At least three top Hillary Clinton aides may have had private accounts on her private server while she was Secretary of State, but the State Department is not planning to review their emails.
According to news reports, Huma Abedin, who was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff at the State Department and is her top confidante, had an account at Clintonemail.com. Two others–State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills and spokesperson Phillippe Reines–reportedly used personal email accounts to communicate with Clinton. Whether they had emails on Clinton’s server could not be verified.
The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes said on Fox News that the “State Department has evidence” that Abedin and Mills “used personal email while they were employed at the State Department.”
But the State Department has no intention of reviewing the “private” emails of the top Clinton State Department staffers.
During last Friday’s media briefing, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf was asked whether, “as part of this review, are the emails that her staff had on the personal server going to be reviewed as well? And if not, why not?”
“Well, this is a review of her emails and her records,” Harf said, according to a State Department transcript.
Harf was then asked, “But if they’re working on her behalf, if they’re helping to represent her opinions, her views to the rest of the Department, why wouldn’t their emails be looked at as well?”
She responded: “Well, I understand the question, but we’re talking about a batch of emails in response to a request from the State Department to update our secretary of state records. So we have hers, and that’s the review that we’re doing right now.”
During a Tuesday press conference, Clinton said she turned over nearly 30,000 “work-related” emails to the State Department but deleted nearly 30,000 others that she herself deemed to be “private.” The State Department said it would publish Clinton’s emails online after it reviews them for possible redactions. The review will take months and will reportedly cost taxpayers millions.
The Associated Press on Wednesday sued the State Department for Clinton’s emails.
“The Freedom of Information Act exists to give citizens a clear view of what government officials are doing on their behalf. When that view is denied, the next resort is the courts,” Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said.
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