Hillary Clinton deleted 32,000 ‘private’ emails, refuses to turn over server
Answering questions for the first time about her emails, Hillary Rodham Clinton said she's turned over to the State Department 55,000 pages of emails she deemed work-related, but said she got rid of the rest last year. (Associated Press)
Answering questions for the first time about her emails, Hillary Rodham Clinton said she’s turned over to the State Department 55,000 pages of emails she deemed work-related, but said she got rid of the rest last year. (Associated Press) more >
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton deleted nearly 32,000 emails she deemed private from her time in the Obama administration and refused Tuesday to turn over her personal email server, insisting she “fully complied” with the law and that voters will have to trust her judgment.
Answering questions for the first time about her emails, Mrs. Clinton said she’s turned over to the State Department 55,000 pages of emails she deemed work-related, but said she got rid of the rest last year. She defended her decision to keep control of her emails by using a private account, saying previous secretaries did the same thing, and saying it was more “convenient” for her this way.
“I wanted to use just one device for both personal and work emails instead of two,” she said in a hastily called press conference after she spoke at the U.N. Conference on Women.
But her explanations are already coming under fire. One conservative group, America Rising PAC, said Mrs. Clinton has previously said she keeps both a BlackBerry and an iPhone.
Mrs. Clinton also said the email server was set up for her husband, former President Clinton, but his office told The Wall Street Journal that he has only sent two emails in his life, and both were during his time as president, which ended in 2001, or eight years before the private server was created.
Of the 62,320 emails in her account, her office said 30,490 were deemed public business, while the remaining 31,830 were deemed private.
Congressional Republicans said Mrs. Clinton shouldn’t take credit for turning over her emails since it was only done under pressure from the House committee probing the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican and former federal prosecutor who is running the Benghazi probe, said Mrs. Clinton’s explanation raised more questions than it answered about her decisions. He said both the State Department and Mrs. Clinton have forfeited trust because they hid her private account from view for so long.
“That is why I see no choice but for Secretary Clinton to turn her server over to a neutral, detached third-party arbiter who can determine which documents should be public and which should remain private,” Mr. Gowdy said. “Secretary Clinton alone created this predicament, but she alone does not get to determine its outcome.”
The former first lady flatly rejected turning over her server, saying she’s already done enough in her mind to comply with her obligations.
“I chose not to keep my private personal emails — emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes,” she said.
She said open records laws leave it up to federal employees to determine what records are government-related and must be stored, and what communications are private and don’t have to be kept.
“I fully complied with every rule that I was governed by,” she said in a 20-minute press conference.
Mrs. Clinton began using the private server and email account on March 18, 2009. She said over the years, about half of the emails she sent from it were work-related and half were personal.
State Department rules reportedly prohibit employees from having more than one email account on a handheld device, and Mrs. Clinton said it was more convenient to use a single device, so she conducted all of her business from her new private account.
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