New email revelations refute Clinton’s claim
Controversy continues to brew over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as Secretary of State. New documents released this week from a court-ordered Freedom of Information Act lawsuit proves the former Secretary of State and presidential hopeful’s staff dealt with “serious” technical problems that forced them to temporarily disable security measures on a private server she kept in her New York home.
On January 9, 2011, a State Dept. IT worker shut down Clinton’s private server because he said, “someone was trying to hack us.” In another email they wrote, “We were attacked [sic] again so I shut it down.”
This directly conflicts with a statement from her spokesperson, Brian Fallon, who said there was no evidence of any hacking.
However, Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary at the time, said he thought it was likely her private server had been targeted by Russia, China or Iran. “Given the fact that the Pentagon acknowledges that they get attacked about 100,000 times a day, I think the odds are pretty high.”
A Defense Department official confirmed the likelihood that Clinton’s private server was hacked and put US security on the line. “You’re putting not just the Clinton server at risk but the entire Department of State emails at risk,” Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer (CTO) for the DIA told Fox News. “When you turn off your defensive mechanisms and you’re connected to the Internet, you’re almost laying out the welcome mat for anyone to intrude and attack and steal your secrets.”
Yet, Clinton maintains that having a private server was allowed and above board. “The truth is, everything I did was permitted and I went above and beyond what anybody could have expected.”
But a report released by the State Department’s Inspector General condemned Clinton for not seeking counsel on whether to handle work-related emails on her private Blackberry. He said information officers would have refused the request because of security risks. It’s worth stating that during Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, she never hired an Inspector General as mandated by federal law.
In addition to the security factors, under federal law, all the emails are considered federal property. It’s this provision that ensures the American people have an accurate, detailed accounting for the history books.
Nevertheless, Clinton kept a private email server at her New York home and publically stated that she deleted 30,000 emails she deemed personnel.
Judicial Watch says it identified more than a dozen work-related emails that were not included Clinton’s production of emails to the State Department.
According to Judicial Watch; “The revelations came thanks to our prying loose the email records referred to in the May 2016 State Department’s Office of the Inspector General report criticizing former Secretary of State Clinton’s email practices. The OIG report makes reference to the emails but they were not released to the public until now. We obtained them under a June 14, 2016, court order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in accordance with an unopposed motion by Judicial Watch to obtain the records. As an explosive Associated Press article makes clear, these new emails raise more questions.”
