anybody could have expected in making sure that if the State Department didn't capture something, I made a real effort to get it to them."
However, the report says that the Inspector General's office "found no evidence that the Secretary requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server."
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, wrote in a statement following the report's release, that "While political opponents of Hillary Clinton are sure to misrepresent this report for their own partisan purposes, in reality, the Inspector General documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other Secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email."
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