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 The Clinton camp quickly sought to discredit a New York Times
report published late Monday that said her exclusive use of a
personal email account from 2009 through 2013 and a lack of email
preservation may have run afoul of the Federal Records Act.
The report got wide play, largely because it fuels a political
narrative from Republicans that Clinton and her husband, former
President Bill Clinton, are obsessed with secrecy and seek to play
by a different set of rules.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill, however, said Clinton had followed
both the "letter and spirit of the rules" while she was secretary of
state.
Clinton made no reference to the debate over her email use on
Tuesday night when she delivered a 30-minute speech at a gala dinner
in Washington for Emily's List, a political organization that helps
elect Democratic women who support access to abortion.
The State Department also defended Clinton, with spokeswoman Marie
Harf saying, "There was no prohibition on using a non-state.gov
account for official business, as long as it's preserved."
Democratic lawmakers and party loyalists tried to cast Clinton's use
of personal email as nothing unusual. They noted that previous
secretaries of state, including Colin Powell, used personal
accounts. They also pointed out that when Republican George W. Bush
was president, senior adviser Karl Rove had used an address through
the Republican National Committee to conduct some business.
A National Public Radio report said Chuck Hagel had not used an
official account when he was defense secretary.
It is unclear what the damage from the report will be. The rules
governing high-level officials' emails have been in flux in recent
years, so it is far from certain that any formal action will be
taken against Clinton.
But it does provide ammunition for critics, especially for a
congressional committee investigating the events surrounding the
Sept. 11, 2012, attack against a U.S. diplomatic facility in
Benghazi, Libya, in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed.
Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican congressman who chairs the
House Select Committee on Benghazi, said the committee learned
recently that Clinton had used more than one personal email address.
"The fact is the State Department cannot certify they have produced
all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails because they do not have
all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails, nor do they control access
to them," he said.
Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah said the House
Oversight Committee, which he chairs, will work with the Benghazi
committee "to further explore Hillary Clinton’s use of personal
emails while at the State Department."
Jeb Bush, a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination
who recently released a trove of emails from his time as Florida
governor, many sent on his personal account, demanded Clinton's
emails be made public.
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EVOLVING RULES
Officials acknowledge that Clinton used a personal email account
throughout her State Department tenure.
The State Department said Clinton last year turned over emails from
the period after a records request and that 300 of these were sent
to a committee investigating Benghazi.
A total of 55,000 pages of material covering the time she was in
office were turned over, the agency said.
The Obama administration has acknowledged that the federal
government is still in the process of modernizing its policy on
archiving emails and other digital information.
Federal agency heads were told in August 2012 they would have to
start keeping electronic records of all emails. A subsequent memo
said explicitly that work performed through a personal email address
may also need to be archived.
Jason R. Baron, a lawyer at Drinker Biddle & Reath who is a former
director of litigation at the National Archives and Records
Administration, said he believed that "the sole use of a private
email account by a high-level official to transact government
business is plainly inconsistent with the Federal Records Act and
longstanding policies of the National Archives."
However, James Lewis, a technical expert at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said the reality is many senior officials
use personal email.
"The issue here was intent. Was she doing it deliberately to avoid
having her emails tracked, and was there classified information?" he
said.
(Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson, Lesley Wroughton, Roberta
Rampton, Amanda Becker, Jonathan Allen and Jim Finkle; Editing by
James Dalgleish and Jeremy Laurence)
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