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 Clinton did not hand over the emails to the State Department last
year when she provided the agency with what she said was a complete
record of her work-related emails, the department said on Thursday
night.
The disclosure that the record was incomplete, for reasons that
remain unclear, has added to criticism of the favorite to become the
Democratic Party's nominee for the 2016 presidential election.
Political opponents say Clinton side-stepped federal record-keeping
and transparency laws by using a private email server in her home
for work-related correspondence. The Republican Party said on Friday
it was renewing its demands that Clinton relinquish the server to be
examined.
"Greetings from Kabul!" Clinton wrote in one of the newly disclosed
emails in July 2012, in reply to a memo on the Libya election from
her old friend and informal adviser Sidney Blumenthal. "And thanks
for keeping this stuff coming!"
Blumenthal was barred from a job at the State Department by aides to
President Barack Obama because of lingering distrust over his role
advising Clinton's run against Obama in the acrimonious 2008
Democratic primary, according to the New York Times.
A Clinton spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about
whether the newly disclosed emails undercut Clinton's comments at a
campaign stop in Iowa last month on her relationship with
Blumenthal.
 "He's been a friend of mine for a long time and he sent me
unsolicited emails, which I passed on in some instances," Clinton
said of Blumenthal in May.
In a March 2012 email, Clinton replied to an email from Blumenthal
about possible French and British actions in Libya. "This strains
credulity based on what I know," she wrote to Blumenthal. "Any other
info about it?"
In a third example, she thanked Blumenthal for sending her
intelligence about the Libyan National Transitional Council in
August 2011 ahead of a meeting with NTC leaders. "I'm going to Paris
tomorrow night and will meet [with National Transitional Council]
leaders so this and additional info useful," she told him.
Clinton has seen her trustworthiness ratings erode after the
revelations in March about her unusual email habits while she was
the nation's top diplomat.
She used a single private email account for all her personal and
work correspondence, connected to a computer server kept in her New
York home, an arrangement that she said broke no rules.
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In March, Clinton deflected accusations of undue secrecy by saying
she had "absolute confidence" she had given any emails that could
possibly be work-related to the State Department, including all that
mentioned Libya. She later called for the entire cache to be made
public.
It remains unclear why Clinton apparently did not include these 15
emails when she handed over her records in December, and whether
there are other omissions yet to be made public.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Friday the department
did not know if other emails were missing.
The undisclosed emails first came to light after a Republican-led
committee of U.S. lawmakers investigating the 2012 attack on
diplomatic staff in Benghazi, Libya, obtained Blumenthal's record of
the emails through a subpoena.
Clinton did include a number of emails between her and Blumenthal in
her disclosure last year. Some of those had already been made
public, but none of those included examples of Clinton actively
encouraging Blumenthal's correspondence.
Nick Merrill, a Clinton spokesman, said Clinton had provided the
State Department with all the work-related correspondence she had in
her possession. He declined to say whether emails had been deleted
from Clinton's private server at an earlier date, prior to the
department's request.
Blumenthal could not be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by John Whitesides and Tom
Brown)
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