Bill Clinton on Hillary’s Private Email Server: ‘She Just Used What Was Mine’

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

NEW YORK — In an unreported section of the report recently released by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, Bill Clinton is quoted saying that when it came to Hillary Clinton’s utilization of a private email server, “She just used what was mine.”

The former president told the Inspector General that the private server was his and that he never thought his wife’s use of the server while she was secretary of state would amount to a serious issue.

“It was after all my server and the FBI knew it was there and the Secret Service approved it coming in and she just used what was mine,” Clinton stated.

As the report relates, Clinton said that he didn’t originally think the FBI’s investigation “amounted to much frankly so I didn’t probably take it as seriously as maybe I might have in this unusual period[.]”

In interviews with the IG, one FBI prosecutor said he thought Hillary Clinton used the private email server to bypass future Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to her emails.

That prosecutor, “Prosecutor 4,” said that he found Clinton’s claim that she set up the server for convenience to be questionable.

“Prosecutor 4” further stated, “My view was and still remains that the private email server was set up to avoid FOIA….  [I]f you look at Colin Powell’s email, he pretty much was trying to avoid FOIA too.”

The IG report, meanwhile, documents the origins of Clinton’s home server and its relation to her husband’s server:

Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State from January 21, 2009, until February 1, 2013.  During that time, she used private email servers hosting the @clintonemail.com domain to conduct official State Department business.  According to FBI documents, former Secretary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had a private email server in their house in Chappaqua, N.Y., beginning in approximately 2008 (before Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State) for use by former President Clinton’s staff.  Former Secretary Clinton told the FBI that, in or around January 2009, she “directed aides…to create the clintonemail.com account,” and that this was done “as a matter of convenience.”

According to the FBI letterhead memorandum (LHM) summarizing the Midyear investigation, Clinton used her clintonemail.com account and personal mobile devices linked to that account for both personal and official business throughout her tenure as Secretary of State.  The LHM states that Clinton “decided to use a personal device to avoid carrying multiple devices.”  Clinton never personally used an official State Department email account or State Department-issued handheld device during her tenure, although there were official State Department email accounts from which emails were sent on her behalf.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.

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