The latest trove of hacked emails recently released by Wikileaks suggests that the Hillary Clinton camp received the blessings of the U.S. State Department to post a Twitter message urging the Obama administration to review 30,490 work-related emails the Democratic presidential nominee had selected to be released to the public, in an apparent effort to get ahead of of the email scandal and appear like she has nothing to hide.
According to Wikileaks, the email was written on March 5, 2015 by Philippe Reines, a former Senate and State Department aide, to various Clinton staffers, two days after The New York Times (NYT) first reported that Clinton used a private email server during her tenure as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State.
“This is final [and] cleared with State. HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] approved,” wrote longtime Clinton aide Reines, referring to the State Department’s approval of Clinton’s tweet.
On that same day on 11:35 p.m., after her decision to post on Twitter “was cleared with State,” Clinton wrote, “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”
Of the total of 62,320 emails sent and received by Clinton on her private server(s) between March 2009 and February 2013 — 30,490 were considered work-related and provided to the State Department while the remaining 31,830 were deemed private and allegedly destroyed.
Meanwhile, no one yet knows the contents of the 31,830 so-called private-emails that Clinton and her team claim to have destroyed.
I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 5, 2015
In accordance with The Federal Records Act, the State Department allowed Clinton to determine which emails are and are not federal record, allowing her to decide which emails to surrender to the federal authorities and which ones to keep or destroy.
U.S. State Department officials and the FBI just took Clinton’s word about the destroyed emails being of no importance.
Clinton may have been able to dispose of emails that could have incriminated her, while she played the card of the concern citizen willing to do the right thing.
“In doing so, she has sought to support the State Department’s efforts, fulfill her responsibility of record-keeping, and provide the chance for the public to assess the work she and officials at the State Department did during her tenure,” claimed Hillary for America PAC, referring to Clinton’s decision to highlight the email scandal on Twitter at the time.
Wikileaks does not cover the content of the conversation between the Clinton campaign and the State Department.
During the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing last October, Clinton argued she emailed other State employees on their official government account, adding that at least 90 percent of her communications must have been logged into the State Department’s federal record system before she ever submitted the emails.
Since Clinton used her own personal server and email rather than an official government account, circumventing the requirement that the U.S. government maintain copies of the communications of federal employees, it would be difficult for the Obama administration to produce all, if any emails linked to the former Secretary of State, without her help.
Although Clinton claims that she did email her fellow State employees on their official government account and that at least 90 percent of her communications are logged into the federal record system, then why did she submit thousands of emails to the U.S. State Department “to review them for release.”
When the U.S. State Department was asked about her claim, spokesman Mark Toner said, “I’m not aware that we have given that figure.”
“The [State Department] Inspector General Report found that less than one percent, less than one percent of State Department emails, record emails were captured,” added Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing last October when Clinton was grilled for hours. “So they give a number of less than one percent, and you give a number of 90 percent.”
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